Inciting racism or representing racism?

We have a problem of racism and xenophobia that has gradually become an even heavier threat than the most serious terror threat to Turkey. To see that this threat is not based on a far-fetched assessment, it is more than enough to look at how the perception of Turkey all over the world has been affected as a result of the media coverage of just a few incidents. This change in perception is halting tourism and investment coming to Turkey, especially from the Gulf, and is causing existing investments to be withdrawn as well.

The interesting side of the matter is that these perceptions of racism and xenophobia are in fact being produced and managed by well-studied, organized operations. Those who watch these operations from outside suppose that in Turkey every foreigner or every tourist can be subjected to an attack every day, everywhere, by everyone, at any moment. Yet of course this is not true. Thank God, racism and xenophobia are not, and have never been, a widespread attitude in Turkey.

To be sure, the peddlers of politics who invest in racism and hostility toward foreigners and migrants claim that opposition to asylum seekers has a very serious social base and that all they are doing is representing this existing base. They say this, but what they do, beyond representation, is to incite people by constantly conditioning them on a single subject.

It is very important to see how "representing" is swapped with inciting people to an evil by "dropping a watermelon rind, suggesting, hypnotizing, brainwashing." In the Kayseri provocation there was no spontaneous reaction from the people. According to a scenario worked out long in advance, the aim was for the people to be roused and rise up and attempt a lynching against a community, but, knowing that this could not be achieved, and since even the mere appearance of it would be enough, paid thugs with axes (baltacı) and shabbiha were brought in by truck. Baltacıs and shabbiha are the classic raw material of the coup-making operations of the regimes in the Middle East.

The ferocity, cruelty, callousness and lack of understanding of those who have been at the forefront of hostility toward refugees in Turkey for years have nothing, near or far, to do with a people seeking representation in this society. All these attitudes are only the personality traits of agents who know what they are doing and never mix their feelings into the work they do. Even so, they try to legitimize themselves with the claim of "representing" the feelings of a people. Just like the claims of the old political representatives of the PKK who, during the events of 6-7 October, claimed to represent the Kurdish youths throwing stones and holding street demonstrations, saying "we are the last generation that can be spoken to about them." They were trying to make room for themselves by putting forward the deaf-to-reason anger of the poor Kurdish youths whom they themselves had incited, directed, driven into the streets. In reality, they themselves were behind those street demonstrations, that vandal violence. Now too, those who incite hostility toward Syrians try to legitimize themselves by saying that they are perhaps only representing an anger that already exists in society. Yet whichever way one looks at it, what they do is itself the cause of the existing violence, of the rising hatred and anger. The anger they produce and spread incites people to commit crimes against humanity against a people who have taken refuge in Turkey and who for 13 years have received an exceptional treatment that has set an example for the world. In this way they pull down to the depths a Turkey that, with the magnificent test it has passed for years, has stood at the summit in the world in terms of humane politics. Whichever way you look at it, it is a crime against humanity, whichever way you look at it, it is a terrible attack against Turkey.

Moreover, there is no such thing as the rule that whatever tendencies exist in politics must be represented and defended. In Turkey, separatism cannot be a subject of politics, for example. There cannot be a politics that advocates religious, ethnic or regional discrimination either. There may be those who want to do this, there may be those who hate others and desire every kind of discrimination against them, but this cannot have representation in politics. When you open the way for advocating this, you do not expand the political arena; on the contrary, you damage the health, the soundness of society. A terrorist organization cannot have representation in politics. The political representation of the PKK, of DAESH or of any other terrorist organization corrupts both politics and society. Today, xenophobia, hostility toward "Syrians," and especially "hostility toward Arabs," which can now be pronounced very recklessly, have reached the point of destroying the fabric of this country. There are 5-6 million Arabs in this country who are original citizens of the Republic of Turkey, and they did not come to this country a hundred years ago like those who are now selling racism; they came in the early years of Islam as evlad-ı fütuhat (descendants of the conquest), as people who are the bearers of the spirit that made this country a homeland. Even if it were not so, hostility toward Arabs is in itself an inhuman crime, but this simple fact to which we are drawing attention shows what kind of ignorance racism in this country today also invests in.

In society, of course, no one is obliged to love anyone, and no one can be forced to. But no one can disparage another race, another people, or incite other people against them. When this is overlooked in one place, it inevitably becomes normal after a while. Every kind of perversion, when put up for sale, finds a buyer. The sale has a seductive side. One must not turn a blind eye to the sale of this. The state, which has the responsibility of keeping society together in peace and tranquility, must take measures against racism and hate speech that disturb the peace of society, just as it takes measures against drugs, alcoholism, prostitution and pornography. Otherwise, when you leave the sale free, buyers of pornography, of prostitution, of drugs increase and spread throughout the whole society.

It is of course likely that the picture that emerged for a time in Turkey because of the intensively experienced migration caused a change, a difference, even a fright in some sections. However, this change could have been managed differently. The foreigner could have been worked on not as a problem but as an opportunity to meet, as a dimension of opening to another world, another horizon, and indeed it was so. Through embracing that foreigner in the country, a country's conscientious stance, virtues and self-respect could have been worked on, and this too was worked on a good deal and in fact brought Turkey a great deal.

In the early period, when refugees were far more numerous in Turkey, and when their problems were felt much more, there was no serious hostility toward refugees, because no one was targeting them. At that time the Turkish economy was also on a relatively better course. This is perhaps the most important indicator that the very presence of refugees does not in fact have a negative effect on the economy as is supposed.

The interesting side of the matter is that there is a correspondence that cannot be ignored between the escalation of hostility toward refugees, the beginning of sending many of them back, and the intensification of economic hardships. As Turkey clung to the attitude of sending migrants back, the economic situation did not get any better.

So how are we going to explain this? In what way are we going to establish the correlation? Are purely economic indicators enough to explain the situation? Or does the matter have spiritual dimensions as well?

Might it not be that the change in our way of looking at the world, even in our personality, is changing the way we see what we are living through?