Speaking of the "mass that cannot defend its own homeland"…

The words Prof. İlber Ortaylı uttered last week about refugees were not of a kind that could be easily brushed aside. That Ortaylı's words are diametrically opposed to what he said on the same subject at another time and in another setting cannot be reduced merely to the inconsistency of Ortaylı as a person, or to the simplicity of his being someone who speaks according to context and setting and serves the sherbet according to the pulse. The performance of contradiction Ortaylı has put forth on this subject also provides an important example of what the knowledge and authority of history can accomplish in today's media world, and of how intricate the relationship between knowledge and power has become.

Is Ortaylı, accepted as an authority on history, establishing a power with this authority, or is he preferring to turn into a mere spokesman for the power of others, for example? Since the power he represents is not the present government, which would not be pleased at all with what he said about refugees, nor even the power of the state, what kind of power has Ortaylı been playing to?

To give a brief reminder, Ortaylı, who said on a television program he took part in in 2022, "Turkey needs refugees. Because we are aging. Our cultural minorities in the world will protect us," and who in another program argued as logically as could be that agriculture in Turkey would come to an end if there were no Afghan migrants, recently made a statement that is a scandal from whichever side you look at it, as if he had forgotten all these analyses.

All of Ortaylı's words, "I think the refugees must be sent away. Why should I turn a mass that cannot defend its own homeland into a citizen mass? This is not a bed of roses either. Then one day tomorrow I will take these men into the army. Will I be able to?" are a scandal, but of course the most attention-grabbing part is "a mass that cannot defend its own homeland." Because when the matter is opened through the expressions "fleeing without being able to defend their homeland," first, the chapter on against whom the Syrians in Turkey would defend their homeland has to be explained over and over as if to a fool.

Let us explain, then: The Syrian people did not leave their homeland and flee because their country was occupied by another country. It is not that they were given a period of time against the attacks of an enemy that was coming and left their homeland to an occupying power and fled. The Syrians were subjected to intense attacks and massacres by the very state at their own head, their houses were destroyed, many were killed, and the remaining survivors fled the bombardment by their own state from the air and from the ground and saved their lives. They had neither a weapon to fight with nor an enemy coming from outside in front of them. An army that was supposed to protect them pointed its weapons at them. The same army received help from Iran, Russia and the United States to massacre its own people.

Second, despite this, it is not true that the Syrians left their country without fighting. For years their men and all who could bear arms fought with great self-sacrifice against this oppressive pack of killers, and in these wars they gave many martyrs, fell wounded, and also fought against the PKK and DAESH, which also constitute a threat to Turkey.

Third, and most important of all: that Ortaylı's expression "fleeing without being able to defend their homeland" sticks out far too much, strangely, as the words of someone who does not look at his own situation at all, who has forgotten where he himself came from.

We knew that Ortaylı was born in a refugee camp, but thanks to Yıldıray Oğur's meticulous tracing, bless him, we learned many details (From a refugee camp in Bregenz..., Karar, 17 October 2023). His own family joined the migrants who, when the Red Army approached Crimea, which was under German occupation, were settled with the Nazis toward the West and Germany in different camps. From there they stayed first in Graz, then in Innsbruck, then in Landeck, a former Nazi youth camp, and finally in the Nazi refugee camps in Alberschwende, attached to the city of Bregenz. Mrs. Şefika and Mr. Kemal, whom she met and married in this camp, had a son in 1947. İlber's family, born in the camp, although after the war they were offered the opportunity to return to Crimea, did not trust the mercy of the Soviet regime and took refuge in Turkey as a safer harbor.

Oğur, touching on these biographical origins or stops of Ortaylı, rightly expresses the expectation that he would be much more empathetic toward refugees. Years ago I had said that the problem in this country stems from "those who came first not being able to tolerate those who came later," but I think the problem is even deeper than that. Once the file of "leaving one's homeland and coming" is opened regarding Syria, the question of who first left Syria and abandoned it to the British, to the imperialists, without fighting at all must also be asked. When in 1918, before the armistice, within only a month, the Ottoman withdrew from this region senselessly and with great speed and left all of the Levant regions, which were homeland soil, to the British, it also abandoned the people of this place to the mercy of these occupiers. And subjects swept under the rug in history sooner or later come to light.

Ortaylı surely knows much about this history, but at this age, with these habits, would he ever enter this subject? Let us leave that; and if he did, could he show a fidelity to truth that would make one forget the nonsense "being Palestinian meant selling land"?

I think no one doubts that İlber Ortaylı is extremely knowledgeable. But it is also very clear that he is abusing badly the authoritarianism he has obtained with this excessive knowledge and his own distinctive style. It is certain that if he told what he knows honestly and courageously, he would tell a history much different from what he tells today or offers on the market according to his customer. But he never took that risk. He did not tell what he knew; he always represented, with what he knew, the poplar breezes in adolescent heads in the halls that host him, and the power blowing from those breezes. He did not even use the power that the authority he gained through his knowledge afforded him, going to the trouble of waking those adolescents.

His words about the Palestinians selling land were not words reflecting the history he knows, but merely a simple peddler's answer to the daily demands of that adolescent market.

Although his own family, having been offered the opportunity to return to their own homeland, preferred to come to Turkey instead of returning to their homeland, today he can say that the Syrians should trust Assad, who is still a complete massacre machine, and return.

Of course, that the knowledge of history can be the material for such different, diametrically opposed stories in the person of Ortaylı also contains important lessons about the relationship between author and authority. The manifestation of style, rhetoric and personality as an authority able to distort the content of truth very easily is also a separate tragedy of modern man.