Boosting TÜSİAD's morale

The spoiled, pampered children of the country. Everything has been done so that they may be comfortable, their profits abundant, their business running smoothly. Customs duties were set high so that the ordinary goods they produce could be sold at the most exorbitant prices and their profits would remain profits. Merely so that their low-quality automobiles could be sold more easily, no investments were made in fields such as public transport and railways in the country; merely so that they could be the largest partners in public revenues, every kind of measure was taken...

Created in fact by the state, but then the first concessions and incentives the state gave them turned into indispensable privileges, and in time they began to exercise a power and authority over the very state to which they owed their debt. The low morale of these children, who have grown ever more spoiled the more they were pampered, creates social-psychological consequences for the whole country. At least it ought to.

You know the mafia boss type in the film who says, when his morale is low and he is angry, "bring me Mazlum, let me take my anger out on him"! Our bourgeoisie, born from the state and fattened up and pampered by it, likewise needs an object to attack and to vent on when its morale is low. One must keep away at such moments. But judging from its past experiences and from where this bourgeoisie has so far positioned itself, our demoralized comprador bourgeoisie goes straight at beating the state, the government, politics, that is, directly the people. Beating politics means enlisting extra-political centers and seeking extra-political interventions with them. Whenever TÜSİAD's morale has been low in Turkey, it has gone in for these pursuits. And at times, through these pursuits, it has beaten the state and the nation, has incited coups and has encouraged and directed them to carry out coups.

The words that TÜSİAD High Advisory Council Chairman Ömer Aras spoke in his speech at the opening of the General Assembly Meeting last week have been under discussion for a week. We too discussed them at length on our program on Ülke TV, moderated by Gözde Özyürek, with Murat Özer, Serdar Arseven and Yusuf Özkır.

The military equivalent of TÜSİAD's expression "our morale is low" is the expression "the young officers are uneasy." If we look at the discourses of coup attempts made under or around these headings in the past, it can easily be seen that the language TÜSİAD uses resembles it. Their analyses of and approaches to the country's general course, or to the matters that disturb them, are extremely superficial and ideological. Moreover, as the country's largest economic power, if there are economic problems, they are not even aware that the source of most of these problems is themselves. They try to strike at the country's politics over inadequate oversight by comparing people who die in disasters such as train and mining accidents, earthquakes and fires with other developed countries. They neither see far more serious examples in the Western countries they compare with, nor do they remember their own share in these oversight arrangements that incur costs in this country. Moreover, they try to obscure how things were in the periods when their own tutelage weighed far more heavily in the country, by looking down from this height now.

One of the things that lowers TÜSİAD's morale is that elected mayors are being removed from office and trustees appointed in their place. So evidently they have no problem at all with municipalities run by trustees appointed by the PKK. Do they keep their morale high over those? While the magnificent distance the country has covered in its fight against terrorism over the last 7 years has actually raised morale across the whole country, we do not know why we are not surprised that TÜSİAD's morale is lowered because of it. Is it not the case that, up to now, this comprador bourgeoisie has never shared the joy or the sorrow of the society?

Another source of low morale is "that an investigation is first launched into a political party leader and then he is arrested for a different reason." That party leader they speak of is like an agent in Turkey of other countries, of the enemies of Turkey and of Turks. The damage that the loss of reputation Turkey has suffered in the outside world because of the xenophobia he has stirred up has done to the country's tourism and economy is several times the taxes paid by all of TÜSİAD put together. The arrest and trial of someone who commits hate crimes against people, who disturbs the country's peace, who in some places has several times dragged it nearly to the brink of a civil war, is a necessary security measure for the country's peace and reputation. That this situation should lower TÜSİAD's morale is also a strange state of affairs.

The fact that another matter lowering TÜSİAD's morale is the expulsion of newly graduated lieutenants from the army, in a way, puts things in their place. After all, in the TÜSİAD tradition there has always been a fellow feeling with "uneasy young officers." But the application of the general principle that people who harbor even the slightest desire for a coup are committing treason against the country and the society, which raises the morale of the country at large, is a beneficial practice, no matter whose morale it lowers.

So how can we raise TÜSİAD's morale? If the whole country joined forces and tried to do what they say, there would be no country called Turkey left. Does TÜSİAD really know what it wants? Moreover, the economic situations that can genuinely lower morale for certain segments of society right now do not apply to TÜSİAD at all. TÜSİAD is an organization of businesspeople who have made the greatest profits of their history even under the AK Party period. There is truly no objective reason, from their own standpoint, for their morale to be low. This low morale rests on psychological causes arising from ideology.

Frankly, what TÜSİAD needs is not morale but psychological rehabilitation in general. Because its psychology is disturbed. It is in a serious melancholic state of mind. It earns more than in any period of its history, but it is not happy. Because it can no longer steer politics as it used to. The relationship between the bourgeoisie and politics is not a relationship that gives them the moral and psychological satisfaction they desire. They are not businesspeople, they want to rule. In the past they came to dominate, after a while, the state that had brought them into being and pampered them. They could change administrations they disliked through one junta alliance or another. The declaration they have issued now is the product of a habit, but it is not a habit as effective as it used to be. This naturally lowers their morale, but to raise this morale the whole country would have to be changed from scratch. Everyone would have to mobilize to raise TÜSİAD's morale, as in Saving Private Ryan. After all, they are the spoiled, pampered children of the country. Aren't they?