Welcome to the reality of society! Does the state weaken when society makes peace?

I first learned the scale of the work HÜDA PAR (the Free Cause Party) has been carrying out in Batman to reconcile families caught up in blood feuds or long-standing enmity when it was criticized by İYİ Party (Good Party) mayoral candidate İlay Aksoy, who had earlier made headlines with her racist rhetoric against Syrians. Aksoy's approach is, of course, extremely shallow. It rests on a mentality that has not the slightest awareness of the nature of law, the state, or civil society.

According to the figure that Aksoy relayed in a provocative tone, saying "the state is being pushed aside, an alternative to the state, perhaps even Sharia law, is being introduced," HÜDA PAR has resolved 23 of the 30 blood feuds in which it has mediated. If the figure is correct, the first conclusion to be drawn from it under normal circumstances should presumably be this: 23 blood feuds have ended, a chain of revenge that might have cost dozens of lives has been broken, and enmities that would have been bequeathed to children have been eliminated. Why should anyone be disturbed by that?

Of course, a very basic distinction must be made here from the outset. In crimes that concern public law, such as murder, injury and threats, no political party, tribe, religious community, opinion leader or scholar can take the place of the state. If a crime has been committed, the prosecutor conducts the investigation and the court delivers the verdict. Reconciliation between the parties does not automatically extinguish the public case.

On the other hand, the state's punishing of the offender often does not end the enmity between the parties. A court can sentence the perpetrator of a murder, but it cannot remove the desire for revenge that will persist for years between two families. The judge delivers a verdict, but reconciling the families is not his duty. This is precisely where the other institutions of society come into play.

Moreover, this is not a practice that began with HÜDA PAR in the region. For centuries, madrasa teachers, scholars, sheikhs, sayyids, tribal and family elders, and opinion leaders have performed this function. Sometimes even state officials draw on the social standing of these people in order to end an enmity they have been unable to resolve themselves. For society is not a mechanical structure governed by law alone. Trust, reputation, respect, one's word, covenants and conscience are also resources of the social order.

Indeed, the state itself has today established mediation and conciliation mechanisms in order to resolve a significant portion of legal disputes without taking them to court. The institution of the ombudsman was established for this purpose, but even it is, in the end, an institution with a bureaucracy, and it too can resolve all these problems only up to a point.

In truth, it is not a sign of a strong state for every dispute to drag on for years in the corridors of the courts. That people can reach agreement through amicable settlement, of their own free will and within the limits of the law, is also a sign of a civil society.

This is precisely the meaningful point that the comments under the news item sharing Aksoy's statement rightly note: People ask, "If a matter that would drag on for years in the courts can be resolved in a few days by amicable settlement, why is anyone disturbed by it?" More importantly, they stress how incomprehensible it is to oppose reconciliation efforts in a region where blood feuds produce new murders in real life.

What is really interesting is that Aksoy reads this activity as a development that weakens the authority of the state. For here one can see the traces of a particular conception of the state.

In this conception, it is thought that the more the state grows stronger, the more the independent sphere of action of society should shrink. The presence of communities, religious authorities, traditional institutions, opinion leaders or other powerful social structures between the state and the individual is met with suspicion. Every social authority independent of the state's control is potentially seen as a rival to state authority.

This outlook has a strong Jacobin vein. In the French political tradition, the republic wants to establish a direct relationship with the citizen; it tries as far as possible to neutralize the communities, religious affiliations and local authorities in between. Yet another democratic tradition, as Alexis de Tocqueville noticed very early on, considers intermediary institutions, on the contrary, indispensable elements of democracy and of a strong society.

THE STRENGTH OF THE STATE IS NOT THE WEAKNESS OF SOCIETY

Indeed, a strong state is not one that does everything itself. A state that preserves society's capacity to solve its own problems, encourages this capacity within the law, and intervenes only when necessary is far stronger.

There is also an interesting parallel between Aksoy's discourse on migration and this approach. She has long been one of the most extreme political figures who read migrants, and Syrians in particular, essentially through the concepts of security, demography, borders and state sovereignty. Of course, irregular migration, border security and integration are serious matters. But once you begin to read human beings only within the state's security categories, the human story of the migrant, their social relations, and the networks of solidarity they have spontaneously developed easily become invisible.

What the reaction to the mediation in Batman has in common with this is not an equating of different social phenomena, but a distrust of social spheres that are not directly produced by the state. A migrant community is one thing, a madrasa another, a tribe another, a political party another. But reading all of them solely through the question "How much does the state control these?" may be a manifestation of the same statist mentality.

Yet a society in which only atomized individuals stand before the state is not strong; on the contrary, it is extremely fragile.

The family, the neighborhood, the foundation, the association, the religious community, the madrasa, the opinion leader, the professional organization and other forms of voluntary solidarity are not rivals of the state but the capital of society. The state does not allow them to violate the law; but neither does it try to destroy their capacity to produce social peace.

If 23 blood feuds in Batman have really been brought to an end, the question to be asked should not be "Why is the authority of the state being shared?" but "What other disputes can we resolve peacefully by drawing on this experience?"

Because the finest indicator of the state's strength is that its citizens can make peace with one another without needing the state in every matter, that they live with one another in peace, love and solidarity. These are the indicators of a strong society, that is, of a strong state.