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ANKARA: Bankruptcy Of The Paradigm

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  • ANKARA: Bankruptcy Of The Paradigm

    BANKRUPTCY OF THE PARADIGM

    Today's Zaman
    http://www.todayszaman.com/tz-web/detaylar.d o?load=detay&link=149230&bolum=8
    Aug 3 2008
    Turkey

    Fikret BaÅ~_kaya is a disturbed man, and he disturbs. This is his
    definition of the intellectual in a nutshell. He may not agree
    with this sort of rewording, but this is a second definition of the
    intellectual for him: "The mission of the intellectual is to bring into
    light the deceitfulness of the pseudo-intellectuals," he wrote in his
    magnum opus, "The Bankruptcy of the Paradigm" (Paradigmanın İflası).

    The main message of this phenomenal study can be summarized as -- once
    again in a way that most probably won't satisfy BaÅ~_kaya -- that the
    "modernization" and "Westernization" rhetoric of the Republican era
    is a continuation of the self-colonization that had started already
    in Ottoman times; that the Republican revolution didn't bring a
    real breakthrough as compared to the past shaped by the Unity and
    Development Party of the late Ottoman era; that the official ideology
    created by the pseudo-intellectuals of the Republican era is both
    incapacitating them and blocking any future possibility of turning
    the nation into a subject of history.

    "The Bankruptcy of the Paradigm" was first published in 1991, and
    it cost BaÅ~_kaya more time in prison than it took him to write the
    book. The story of "The Bankruptcy of the Paradigm" and its author
    is evidence for BaÅ~_kaya's claim that the statist paradigm went
    bankrupt. Though he claims that the paradigm is bankrupt, BaÅ~_kaya
    admits that it has not yet been replaced by another one. According to
    him, whether Turkey will manage to create this new paradigm or not will
    be decided according to the result of the Ergenekon investigation,
    as the Ergenekon organization is one of the latest representations
    of the old paradigm. Sunday's Zaman spoke to BaÅ~_kaya and tried to
    carry his neologisms created in 1991 into 2008.

    You are claiming in your book that the "modernization"
    and "Westernization" rhetorics were part of the process of
    self-colonization. The Justice and Development Party (AK Party) is
    following a similar path and saying that for the first time it is
    not using the rhetoric, but actually doing so. Does this mean that
    the self-colonization has ended?

    In order to understand today, we need a discussion of the
    background. Both the Unity and Development Party, which imposed the
    constitutional monarchy, and those who changed the name of the regime
    in 1923 to republic through a coup showed modernization, coming to the
    level of developed nations as a target. They spoke about superpowers
    and their desire to become one: powerful like them, wealthy like them,
    militarily advanced like them. It should be underlined that as long
    as the system of slavery continues to exist, it is impossible for
    the expectation of a slave to be like his owner to come true. There
    is an asymmetric relation here, the relation between the center of
    hegemony and others shaped by this hegemony. There is no chance the
    peripheral elements will be like the center.

    Today the AK Party is saying that it has changed the picture and what
    the previous ones spoke about, they realized. This is theoretically
    impossible. It is true the AK Party looks like it is doing better
    than others, but this is relative. Its alternatives are so backward
    that it presents a progressive image. Otherwise there is no difference
    between the sides on the issue; both are speaking about the impossible.

    So self-colonization, to use your term, is continuing?

    With an increasing pace! This globalization thing is rhetoric to
    deceive the people. Imperialism is continuing as it is. But in this era
    the imperialist attacks are done through the European Union. Nobody
    regards the EU as imperialist. What did change in Europe? We came to
    regard the EU as an island of wealth. This is not true, and this will
    not continue forever.

    You claim that in World War I the Ottoman state was on the side of the
    imperialists. Was this a kind of struggle to move from the periphery
    to the center?

    Each and every imperialist war is a war of redistribution of
    wealth. The members of the Unity and Development Party then thought
    that they would be able to take a share from this redistribution. This
    was once again dreaming the impossible. This mistake collapsed
    the empire. It was going to collapse anyway, but the fact that
    those people chose the losing side to join in the war quickened the
    collapse. Then they started to claim that not Turkey, but the Germans
    lost the war. This is a lie that children would laugh at.

    Turkey has been busying itself with dreams of becoming a regional
    superpower. Is this also a modern reflection of the dreams of the
    Unity and Development Party leaders?

    It is true that Turkey is still trying to take a place in the
    imperialist camp. That is a shame. The North Atlantic Treaty
    Organization [NATO] is an imperialist pact with an American
    commander. This was founded against the Soviet expansionism, and Turkey
    was a wing country to secure the boundaries of NATO countries. Today it
    has been given similar roles within the Greater Middle East Plan. For
    instance, Turkey has soldiers occupied by imperialist powers. The
    existing hegemonic classes in Turkey have their own interests in
    keeping the country in line with the American policies and regard
    this as a great success.

    You are claiming that these hegemonic classes have never changed in
    the last century. The AK Party claims that it is a new actor in the
    old game.

    Look, in order to understand the root causes of all the problems
    in Turkey, you have to know that Turkey never had a modernity
    revolution. Turkey never settled its accounts with the old regime. Take
    the Unity and Development Party leaders. They opposed the monarchy,
    but when they came to power their prime target became to guarantee
    the survival of the state as it is. They didn't change the system,
    they just changed the garments. Nothing changed with the republican
    coup; and nothing changed in the following years.

    Take the 1980 military junta. Five generals came and dismissed
    the Parliament and changed the whole country into an open
    torture-house. Then they prepared a constitution and put a clause of
    immunity in there. After the junta's leaving power, Parliament was
    changed seven times, but not a single man was brave enough to ask for
    a change in that clause and indictment of the generals. Why? Because,
    the parties in Parliament are subcontractor parties. It is the
    subcontractor of the 'real state party.' Subcontractor parties have
    limits to their authority.

    It is just because of the fact that AK Party tried, to a small extent,
    to force those limits, that they started this entire row. If the
    AK Party managed to adopt a style like that of Suleyman Demirel's
    party or that of [the Motherland Party] ANAVATAN, it wouldn't have
    these problems. As it forces its limit, the real state party steps
    in and says, 'Wait a minute, you cannot do this.' This is why they
    don't want us to discuss Ergenekon. And I say that we have to start
    discussing the regime. If we can discuss the regime itself, instead
    of our perceptions of the fact, we will see that the real faces
    of things were different. But nobody is yet ready to come to this
    point. Unfortunately, the political consciousness of this country is
    still underdeveloped. As long as we have a regime like that, that
    does not permit a bit of public sovereignty, there is no chance of
    strengthening the political culture.

    In your book you use the terms Kemalism and Bonapartism together. You
    are speaking about a Kemalist version of Bonapartism. What is this?

    Bonapartism was extant with Bonaparte. Our Bonapartism was not
    like the French experience, nor like the one in Algeria. What I
    say is this: The dictatorship of Mustafa Kemal was a Bonapartist
    dictatorship. The classical definition of Bonapartism is a crisis
    regime. The crisis emerges when the balance between the working
    class and their oppressors reaches a critical position, or the fight
    for power among different elements of the sovereign class reaches
    a point of uncontrollability. There comes Bonaparte and defines the
    limits of all parties to the struggle. But in Turkey the situation is
    different. Different elements of the sovereign class are not clashing
    at all. They are all created by the state, and they are continuously
    strengthening each other.

    Now this Bonapartism lost its importance after the 1950s and 1960s, but
    one thing from that culture continued to exist. Since the republic was
    founded by a military coup and since the country's Parliament was never
    a real parliament where real political parties sat, this tradition of
    coups, conspiracies and gangs is still alive. This is what I call the
    'state party,' and what we call Ergenekon is a representation of that
    state party.

    When you are discussing the real intentions of the Societies of
    Preservation of Rights established during and after the National
    Struggle [BaÅ~_kaya does not use the term War of Independence], you
    claim that there was no ideology, no higher value there; they were
    just after keeping the properties and privileges they had. Do you
    see similar things among the Ergenekonists?

    This is an ongoing reality. In those years, the groups that
    expropriated the wealth of the Armenians and the Greeks had
    an alliance with the elite that had class-based interests in
    the survival of the state as it was. Actually, these are not
    necessarily distinct groups. This alliance has continued until
    now. The political parties that were founded from 1946 onwards are all
    'commissioned parties.' They have to give guarantees to the real state
    party. Otherwise it won't be allow to survive. Even if they come to
    government, they are not allowed to govern. So there is a similar
    alliance between the capital and the political parties trying to
    secure survival of the state.

    Will this continue in that manner forever?

    Hopefully not. This state party and its extension, Ergenekon, and the
    paradigm that breathed them into life are being deciphered nowadays. I
    detect three reasons for this disclosure of the state party: the
    neo-liberal, the Islamist and the Kurdish movements. This gang,
    which determined the fate of this country from 1908 [proclamation of
    the constitutional monarchy] now on has already realized that it is
    losing ground. This was a justifiable alarm, and this alarm explains
    the attempted coups, the republican rallies and the coup diaries.

    We had seen similar groups in the 1960s, the movement called "National
    Struggle Once Again," for example. It existed then, and it was recently
    revived. Did they have a similar fear back in the 1960s?

    This statist paradigm has an intrinsic logic of keeping the
    public out of ruling circles. They want to rule with minimum public
    interference. This was the real reason for the 1960 coup. They believed
    that after 1946 a "vulgar mob" started to mingle with serious issues
    too much. They thought they had to create mechanisms of keeping
    the public out of this ruling circle. Some people called the 1960
    Constitution a democratic one. Suleyman Demirel went so far as to say
    that this Constitution was one size too large for Turkey. These are
    all lies. The purpose of that constitution was to keep the public
    out. They created the National Security Council [MGK] and occupied
    the center of the state. Then they established the senate and some
    of the senators were left to the president to be appointed. Even this
    was not sufficient for them, and they established the Constitutional
    Court. People think this institution checks the congruity of the laws
    to the Constitution.

    That is another lie. This institution is there to work as a filter
    against the manifestation of national sovereignty. Take the State
    Planning Organization [DPT]. This was the mechanism to lay the state's
    hand on the distribution of wealth.

    Why is so much fear from the public?

    Because when the public steps in, these people lose their
    immunities. They will become accountable. But they want the right
    to question others to keep their monopoly. They want the people to
    remain an object of history, not a subject.

    Is there any chance that the people will one day become the subject
    of history once again? What needs to be done for that to happen?

    The average human life is about 80 years, but the lifespan of society
    is much longer. The solution to this bankruptcy of the paradigm
    will come through increased consciousness of the working class. I
    believe that the people are ready to ask the questions that need to
    be asked. This paradigm is bankrupt. This is not like the bankruptcy
    of capitalism. This is about the system, and it is not sustainable
    in its current form. Who will bring us out of this? The public masses
    will be more consciously intervening on these issues, I believe.

    Don't we need intellectuals for such a public intervention? Can the
    society act itself?

    No social movement can be successful without intellectuals. Only true
    intellectuals can create a new paradigm. I am not speaking about
    the 'graduated crew' that serves the current corruption. There is
    a wide range of pseudo-intellectuals in the higher echelons of the
    universities, politics and the judiciary. Some of them have proven
    connections with Ergenekon. These people create the official ideology
    over and over again in the same format. They don't allow any change
    of perspective. But new horizons are opened only if you change your
    perspective, and only a true intellectual can do this.

    I don't see such a strong intellectual tradition in Turkey, especially
    in the left. Am I wrong?

    Not at all! Though the paradigm is bankrupt, it is still there, and
    since it is there and since the left cannot sever its ties with the
    official ideology, it cannot present a consistent position. There are
    exceptions, but exceptions exist in order to confirm the rule. The
    left would not really be left without breaking away with Kemalism --
    and it could not.

    --Boundary_(ID_ElOVFlrNQ4MXswESwFzTqg)--
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