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THE HIJACKEE SYNDROME OF WRITERS
By Kerim Balci
Today's Zaman, Turkey
Feb 20 2007
Journalists and writers covering wars and conflicts develop a
"dependency and trust syndrome" similar to the well-known hijackee
syndrome. Psychologists have already started to use the term for
cases where a dominant repressive culture is adored and the public
figures of that culture are idealized by members of a repressed
culture. Psychologists explain this syndrome by means of various
internal and social mechanisms that hijacked people are also exposed
to. They develop a kind of respect and adoration vis-a-vis the
absolute power of the hijackers on the one hand; fancying the kind
of fame and prestige this hijacking will supply them with, if they
should be rescued alive.
Over-attachment to the object of an inquiry is a well-studied
challenge of academic studies on extra-social groups. Undercover
police operations where members of the security forces infiltrate
illegal organizations, over-identification with the object or the
lifestyle of the object is common. Journalists depending on members of
terrorist organizations as a source of information, visiting terror
camps with a considerable amount of fear and hesitation, do develop
a syndrome similar to this. I have observed diplomacy correspondents
in Ankara becoming emotionally attached to their objects after a
lengthy contact with them. This hijackee syndrome is best observed
in journalists embedded in a revolutionary or terrorist organization.
Christopher de Ballaigue, correspondent of The Economist in Tehran
and regularly appearing at Granta and the New York Review of Books
(NYRB), is a young journalist with a bright future. A Cambridge
graduate, settled in Tehran for journalistic and artistic reasons,
de Ballaigue published his first book titled "In the Rose Garden
of the Martyrs: A Memoir of Iran" in 2005, and his second book is
waiting in the publication line of the prestigious Chatham House.
De Bellaigue published an article in the latest edition of NYRB titled
"The Uncontainable Kurds." The author is by no means anti-Turkish. I
know that he had been stoned by the Armenian Diaspora for one of his
articles that appeared in NYRB refusing to name the 1915 Deportations
as Genocide and limiting the death toll to a 500,000. But the
"Uncontainable Kurds" article was dominated by a pro- Kurdish Workers
Party (PKK) voice. The author spoke the several PKK terrorists,
but with no Turks at all.
For a newcomer to regional politics, de Bellaigue's article presents a
repressive Turkish regime that isolates or forcefully integrates all
the Kurds of Turkey. Intermarriage of Kurds and Turks, which I see
as an indicator of the shallowness of the so-called Kurdish Problem,
is regarded by the author as an assimilation strategy of the Turkish
State. "In short, they have become the Turks that the state always
insisted they were," says de Bellaigue, mentioning the fact that the
Kurds have taken their place in the mainstream Turkish economy and
learned to enjoy Turkish food, pop music and soap operas.
The worst mistake de Bellaigue makes is to equate PKK sympathy with
a strong sense of Kurdish identity, and to present the problems of
the Turkish democracy as problems of Kurds only, as if the Turkish
majority is all happy with the Deep State or the dominance of the
military in the governing apparatus. There is not enough room to
correct all of de Bellaigue's mistakes here. Compare these successive
paragraphs, and see what I mean by the hijackee syndrome of writers:
"Each time I visit Turkey, it seems that the portraits of Ataturk,
painted onto canvas and flapping down the side of big public buildings,
or digitally reproduced in the window of a department store, have got
bigger; they are now overwhelming features on facades and walls. The
portraits and the Turkish flags that fly everywhere, the biggest flags
that I have ever seen, make a whipping, cracking sound on a windy day.
"On the other side of Turkey's southern border, in the Kandil
Mountains of northern Iraq, the man prominently portrayed is Abdullah
Ocalan. After a drive into the mountains Northeast of Erbil, the
capital of the Kurdish federal region, you round a bend and see his
face, painted black and blue on white concrete that has been poured
onto the flint-strewn hillside. It is an ordinary face, rough and
slightly startled-the face, we now know, of a survivor."
By Kerim Balci
Today's Zaman, Turkey
Feb 20 2007
Journalists and writers covering wars and conflicts develop a
"dependency and trust syndrome" similar to the well-known hijackee
syndrome. Psychologists have already started to use the term for
cases where a dominant repressive culture is adored and the public
figures of that culture are idealized by members of a repressed
culture. Psychologists explain this syndrome by means of various
internal and social mechanisms that hijacked people are also exposed
to. They develop a kind of respect and adoration vis-a-vis the
absolute power of the hijackers on the one hand; fancying the kind
of fame and prestige this hijacking will supply them with, if they
should be rescued alive.
Over-attachment to the object of an inquiry is a well-studied
challenge of academic studies on extra-social groups. Undercover
police operations where members of the security forces infiltrate
illegal organizations, over-identification with the object or the
lifestyle of the object is common. Journalists depending on members of
terrorist organizations as a source of information, visiting terror
camps with a considerable amount of fear and hesitation, do develop
a syndrome similar to this. I have observed diplomacy correspondents
in Ankara becoming emotionally attached to their objects after a
lengthy contact with them. This hijackee syndrome is best observed
in journalists embedded in a revolutionary or terrorist organization.
Christopher de Ballaigue, correspondent of The Economist in Tehran
and regularly appearing at Granta and the New York Review of Books
(NYRB), is a young journalist with a bright future. A Cambridge
graduate, settled in Tehran for journalistic and artistic reasons,
de Ballaigue published his first book titled "In the Rose Garden
of the Martyrs: A Memoir of Iran" in 2005, and his second book is
waiting in the publication line of the prestigious Chatham House.
De Bellaigue published an article in the latest edition of NYRB titled
"The Uncontainable Kurds." The author is by no means anti-Turkish. I
know that he had been stoned by the Armenian Diaspora for one of his
articles that appeared in NYRB refusing to name the 1915 Deportations
as Genocide and limiting the death toll to a 500,000. But the
"Uncontainable Kurds" article was dominated by a pro- Kurdish Workers
Party (PKK) voice. The author spoke the several PKK terrorists,
but with no Turks at all.
For a newcomer to regional politics, de Bellaigue's article presents a
repressive Turkish regime that isolates or forcefully integrates all
the Kurds of Turkey. Intermarriage of Kurds and Turks, which I see
as an indicator of the shallowness of the so-called Kurdish Problem,
is regarded by the author as an assimilation strategy of the Turkish
State. "In short, they have become the Turks that the state always
insisted they were," says de Bellaigue, mentioning the fact that the
Kurds have taken their place in the mainstream Turkish economy and
learned to enjoy Turkish food, pop music and soap operas.
The worst mistake de Bellaigue makes is to equate PKK sympathy with
a strong sense of Kurdish identity, and to present the problems of
the Turkish democracy as problems of Kurds only, as if the Turkish
majority is all happy with the Deep State or the dominance of the
military in the governing apparatus. There is not enough room to
correct all of de Bellaigue's mistakes here. Compare these successive
paragraphs, and see what I mean by the hijackee syndrome of writers:
"Each time I visit Turkey, it seems that the portraits of Ataturk,
painted onto canvas and flapping down the side of big public buildings,
or digitally reproduced in the window of a department store, have got
bigger; they are now overwhelming features on facades and walls. The
portraits and the Turkish flags that fly everywhere, the biggest flags
that I have ever seen, make a whipping, cracking sound on a windy day.
"On the other side of Turkey's southern border, in the Kandil
Mountains of northern Iraq, the man prominently portrayed is Abdullah
Ocalan. After a drive into the mountains Northeast of Erbil, the
capital of the Kurdish federal region, you round a bend and see his
face, painted black and blue on white concrete that has been poured
onto the flint-strewn hillside. It is an ordinary face, rough and
slightly startled-the face, we now know, of a survivor."