Atatürk in Lausanne

Due to many reasons, I’ve been thinking about Turkey and its history, as well as the current EU and its . Still haven’t seen Mustafa, which doesn’t seem to be up on the Pirate Bay yet, but will as soon as I get the chance. And here are some of those thoughts.

Atatürk in Lausanne

In October 1922 the victorious Allies of the First World War wanted to negotiate with representatives of the Ottoman Empire, as well as of the Nationalist government. They invited both the Turkish bodies to Lausanne in Switzerland, and the Nationalists refused the invitation. They de-facto were a new Turkey, so any negotiations which would have included the old powers would have been purely harmful for their position. As a result, Atatürk and his government were the only body of a nation that had lost in the Great War that was negotiated with as equals. The next month the Grand National Assembly declared that the Ottoman Empire had, in fact, stopped being the government in 1920, when the Allies entered Istanbul. This, in course, led to the proclamation of the Republic of Turkey on October 29, 1923, with Atatürk as president and Ankara as capital. The birth of a modern Turkish state.

This modern, Turkish state now needs to enter postmodernity, and finally arrive in Switzerland.

One of the greatest achievements and strengths of the western European democracies, especially since ’68, is their relative stability under social pressure. This is achieved in part through a diversification of functions of political criticism through heckling, sacrilege, satire and street protest. These do not threaten the state, since the state itself is multifaceted and usually can offer different faces to the various desires of its members. This is far from the unitary and absolute image of the state that was created in the French revolution, which the modern Turkish state still seems to want to emulate.

Yes, the Turkish state does need to be afraid, as long as it resists diversification. As long as it is imaginable that one single party can control the whole state, without checks and balances, those currently in control must fear a loss of power absolutely. This is why the deep state in the hands of some old CHP party cadres does need to be afraid, and it is a fear they have brought upon themselves. They have to recognize the Atatürk in themselves: old men afraid of the dark.

Meanwhile, in Switzerland…

Compared to the massive transfer and eradications of whole populations that characterized the time of the First World War, and also politics in Anatolia immediately following it, Switzerland must seem like a haven of peace. Some 50 years before the Great War, in 1847, Switzerland fought its own civil war, the Sonderbundkrieg, between liberal federalists and rebellious catholic conservatives who wanted to retain the autonomy of their cantons. Total casualties were less than a hundred. Compared to the massive blood spills in other parts of the world, the resolution of conflict between centralized state and regionalist nationalism of the Swiss seems civilized, acceptable and even necessary.

This must be the target when Turkey gets dragged, kicking and screaming, into the European Union. Once again we will face conservative religious nationalists, breaching constitutions and common agreements, trying to break off their own part of a constructed political whole. We will face them in all member states of the EU, and they will be shouting with a single massive voice of islamophobia. “Keep Turkey out”, they will shout. “Keep the Muslim hordes away.” And at the same time, a group of old men afraid of their own shadows in Ankara will do their best to keep Turkey out , to maintain their own corner of the world.

Their behavior is an insult to Atatürk. Yes, he was a chain-smoking alcoholic in the end, but he was a also a great modernizer, a creator of a modern nation, that now is weighed down by the dogma of those who claim to be his followers.

In order to survive, Turkish secularism must accept that there can be a religious party in power at times. The Bavarians, somehow, managed to live under such conditions for near to five decades, and are still considered a somewhat secular state.

In order to survive, Turkish secularism must enter the larger Union. It must give up its powers with a minimum of resistance; go through an acceptable Sonderbund war, of course allying itself with other national reactionaries fighting for the control of their precious national sovereignty. And they must allow themselves to lose, democratically, with a minimum of casualties. And they, like the other reactionaries, must accept that they are united in a secular Union.

In order to survive, Turkish secularism must lose its claim for being a unique modern construct. Only through seeing its role in a complex interconnected political reality, where relations and the relative, not in the sense of the old uncle who helped you to power, but in the sense of comparison, of weight and counterweight, will it be able to renew itself. Only by postmodernity can the legacy of the modern be saved.