Fed up with conservatism

I know this is a stern headline. But I am sure that it depicts the inner feelings of so many. It is absolutely not an exaggeration.

Yes, dear friend, this pitch-black climate that was created in the past five years has been suffocating the contemporary people of this country.

It was high time that one of us, one among us, said this openly.

The summary of this feeling is this: “Yes, this climate that is trying to be deceived as, forced as, imposed as conservatism has become suffocating…”

Finally, an intellectual has emerged and expressed these feelings openly. Writer Nedim Gürsel in last week’s Hürriyet Cumartesi supplement voiced this reaction:

“Conservatism has transformed into a government discourse, grating on people’s nerves.”

He describes this suffocating feeling in his last novel “Yüzbaşının Oğlu” in the sharpest style possible.

With the same openness, he is telling us, “I have used such a sharp style in an environment where freedom of expression and individual freedoms are increasingly restricted not only in the political arena but in intellectual area, educational area, in our daily lives, in every field.”

I want to draw your attention to a very important aspect. I had read such a feeling in a novel 35 years ago. It was Adalet Ağaoğlu’s “A Wedding Night” where she depicted the climate of the years when the March 12 interim regime was on people like a nightmare.

Now, another “interim regime” novel has been written.

It is time that the diagnosis of the writer in the literary field is also applied to the political and social fields.

Novels of those years when people were oppressed under the name of conservatism have started being written. I was expecting it; it arrived earlier than I expected.

This will be followed by novels depicting Silivri tragedies.

At the end, Turkey will complete the foursome with the regimes of March 12, Sept. 12, Feb. 28 and Nov. 28.

Turkey was about to suffocate in a postmodern oppressive regime deceived as “conservatism.”

A very important detail: “The problem is not conservatism; it is an authoritarian interim regime that is trying to be deceived as conservatism…”

This is what Turkey is rebelling against.

I am repeating: This has nothing to do with conservative values. Some of world’s most advanced democracies are built on conservative values.

What we are rebelling against is “Making a degenerated, abused conservatism a support for an authoritarian regime.”

 I am quite optimistic. We have left behind the worst days. The climate that has brought the feeling of being fed up on a significant portion of the people cannot be lived again as it used to be.
Maybe we will witness a final authoritarian effort…

But, be sure that it will be the last...

The real and new Turkey will be born right after that…

Such novels depicting the rebel of the writers who feel suffocated are the manifests declaring the end of the interim regimes.

Appreciating the chairman of TBB

In those periods what sociology calls “anomy,” in other words those periods where the social disintegration starts, where irregularity reigns, special persons emerge.

Metin Feyzioğlu, the chairman of Union of Turkish Bars (TBB), is leading a very nice initiative in the name of law. He is meeting with the President, the prime minister, making suggestions. And he is doing this elegantly, without excluding even those people he is extremely cross with.

In an era when issues are trying to be solved with ridiculous conspiracy theories, he is trying to explain a very important thing with the language of the law.

If all of Turkey’s civil institutions act with this sense of responsibility then a nice resolution period may begin for all of us.

Ertuğrul Özkök is a columnist for daily Hürriyet in which this piece was published on Jan 7. It was translated into English by the Daily News staff.