The atmosphere of the time during which this minister, who was dreaming of an Education Ministry without schools, was in office was the perfect setting for such a thing to be dreamt of, because in those years some people grew so fond of playing a game of democracy in a republic that there was certainly no place for the public.Is this not a country where an oligarchic elite set about endeavoring to create a form of modernism “not in essence, but in word” in the first quarter of the 20th century? Did they not forcibly draft attire laws and enforce them using military force? Did a small clique of people, consisting of hundreds at most, not hold innumerous balls by imitating Europeans in an environment limited to its appearance and make itself happy by following recent fashion trends in its highbrow society, strictly forbidden to non-elites? Did they not conscientiously try to preserve their sterilized oases of modernism by denying rural visitors in their traditional clothes entry into urban areas by using gendarmerie forces? Did they not always keep people as distant from themselves as possible instead of sharing the blessings of modernism by accepting them into their own society? And did they not later start despising and belittling those whom they deprived of the modern life?
It’s not difficult at all to guess to what extent the oligarchic elites of the time suffered chaotic and traumatic feelings when people started participating in the running of the system with Turkey switching to the democratic system in 1950. You can trust me that the most circulated remark among this elite was “People flock to the beaches; citizens can no longer swim.” The elites in question finally being forced to share “their” beaches with the people was definitely not dark comedy.
And if you, on the other hand, think that Turkey left behind these bitter realities long ago, you are sadly mistaken. Unfortunately, this country is still being made to suffer similar pains. This is still a country where despotic university rectors, who completely disregard the freedoms and individual choices of people by reducing the notion of modernism to merely a form, have turned their posts which they acquired during the time of military guardianship into instruments with which they are perpetuating their arbitrary bans. Are the only despots the university rectors? What about some major media corporations? Are they also democratic and fair? Not in the least!
Reading the headlines of some newspapers yesterday made me ashamed in the name of my profession. These newspapers are using unproductive, vicious and archaic remarks of fascism and are incessantly pumping up unsubstantiated paranoid fears, concerns, enmity, hatred and anger. Here is the headline of Cumhuriyet, the notorious and peerless pioneer in its field: “They [the government] stir up chaos at universities.” The headline of Radikal, which passes itself off as liberal, was no less stern: “Chaos on 1st day: Headscarf divides universities.” Milliyet wrote “Headscarf freedom divides YÖK [the Higher Education Board],” while Hürriyet said, “Headscarf chaos divides YÖK.”
I’d like to share with you something I’m sincerely curious about: I’m still at a loss to understand how a newspaper like Cumhuriyet can survive in this modern age, given its current fascist remarks and headlines, and how mentally healthy individuals still want to read it. Imagine a newspaper that for decades publishes headlines, each more paranoid than the last, on each one of the year’s 365 days, and publishes news articles in line with its headlines while its columnists pathologically keep writing about the same issues over and over again. And this newspaper still finds readers in this country. The mindset we are talking about is quite eerie, and its fears grow deeper as Turkey advances toward becoming a real democracy, as its economy develops, as the rates of unemployment and poverty decline and as it becomes more and more integrated with the world.
It is possible to find traces of what sort of regime Cumhuriyet deems fitting for Turkey in a case study on Cuba -- which it has announced for the last three days in large font, along with excoriating remarks on Parliament for taking the necessary steps to lift a ban -- instead of criticizing the arbitrary practices of despotic rectors who continued to violate the educational rights of headscarved students the day the constitutional amendments, which finally opened the doors of universities to them, were put into effect.
The case study, penned by Işıl Özgentürk, is titled “Cuba: A Picture of Bliss.” The subtitle was “Education, health and accommodation problems have been solved in this last remaining bastion of socialism; people have no concerns about the future,” and the spot of the first day was “Cuba is a heaven where children go to school dancing. Old people are also very happy because they are not afraid of illness. The health problem has been overcome once and for all. Cuban houses have no windows; however, 10,000 Cuban doctors work for poor people all over Latin America.”
Well, after reading this case study, one cannot believe that this is in fact the Cuba we know of, where poverty, misery and moral erosion hover at terrifying heights. Now, you might want to ask me, “So what? After all, Cumhuriyet is a paper whose daily circulation is 60,000 at most. Why are you exaggerating this much?” No, this paranoid and despotic “Cumhuriyet” mindset is not limited to a newspaper that sells 60,000 copies a day. That is why it is worth dwelling on the matter.
Wherever you encounter people who disregard individual rights and freedoms and who extol bans and pressures, you can be sure that you will easily find the traces of this outdated and bigoted ideology, represented by Cumhuriyet, in those people. The origins of an overwhelming majority of the columnists and editors of these newspapers, which call themselves mainstream, lie in Cumhuriyet. In addition, most university rectors who have turned universities into army barracks are loyal servants of this mindset.
So what should we do in this case -- just sigh and groan? Of course not. If this is really a state of law, its prosecutors should immediately take action and do to university rectors who blatantly violate a constitutional freedom what they would do to those who commit a constitutional crime. A literal translation of the Turkish word “constitution” gives us “Mother Law.” So anyone who does not abide by the Constitution, which is tacitly above all court rulings and laws, is heading into illegality. And when one does that, he is confronted by police forces, the penal code and the judicial organs.
The last word: A certain segment of the Turkish media is deadly mistaken. There is no chaos at universities. What in fact exists is the violation of individual rights committed by despotic rectors who have no respect at all for the law. These rectors are supported by their lackeys in the media who have been suffering one defeat after another, owing to their archaic ideologies.
