The difference in the way Americans inaugurate their president and his cabinet and the way we select and inaugurate our president, prime minister and/or cabinet reveals the gap between the cultures of a great state and a petty (deep) state.
The first thing that strikes viewers is that the inauguration was a joyous celebration for the whole nation and its executive and legislative administration. People of all shades, colors and races, people from across the spectrum of political thought, people of different faiths and creeds or of no belief were all there celebrating. They were smiling, hugging one another and trying to capture that historic moment among their peers, colleagues or political opponents with their cameras. Whether they voted for President Obama or not, from noon on Tuesday onwards, Obama was their president, and they celebrated the people's choice regardless of their partisan interests or political ambitions.
Let's flash back and remember how people acted during and reacted to the presidential election Abdullah Gül won in Turkey. Certain people in the political, judicial and military administration were not happy at all about Gül being elected by Parliament and the popular vote. They accused the people of idiocy and folly, and they claimed on TV that 10 or 100 votes from "ordinary people" were not worth one of their "white Turk" votes. They did not accept the popular or parliamentary verdict and did whatever they could to prevent President Gül and Prime Minister Erdoğan from coming to power. A majority vote in Parliament, the Constitution and the elections meant little to them if they brought to power someone outside their ideological grouping. They caused political and financial crises to further their petty ambitions. So our inaugurations always foretell some kind of crisis of state or regime, and we all feel very tense and agitated rather than joyous and celebratory.
State dignitaries, the new cabinet and their families all fittingly joined and enjoyed the inauguration in America. Obama's two little daughters were right there with their parents and relatives. It was an occasion to be rightly shared and celebrated among family and friends, in addition to being a great state's formal procedure. Behind President Obama, we could see an African-American woman wearing a traditional white headscarf. Contrast this with Turkey, where we remember the arguments of supporters of the deep state that President Gül could not take his wife into the presidential palace because she is not permitted to wear a headscarf in a public space, that she cannot join or host state or foreign dignitaries at receptions within the palace and that Gül and Erdoğan should divorce their wives if they wished to take up their positions.
On the west portico of the US Capitol building, all except former and future presidents and vice presidents sat on simple chairs, and people were there from dawn so as to be closer to the portico and podiums. Then let's remember the tension and conflicts in Turkey's celebrations, where all state dignitaries and bureaucrats sit on thrones fit for sultans and quarrel about where they sit, and let's remember the heads of the military -- who, as officers of the Ministry of Defense, are supposed to be serving the government and public -- acting like rulers of a country with a military regime and even ordering the removal of certain civic and political leaders from the celebrations.
President Obama was inaugurated with his full name, Barack Hussein Obama. Now, what if a parliamentarian of Armenian or Kurdish ethnic origin were appointed to a state position using a name which clearly expressed their ethnic identity? Would we not, all of a sudden, start discussing Turkishness and the indivisibility of the Turkish state and how such ethno-religious identity is a threat to the Turkish Republic?
However, the United States of America, with its great state culture, conducts the inauguration ceremony with a sense of purpose and civility. President Obama said, "As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." Yet, contrary to our common defense, the marginal group of "white Turks" of Turkey, or the deep state, always put their petty interests, ambitions and ideology before the ideals of democracy, the rule of law or civility.
President Obama said the United States is "ready to lead once more" in the world, but people in our deep state have even failed in their attempt to lead their murderous gangs within Ergenekon. Obama said greatness is never a given but must be earned. Those in Turkey's deep state seem to think they can earn their greatness though bombings, killings, plots and coups against democratically elected presidents and governments. Unlike a great state culture, our deep state culture chooses fear over hope and conflict and discord over common unity of purpose. Is there any need to wonder why the US became a great nation and a world power, while Turkey languished under the dark influence of Ergenekon?
