Durmuş claimed that AK Party supporters -- at least some of them -- regarded the prime minister as a “prophet.” This is clearly an insult to all AK Party supporters and the prime minister himself. But the insult had added dirt on it.Durmuş clarified, later on, that one particular AK Party member had in fact referred to the prime minister as a “quasi-second-prophet” and that he was only repeating this term. Putting aside the fact that there is a clear difference between “prophet” and “quasi-second-prophet,” Durmuş’s reiteration cannot be justified even if some AK Party members used exactly the terms he used to insult the prime minister.
Despite this, the harsh response he received from the prime minister was not about the term “prophet” but about the fact that Durmuş was trying to justify the inhuman treatment the prime minister’s wife was subjected to when she wanted to visit a patient at the Gülhane Military Academy of Medicine (GATA). She was turned down by military officers due to the fact that she wears a headscarf. And Durmuş was trying to be sarcastic when he rebuked these officers from the pulpit of Parliament: “How dare you not allow the wife of a prime minister, who is accepted as a prophet, to enter GATA? Who do you think you are?”
What does this fake rebuke suggest?
If Durmuş is trying to say that the issue of headscarved women not being accepted at GATA should not have been publicized through the name of the prime minister’s wife -- Durmuş served as the minister of health for the country for some time -- why didn’t he raise the issue over the heartbreaking story of an MHP mother trying to visit her wounded soldier son at GATA?
If Durmuş is trying to suggest that military doctors have the right to deny entry to headscarved women to even visit a hospitalized relative or friend, shame on him. Durmuş is a professional doctor who took the Hippocratic Oath. For him religion, faith, ideology and the skin color of the patients and their relatives should mean nothing.
If Durmuş is trying to say that the prime minister’s wife deserves such treatment not because she wears a headscarf but because she is the wife of a prime minister who is disliked by the military establishment, that is extra stupidity on top of shame. Durmuş is a former university professor who needs to know that it is not what you wear on your head, but what you have in your head that makes you worthy or unworthy of something.
Why did he do that? Neither of his previous social roles provides an answer to that question.
I think this was part of a planned and organized tactical move to change the agenda. The recently revealed coup plans of former army officers have handed the government a legitimate reason to continue with the legal, constitutional and bureaucratic reforms it wants to accomplish. A conspiracy for a military coup has nothing that can be justified or advocated. The opposition was losing ground.
The undemocratic and yet absurdly legal and constitutional ban on the headscarf, on the other hand, has a legitimate basis and gives the opposition the legal backing it needs when it formulates a new discourse to attack the government. They are also well trained in this issue. They don’t know how to advocate a military coup, but they have been advocating the headscarf ban for years now. The MHP in particular has the experience of using the headscarf ban to trap the government and make the problem practically insoluble.
So instead of speaking about the military and judicial tutelage of Turkish democracy, start a discussion about the headscarf. They have already won that battle. So let’s go back to the same front. If one or more of the deputies of the Republican People’s Party (CHP) or MHP starts mentioning “peer pressure” within Parliament in the next few days, I won’t be surprised.
What good old days they had! We were all made to speak about the headscarf, Shariah, backwardness, peer pressure, the alcohol ban... Now that they are made to speak about the Sledgehammer plot, the EMASYA protocols, the National Security Document; any opportunity that will reintroduce the old discussions will not be missed...
