Totalitarianism is the key feature of the plots and putsches of some bureaucrats in Turkey’s military and judiciary. All their schemes, and botched attempts at coups, which constitute charges in current court cases, exemplify totalitarianism as described in many academic analyses of it.Totalitarian rule imposes an absolute control over all aspects of individual and public life. Expression of political, economic, social and spiritual understanding is subordinated to the guiding ideology of the government. The government functions under the control of a single political person, faction or hierarchy, closely interwoven with the state bureaucracy.
Totalitarianism values authoritarian leadership, whether a dictator or a collective. A monopolistic control of the armed forces and mass surveillance consolidates a system of terror and physical force. This leads to the loss of pluralism and the rule of law. A monopoly on mass communication and the media brainwashes citizens. Technology and informants are exploited to identify dissidents and coordinate action against them, especially through collaborators in journalism. Central control and direction of the entire economy and industrialization through state planning crushes all autonomous investments.
Ordinary citizens have no share in state decision-making. Tolerance and respect for minority and individual rights are replaced with fixed goals, regulation and restriction of speech. Minorities are scapegoated. The state monopolizes political power and penetrates deep into the societal structure, seeking to completely control the thoughts and actions of citizens. If need be, it politicizes everything spiritual and human, and dismisses any objective truths.
Totalitarianism portrays democratic values and their advocates as decadent parasites that must be sacrificed for a higher cause. Its tyranny leads to massive terror, allegedly aimed at stability but risking stagnation. It seeks not only to punish and kill its enemies but to dehumanize them and erase any trace of their existence from memory. It changes its list of enemies. The innocent abruptly become enemies of the state, regime or public. Once arrested, they are non-persons. Killings and mass murders are normalized as necessary bureaucratic operations.
Totalitarian rule does not recognize talent, intelligence or wisdom in case they threaten its leaders’ self-importance. For totalitarian ideals, a false reality is easily produced through conspiracies. Objective enemies are created -- people who have not committed crimes but who might commit them in the future because of their “mentality” and “tendencies.” People are left in a paranoid state wondering why freedoms cease to exist and why people start disappearing. Suspicion and uncertainty drive wedges between atomized individuals and society. Thus the concepts of justice, morality and eventually individuality and human dignity are completely eliminated through torture. Opposing the authoritarian system assures not only the demise of one’s self but one’s family, friends and more.
Once in power, totalitarian rule wills to prevail forever. Some governmental or organizational units are left in place, as a facade to conceal the complete control or coordination by the doctrinaire elites. Vague orders from the leadership are interpreted by elite factions to suit their own interests. Totalitarianism defies law but claims legitimacy at the same time. And its leaders never admit to error.
However, contrary to the common assumption, totalitarian rule mostly rests on the consent of the governed. For totalitarianism to occur, there must also exist a combination of a lack of civilian political power, an absence of the sense of duty and human dignity, indulgence in short-term partisan interests, passion for higher position, and waste and blindness caused by hospitality and grandeur at the state’s expense. When these merge with propaganda reinforced by an unscrupulous intellectual community, complicit political parties and hungry interest groups that have already estranged themselves from mass culture, the stage is set in any country, as it was in Turkey.
Our brutal reality must be faced honestly by intellectuals, the ruling party, the government and all civil democratic leaders of Turkey. The history of these events in Turkey is a warning to all those who advocate and comply with change that does not take into account mistakes committed thus far by authoritarian murderers.
