The situation changed with the victory of resistance forces led by Mustafa Kemal and the expulsion of the Greek army from Anatolia, and the Lausanne Treaty (1923) establishing Turkey’s present-day borders was ratified.This Sevres syndrome, which is characterized by a deep fear of losing the homeland as a whole, is one of the fundamental ingredients of the mental conditioning of the founders of the Turkish Republic. As a result of this fear they saw Turkey as a territory which was constantly in great and imminent danger. Turkey was a country which was encircled by enemies. Not only did we have an outside world which wanted to swallow us, but also our own country was full of internal enemies who worked as the fifth column for external ones. These were, of course, especially Turkish citizens with Greek and Armenian background. As a result of this psychology, republican elites simply followed the Unionist policy of ridding Turkey of non-Muslims, which basically started with the Armenian massacres in 1915. So, fear and feelings of guilt mingled together.
What happens when you establish your identity on these kinds of fears? You, of course, become a very rigid person whose options are quite limited. You become a security state in which the nation’s security precedes anything and everything. Your guardians become unquestionable heroes. Because of this prevailing psychology in Turkish society, the Turkish military and its guardianship over the nation became unquestionable elements of our political system. When there are guardians, there are, of course, always “extraordinary conditions” that justify their privileged positions. Therefore, Turkey’s internal and external problems have never come to an end.
With the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) government’s coming to power, the concept of a “security state” and the vicious circle it engenders received a serious blow. The rhetoric of being surrounded by enemies has been put aside, and, instead, the government replaced it with the concept of “zero problems with neighbors.” Our old “enemies” have turned into good neighbors. The second blow to this security state mentality came with the questioning of the military’s guardianship over the system. Certain media outlets started to criticize the military for its shortcomings and wrongdoings. The Ergenekon probe, of course, was a turning point in putting an end to the absolute immunity enjoyed by the members of the military for ages.
However, there were a few occasions when this government lost its self confidence and regressed, relying on old rhetoric and fears. One instance was its reaction to the possibility of the US Congress passing the “Armenian Genocide Resolution.” Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his government simply relied on old reflexes, and behaved just like the old-fashioned security state complex.
The second problem which drags this government down and paralyzes it is the Kurdish question. The Kurdish question, of course, is the last bastion of the “security state” in Turkey. With recent developments we have seen organized lynching campaigns against Kurds by ultranationalist in different parts of Turkey; the deep state is trying to turn the Kurdish question into a kind of civil war.
Some members of the government reacted harshly to Diyarbakır Mayor Osman Baydemir’s suggestion of regional autonomy and flying the Kurdish flag beside the Turkish flag, and it showed us that the AK Party is not totally immune from this “security state mentality” which uses the Kurdish question as a trump card.
There is a critical phase in the healing process for a person suffering from neurosis. Towards the very end of the process, as the patient comes closer to the gates that will lead him to real freedom, on the threshold of getting rid of his neurosis altogether, destructive forces once again try to gain control of the psyche to destroy every single positive step that this patient has ever taken. This is a struggle of life and death which will determine whether the person will be able to free himself from his self-created cycle of destruction or whether he will slip into his old habits. Whether Turkey can get rid of its “security state” neurosis is absolutely dependent on how we maneuver at the critical junctures of the Kurdish question. Destructive forces within the AK Party, the deep state and the deep Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) are all working to drag us back into our old “neurotic comfort zone.” Can we overcome this security state neurosis and be totally free? I really hope so.
