If you remember how hundreds and thousands gathered for the “Republic Meetings” in several major cities in 2007 to prevent someone with a headscarved-wife being elected as president, the sharp contrast will be obvious. Even though more than 35 percent of people continue to say that “the Ergenekon cases have been fabricated by the Justice and Development Party (AKP) to either get revenge against the old elite or suppress the opposition,” it seems that they no longer feel very strongly against the cases, possibly because they are gradually but subconsciously being convinced. This may also be a time when Turks start awakening from their deep slumber of the myth of the military-nation.
As Ayşe Gül Altınay argues in her 2004 book, “The Myth of the Military-Nation: Militarism, Gender, and Education in Turkey,” that the military culture and military-nation are products of history and a relic of a century of practices and discourses. Until the mid-19th century, compulsory conscription was not an Ottoman practice and to use today’s terminology, the Ottoman army was a professional army (the Janissaries, etc.). Nevertheless, the Turkish nation, with of course some exceptions, believes today that from time immemorial they were born soldiers even though in fact they were mostly farmers and small merchants. When modernizing and centralizing the state, the Ottoman elite saw it also as a necessity to form an army based on compulsory conscription.
Fascinated by Prussian militarism, in 1884, young Turks (the ideological fathers of Kemalists) translated Baron von der Goltz’s influential work “Das Volk in Waffen” (The Nation in Arms) into Turkish under the title of “Millet-i Musellaha.” Turks were then brainwashed into thinking they were natural born soldiers. Then, a militarist ideology followed, getting people to be controlled by the military and to believe that their well-being depends on the military and militarist ideas. This militarization became successful when it achieved normalcy and when people saw nothing wrong with the military’s involvement in politics, economy, civil society and a variety of discourse production mechanisms and processes in the public sphere.
The generals had always been respected and the military had always been the most prestigious institution in the country. There are of course several other factors behind the de-militarization awakening in Turkey, but the Ergenekon cases are also influential factors that made people realize that generals were also human beings who could make mistakes. As I wrote here last week, with the recent Gen. İlker Başbuğ-Hasan Iğsız et al case, Turks now also know that generals are not great heroes and let alone not sacrificing their lives for the nation, they can even lie for egoistic purposes.
It is not of course easy to detoxicate a myth that has pervaded the nation for roughly 100 years, but this is a good start. This will hopefully be followed by ensuring transparency with regard to the military, its budget, its education and making it accountable for its actions and so on. The AKP has been reluctant on these issues not only because they are also the children of Kemalistan’s military-nation, but also the cultural genes of its voter base are also infected with this myth. After tackling the myth of the military-nation, Turks will also inescapably need to deal with their unconfessed love of the “sacred-state,” which will be followed by the most difficult issue of all: nationalism.
