It was a pioneering study in the concept of cognitive dissonance -- that uncomfortable feeling when reality appears to contradict belief. The author, Leon Festinger, hypothesized that the group, rather than accept they might be wrong, would seek ways to reinforce the truths they knew. This indeed turned out to be the case. Whereas previously they been closed and secretive, after prophesy failed the sect members went to the newspapers and attempting to recruit new members by asserting that the pristine quality of their beliefs had saved the world.Although I last read the book decades ago, I remember a particularly vivid incident. Festinger was eager to get first hand observations of the group, so he dispatched two graduate students to investigate. They pretended to be members of the public wanting to join the sect and were welcomed with open arms -- although not for the reasons they expected. The sectarians assumed that the two students were an advance party from the planet Clarion, comubf to whisk them away. Try as they could, the pair could not dissuade their hosts who nodded and winked at their protestations.
The reason I remembered this is that I felt similarly flummoxed this week as I sat in the office of the president of the National Forces Association (Kuvay-ı Milliye Derneği), a right-wing group dedicated to the defense of the nation. Try as I could, I could not disabuse him of his believe that I was not so much an alien come to Turkey’s rescue, but an agent of a foreign intelligence service hell bent on the country’s dismemberment. I realized that when he used the expression “siz” (you) he was not referring to me but my masters back at Langley.
Col. Fikri Karadağ is by no means an unsophisticated man, although some of his views on world trade and the flow of capital I found unconvincing. He sees Turkey under threat from American imperialism but has no quarrel with Microsoft or Coca-Cola. Ozal’s opening up of the economy was a good thing, but he seemed to live in a pre-Ozal universe when the greatest threat to the economy was perceived as wealthy Turks smuggling assets abroad. One of the things he believes strongly is foreigners should not be allowed to buy property in Turkey. On this point at least, I suggested, there was reciprocity. Turkish citizens, with the exception of Swiss cantons, can buy property throughout the Europe and America, but he simply could not accept this might be so.
It was more difficult to discuss the case for Turkey entering the EU. His argument was not that Turkey shouldn’t join but that there was absolutely no possibility of Europe letting it in. All the silly things that Ankara had done to appease Brussels, like abolishing the death penalty, it had done in vain.
“What happiness to the one who can say ‘I am a Turk’” appears proudly on the Kuvay-i Milliye Web page (below a graphic display critical of those who tried to identify with the murdered Armenian journalist, Hrant Dink), but I have to say the people in the organization’s headquarters did not appear content with life. They seemed angry at the world, disappointed in post-war history of their country and complained of being mal-administered since the death of Atatürk nearly 70 years ago. The solution is not to join the many movements for better governance, but to eliminate the perpetrators -- those who have tried to obscure the light of Turkish purity from shining through.
All this would be of academic interest if this institutionalized suspicion of reality were not becoming the dominant discourse from television serials to newspaper headlines. Like Festinger’s millenarians, much of Turkey is banding together, united by some notion of purity to save itself from the flood, a catastrophe of its own devising.
