‘State,’ ‘fear’ and ‘conscience’ in the Turkish context

Knowing the state security apparatus and security personnel, the only explanation that I can come up with is the “fear” factor. We can examine the fear factor in two categories: First, the fear that the state has in its subconscious mind and second, the individual fears of the security staff.

Let me examine the fear of the state first. This state was established on a foundation that was made up of three fears: fear of losing the state, fear of secession and the fear of revolution. Borrowing from the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the Turkish state has always had the fear of losing the state. This fear has always kept the Turkish security institutions worried and vigilant against the danger of losing the state. To maintain it in the people's conscience the Turkish education system has always re-produced the fear of losing the state by giving examples of how the Ottoman Empire was lost. Especially in military education curriculums, the stories of lost battles in Turkish history have always been emphasized more than the stories of battles that ended in Turkish victory. Related to these painful defeats, Turkish history books are full of narratives that detail human suffering, page after page. This method of writing history keeps our conscious minds alert to the “danger” of losing the state. And the human tragedies that are told in history books not only kills our “conscience” against “our enemies and their collaborators who always plot against us to collapse our state,” but it also legitimizes the inhuman “security practices,” i.e., torture, mass killings and “unsolved murders.”

Fear of defeat, became one of the dominant fears in the late Ottoman period when the empire was facing defeat upon defeat from the Balkans to Arabian Peninsula. The Turkish state was predominantly established by the immigrant intellectuals who came from the “lost lands.” The immigrant intellectuals when contributing to the foundation of Turkey not only inserted their “intellect” into the state's foundation but they also injected their fears as well -- the fear of losing a territory, which meant losing the state. Therefore, defeat in the Turks' collective mind was always considered the first step towards losing the state and great human tragedy. Perhaps the best example of this mentality is depicted in the following saying that is frequently attributed to Yavuz Sultan Selim, one of the great Ottoman sultans:

For want of a nail the shoe was lost.

For want of a shoe the horse was lost.

For want of a horse the rider was lost.

For want of a rider the battle was lost.

For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.

And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.

When it comes to the third fear, fear of revolution, it was developed on the fear that the state may lose one of its pillars, secularism. Unlike the other two fears this fear was injected into the state foundation against the “inside” enemies who may attempt to alter the secularist nature of the state. The intellectuals who founded the state and maintain the secularist nature of the state have the tendency to relate revolution to the other two fears because they think that in order for Turkey to be strong, the Turkish public should be educated with a secular education model and that they should maintain a unified opinion against the potential danger, including a revolution. This fear always keeps the state institutions alert to the developments that may change the secularist nature of the state.

This fear prevented Muslim networks and thus religious conscience from influencing the state system. Absent a Muslim conscience, and the aforementioned fear created a state structure with no conscience. Developing such a fear on the basis of “losing a country if you lose a pebble” kills the conscience in the human heart and legitimizes all wrongdoings in order to “save” the state. Because of these very fears, the Turkish state has no conscience.

Yet globalization and development in technology has empowered social engagement between different societies that erode the “invented fears.” But Turkish society, due to its long-lasting indoctrination of fear, has fallen behind the rest of the world in developing its conscience. Lack of conscience in the Turkish state structure and society isolates and alienates Turkey from the rest of the developed communities. I think the basis of the resistance to the Kurdish initiative and further democratization is deeply related to the problem of our state having no conscience but being full of fear.