The Turkish December

BELGİN AKALTAN - belgin.akaltan@hdn.com.tr

Just like the Arab Spring, I am naming this era “The Turkish December.” For the records and future reference, it is me, Belgin Akaltan, who has come up with this phrase on Jan. 11, 2014. Not “Turkish Winter” and not “Turkish January.” This is “The Turkish December.” Again, for the record, “Türk Aralık’ı” in Turkish with the “A” as a capital; also, you need an apostrophe after the name of the month, and no dots on the two ı’s.

The Turkish December started on Dec. 17, 2013.

Do you feel the spring in the air?

It was like this when the Sept. 12 era was finishing. (Has it ever finished?) While the pressure of the military regime was gradually leaving its premises, it was difficult to believe. Freedom at last… Finally… No curfews. No restrictions. (Well, almost…)

It was like a weight being lifted off your shoulders... The nice, nice, nice feeling of getting back to normal… The pushing back of those primitive fears… Not to be dictated to by military leaders… No more asking for permission from a military or ex-military authority to broadcast or publish a certain story…

Can we say this? Can we write about it? Can we talk openly? Can we call the cat, the cat, without making twists and turns, beating about the bushes?

The sweet, sweet taste of normalization…

Now, this time is like that…

This very moment in history is signaling the end of an era. A period when people like Muammer Güler, who has proven his enormous disability as an administrator during his governorship in Istanbul, are not promoted to higher positions as the Interior Minister just because he has been loyal. Or maybe there was more than loyalty involved in the matter? Maybe some shoe boxes changed hands while religion was being made the center of life… Was it not Güler who scolded the parents of the Gezi Park youth that we should take better care of our children? Now, he is asked in social media, “Sir, when children are better taken care of, does it mean $4.5 million hidden in their bedrooms? We think we did a better job with our children, don’t you think so?”

Is this the end of an era? Maybe we should call it the “Turkish June” because it all started with the Gezi Park. Again, for the records, “Türk Haziran’ı” – capital H, one ı without a dot on it.

Necati Doğru from daily Sözcü argued that if it were not for the parallel state of Fethullah Gülen, “We wouldn’t have learned that Ağaoğlu took the prosecutor to Dubai for a fun trip, that the husband of the singer gave a watch worth 700,000 Turkish Liras to a Cabinet minister, that the son of a minister sleeps with money cases around his bed, that the general manager of a state bank stocks millions of dollars in shoe boxes… I think the parallel state should better remain.”

Ece Temelkuran from daily BirGün named it “organized illiteracy.” She wrote, “It was a full 10 years of organized illiteracy, as crazy giant crowds mounted on the least common denominators of free thought, human values, conscience and humanity.” She also said a nation that does not come to its senses after seeing the face of Ali Ismail Korkmaz, who was beaten to death during the Gezi incidents, “is seriously sick…” It is almost impossible, she added, to find a logical reason for organized ignorance, organized remorselessness, the organized “wish not to think any further…”

Ertuğrul Özkök from daily Hurriyet called on Turkish citizens to evaluate whether or not real democracy would come, justice would become impartial and just, police would stop being Erdoğan’s police, phones would not be arbitrarily tapped, everybody would be free to say what they want, those who do so would not be jailed for being terrorists. A time when young people who demonstrate to prevent concrete buildings being erected in parks would not be declared bandits, terrorists, looters, and that they would not be sprayed with tear gas, targeting their heads… When the number of children you have, the drink you choose, the length of your skirt and how you sit on the ferry you have boarded would not be interfered with…

Özkök also wants to be ruled by a culture that has truly adopted real democracy as a character trait. One that does not turn its beliefs into a conservative lifestyle war against the people of this country who want to live differently…

I also want to be ruled by people who possess better features than many of us, at least some of us…
I don’t want to be ruled by a former ticket seller at the İETT (Istanbul bus, tramway and tunnel services). I do not want people of questionable character to decide for me. I want my leaders to be familiar with universal norms, be able to think beyond local small issues. I don’t want engineers to rule us. Not even poets…

When there is a central exam for everything in Turkey, why is there not a Public Personnel Selection Examination (KPSS) for politicians? Also, maybe a Character Analysis and Selection Exam?

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