The timid expres­sions of sol­i­dar­i­ty expressed in Euro­pean coun­tries for the oppo­si­tion in Turkey take the form of col­lo­quia, round tables, fes­tiv­i­ties, and dec­la­ra­tions dur­ing Euro­pean par­lia­men­tary ses­sions, in lan­guage exclud­ing all real polit­i­cal analysis.

Any Euro­pean par­lia­men­tar­i­an will tell you that, in order not to med­dle in Turkey’s “domes­tic affairs”, one must remain at the lev­el of notions… let us call them… moral or philo­soph­i­cal, of a uni­ver­sal and legal char­ac­ter, such as notions of safe­guard­ing human rights. Thus, one will hear “cau­tion­ary state­ments” here and more rarely “con­dem­na­tions of inap­pro­pri­ate words or actions” dur­ing solemn dec­la­ra­tions deliv­ered from on high in a star-bedecked rostrum.

For the past three years, this has been the case dur­ing ses­sions of the Coun­cil of Europe, dur­ing slight­ly tense diplo­mat­ic episodes with Erdoğan, or dur­ing the press con­fer­ences arranged around these meetings…

Thus, the terms “free­dom of expres­sion”, “democ­ra­cy”, “drifts”, “attacks on free­doms” bloom in press releas­es and “objec­tive” papers, via the “diplo­ma­cy” of Europe or of its mem­ber states. This, we are told, speaks the most wide­ly to the “pub­lic at large”.

In the glob­al mar­ket, it is the rule not to insult the cus­tomer and this atti­tude has leached into a diplo­ma­cy that was already not in the least “offen­sive” in its rela­tions known as “inter­na­tion­al”.

The real-poli­tik asso­ci­at­ed with defend­ing eco­nom­ic and finan­cial inter­ests total­ly placed inter­na­tion­al bod­ies under its sway and this, from their very incep­tion. No sur­prise here : in describ­ing this glob­al lib­er­al cap­i­tal­ist func­tion­ing, I’m barg­ing through a wide open gate.

But play­ing the ingénu when speak­ing of politi­cians and insti­tu­tions sim­ply allows me to ques­tion the atti­tude and posi­tion­ing of asso­ci­a­tions, groups, even par­ties which, in prin­ci­ple and in their declared objec­tives, should not feel tied to this pol­i­cy rem­i­nis­cent of banana repub­lic type diplo­ma­cy, to the extent of bor­row­ing its man­ner­isms and expressions.

Con­trary to the politi­cians I was quot­ing above, asso­ci­a­tions with inter­na­tion­al man­dates in rela­tion with the safe­guard of human rights nor­mal­ly ignore real-poli­tik (that is, when their finan­cial back­ers don’t exert pres­sure on them). But the argu­ment invok­ing the need for mobi­lizat­ing “as wide­ly as possible“often pro­duces the same result, in the name of nec­es­sary objec­tiv­i­ty and avoid­ing tak­ing sides. Exam­ples abound where analy­sis and denun­ci­a­tion lead­ing to sup­port and reac­tion are replaced by affect , and the spec­ta­cle of sen­ti­men­tal­i­ty when defend­ing human rights. The good deed replaces ful­ly con­scious sol­i­dar­i­ty and the “sol­i­dar­i­ty busi­ness” brings “image div­i­dends” and roy­al­ties to those who put it in prac­tice. Said asso­ci­a­tions are thus “spon­sorized” by the very sys­tem they are sup­posed to denounce. The sto­ry goes full cir­cle. There also, I barged through a wide open door.

A con­trario, I wel­come in pass­ing the fact some asso­ci­a­tions among the most well known have begun to renew their ties with real polit­i­cal sol­i­dar­i­ty and pro­vide ana­lyt­i­cal mate­r­i­al and denun­ci­a­tions, despite the con­straints of con­ven­tion­al language.

In the great “human val­ues” mar­ket, one must then try to find a true path to effec­tive mobi­liza­tion of the hearts, for sure, but most­ly of the minds, when the time comes to real­ize it is in everyone’s inter­est to have “eyes wide open” on the Mid­dle East… for instance.
By ric­o­chet, attempt­ing to do that by putting for­ward this or that case — and thus “per­son­al­i­ties” — for a bet­ter under­stand­ing of the larg­er sit­u­a­tion, shar­ing analy­ses to that effect could be assim­i­lat­ed to the “great mar­ket” I’ve just denounced.

This is why, for exam­ple, we wouldn’t think of sim­ply using the term attack on “reedom of expres­sion”, of “denial of democ­ra­cy” in order to car­ry out a sol­i­dar­i­ty cam­paign around the Kur­dish woman, artist and jour­nal­ist Zehra Doğan.

The repres­sion to which she is sub­ject­ed and her incar­cer­a­tion are not sim­ply the nega­tion of “great uni­ver­sal prin­ci­ples”. They are linked to a polit­i­cal con­text, a spe­cif­ic strug­gle she is lead­ing for change, and to the polit­i­cal and mate­r­i­al repres­sion that is the regime’s response, a response the his­to­ry and nature of which we must ana­lyze in order to fight it. The repres­sion is also deter­mined by her con­di­tions of birth, as a woman and a Kurd, in a high­ly patri­ar­cal and Tur­ki­cised soci­ety. Demon­strat­ing its con­stant nui­sance val­ue in the Mid­dle East and on the Euro­pean con­ti­nent would even con­sti­tute a plus… Her words and her art express all that and ren­der it under­stand­able, as long as we don’t over­lay it with a con­ven­tion­al “objec­tive” var­nish. Her words are what is uni­ver­sal and collective.

This is where we find the basis for real sup­port and sol­i­dar­i­ty and all the ques­tions we must ask our­selves in order to get involved.

When we con­tributed to a cam­paign that then became trans-nation­al around the threat still weigh­ing on author Aslı Erdoğan, we learned much, and are still learn­ing, as a mat­ter of fact…

A few words only… Her pub­lish­er in France, a busi­ness­woman now Cul­ture Min­is­ter, can both greet a return­ing jour­nal­ist held hostage such as Loup Bureau, with­out a sin­gle pub­lic word of con­dem­na­tion against Turkey, and con­grat­u­late her­self for a sol­i­dar­i­ty in “free­dom of expres­sion” toward her author, to which she con­tributed her mod­est share by a sig­nif­i­cant increase in her sales… with­out for a sin­gle moment pre­sent­ing a polit­i­cal analy­sis liable to con­demn the Turk­ish regime. The bestow­ing of prizes and dis­tinc­tions that couldn’t occur because of the restric­tions on Asli Erdogan’s free­dom, now allow for a few timid cri­tiques here and there toward a “regime whose future we can’t pre­dict”. We watch a re-order­ing among well-bred peo­ple, far from the many evenings of mil­i­tant sol­i­dar­i­ty in which an under­stand­ing of the polit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion in Turkey was always a com­po­nent, tak­ing into account the roots of its present cir­cum­stances, based on the read­ing of texts incrim­i­nat­ed by the Turk­ish regime, with­out in any way set­ting aside the human dimen­sion of the the prob­lem. Now, we lose count on the num­ber of jour­nal­ists who also keep qui­et over here…

Although we doubt Asli Erdo­gan will be incar­cer­at­ed again, although that fate is still demand­ed by Turk­ish injus­tice, our doubts are even greater that those “insti­tu­tion­al” ones would defend her again, if the AKP regime per­sist­ed ; and, even more, are we appalled to see that those late arrivals on the defense team nev­er men­tion the co-accused in these round robin tri­als, and even less the impris­oned mem­bers of the oppo­si­tion, when they don’t throw out an agreed-upon and often inex­act num­ber of jour­nal­ists in prison, putting on the req­ui­site “sad” face for the occasion…

I will not even men­tion the pos­tures and pos­es of mis­er­able intel­lec­tu­als in search of caus­es to defend for their own sake…

The ener­gy of true sol­i­dar­i­ty has evap­o­rat­ed in “guest” TV chat­ter on media plat­forms. Every­one can find the shoe that fits here.

This is why Kedis­tan will nev­er trim its sail on the polit­i­cal ground­ing of the sit­u­a­tions it denounces, on the infor­ma­tion it trans­mits or dur­ing con­crete sol­i­dar­i­ty cam­paigns, be it out of oppor­tunism to gain wider support…that gets dilut­ed in an ocean of mer­chan­dized compassion.

Strong words” are incar­cer­at­ed in Turkey, and threat­ened in their flesh. We have been their echo cham­ber for the past three years.

Those words describe, ana­lyze, make vis­i­ble, give keys to under­stand­ing. Being in sol­i­dar­i­ty means act­ing as their trans­mis­sion belt, and not sim­ply cry­ing out when their voic­es are silenced.

It is more than time to take a stand by the side of those fight­ing for oth­er futures and who for that very rea­son are sub­ject­ed to the repres­sive pow­ers of the State they are con­test­ing, and no longer to dilute their strug­gles in Char­lie-type slogans.

Did you know gold­fish turn grey in tepid waters ?


Trans­la­tion by Renée Lucie Bourges
iknowiknowiknowblog.wordpress.com

En français : “Turquie • Quand on veut noy­er le pois­son” Cliquez pour lire

Traduction et rédaction par Kedistan. Vous pouvez utiliser, partager les articles et les traductions de Kedistan en précisant la source et en ajoutant un lien afin de respecter le travail des auteur(e)s et traductrices/teurs. Merci.
Kedistan’ın tüm yayınlarını, yazar ve çevirmenlerin emeğine saygı göstererek, kaynak ve link vererek paylaşabilirisiniz. Teşekkürler.
Kerema xwe dema hun nivîsên Kedistanê parve dikin, ji bo rêzgirtina maf û keda nivîskar û wergêr, lînk û navê malperê wek çavkanî diyar bikin. Spas.
Translation and writing by Kedistan. You may use and share Kedistan’s articles and translations, specifying the source and adding a link in order to respect the writer(s) and translator(s) work. Thank you.
Daniel Fleury on FacebookDaniel Fleury on Twitter
Daniel Fleury
REDACTION | Auteur
Let­tres mod­ernes à l’Université de Tours. Gros mots poli­tiques… Coups d’oeil politiques…