Turkey needs a new way of doing politics and a new story. The old ones are just over

The demonstrations in Taksim to protest the construction at/profit attempt on Gezi Park have not yet ended but are spreading. As they spread, the core of the issue becomes blurrier. That’s why we’d better take a few snapshots to elaborate on. First things first: we have to admit that there’s a serious social fact from which important lessons can be learned. Everyone is trying to identify its meaning. There are two groups of initial reactions: on the one hand is the archaic conspiracy reaction that ascribes anything it does not understand to abstract and incomprehensible outer forces. On the other hand is the effort to understand the events as a social fact. I think the second is healthy, but not the first.

First let me tell you what I saw: For the first time in their lives Turkey’s young urban professionals have gotten engaged in political action. They are Turkey’s yuppies, like America’s yuppies in the 1980s. They were born after the 1980 coup and raised by urban parents. First, they are young. Second, they are urbanites. Third, they are professionals. Last, they are at work during the day and on the streets clashing with the police at night. My generation was scared of the police. Today’s young urbanites are not. This is the first time we are witnessing this in Turkey. This is the first time that the urban capital is inclining towards politics. Until today, they were interested in their own problems. Now they are pouring into streets since they consider the current peasant politics a threat to their lifestyles.  Turkey’s yuppies are mobilizing around their common problems. If you ask me, they are looking for a new perception of urban politics to substitute the statist tradition of the 1930s obsessed with “bringing order to the world.” They want a “servant state,” as the late Necmettin Erbakan always said. They want friendly service; not aggressive, heavy-handed politics roistering the world with wish-wash and heroism. Turkey’s urban population was 30 percent in the early 1960s; it is now 75 percent. Yet the Turkish Parliament’s tradition of Tuesday Meetings, the apex of the Baath-style, yes-manism remains intact. And none of the parties currently in the Parliament seems to be disturbed by the noise.

From this perspective, the Arab Spring has no relevance with to what’s going on in Turkey, except for its appearance. I think Turkey has to react by designing a new urban politics framework. This is the duty of political parties. Those who respond to this demand will win; the others will see their share at the ballot box melt to nothing. Let me make three observations: First, there are as many women as men on the streets. There was male dominance in Tahrir Square. Taksim Square, however, has an obvious female density. There were many women in front of the police panzers spraying water cannon. Second, since the media was silent due to the strict censorship, Turkey watched the protests via the social media. In Tahrir, 30 percent of the messages were from Egypt; in Taksim 90 percent were from Turkey. It is not like the Arab Spring. One of the tweets I saw was: “I used to read the paper and watch television during breakfast on Sundays. Now I have Twitter on my screen.” By the way, let me add that Turkey is among the top ten in the world concerning social media usage or the 18-29 age group. It has the same rate of usage as Germany, at 69 percent. That’s the deal whether the heavy-handed peasant politics likes it or not. Third, crowds of people, 70 percent of whom had never voted before, have mobilized. We are talking about people who do not vote. Until today, they were concerned exclusively with their personal issues. Now they are talking about social issues. Have you seen the placard that reads “Neither right-wingers not left-wingers; we all are looters”?

My personal favorite was by writer-caricaturist Metin Üstündağ “Turkey, you are beautiful when you are angry.” Turkey needs a new way of doing politics and a new story. The old ones are just over.

This commentary was published in Radikal daily on 07.06.2013