Hold on – don’t go. There is still plenty to live for

Universities, centrally placed among secularist influences in the country, appeared to be one of the biggest obstacles to the spreading of Islamist ideology by the ruling party. The regime’s leader would say, “We fear colonial universities and not military attacks. A fundamental revolution must be accomplished at all universities in the country and serenity must be imposed for the establishing of hallowed Islamic education.” They got ready and staged a midnight raid on many universities and locked the doors. All universities and higher education institutions remained closed for two and a half years.

 Over these thirty months, thousands of faculty members deemed to be left-wing or liberal were thrown out of universities. It did not stop here and thousands of students were expelled from their places of study for the same reasons; those applying to register were subjected to very rigorous checks based on the criteria of devotion to the new regime and religion. The selection commission inspectors investigated these students’ and their families’ lifestyles to the extent of going to their homes and neighbourhoods. Those deemed suspect were deprived of the right of access to higher education. This practice was later extended as far as secondary schools.

 Meanwhile, 52 American diplomats were being held hostage at the American Embassy, having been raided by the regime’s militants. (*)

 Of course, you have realised that the events took place in Iran.

 The year in which the universities were closed was 1980, the month was April. The outset of the Iranian Islamic Revolution. The mullahs really turned Iran into an uninhabitable country for the middle class and youth that had been excluded from education. We most certainly cannot ignore the effects of the Iraq-Iran war and embargos, but the prime factor was the Islamic Revolution itself.

 The result was that millions of well-educated Iranians with means at their disposal and who had the wherewithal to set up new lives for themselves anywhere in the world left their country. Iran, deprived to a dramatic extent of educated human capital and the middle class, was also impoverished due to this. As to the mullahs, they were delighted to be rid in this way of a large population that they saw as being problematic.

 I will now come to the point:

 Youngsters and the secular minded of all social classes who think “Turkey has become an uninhabitable place and we can no longer have a future here” and are preparing to leave the country – I recalled the Iranian example for you. My aim was to show what a truly uninhabitable country looks like. If you ask, “What was the need for that now?” I will reply, “I found the inclination to leave Turkey of which I had actually become aware before I was arrested and put in Silivri twelve months ago had grown much stronger inside me on my release.”

 It is now commonplace news that an increasing number of young people that the country went to such pains to bring up are departing to work and settle abroad. On hearing that people from the middle-aged generation in my entourage are joining the flow, my sorrow increases.

 I, too, share the concerns of those who are thinking of going.

 Yes, there are no legal safeguards in any area whatsoever in Turkey in which arbitrary rule under the state of emergency continues to hold sway.

 Yes, those in power are excluding those who are not of their ilk from all processes and connections related to public administration.

 Yes, the disastrous scale of the drop in quality in education clouds our children’s future.

 Yes, as the need of the increasingly mediocre economy for skilled labour diminishes, youngsters turn their eyes abroad.

 And, yes, the belief that a fair, free and legal election can be held in this country grows ever weaker.

 And many more things like these.

 But, hold on a minute.

 Select one of the options below:

 First: Are all of these negative factors that inspire you to leave Turkey the work of a force that has just come to power, is rising and energetic and possesses extensive material and human resources and so will be permanent, like in Iran?

 Second: Or, at the root of the hopelessness, are there acts to which desperate recourse has been made by a force that is undergoing the tiredness of long years spent in power, whose dynamism and problem-solving capacity is exhausted, has no story left to tell and is spiralling into loneliness in its country and the world?

 If I were you, I would go for the second option.

 But, even if you selected the first option, I would not say, “Farewell and all the best.”

 Quite the contrary, I would say, “Hold on, don’t go. There is still plenty to live for in this country.”

 Compare this country with all other countries that have ceased to be habitable places and have become exporters of migrants. We have more deep-rooted and longstanding experience of reform and democracy, more striking attainments in the civil service and institutions that have not yet been fully destroyed and a stronger civil society than all of them. We owe our wealth to our people’s capacities and labour.

 In the meantime, further bad and negative things are sure to happen. But, there are a great many reasons for us to think that this state of badness cannot be consolidated under the aegis of a regime.

 Basically, if you go your prophecy will be self-fulfilling and this is precisely when the country will become an uninhabitable place.

 (*) Source: Kasra Naji, “Ahmadinejad, The Secret History Of Iran’s Radical Leader” 2008 I.B. Tauris 

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