Congratulations on 8 March to Özdağ and Halaçoğlu, too

As to whether there is a connection between them – and at first sight it would appear not - let us dig into it a bit and set the ball rolling!
One of them was from Istanbul Bilgi University. A ten-person group attacked students who had opened a stand on the occasion of 8 March World Women’s Day. They beat up the female students in a flurry of punches and kicks accompanied by cries of ‘God is great,’ and one of them suffered a swollen eyelid. One of the ‘God is great’ chanting assailants also had a knife about him.
Of course, it was significant that those celebrating Women’s Day displayed a banner reading, ‘Congratulations to All Women on 8 March’ and this provides a pointer towards making sense of the attack. It is conceivable that, above all, the word ‘Congratulations’ roused the mob’s fury and ‘Women’ compounded with ‘8 March’ exasperated it.
 
On the other hand, a hall in Mersin’s Silifke sub-province where two of the MHP’s opposition MPs, Ümit Özdağ and Yusuf Halaçoğlu, were in attendance to make a speech was raided by a hundred-strong group of Bahçeli supporters. The group, shouting slogans such as, ‘The leader of the movement is Devlet Bahçeli,’overturned tables and the rostrum in the hall and caused great mayhem.
Özdağ, speaking after the attack, summed up the incident with the comment, ‘Various obstacles confront us everywhere, (...) because our aim is to say “No” to a divisive and dictatorial constitution that it is wished to impose on the Turkish people.’ Halaçoğlu made a more pleasing ‘metaphorical’ assessment: ‘I ask you if this plastic bottle you see in my hand is a jug. Well, a smart person says that this is a plastic bottle. I hide the bottle in my hand and tell you to accept that it is a jug because I have seen it. What do you say to that? No.’
There exists strong evidence that those who attacked the Women’s Day celebrators at Bilgi University were acting ‘adjunctively’ to the student grouping named the ‘Nationalist Thought Club’. On the other hand, Ümit Özdağ, who shared the fate of the 8 March group that suffered an attack at Bilgi, says, ‘We will overcome these obstacles in a manner that befits a Turkish nationalist and continue on our road.’
Is this not a totally mixed up situation in terms of championing ‘nationalism’, one in which it is as though meat were given to horses and hay to dogs? On the one hand, a nationalist attack on those saying, ‘Congratulations on 8 March,’ and, on the other, an attack on nationalists for supporting ‘No.’
While trying to get my head around this, the atmosphere surrounding the Gezi events reawakened in my mind. Who did we not see coming together over those events that could be described as the first mass reaction or outcry against the successive machinations of a pseudo-religious totalitarianism? Ataturkists, neo-nationalists, socialists, ultranationalists and HDP supporters!
Groupings, politico-ideological formations that could not possibly come together did so at that time in defence of ‘Life’ against oppressive pseudo-religion.
Now, with the same oppressiveness bringing together groupings which are far removed from one another, that is narrowing the distance between those who are distant, as it marshals duress and violence to engineer a ‘Yes’ vote in the constitutional referendum, it is also increasing the distance between those who are close. The MHP and ultranationalist movement is tearing apart from the middle the more a has-been leader cuddles up to a pseudo-religious rulership to stave off his demise and is reaching the point at which it loses its history, traditions, originality and autonomy and thus perishes.
Just think: they are capable of challenging common sense to the extent of accusing figures like Ümit Özdağ and Yusuf Halaçoğlu of being at one with Qandil and consorting with terrorism because they will vote ‘No!’
However, terrorism is actually being waged on the streets against all sections of the population in the interests of a ‘Yes’ vote.
This must be what connects the MHP’s Özdağ and Halaçoğlu with the pro-8 March students!