You have never been this free

You see the state we are in.

There are times when a columnist gets stuck and cannot find anything to write about. They wonder how they are to fill their column that day.

I find myself stuck these days. But, not for want of topics. I am stuck because I am spoiled for choice, and do not know which one to go for.

Well, I will do what the kids out on the plain by Küçük Menderes do to decide who will be ‘it’. I will go “eeny, meeny, miny, mo” and see which topic is ‘it’.

Of course, if it were down to me, I would write about the low-down attacks against Cumhuriyet and my ten colleagues in Silivri. I would never stop. I would speak of my yearning, anger and my heart beating in Silivri.

However, one could hardly ignore the new plague of DonaldTrump or the AKP – MHP marriage (you could read that as the “Erdoğan – Bahçeli marriage”). On top of that, can you really ignore the closure of hundreds of associations that have never had any truck with the Fethullah Gülen Terror Organisation (FETÖ) crowd, the majority of which, on the contrary, have stood in opposition to FETÖ and similar forces of ‘political Islam’, or the eviction of the HDP from parliament and, with it, the process in the direction of denying Kurdish citizens a platform for political struggle?

With this on my mind ...

Yes, with this on my mind, the man heading my republic spoke on Al-Jazeera television. He replied to those who call him a “dictator”.

“... We have imposed prohibitions on nothing. Turkey has not become a country where there are prohibitions. Turkey, if you put the last fourteen years to one side, has in no period experienced such a free, such a calm, such a relaxed period.”

I immediately abandoned the search for a topic. The topic was now staring me in the face.

***

Oh, head of my republic, pay no heed to those with forked tongues and those who ridicule you for speaking your mind, because you are absolutely right.

As you have decreed, truly Turkey has never been as free in any period.

Of course, if you are Turkey.

If Turkey equates to you and we are not part of Turkey.

You are quite right. Why, those teachers, academics, judges, civil servants, non-subservient journalists and intellectuals who had no connection with FETÖ or involvement in the attempted coup yet have been suspended or dismissed from their professions are not Turkey. You, so it seems, are Turkey. Truly, Turkey (i.e. you) have never been as free, calm and relaxed in any other period.

You are free, calm and relaxed with your shoe boxes stuffed with money, your media and your hulking great contractors who win tenders unhindered and unopposed for hydroelectric power stations, airports or the canal alongside the Bosphorous, and with your Reza Zarrabs.

***

That is the end of the article. I have said all I have to say.

Now I sit back and a poem by Nâzım Hikmet comes to mind:

“... if patriotism is the catechism, if patriotism is the police club,
if your allocations and your salaries are patriotism,
if patriotism is American bases, American bombs, and American missiles,
if patriotism is not escaping from our stinking black-minded ignorance,
then I am a traitor.”

Aydın Engin