Another Brick in the Wall
Mustafa Akyol on education and nationalism (excerpts):
One particular discovery of Europeans has been that the secularist Turkish elite is not sharing some of their fundamental values, such as democracy and individual freedom. These European-looking Turks are also quite militarist and nationalist according to Western standards. The curious point is that this illiberal elite of Turkey is also the relatively better educated part of the society. …
Why is that? Or, why, one might ask, are educated Turks more close-minded?…
To find the answer, you need to realize what “education” really means in the Turkish context. It actually means indoctrination. In others words, the education system is not designed to raise individuals who believe in democracy, freedom, pluralism or critical thinking. It is rather designed to inculcate all students with the “state ideology.”
Just spend some time in a Turkish primary or high school, and you will see what I mean. Students start and end every week by swearing an oath of allegiance to Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, around whom our state ideology has built a cult of personality. “O mighty Atatürk who has given us this day,” all students recite, “I swear that I will walk relentlessly on your path.” The oath ends with a collectivist promise of sacrifice: “Let my existence be a gift to Turkish existence!”…
What really mattered was the freedom of our state from foreign powers. Our own freedom was not a value worth mentioning… Citizens, as Pink Floyd once put it, are supposed to be just another brick in the wall….
That’s why quite many Turks, who are otherwise smart and reasonable people, will go irrational when you start to question the national myths of nationalism or ultra-secularism.
“O mighty Atatürk who has given us this day,” all students recite, “I swear that I will walk relentlessly on your path.” The oath ends with a collectivist promise of sacrifice: “Let my existence be a gift to Turkish existence!”
Except that the ‘illiberal elites’ he has in mind are not young enough to have said it like that. The bits mentioning Ataturk were added in 71 or 72 (after March 12th 1971 coup-by-memorandum). I think this was supposed to make clear just what kind of a nation all this collectivist effort the kids pledge is supposed to be for. Though in that day’s climate, both Ataturk’s address to the Turkish youth and the controversial ‘Bursa Address’ were being used by the far left so I’m not really sure which faction thought this was a good idea. I think of this in similar terms to the addition of ‘one nation under God’ to the US pledge in the ’50’s against godless communism. (The fun bit there is, of course, that the original US pledge was written by a socialist!).
He’s partially right though, neither the educated classes nor the others hold the kind of liberal values he implies. This attitude may be reinforced in schools but isn’t introduced by them — parents and families have the same attitudes too. This is why interference with speech or the net doesn’t provoke much opposition from any circle. (Most are honest about this though, the annoying — but probably harmless — hypocrites are the AKP-liberals who pay lip service to liberal values when it suits their propaganda and then stay mum when draconian censorship laws are passed.)
So, anyway, we are stuck between people who claim to hold enlightenment values but will quite openly prune the ideal of liberty when suits them, and people who think the enlightenment produced secularism (the root of all evil, even more so than that devil Darwin) and say so while pointing out what kind of illiberals the ‘other’ side contains. Will someone please tell me which button resets this game?
Akyol insists on not according to other people the intelligence and commonsense he himself may have. I don’t believe that elementary school oaths are the cause of alleged illiberal tendencies of an elite. But it’s a pretty apt stick to beat the drum.
And where do these illiberal elite wannabes come from? Opps! They are simply conservative beings (so what?), and watching over public morality isn’t illiberalism… My bad.