Mümtaz'er Türköne wrote: The Turkishness issue

In his article titled “The Turkish Question”, Mümtaz'er Türköne examines the Turkish identity in personal and historical contexts; he draws attention to the historical contradiction between the state-founding mind and plunder, from the Oghuz tribes to the Ottomans.

While we were preparing to open a brand new page for our common future by making a fresh start with the Kurds, I reminded those who grumbled and grumbled because they could not give up on comfortable hostilities, the words of the late Türkeş, “I am as much a Kurd as a Kurd,” and like him, I declared my Kurdishness. When the informants, who could not understand that having a national state and keeping it alive depended on having empathy, started to attack my lineage, I did not dwell on it. This nation is used to those who have no ability to say anything other than “We do not want it”; I am also used to the fact that the dog and the dog murmur while I take the pen in my hand and draw the crooked bodies of the camels lined up in the caravan. Our journey is difficult and long, what concerns me is to flatten the obstacles that will come in front of the nation as much as I can.

In short, the issue is not personal, even as I talk about myself, I will have the opportunity to go deeper into this opportunity of brotherhood that comes before us, like someone who has found a treasure in the garden of his house.

Throw away your old habits; try to look at history, present and future with the most realistic eyes, not from beyond the clouds of dreams.

Let's start with what it means to be from the Oghuz lineage.

On the map, place the point of the compass on Ankara and draw a circle of a hundred kilometers around it. When you scan the settlements, you will come across the following names: Iğdır, Bayındır, Çavundur, Kayı, Kargı, Buğdüz, Peçenek, Eymür, Dodurga, Bayat, Kınık, Yazır, Kızık, Salur… If you try, you will come across more, but even this much is enough to get an idea about the lineage and origin of the region; because you have already listed more than half of the 24 Oghuz tribes whose names were recorded one by one in the Divanü lugāti't-Türk by Kaşgarlı Mahmud a thousand years ago.

The topography is difficult, the climate is harsh. Towards the north, the altitude increases in places. The winters are unpleasant with bare oaks, resistant pines, and a few trees. A nomad is someone who roams the mountains and valleys after sheep and goats; the flock needs grass. In the north, where the plateau climate is adopted, you can understand the reason why the Oghuz tribes settled here, seeing these places as heaven, by looking at the grass that remains fresh in summer and winter.

Ankara attracted people from almost all over Türkiye with the charm of being the capital and became a metropolis, yet it remained “Angara”. No matter where you are from, children quickly learn to say “what are you doing?” instead of “what are you doing?” when talking to their friends on the street. The Oghuz people have an incredible ability to quickly make anyone who comes between them like them; the reason for this is their innocence, naturalness and empathy skills. The local people have incredible self-confidence and loyalty to their own lifestyles and traditions that vary according to their age groups. Its people, especially the young, are tough like geography, they speak without any formality, they see fighting as fun and they do not need an excuse to swear loudly.

If you continue north, past Çubuk, as you go towards Karagöl, among the rising and falling hills and valleys that make you want to take a huge iron in your hand and straighten it, you will see a village with a Kuruçay signboard hidden in a dry stream bed in a narrow valley on the right. It is a five-hundred-year-old Oğuz village. Its cemetery, spread over a very wide area, is evidence of its past. My mother lies in this cemetery on the slopes of this village where she was born and lived until she was 16, side by side with my brother whom she gave birth to in Elazığ.

If you extend from there to the northeast, where the Black Wind blows, for about 400 km as the crow flies, you will come across Boyabat with its majestic castle near the end of the line where the Gökırmak winds to join the Kızılırmak. Like a guardian on guard duty, the castle’s dominant position at the bottom of fertile agricultural lands reminds you that you are at a strategic crossroads. This city is a blessed place that has paid the highest price for its homeland and given the most martyrs in proportion to its population. It has not been touched by enemy foot. There is an ancient village called Akyörük in the forest, five or six kilometers as the crow flies, from the castle. During the time when Osman Bey was affiliated with the Çobanoğlu bey in Kastamonu, several Oğuz tribes from the Kızılboğa tribe of the Kayı tribe were settled in this region to keep an eye on the derben. The title “Ak” is a claim to nobility; their center is this village, as its name suggests. The name of this village is on my population record. The villagers were famous in the region for their hardness and stubbornness, such people were called “Rude Turks” in the Ottoman Empire. My grandfather, who was born in 1906, was the youngest of four siblings. He had lost his father in the Balkan War at the age of six, and his mother in a cholera epidemic just before that, and despite growing up deprived of parental care in this village where his ancestors were buried, he had a very strong sense of history. “What are we?” I asked my grandfather during the early adolescence phase when my identity and personality were forming. He pointed to his ancestors, who were entrusted with the security of the region, like Boyabat Castle, and said: “We are the state.” I understood from this statement that being a Turk did not mean a privilege, but having a duty and responsibility.

The alms of my Turkishness are enough for all seven ancestors of those who speak ill of my lineage. I have the genes of Turkishness that have been carved out of steel, which is not measurable or measurable, and whose past has been engraved with its faults and merits, like a piece of chickpea. From time to time, I hear the sound of hoofbeats and shepherds’ cries in my brain; I watch the relentless fights of my ancestors in my dreams at night. I witness the hardships that the Oghuz tribes endured until they set off on the road as children and arrived in these lands, their struggle with difficult natural conditions for centuries, their joys and sorrows. The “collective unconscious,” says the great psychologist Jung, “reveals itself in dreams.” The fears you experience collectively, the common joys and sorrows that excite you, the reflexes you develop as a society are passed on from generation to generation through genes; then, in difficult times, when your nation and homeland are under threat, on the eve of an important decision, it reveals itself.

I know that the present day we live in is also a part of that exciting history. I realized that nationalism is a consciousness of history. Beyond being Turkish, I am deeply attached to my nation and nationality with a solid historical consciousness enriched by knowledge and comparisons, and moreover in its truest form. There is no need to idealize, it is already magnificent.

I studied, educated myself, learned civilization and politeness; still, let them not force me, my “Rude Turk” vein remains, I can go straight over mountains and hills without beating around the bush.

If you want to build a bridge from history to today without getting bogged down in fanaticism and confront your talents and dilemmas, you need to focus on two qualities that conflict and contradict each other. On one side, the idea of ​​custom/law, organization and the ability to establish a just order, and on the other, plunder. We were a plunderer society, like all nomadic societies, and we became dominant in the lands we spread to with a just mind that controlled and regulated this energy.

The most concrete beginning of this mindset is the fight in 1038 after the battle of Sarakhs, when two men, the brothers Çağrı Bey and Tuğrul Bey, were so angry that they drew their swords on each other when they entered Nishapur. Çağrı Bey would plunder the city as a right of the sword, but Tuğrul Bey had in mind the beginning of a sound state order and a just administration instead of plunder. The emergence of the Oghuz tribes as a permanent state on the stage of history was possible when Tuğrul Bey did what he said.

The effort to establish a just order through plunder is the most serious and unresolvable contradiction in Turkish history. This contradiction was balanced by systematic efforts that transformed Oghuz plunder into the energy of ghaza and conquest like a religious worship. The policy of “istimalet” paved the way for Osman Bey as the weakest Oghuz principality in the region and carried Tuğrul Bey’s vision one step further while establishing this balance. There is no exact equivalent for this magic word in Turkish. Words such as “şenlendirme” and “ışındırma” are used. This solid and stable policy means treating the local people well in the conquered lands, observing their rights and laws, not interfering with their beliefs and worships, and ensuring their security. The secret of the Ottomans becoming dominant in a very wide geography in a short time is this policy. Of course, plunder did not stop. When Fatih could not take Istanbul, which he wanted to take over in one piece like a jewel chest, after 52 days of campaigning, he was forced to order “plunder” in order to mobilize the military.

If you research the "Khan-ı Yağma" tradition from reliable sources, you will see that the Oghuzs are the only nation that institutionalizes looting as a state ritual. The Khan organizes a toy once a year and has his own lords plunder his property. So much so that when one of the great Seljuk sultans, Melikşah, was unable to fulfill this tradition due to the campaigns he could not control, all the Oghuz tribes revolted.

The traditions that history has carried on its back do not change easily: When states with rules emerged in modern times, the tradition of plunder turned into the distribution of public opportunities and resources among the winners through the state. If we can talk about a historical identity and personality, one of the most fundamental differences that separates us from other societies must be the perception and execution of political activity as a plunder. To prevail in democratic competition? Look at the end of the day. How is the result you achieve different from defeating the army in war and plundering their property?

Public duties, public resources are the right of the sword to the victor, that is, to the winner at the ballot box. All the wealth distributed by the state; licenses, tenders, tax exemptions, permits, positions, interviews and job openings are transformed into “revenge” distributed by the victors to the right and left. Political parties are seen as organizations that operate this plunder system. The winner wins everything; being in power is seen as the power to share this gain. A “revenge” is made from the top to the bottom with a series of steps, and then this “revenge system” becomes permanent. Those who profit from not stopping the spinning wheels protect the government until the last drop of their blood.

As opportunities arise, hands and arms reach out into society through the government. Under the auspices of politics, property is squandered, and great fortunes change hands.

Large segments of society who are waiting for justice and dreaming of living under the guarantee of law are watching this plundering system helplessly.

You cannot escape this by taking refuge in the glorious pages of history; this plundering system also comes from the depths of our history, accompanying our Turkishness, and moreover, developing and flourishing. Be careful! Let Turkishness not become an excuse or a mask for gaining a comfortable place in this plundering system.

The main motive that is dragging the Turks and Kurds to a common fate today is our historical experience. On one side of this historical experience, there is the Oghuz tradition, Tugrul Bey's state mind, Osman Bey's vision that transcends the ages. The hardest wall that will prevent this common fate is the plundering habits that stand at the exact opposite pole.

There are those who make a living from this business. There are large cadres who have reached their positions and positions through terrorism. In the underworld, this excuse appears before you as a protective umbrella for drugs, smuggling, money laundering and bookmaking.

Politicians who will play with the nerves of the citizens and make a profit will be left without problems and jobs. How will they exist without hostility? There was a tremendous political comfort in excluding and othering the Kurds through the PKK. So much so that it was enough to strengthen some political positions with just anti-Kurd sentiment. Even today, opposition to the Process has almost become the sole reason for existence for some marginal parties.

Even a business owner who is disturbed by a Kurdish shopkeeper in a touristic area will lose his comparative advantage and will not be able to go to the gendarmerie and say, "This man is a PKK member."

I know that it is not possible to solve, to end, to completely eliminate it. It is enough to know that some of the obstacles you encounter in this delicate process are due to the fact that you have thrown a wrench into this plundering system.

Those who fail to grasp the empathy that Alpaslan Türkeş established and who attack my lineage and ancestry through his words, knowingly or unknowingly, do nothing but oil the wheels of this plundering system and add water to its mill.

Reducing differences of opinion and political stance to a stick or a club is the most naive and primitive form of reasoning. I personally would immediately ask: “What is this man’s problem?” Believe me, there is a completely different intention behind it.