The Government Opposition

There is an at least two centuries old Turkish tradition that the opposers against the regime has always sought asylum in Europe. In this post, i am not going to argue whether they were right or wrong; nor i am not going to argue what the European countries really intended when they provided a shelter for the Turkish opposition. As a matter of fact, i don't discriminate the ethinc origins of the opposers; i don't discriminate the political views of the opposers; and furthermore i don't even discriminate whether it is Ottoman Empire era or the Turkish Republic era. I am talking about a general notion in Turkish history.

And the bottom line here is, Turkish oppostion has always considered Europe as a safe haven against the regime in which they never felt safe while expressing their discontent.

Mr. Ali Babacan, the Foreign Affairs Minister of Turkish Republic has taken this notion to a groundbreaking new level. Because first time in Turkish History, we see a member of the government complaining about his country to the European politicians as if he is not a part of the state mechanism but a part of the opposition to the current Turkish regime.

When asked about the problems regarding the rights of the minorities in Turkey, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Turkish Republic replied to the EU politicans that "Not only the minorities but also the Moslem population of Turkish Republic suffer from the lack of proper rights."

The Moslem population he refers is often said to be the 99% of the general population of Turkey. Of course, his words created another furius controversy, and interestingly everybody except Mr. Babacan himself declared an opinion about it. We haven't heard fron him about this issue so far. From my point of view, this is a typical abuse of religion for the sake of political advantage, and this pretty much explains why Turkish Republic had once took severe measures against almost everything which was considered to be political Islam.

Because when you start abusing it, it becomes too hard to see when it is really the time you should stop. However, the most important aspect of this unfortunate declaration is not the fact that it is extremely biased and far from reflecting the real situation. The most serious problem here is not this old song about more religious rights. The real problem here is the psychology behind these words. And before analyzing the religion aspect to see whether he is right or wrong, we should really analyze the structure of the mindset which makes Mr. Babacan to complain about his own country which he happens to be governing.

Simply, Mr. Babacan did not act as if he was a part of the ruling mechanism of his country. Instead, he preferred to act along the tradition and complained about Turkish Republic as if he is the opposition. It is also important to keep in mind that we are talking about a poitician who doesn't talk much in public, and when he talks, he talks with extreme caution -probably because he is too cautios about being misunderstood.

So far, the AK Party and their army of shallow liberals have masterfully presented the penetration of all kind of religion-based implementions into ruling mechanisms of the country as democracy. And while doing that they completely ignored the social necessity to restrict the role of religion in the social life, or totaly twisted the facts about Turkish History to convince you that the restriction was nothing but a persecution. Yet, what we actually see is that, they can't actually tolerate anything which is not religion based and therefore feel themselves as opposition even if they are ruling the country but encountering a resistance coming from the Turkish Republic herself.