Quo Vadis?

Sunday, April 16, 2006

Is nationalism on the rise? What’s going on there? wrote a Canadian academic I’m acquainted with from the United States. He is an international relations expert for his profession. He must have scanned through everything that has appeared in the press recently. He is aware of the interest shown in the Valley of Wolves, the admiration for the book Metal Storm, the results of research revealing the degree of our nationalist sentiments and the Diyarbakır incidents. One can sense while reading between the lines that he is curious, even panicked. Are you all right? Quo Vadis? Is there a problem? How has the reaction to your novel been, too much?

  “Is nationalism on the rise? What s going on there?” wrote a Canadian academic I m acquainted with from the United States. He is an international relations expert for his profession. He must have scanned through everything that has appeared in the press recently. He is aware of the interest shown in the “Valley of Wolves,” the admiration for the book “Metal Storm,” the results of research revealing the degree of our nationalist sentiments and the Diyarbakır incidents. One can sense while reading between the lines that he is curious, even panicked. “Are you all right? Quo Vadis? Is there a problem? How has the reaction to your novel been, too much?”

  These are not indeed questions in proper terms; they are a reflection of some concerns and judgments reached earlier. They are well intentioned but just as much prejudiced. So much so that he would jump on a plane and come to rescue me if I happen to complain. But rescue me from whom?...

  “The book is going quite well. The reaction to the ‘Bastard of Istanbul [Baba ve Piç] has been quite good. The sales are good and it has received much attention, sparked a debate here,” I write.

  “How come, it talks about Armenians!” he writes in response. “Are they not angry…?”

  Who? Who are not angry? I come to realize that in the eyes of my academic friend, the Turkish nation is one-colored, monophonic. It is conservative from top to bottom and nationalist. Perhaps he imagines a crowd, marching with clubs, flags.

  “Of course there have been those who are angry, how can there not be? But there are a lot of people who love it, too. And they include people from all sides. Literature can permeate areas where politics cannot. You see that prejudices are broken just like that. People with conservative backgrounds, social democrats, socialists, feminists, mystics… and most particularly young people. University students. They buy it and read it, debate it. This is what matters to me.”

  “How astonishing!” starts the next message. My friend seems almost disappointed that I have not been arrested and put in jail. There s a note he added to his message: “Keep me posted about developments.” I told him about the layers nestled in the Turkish society, different voices and diversity while he was expecting to receive disaster news. I told him that the rising nationalism here is a conjunctional matter as well. The “recent” Turkish nationalism in Turkey should indeed not be perceived separately from the two nationalism factors -- one internal and the other external. Internally, there is Kurdish nationalism. Recently, nationalism on both sides has been mutually feeding off each other. Kurdish nationalism flames Turkish nationalism and Turkish nationalism flames Kurdish nationalism. The second form of nationalism is the one rising in the West, particularly in Europe. Xenophobia and Islamophobia increase all kinds of local nationalism. In the globalized world system, what happens in a country is in no way disconnected from what happens in the rest of the world.

  I sense that my friend does not like replies that extensive. Too much nuance, too much detail. Unfortunately, what s valid in today s international relations and the foreign press are big generalizations -- sentences starting with “Turks are like…Except Turks…” Only then are your sentences considered important. Otherwise, if you refuse to make generalizations and take up an analytical approach, people get bored. Nobody has the time to think that much. Knowing without thinking, reaching a conclusion from a distance is always easier.