Public sphere in Turkey

Sunday, July 2, 2006

Right in front of me on the street, walking hand in hand, are a young woman and her son. The boy is around four or five years of age and the woman has a chic, silk scarf tied loosely over her head. Under her arm she holds on tightly to a violet-colored purse. The child has a chocolate wafer bar in his hand. Clearly, they are off on an outing.

Right in front of me on the street, walking hand in hand, are a young woman and her son. The boy is around four or five years of age and the woman has a chic, silk scarf tied loosely over her head. Under her arm she holds on tightly to a violet-colored purse. The child has a chocolate wafer bar in his hand. Clearly, they are off on an outing.

  I feel like I know them; their demeanor has a completely familiar tone. The boy is wearing a snow-white shirt, sharply ironed, and the young woman has a matching skirt and blouse. Their outfits are neither expensive nor new, but they are clean and probably the best they could buy. It is clear they have dressed with care. In any case, as I am observing all this, the boy finishes his chocolate wafer, and his mother pulls a paper napkin out of her purse to wipe his hands. And then she throws both the paper napkin and the chocolate wafer wrapping on the ground. There is a trash container a little way ahead, but neither of them have noticed it. They didn t look for it, either. They keep walking as though nothing had happened. I come from behind them. As I pass them, I can t help thinking: there is no doubt that every corner of this woman s own home is spotlessly clean. It is probably so well-taken care of that you would be hard pressed to find even a trace of dust on any object in her living room. So why is that in our society, with our homes which are kept so carefully, that our streets are the objects of such neglect from us? How could it be that while the rooms under our roofs are so spotless, so clean, our streets are so filthy and unkempt? Or is it that we perceive our houses as our own, while our streets belong to others? And if that s the case, then to whom do Turkey s streets belong?

  With the invisible chalk we hold in our hands, we are constantly defining the arenas in which we live our lives. We draw imaginary lines around our own homes, the homes of our relatives and also the places where our neighbors and friends live. These are places where we are clean and careful. What is left over are the public places: the streets, squares, parks, seas, forests... These all fall outside the borders we have drawn with our invisible chalk. These places are all "over there." The streets in Turkey all belong to others. This is why we, as a people, can be so unforgiving of even the slightest layer of dust in our own homes while at the same time so full of contempt for our streets.

  When it works to our benefit, we love to talk about the cleanliness of the Ottomans, noting how through history, we were always so clean, while Westerners were so disgustingly dirty. We praise our ancestors for cleansing themselves in the generously flowing waters of Ottoman hamams while French streets overflowed with disease, trash and waste. Public fountains, underwater springs, hamams... How is it that we lost this culture of water?

  A society s perception of "time" and "place" are critical to understanding its political culture. In Turkey, the fact that we treat our public arenas with such contempt is a signal that our culture of democracy has not fully developed. If the streets belong to no one in a society, it is not possible for democracy to run uninterruptedly in that place. This is because democracy develops both in and with the public arena. So do civil society and civic duty. The dismissal of the importance of public arenas is a sign that civic duty does not exist in a society. It is only at that point when we start to treat our streets like we do the insides of our own homes, ignoring our many differences to come together and take responsibility for our public arenas together, that we will begin to comprehend the bridges that exist between the concepts of "self" and "others." And so, when will democracy in Turkey begin to develop? When that woman with the violet-colored purse, when all the women with the violet-colored purses, treat the streets around them with as much care as they do their own homes.