Father FranK’S RANTS - Turkey: The Return of the Repressed

Rant Number 456 16 September 2011

Ne mutlu Turkum diyene. ‘How happy it is to call yourself a Turk.’ One of Kemal Ataturk’s resonant slogans. Splashed all over the place in Turkey. Sounds smug but, remember, it was meant to rouse Turks after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. And after bellicose European attempts to carve up Turkey and restore Byzantium. Yes, Ataturk dissolved the caliphate, hanged the Sufis and dethroned God but he also founded a brand-new, progressive, West-looking Turkey. The popular adoration he got exceeded even that owed to Muhammad. Happy Turks? Perhaps...
80 years on, Ataturk’s children should be even happier. Economy booms. Erdogan’s foreign policy is grandiose, kind of neo-Ottoman in its ambition. While patiently worming its way into the EU, Turkey warns Syria, reaches out to Libya, supports Palestine and kicks out the Israeli ambassador, huh! Bold stuff indeed. More happiness for Turks. But it is funny. Somehow this buoyant new Turkey conjures up the shade of bad Dr Freud. Hhmmm...It is the return of the repressed, that’s it!
Psychoanalysis, the sordid mythology Freud cooked up, claims that the induction of a human being into civilised life involves the repression of primitive, infantile desires. Mostly – surprise, surprise - of a sexual nature. The bad doctor also taught that mass psychology replicates the same repressive processes. For example, in Moses and Monotheism you learn that: a) in primeval times there was a horde, in which a strong man, a father, ruled despotically over females and sons alike; b) if a son rebelled against his father he was either castrated or expelled; c) eventually the sons murdered the father and ate his body; d) every boy longs to sleep with his mother and murder his father; e) the Jews murdered Moses, the father of their nation and religion, in the wilderness; c) they rejected Moses’ teachings and went on to worship idols; f) the repressed memory of their shameful deed lingered latently in the Jewish subconscious; h) Moses’ monotheism later came triumphantly back – the repression mechanism making sure the Jews would compensate for killing their spiritual father by embracing the strictest worship of the One God. And so all jollily on.
All right, the priest admits it. This sketch does not quite do justice to Freud. Moses and Monotheism has some stimulating bits. Like witchcraft, psychoanalysis could hardly have mesmerised the minds of millions, unless it had contained a modicum of truth. So, let me see...Could it help explain today’s Turkey?
Ataturk means ‘Father of Turks’. That is how Turks spoke in Mustafa Kemal’s days. (Modern Turkish has Baba for ‘father’ but the older Turkish spoken in Azerbajan still says Ata.) So, yes, Ataturk. Father and founder of his nation. ‘A man who prays is a coward’, he once said. That spells out the great man’s view of religion. His statement knocks down Salat, ritual prayer, one of the five pillars of Islam. So, Ataturk dethroned Allah. Minarets no longer wailed out the adhan, the prayer call. The Father of the Turks shut down religious schools, imposed secular education and replaced the old Ottoman law with a Swiss-inspired legal system. He also forced his people to switch from Arabic script – that of the Qur’an - to the Latin script. That way he cut – or he thought he had cut - the umbilical cord that joined Turks to their past, their religious heritage. From that moment, there was no going back.
Wasn’t there? Ataturk should have read Freud. He should have reckoned that what is repressed returns. Erdogan’s AKP, the party of justice and progress, is reverting to the Turks’ true father, Islam. The new-fangled fatherhood of Ataturk is gradually dissolving. The past returns.
In reality, the Turkish masses had never abandoned Islam. ‘Kemalism’, Ataturk’s secular ideology, was shared only by elites. That is what made Turkey, in Professor Huntington’s view, a torn country. One with ‘a single predominant culture which places it in one civilisation’ but whose leaders want to shift to another civilisation. The Turks’ main culture was Islamic until the Westernising elite created by Ataturk tore Turks apart. It sought to make Turkey part of a modernist, non-religious Europe. By embracing European secularism a la francaise. The notorious principle or dogma of laicite’, which drives a wedge between church and state. Hence the tear that has divided the country. But now Erdogan is repairing the tear...
The most momentous sign of the returning past is Erdogan’s break with Israel. Secular Turks could live well with the Zionist state. Religion being a private affair, why feel solidarity with fellow Muslims in the Holy Land? America, Israel’s main prop and protector, rewarded Turkey generously. But now the AKP even hints at a possible war with Israel, should Gaza-bound Turkish ships be attacked! That is indeed a seismic shift. A war between Turks and Jews. Barish evde, Barish dunyada. ‘Peace at home, peace in the world’. Another famous Ataturkian dictum. One that could soon be superseded. Unglaubig!
Erdogan astutely masquerades his sabre-rattling under the cloak of national pride. The Israeli attack on a Turkish ship. (My son Linus, a fanatical Zionist, shouts that it was all Turkey’s fault - they should have stopped the ship from sailing to Gaza in the first place: groan... the silly boy!) Nationalism and religion – a potent brew. Not a sure-fire one, though. First, Erdogan has just angered the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. For his cheek of summoning Egyptians to his phoney brand of secularism. Second, Turks are not Arabs and the Arabs have not quite forgotten the cruelties of Ottoman rule. Religion is a strong bond but it cannot bind absolutely. A common faith never prevented the English and the French from slaughtering each other for centuries. A resurrected caliphate would not prevent internecine wars, alas.
Back to Freud. This return of the repressed comes with a twist. The returning parent whose heritage had been expelled into the id, the unconscious, is not the father but their mother, faith, the Muslim religion.(Will that please feminists?) The ‘Father of Turks’, on the other hand, is being dethroned. Not officially, yet. Guess Erdogan is waiting until he gets EU admission. Then you might see the ubiquitous Ataturk’s portraits obsessively displayed everywhere in Turkey kicked upstairs, along with secularism.
Revd Frank Julian Gelli