Comfort doesn't suit us Turks for some reason.

- 23 / 07 / 2008 12:43

Mehmet Ali Birand

Better said, it makes us uncomfortable after a certain time. We start to get bored. Even the novelty of wealth wears off if it remains at the same level.

  Do you want an example? You don't have to look back very far. It's enough to review the period between 2001 and 2007. Companies kept growing in value, our economy was buoyant, and more and more money was going into people's pockets. The time of coalitions was over. Government partners had not parceled out the state, and the country had achieved an obvious stability. Turkey had become the shining star and had reached the doors of the European Union.

  Now take a look at the present. Throughout my life, I have always dreamed of the Turkey that I describe below:

  - A stable democracy with a prestigious judicial system; a country where those who violate the law are duly punished and where cars stop at red lights; a Turkey where people do not resort to all sorts of tricks to construct extra unlicensed floors...

  - A Turkey where political parties are allowed to change leaders when they lose elections, and where Parliament members do not demean themselves for the sake of lucrative transfers, and where everybody respects election results...

  - A Turkey where no one provokes the armed forces to push the government into a corner or to take over the government, and where the armed forces do not go beyond their real duty to defend the country against external enemies, and where retired generals actually remain in retirement...

  - A Turkey where the media is not guided by self-interest or ideology alone and does not consider mudslinging to be among its primary functions; a media that refuses to see ratings or circulation rates as the sole objective of publication or broadcast, and one that is able to weed out the rotten apples among its members...

  - A Turkey with a healthy economy and a reliable banking system; a country that constantly grows richer through its long-term economic policies...

  - A Turkey that doesn't consider all its citizens of Kurdish origins to be members of terrorist organizations; a country which admits the significant contribution that they make to its welfare and is willing to share its wealth with them...

  - A Turkey where people don't tear out each other's eyes and are able to lead the lives of their choice regardless of whether they are religious, secularist or partisans of either sector. However, a Turkey that has come to terms with being ruled by a pluralist and secular democracy...

  Didn't you get depressed by simply reading all that?

  A very boring, insipid Turkey with no fights or clamor... Not to our taste at all. We need to have fighting and tension. We must get in and out of crises. Why are we like that? Why do we need irritation? The reason is very simple: Comfort and wealth bore and depress us.  

  What you're about to read could disturb some of you. You could even say that some of the following lines are full of exaggerations. You would not be very wrong. However, when you think about the things I write, you may agree with me on most points.

  I don't know whether it's because of our genes or long-standing habits.

  Don't you just love strife and poverty?:

  All I know is that our community usually does not mind being unhappy and almost believes poverty or injustice to be God's will. Our society disapproves of happiness and if we do get happy, we still end up fighting or at least disturbing those around us. 

  Foreigners give us complexes for some reason. We constantly strive to prove something to them. We have no self-confidence. We are also suspicious of them. We always hold external forces responsible for our problems that actually originate from our own mistakes. That helps us overlook our faults while we explain away our troubles through abstract conspiracy theories or “unknown facts” and manage to relax.

  We don't like the rich or the successful. If we make money, that's fine, but if others do, we always look for a catch. They must have “stolen” their way into wealth. As for successful people with irreproachable morals, we blame them for “being too correct and therefore boring.”

  Still, we love this nation and this land no matter what. We love it despite the crookedness and the problems. This is our country and these are our people with all their defects.

  To me, the comparison is more striking for having spent years in Europe. “Why can't we be like that?” is almost a frequent motto with me. Yet, I never miss any of those countries.

  Our attachment to Turkey is like a disease. We may criticize it; we may even drag it through the mud from time to time. However, the thought of it always brings tears to our eyes.

  When foreigners criticize it, we breathe fire, even if all they do is echo our own words. We are really something else. We really are very, very sick!

  I don't know about you, but I am happy to be sick with love for Turkey.

  The translation of M.A.Birand's column was provided by Nuran İnanç. (nuraninanc@gmail.com)