This entry is about a major political scandal that engulfed the main opposition party in Turkey, the CHP!
It all started with the rumors of a video of the party leader, having an affair with a CHP parliamentarian. A quick google search with my husband brought the whole thing right into our living room! It bothered us at a personal level, since the daughter of the lady who is allegedly involved in this scandal was our student. We felt really badly for this young girl.
The on-line video had a very poor quality. It was hard to tell who the people were. It showed a bedroom, with a half naked women walking in and out. There was also a man, wearing a shirt and underwear. We watched them getting dressed and the woman made the bed before they both left the room… Nothing too graphic, except the naked bottom of the lady. But the video ended with an ominous warning: “Wait for Part II!”
The hell came loose after this video... Here is what happened subsequently, in a nut-shell: The party leader (who is 72 years old!) resigned. He retreated to his house for days, which is just around the block from our apartment. CHP zealots set up tents around his home and started a hunger strike begging for his return. My husband honks at them angrily on his way to and from work. The parliamentarian in the video and her husband are keeping a very low profile. The party united around a popular candidate for the upcoming convention.
What to make of all this?
Too good to be true! The 72 year old dude who just resigned had established such an impenetrable rule over the CHP that everyone thought he was infallible. He and his gerontocratic politburo had effectively sealed off any attempts for reform, liberalization and democratic opening. Now suddenly, the infallible has fallen! I hope the progressive forces can take advantage of this opportunity.
A new and strong political left? Turkish politics witnessed a sharp swing to the right in the last couple of decades. This created a highly unbalanced political environment. It also hindered the democratic debate and deliberative capacity of the society on many issues. Having a genuinely progressive party can help correct some of these imbalances and pose serious alternatives to the chronic problems of the country.
Difficulty of systematic analysis: When political change comes in such unexpected and haphazard ways, it just illustrates how difficult it is to analyze Turkish politics in a systematic fashion. We are tired of living in “interesting times” in Turkey. I can’t help but wonder, when will the “normal times” come?
Final advise: check the closets for hidden cameras if you're having an illicit affair. Better yet, don't have the affair.
The scandal-weary academic mommy...
Don’t hold your breath for any rejuvenation of the CHP after this, and don’t even begin to think that the installation of Kılıçdaroğlu as party leader will reorient the party to the left by any significant degree. What this sad episode shows is the fundamental lack of intraparty democracy in Turkey, much more so in the CHP. Come now, what kind of a party is it if the only way you can oust a deeply unpopular leader is to tape him cavorting with his secretary?
ReplyDeleteOnce you peel off the presently happy face of the leadership, little seems to be likely to change. Despite Kılıçdaroğlu promises of greater internal democracy, we saw him bow to the pressure of Önder Sav to maintain the “bloc” ballot method used by Baykal to ensure only his allies were elected to the executive council. Not exactly the recipe for intra-party democracy.
Speaking of Sav, wasn’t he one of the evil henchmen of Baykal’s era that was willing to throw his leader under the bus when it was expedient? Think he’ll do the same to Kılıçdaroğlu when he get’s the chance? Magic 8-ball says “Signs point to yes.”
Compounding Kılıçdaroğlu’s challenge is that if he actually democratizes party procedures, he’ll be opening himself up to the deep factionalism that was the hallmark of the CHP in years past. In those circumstances I’d give him two more party conventions at best before he loses his job; especially since he’s set the bar far too high for himself in the 2011 elections.
As for the leftward realignment of the CHP that people are so excited about, good luck with that. First, what does it say about a party that can turn from a rightwing nationalistic position on all the big issues of the day to a European style social democratic party fully supportive of individual rights all due to the ousting of one individual? Nothing positive by my reckoning. If CHP MPs and voters are so sheepish to their leadership, they deserve the very worst leaders. Second, we’ve seen nothing yet that hints towards a major realignment regarding democratization, EU accession, desperately needed constitutional reform, or resoulution of the Kurdish issue. Gentler rhetoric is all we’ve seen thus far, nothing substantive. The CHP has spent every waking minute cementing itself to this defensive nationalism since Baykal founded it in 1993, don’t think they’ll abandon this overnight.
Lastly, don’t write Baykal out just yet. He’s found himself in this position before only to return and exact his revenge on “traitors.” If, nay, when the factionalism returns to the party, he’s bound to be a major player in any power struggle. He might be in his golden years, but there’s a lot of fight left in that man. And for the record, I never honked or raised an angry gesture towards Baykal’s supporters on my way to work. There’s no anger there, just pity.
I do not have any word to say on possible and prospective consequences of this event as let alone my incapability, all and many have been written by you, as well as in the response above, regarding to political outcomes for the nation.
ReplyDeleteMy primary concern here, is the narration of one of the protagonists in the text: the woman. Considering authors just do not pick a word out of thin air or by looking at a thesaurus, not at least after deconstruction and/or Derrida, I think, your depiction of "woman" here in your text is pretty problematic. In this "very poor quality video", you say, a "half naked" woman walking in and out to the bedroom; but the problem is that, merely a shirt and an underwear, I guess, make a man equally half-naked. However, you chose to mention -and reflect to your reader- what a woman does not have because if she is "half-naked", then surely she must still has some clothes on her, but we are not informed about them and thus your idea of half-nakedness gains a moral, sexual connotative meaning. It departs from a simple narration and arrive in a juridical public eye which judges women by telling, once again, what she lacks while paying no attention what she has. It is the same woman that has to put on twice as many clothes as her male-counterpart so as not to be referred as "half-naked".
Furthermore, it is ridiculously comical yet equally sad to see how much the arbitrary gender role models are internalized by women; and our precious concept of heteronormative corrective discourses are in action. You say, before leaving, the woman "makes the bed". Here, I think, it is obvious that, the woman has still holds some duty obligations to comply with her congenital(!) house labours. After all, they are not married so they are having an adulterous relations, like it or not. Even in this relationship with no legal bounding, our poor poor politician woman can not help herself making the bed before they leave. In another words, her emancipation is deterred as the duty calls: Make the bed before leave woman!, as you are the ONE who is congenitally predisposed, together with being always and always heterosexual before that damn camera for the male gaze, to run for domestic duties as it is God given, almost naturally there... The man, on the other hand, simply leaves the room: So simple and hands clean with no bed making involvement.
It is the English writer Charlotte Bronte claims that she emancipates woman, the young and almost beautiful Jane, in her novel Jane Eyre and rejects Victorian stereotypes about women as she gives a voice to Jane Eyre. But, she also creates a prison for another woman in the same text: Bertha Antoinetta Mason or the insane wife of Mr. Rochester. How come we know that she is actually insane? Because Mr. Rochester tells us so and nothing more is really mentioned. The man proclaim that, her wife is "insane", and she is insane; almost like a celestial creation, Mr. Rochester creates an insane entity by simply referring her as so and that insane creation is kept under lock upstairs while he is enjoying her time with Jane, the woman with the voice, downstairs. Yet interestingly enough, this text is written by a female author. So finally, just like Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, your text, besides its political connotations and criticism, becomes an example of how much we internalize the discourses which governs "woman", which usually makes a hierarchical relations between its binary opposite "man", and prioritizes the later unintentionally. I think, these discourses, though we try to abstain, simply lay in our stomachs "like an undigested piece of society", as Harland once said.
I would like to note that, mine is just a textual criticism with a post-structuralist lenses, which traces the figurative depiction of woman and it is nothing personal as I have been lucky enough to attend one of your classes and thus I am more or less familiar with your standpoints on gender issues in society, as well as women in politics. But also, as the stable relation between a sign and a signifier is lost and now the words are "sous rature", luckily, so are the fixed, cemented meanings in the texts; events; in even scandals... And may be in this jungle of meanings among many, with no point to reach, "the others", including but not limited to women, could make their way towards emancipation, even perhaps in the realm of IR, which is still predominantly inhabited by men.
ReplyDeleteFor the record:
ReplyDeleteThe woman in the video had a shirt on but no underpants. yep, her private parts were exposed. but blurred, due to the poor quality of recording. this difference between the man and the woman in the video (one w/underwear, the other w/o) might've been the reason why I depicted the lady as "half-naked"... apologies for unintentionally hurting the feelings of any post-colonial, post-structuralist, post-feminist, etc. readers..:)
Thank you for the comment. My primary concern here is supporting the argument that the author, whether he/she is the author of a scientific text or a blog, is usually a mere representation of the episteme of his/her realm; in other words, proclamation of a certain death of the author... Not that I am a post-colonial studies scholar; post-structuralist or feminist or a "post" of any "-ism", I am very much preoccupied with the subverted meanings of the events, which are usually taken for granted and giving a voice to the unintentional subversions by using, abusing and projecting that texts which holds that anticipated meanings. I am also very preoccupied with the fact that, the criticism as well as the comments produced are usually constructed by the framework of a certain phallogocentrism. I think it is because of that male-centrism and it is constant reaffirmation, intentional or unintentional, the the man, most probably with his underwear and absolutely his shirt on, in your text took an almost election-driven Turkey tour as if he was still the the chairperson of CHP; as if it lacks one, and nothing much have been heard of the "half-naked" woman, she just vanished before our pristine, neutral eyes...
ReplyDeleteRegarding, I still think that your text prioritizes man in man/woman dichotomy but I also acknowledge that it is an Althusserian text: it reflects an ideological framework in which we experience our social relations and through which the meanings are produced, it is the (re)presentation of the episteme. And obviously and perhaps naturally, these meanings are required to be either sterile or about "hard politics" of security, elections, politics of state affairs...etc so as to gain some validity, as well as credibility. We are literally lusting for the arrival of another Twenty Years Crisis by another Carr; or perhaps a Waltz and another Theory of International Relations to depart from Carr in its emphasis (of lack of it) on the ethics of statecraft. If not these two guys and their thousands and thousands of minions, then definitely our trio of lunatics -Statism, Security and Survival- come and slap us in the face and once more remind us that, only "the successful (in the sense of those whose aspirations anticipated subsequent evolution) are remembered. The blind alleys, the causes and the losers themselves are forgotten." Better yet, we are waiting for the appearance of a certain Godot-like globalization to pardon our miseries by increasing the interdependence among the states. As, after all, and at the end of the day, it is all about power politics and, no offence but, it is this obsession with the power politics with its classical meanings and readings of the events which create an inflation of "worldly renowned" omnipotent politics scholars on security, geopolitics and the issues of internal affairs in the world and in Turkey, as we are not immune to mimicry. Yet, the idea of "speaking the language of exile", as Ashley did, is still considered as a "dissident" voice, even by the author himself.
Now everyone is talking about the Egyptian turmoil; some referring it as a revolution, others are more sceptical about it. A great deal of them are saluting a prospective hope for a transition to democracy, a few are lamenting after Mubarak. Now that one dictator is gone in the scene, the system -if there is any- is creating another one in Afghanistan. The rising of Hamid Karzai as an impotent dictator, with his treatment of women and his "subjects" in general, is shadowed or ignored by the euphoria of the "revolutions" in the region. His affiliations with drug cartels are widely known; his country ratified a "rape" -literally- act and as it was like in the times of Taliban, now, the women cannot leave their houses without an accompanying male relative. Welcome to the kindling revolutionary movements in the greater Middle East... or introduction to failure of the Enlightenment Project, yet again. [continued]
It is never about who wears what while it is all about who wears what, sometimes. The conventional meanings which are blossomed by "the system" could no longer hold the center. It is for that reason, they become subverted, no longer accurate in their claims. The armed forces which departs for the liberation of a certain country, now end up in a country which is as corrupt as it was before, perhaps even more. Likewise, "the woman" as an ontological and epistemological beings differ much as the theory and practice never and ever overlap but simply juxtapose. We all have an image for a woman: the mother, whore, bull-dyke, and women in politics or women with "graphic" backs. But the problem is that, our narrations, no matter our intentions, are never value-free and almost reflect the ideological historical sequences of subversion. Intentional or unintentional, we tend to narrate our stories by centering the power which is imposed, but the little attention is given to power which is experienced. If the glorious "Behavioralist revolution" is so potent, then here is my fact-like statement: A decentered world with no priorities to make; no place to reach and no hierarchical ends to make between the binary opposites, will become a safer place for all. And if I am asked to prove it, I bet, a certain account of torture to the numbers could provide me with a meaningful p value, to hold the center. :)
ReplyDelete