Can Baydarol
The young US President, John F. Kennedy, had said during his election campaign, “We have nothing to fear but fear itself!”, and lost his life on 22 November 1963 as a result of an assassination that remains unexplained to this day. In fact, the origin of the first statement on fear can be traced back to another US President, Franklin D. Roosevelt, who, in his inaugural address in 1933, used the phrase: ‘The only thing we have to fear is fear itself!’
I believe it is also possible to trace the origins of this phrase back a little further and internalise it. Let us recall the opening words of our National Anthem, written by Mehmet Akif Ersoy in February 1921 and officially adopted by the Grand National Assembly of Turkey on 12 March 1921: “Do not fear!”
At the very beginning of the 2000s, at the invitation of my dear friend, the late diplomat Bülent Karadeniz (known as ‘Keşiş’ at Galatasaray High School), we visited Romania—which had only recently emerged from the Ceaușescu regime—to learn about the motivations driving it towards full EU membership. A brief assessment we received from a retired Romanian ambassador was that the Romanians prioritised NATO over the EU. For the Romanians, who had been oppressed under the Soviet regime following the Second World War, “the EU was important for development, but the NATO umbrella was even more important to avoid falling back under Russian domination.” In other words, the Romanians’ primary fear was Russia.
So, how different was the fear of Russia for us Turks compared to that of the Romanians? If we were to briefly recall Turkey’s accession to NATO, the wars the Ottoman Empire waged against Russia, the underlying reasons behind the Montreux Straits Convention, and so on, it would not be wrong to argue that the fundamental fear dominating our political history was the ‘Russian threat, which had set its sights on Turkey in order to gain access to warm seas and which had constantly caused the Ottoman Empire to suffer territorial losses’. I still wonder how much truth there is in the words of a lecturer from my days at the School of Political Science: ‘If it weren’t for the Russian threat, the young Republic of Turkey might have chosen socialism over capitalism!’
Anyway, let’s leave history aside for now and turn to current fears.
For years, I have been trying to categorise these fears into two categories: macro and micro.
At the macro level, depending on one’s political preferences, the ‘fear of partition!’, the ‘fear of Sharia!’ and the ‘fear of a coup!’ are the ones I have identified at this initial stage. So, are these fears unfounded? The fact that the ‘Ottoman Empire’—a term we frequently refer to in political history—was partitioned and we were forced to retreat to the ‘Misak-ı Milli’ borders is a reality.
‘Is the fear of Sharia law unfounded, particularly when one considers the ambitions of extremist religious movements?’ For individuals who embrace a secular worldview, this is by no means a trivial fear. ‘What about the fear of a coup?’ you might ask. The history I have recounted since my birth is, in a sense, a history of coups.
Let us not overlook the addition of new fears to these three fundamental ones. In particular, the fears that have emerged recently, originating in the US and supported by certain politicians in Turkey: “the fear of deriving legitimacy from the US rather than from democracy” and “the fear of fragmentation, fuelled by the pretext of serving as a role model for the region in which we find ourselves!” ‘Come now, could such things really happen?’ you might ask. If so, recall time and again the statements made by Barrack, the US Ambassador to Ankara, who makes no secret of his role as the ‘high commissioner’ for Syria and Iraq. Take a look, in particular, at Mr Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu’s conduct within the CHP—which has met with strong reactions from many of us—and at the stance taken by Mr Devlet Bahçeli, the leader of the MHP, regarding the opening process.
For my part, I am anxiously awaiting what US President Trump—who is expected to visit Ankara on 7 and 8 July for the NATO Summit—will bring in his ‘basket’.
Now, moving on from the positions taken regarding these new fears to the basic, everyday fears of us mere mortals below.
To put it very briefly, the economy – which we have been unable to sort out due to these major fears – is the source of the greatest fears in our world as ordinary people;
If we find ourselves amongst the growing number of people in the lower-income bracket of society: ‘the fear of what we’ll eat for dinner tonight!’, ‘the fear of how we’ll pay our child’s school fees!’, ‘the fear of how we’ll manage the rent!’ and so on, and so on…
If, on the other hand, we are among the dwindling numbers of the affluent, high-income group in society: “Should we invest in gold, foreign currency or interest to preserve the value of our money?” – the fears brought about by the uncertainty surrounding these questions! If we are investors, the fears arise from the quest to escape these uncertainties and find a safe harbour; and so on, and so on…
I wish you all—and all of us—days free from fear!…