Never Let A Scandal Go To Waste

A controversy over religious symbols and a look into THE STATE

It’s old news now, but I want to go over something from last week’s news cycle. I think there’s lessons in there about how people talk about interest groups within the state.

You might have noted that on January 1, a group of senior figures, including the second generation of the Erdoğan family, organized a rally to wish “Peace upon our martyrs, support for Palestine, curses on Israel” at the Galata bridge in Istanbul.

A 48-year-old man departing the rally was carrying a green flag with the tawhid on it when he was suddenly confronted by a 22-year-old who accosted him for holding up a foreign flag and punched him.

One moment you’re chanting slogans with the Erdoğans and Albayraks, and the next you get punched on the nose. What gives?

A scuffle ensued. Onlookers joined in. Someone took out their phone and recorded it all.

Bleeding man: “I’m Muslim! I’m a Turk!”

Puncher: “I’m Muslim too!”

Bleeding man: “Then why are you punching me?”

Puncher: “You idiot, we’re Turks!”

Bleeding man: “Are Turks not Muslim? Is Turkishness and Muslimness not one?”

And so it went. The young man who threw the punch clearly thought it unbecoming of a Turk, no matter how pious, to hold up a flag other than the Turkish flag. He was also bothered by the growing Middle Eastern population living in Turkey.

The other man had a more expansive conception of Turkishness, and thought that Islamic symbols, if anything, enhanced Turkey’s national symbols. If you look at footage of the protests at the Galata Bridge, there are indeed flags other than the Turkish flag, as seems appropriate in a rally, which, among other things, is in support of another nation (Palestine). Besides, flags bearing Islamic symbols have for some time now been appearing at regime rallies.

All this, of course, fed into the kulturkampf raging across the country. We can divide reactions into three camps:

The regime side thought it outrageous that (in this day and age!) Turkishness and Islam were still thought separate. They also saw anti-Arab bigotry in the young man’s aggression.

The Kemalists thought that the young man, though perhaps overly physical in expression, was right to be alarmed at the erosion of secularism and unchecked migration.

Leftists thought that the whole thing was a rather hilarious case of friendly fire.

Now that we’ve got the lay of the land, we can get to the actual issue.