Rhetorics of Insecurity by Godoy-Anativia Marcial. Gambetti Zeynep. & Marcial Godoy-Anativia

Author:Godoy-Anativia, Marcial.,Gambetti, Zeynep. & Marcial Godoy-Anativia
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: New York University Press
Published: 2013-08-26T16:00:00+00:00

The Violence

The first lynching attempt reported in the press was on April 6, 2005. Five members of TAYAD, a Leftist group, were attacked while distributing tracts in Trabzon, a major metropolis in the Northeast.7 A crowd of around 2,000 people reportedly gathered upon rumors that the Turkish flag was being burned, and began beating the five activists, who were actually protesting prison conditions in the country. The police intervened, but the crowd insisted that the activists be handed over to them, shouting: “We will burn those who dare burn the Turkish flag,” “This is Trabzon, there is no way out of here,” and “This is not Mersin.”8 What these would-be lynchers were alluding to was the infamous Mersin incident, where a Turkish flag was reported to have been trampled and burned by Kurdish youngsters participating in the newroz (Kurdish New Year) celebrations on March 21, 2005.

The particular feature of the Mersin incident was not the incident itself but a statement made by the chief of staff the day after. It triggered what the BBC called a “flag frenzy” that gripped the whole country.9 “Innocent festivities organized to celebrate the coming of spring,” he said,

have been pushed so far as to provoke the insolence of attacking the glorious Turkish flag, a symbol of the great Turkish nation and inch by inch bedecked with the blood of martyrs, by a group that has not received its share of values. The Turkish nation has seen good and bad days in its long history; besides its innumerable victories, it has also experienced treasons. But never did it have to face such ignominy in its own fatherland by its own so-called citizens … This is treacherous behavior. Being the citizen of a country, breathing its air, drinking its water, filling one’s stomach, and then daring to raise one’s hand against the flag, a country’s most sacred common value, can be nothing other than heedlessness, depravity, and perfidy. Friend or foe, everyone should understand that neither the country’s indivisible integrity nor the glorious Turkish flag, a symbol of this unity and integrity, has been abandoned. First the great Turkish nation, and then the Turkish Armed Forces that emerged from its bosom, are ready and have sworn to protect and look after the country and the flag, exactly as their ancestors did, and, if necessary, to shed the last drop of their blood for this. We advise those who misinterpret our dignity and solemnity, our patience, those who are after mistaken deals, who attempt to put the Turkish Armed Forces’ love of country and flag to test, to look into the pages of history.10

One of the severest declarations made in recent years, this speech was spectacularly performative in the existential sense of “world-creating.”11 It reordered the discursive field in such a way as to reset priorities and targets, identify the characteristics of the “nation” as an entity and agent, and reconstruct its past, present, and future. It assigned the armed forces an organic place within the nation, reminding the latter of its duties and values.

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