Sun, 10 Sep 2006
"Is it ethical?"-- A statement for intellectuals to dilute the issue.
Another day of morning entertainment from Yeniduzen. Only one of the trio members wrote a new column today and it was a light one. But the common theme was "is it ethical?". Ofcourse, they are talking about the resignations and the follow-up. Two articles I am thinking of are by Nazim Beratli (http://www.yeniduzengazetesi.com/index.php/cat/1/col/34/art/4102/PageName/Haberler ) and our (Hamamboculeri.Org's) Birikim Ozgur ( http://www.yeniduzengazetesi.com/index.php/cat/1/news/9777/PageName/Haberler ) who wrote in Yeniduzen as a guest columnist. I was expecting some interesting commentary but I did not find it. Instead, what I saw was "step back, put on your intellectual hat, make some generalizations, talk very little about the story on the ground, put out few local facts, and reach a conclusion" approach. Ofcourse, I am caricutarizing this and that is my intend here. There is one catch and both have caught on that which is that the parties that were really hurt by these events (UBP and DP) are afraid (to some degree, see my comments yesterday about Ozgurgun) cannot play the "external influence" card very openly, so they themselves dilute the issue and play "is it ethical to leave one's party?" card. Nazim cleverly raises this issue and questins UBP and DP, afterall, they are both parties very familiar with this type of fiddling and many of their big-shots have changed parties on multiple occasions. Just today Erdem Ozaskin who left UBP in July was talking about coming back to home in Kibris newspaper. Nazim does his usual, puts out a reference, plays "I am the big knowledgable intellectual" and "you are the guy who talks about politics in a bar" , makes sure he inserts an attack on "the left" by which he remembers his Marxist past and equates "the left" mainly to Soviet style Stalinism. Somehow he remembers the fractions of left but forgets that pretty much all major conservative movements in today's Europe are based on fractions -- political, religious, ethnic or national. Religious fractions, divisions are what shaped Europe's borders and politics specially in last three centuries. He offers no substance on "Ankara influence" except to try to ridicule it. Birikim is another story. He has a long standing interest in "what is ethical" and I find it unconvincing everytime he writes a long article about it. To me, it appears to come from his academic background in social sciences. His argument is basically that north Cyprus needs a "modern right-wing, conservative movement" to match those in Western Europe. Fair enough, I agree with him that north Cyprus and Cyprus in general needs to evolve in its political thinking to embrace the so-called "European values" and embed them in its daily politics. However, this is not the issue here atleast Birikim does not make a good argument that the MPs involved are people with personal histories that show they are the "modern type". May be Birikim is too young (not that I am much older) or is deliberately ignoring history here. Every couple of years, few MPs -- including the "movement of 9" that led to formation of DP -- from UBP/DP come together and declare that they will form a "liberal party" or "a party of modern right". It creates a lot of excitement precisely amongst the circles Birikim praised ("the valuable intellectuals of right") but the history of the players (for donkey's sake, the major player here was UBP's general secretary) and the subsequent developments prove otherwise. May be I can force him to write a follow-up arguing how these people are "face of change". Birikim also brushes aside the Ankara influence story and given his past where he is quick to call this influence (we come from very similar political traditions about that issue) , I am led to believe that he is simply wearing his intellectual hat too tightly.
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