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January 12, 2008
The Turkish Blutfahne (Blood Flag)
[Originally published in Turkish Daily News]
Have you heard the news? A group of high school kids from Kırşehir, a central Anatolian city, sent a special Turkish flag to the commander in chief of the Turkish military, Gen. Yaşar Büyükanıt. What made the flag special was the stuff it was made of. The red color in the background was not any ordinary paint. It was literally the blood of these students, which they had joyfully spilt to symbolize their devotion “to the homeland.â€
According to the daily Bugün, which ran the news from its headline yesterday, Gen. Büyükanıt was deeply touched by this present. In a public speech, he mentioned it as symbolic of the fact the whole nation is ready to “spill its blood for the sacred cause of our national unity.â€
Now, I very much respect the patriotism of these students, and our top general, but this is a bit over the top. The live connection between the national flag and blood is not a healthy sign. It reminds of some nasty episodes in the century we have just passed — such as the “Blutfahne†(blood flag) of the Nazis.
The Beer Hall Putsch
The Blutfahne was a relic from Hitler’s first attempt to seize political power, the failed Beer Hall Putsch of Nov. 9, 1923. During this skirmish between Hitler’s SA’s ("storm troopers") and the local police, the flag of the fifth SA squad was covered with the blood of the "Nazi martyr," Andreas Bauriedl. Thereafter the flag became a sacred object for the Nazi Party, and was carried at various Nazi ceremonies. Hitler used to touch other banners with the Blutfahne, thus "sanctifying" the new flags with this quintessentially holy one.
I am sure neither the Turkish students who created our own "blood flag" nor the authorities who liked the idea would have sympathy with the Nazi ideology. And their nationalism cannot be compared to the fascism of Adolf Hitler. But the similarity we see in these cases is still disturbing and still needs some explanation.
And here is my explanation in a nutshell: Turkey, unluckily, missed World War II.
Let me explain. We Turks have always been happy with the fact that our country remained neutral and thus secure in that Greatest War. Yes, that safety was indeed a blessing from a material point of view. But in the level of ideas, bypassing World War II deprived us from learning a fundamental lesson about modern politics: nationalism can be a very evil and destructive force.
Most nations got that lesson by having seen, and suffered from, the colossal disaster created by the fascist axis — the Germans, the Italians, and the Japanese — during that war of the world. Most people realized that passion for one’s homeland and kinsmen might be a very dangerous temptation, if it is not balanced by respect for human rights and international law. Indeed, since 1945, "nationalism" became a dirty word in Europe. The old continent rather cherished inter-nationalism, which led to the creation of today’s European Union and the United Nations.
Turkey missed that historic experience. We not only stayed out of the war, but also kept our minds closed to it. Curiously, in the Turkish educational system, World War II doesn’t exist. The history classes in Turkish schools (from elementary to high school) have nothing to say on this greatest disaster the world has ever seen. World War I is taught, on the other hand, but only with regard to the ending of the Ottoman Empire and the creation of Turkey “from its ashes.†Turkish kids by no means learn how millions of British, French and German youths were slaughtered in no-man’s land or became shell-shocked in miserable trenches. The ugly face of war is almost never mentioned in our education system. A sentence such as, “Nations slaughtered each other simply for nationalist zeal†does not exist in any Turkish textbook. In fact, those books are written, in part, to nurture that very zeal.
That’s why our society lacks the allergy that Europe has toward extreme nationalism. Here, it is assumed that "love of the homeland" is the highest virtue, and you can’t go wrong once you have it. The truth is that the homeland, like virtually everything, can become an idol for which humans can do terrible things. Moreover, when you turn the homeland into a sacred cow, you lack the capability to look at it critically and find ways to make it better.
“To make us love our country,†Edmund Burke once wisely said, “our country ought to be lovely.†But if you don’t have any values beyond your country, you can’t judge whether it is lovely or not. And you can’t see what is wrong when your kids create a Blutfahne.
A NOTE: Islamist vs. Kemalist science
I recently had a piece in the TDN on “Kemalist science and its perpetual motion machine.†Then fellow columnist Mr. Bekdil wrote, “Kemalist science – a quest to complete an incomplete prose.†He pointed out that Islamists might be daydreaming as much as Kemalists on issues relating to the natural world.
Indeed this is the latest example of a good habit Mr. Bekdil has: When I show some dogmatism in the Kemalist camp, he shows the other side of the coin by probing the Islamic one.
Fair enough. But I should note two points: Islam is a self-defined religion, whereas Kemalism claims to be a dogma-free "system of thought." So when both of them propose faith-based solutions, it is a bigger incoherence for the latter. The second and more important point is that Kemalism is the official ideology in this country, while Islam is not. If I were living in Iran, where the situation is just the opposite, I probably would be more alarmed about Islamic dogmatism. Here, the other one looks more worrisome.
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