Is calling Erdoğan 'crude' also criticism?

Criticism is a good thing. For an administrator, there is nothing better than a friend who tells the truth – if he knows it. Criticism is the momentum of the renewal process as well as an intellectual duty. One who is critical cannot fulfill his duty to warn and jolt without sharpening his pencil. Hence, criticism is generally annoying.

Regardless, administrators need to be able to successfully take note of criticism without becoming angry, even if the dose is high, even if the plain truth reaches striking points. Because, yes, criticism is annoying, yet it is also prevents slackness, complacency and the increasing disassociation from reality. As you know, after a certain point, the thing we call power becomes the single address of one's contentment with oneself, being sated and the end of struggling. Power, especially one that has been crowned for 13 years with the consent of the people, can take one, at the speed of light, to the comfort of being pleased with oneself, then to stop, then to decline.

In brief, sincere criticism will keep alive, alert and active while keeping one's eyes open.

In Turkey, in other words, a country where personal space was pale in comparison to the collective space; a region where during both the Ottoman and Republic eras the state gave priority to everything and everyone; this country in which the state is referred to as “father” and a dominant patrimonial culture reigns; “criticism” is even more valuable. If we take it further, in a country like Turkey, criticism is more functional than it is in the West as it expands the personal sphere by carrying it to the public one.

Wasn't one of the promises of the transformation called new Turkey to reach a Turkey where service is taken to the people rather than one where the people were once turned away from the state office? Yes it was.

However, the “criticism” matter may have been misunderstood. Since the Gezi incidents, there is no criticism in this country, only constant insults. I am talking about the hostility aimed directly at President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. We saw the latest example of this in the comments made even regarding the gold foil on the chairs in Yıldız Palace's Mabeyn Mansion, where German Chancellor Angela Merkel was hosted last Sunday. Everything was said from the lie that the crescent on top of the chairs were added later to insults about Erdoğan's “crudeness.”

The letter written to Merkel by 100 academics saying “don't come, it will benefit Erdoğan,” did nothing more than reveal the admiration for the West and self-hatred of the Republican elite, which feels greatly inferior in relation to the West. Personally, I think they insulted themselves in that letter rather than Erdoğan. What a pity.

This organized enmity in Turkey, which is carried out under the name of criticism, does not have the intention preventing the totalitarian inclinations of authority as it should; it is not a liberalizing voice against collectivity; it doesn't strengthen democracy; it doesn't represent the people against the state and stand up against tutelage...

No, this increasing and growing obsessive brashness after the Gezi incidents does none of this; it grows the totalitarianism of the old kind of authority; through block discourses it is becoming the indication of an operation directed from a center, not the indication of individualism, freedom or transparency. It does not strengthen democracy and in fact, almost accuses democracy because of Erdoğan's presence. It goes so far as to insult those who voted for Erdoğan.

This rush which demands “legitimacy” or at least “tolerance” through calling it criticism, may appear to be on the side of the people against the state, when in fact it is glorifying that old tyrant state. For instance, it undermines Erdoğan's meetings with mukhtars (headmen) in a quite class-dividing language, or they see the people as sheep...

Criticism is a good thing, only if it is criticism... What we are facing, at the current point, is simply an operation that hints at the desperation of those against Erdoğan as well as their moral collapse.

Personally, I think such “criticisms” require fighting, not tolerance.