The melancholy of nationalism: Beating up slant-eyed people…

It's weird; we passed the Ramadan by talking about the idealists, who attempted to beat up every Asian they could catch, rather than talking about the “fasting ban” implemented on the Eastern Turkistan Muslims by China.

Because the happenings experienced by the people, whose only fault was to look like the Chinese and be in the wrong country at the wrong time, were due to being a member of a race. Even though it wasn't as systematic like the Chinese torture in Eastern Turkistan, this was also an injustice and oppression like the ones implemented on the Uyghur. Things reached such a point that; the idealists had beaten up an Uyghur Turk while mistaken him for a Chinese person. The victim's identity had been revealed after the beating.

MHP leader, Bahçeli's “They are youngsters. Someone will drag them, and they will follow. What is the distinctive feature between a Korean and Chinese? Slant-eyes… When they look, both of them are slant-eyed… Will it make a difference?” statement, which he made in an interview, might have had an influence on the continuity of such events throughout Ramadan.

However, no; in a place, where the “revolutionist violence” is almost regarded as some kind of secular divine, we don't need to be narrowed in that classic “idealists don't know anything other than beating” dichotomy, because even if there is a relatively moral difference between them, there is no difference between the leftist violence and idealist violence. Besides, the ethnic nationalists have an excuse for skidding to this type of violence in these types of situations. Because this type of nationalism possesses an extremely fragile and melancholic context.

Yes, the situation is called ethnic nationalism. Because, even in the days, when Israel bombed Gaza and all the timelines were filled with pictures of dead babies, the reaction of the idealist was never “beating up Jewish people”. Thus, we can presume that there is “ethnicity”, rather than religious sensitivity, under the reactions of the idealists directed at the religious limitations in the Sincan Autonomous Region.

As for the fragility; despite the opinions that the Turkish race existed since time memorial, the dominant opinion is that the Turks and Turkishness had been spread to the world from the Uyghur Region. Thus, it's not possible to explain the essence of the nationalism here with a capitalist development, with reference to Hobsbawn, or with progressivism like Gellner. There is no point in arguing over whether this nationalism is imagined, constructed or invented.

However, we can say this easily; the melancholic-romanticism in the irrational behaviors, which reached “beating up every slant-eyed person” on the matter of Eastern Turkistan, of the idealists in Turkey, is closely related with the fact that Eastern Turkistan is known as the “first” from the point of Turkishness.

Yes, it is being presumed that nationalism was revealed after the French Revolution. It is a product of modernism and it only has 200-300 years of history. However, one of the things that unites nations is; the ability to explain the essences of belonging in the pre-modern times. In other words, Eastern Turkistan amounts to historicity for the Turkish nationalists in Turkey. In the end, the Uyghur people are a mirror for the ethnic nationalists in Turkey. Eastern Turkistan is a root and the symbol of Turkishness' perpetuity. According to these kinds of nationalists, the modern Turkish nation is connected to the perpetuity of the old belongingness. At this point, we can relate this to Anderson; the history of nationalism is short, but very long.

At the present point, the reason behind the mind-boggling delirium in the act of beating up everyone that looks like Chinese in exchange for the implementations towards the Uyghur people is the state of incarceration related with the existential loyalty directed at the Uyghur Turks. This incarceration is related with the distance between the sense of belongingness, whose roots were consolidated with historicity, and the citizenship identification in the country lived in.

The problem is; the failure of realizing historic, cultural and ethnic perpetuity in modern life. It's the “We are Uyghurs, however, they are connected to China, in terms of citizenship, not Turkey” idea. This transforms Eastern Turkistan into a distant homeland, and the Uyghurs into lost cognates that cannot be lent a hand despite the desires.

The result is; a mass that is satisfied by beating up all the slant-eyed people… Desperate nationalists that are in melancholy and delirium…

Note: Dr. Ruhtan Yalçıner's article entitled “Ethnicity and Nationalism: A Critical Evaluation” (2014) had been utilized for this article.