are only idiots surprised?

running turkey even as smoothly as a farm tractor is noticeably beyond the ken of tayyib effendi & co. so far, whatever accomplishment they can claim to their name is authored (*) not by their political acumen, but a short lived good sense to listen to common sense: the still dubious recovery in economy is due to a "sufficiently" strict compliance with imf recipes. the political "reforms", which, to many in the country are an anathema that has left turkey in the bosom of terrorism and hostile forces; is the dictate of europe.

that leaves the balance sheet of tayyib effendi & co. in great debit. the last six-seven months have passed in constant tension, caused by the akp's resurrected political-islamic tendencies, which have incrementally gained precedence in their style of government and has tainted the presidential elections as well. i am not blaming the akp for getting publicly (and electronically) rebuked by the army and slapped with the threat of a putsch but i am blaming them for not foreseeing the crisis, making the right moves to prevent it so that they could be strengthened with enough public support to resist (**) an intervention in the democratic process. instead, now they have become more obedient to the soldiery, while becoming more malevolent toward those who are not their political kins.

they grossly flunked the test in political aptitude.

the akp's mentality and mental stretch are terribly beneath the required minimum to administer a country like turkey; a fact obvious in the all-over decrepitude. beyond the "higher-up" affairs of state (which are in shambles anyway), the day-to-day management of the society has degenerated in a fashion that will take generations to repair. the stitches that hold together the social fabric have mostly come undone.

the belief in the possibility of a collective and universal legitimacy is the psychological mortar that keeps the society together. for at least a decade in turkey, the society's sense of legitimacy has multifurcated, with each splinter adhering to its own description. the scenes of corruption that resulted from that fragmentation were elemental in elevating the akp to power in 2002. however, since then, the only social reference of the akp proved still to be religion; and religion cannot suffice in keeping a complex, multi-faceted community as a going concern. when no intellectual or psychical orthodoxy could be devised to rally around, the societal mortar became too loose, too grainy to bind the public.

nobody in turkey (unless well connected) has any faith in law, its enforcement or its equal application to all. social norms are disregarded to the point of ridicule. everyone is ready to enforce his/her own rules on another by any means, very often not legal; because legality is not a consideration. morality is largely defunct, immorality is efficacious and proportionately rife. the end result is a pervasive and burgeoning anomie. the society has lost its benchmarks of fair play, because it has lost all measure of "normal" (***); which is the medium of social life.

the author-ity which derives its power from its representative status is helpless or, worse, apathetic to the plight of society. in any case, it therefore lacks the quality of being representative! in the past, there have been governments whose status was challenged, as is the current one, but even the most violently opposing social forces could hardly open their legitimacy to state for debate. the akp, due to its - apparently not unjustified - deficient confidence in its own capability and capacity, forfeited if not all, most claim to that legitimacy.

because of that overstretched capacity and the toil it extracted from the society's schemata of legitimacy, robbers and thieves galore on the streets; communal order is smothered by ubiqutious confusion; as can be observed in the brazen transgression of traffic laws (or any other law, for that matter) to which even dogs learn to obey; any stranger you talk to may pull a gun and shoot you if he does not like you; courts reach legally lame decisions after decades of trying the same case; the educational system keeps turning out religiously thwarted minds and floods of ignorance - and it is possible to prolong this list to eternity...

the problem of turkey is defining a spirit of society that can offer a meaning to individuals for being a member of that commun-ity. the flags; the almost pathological fanaticism that permeates every collective activity which is born of epidemic diffidence; the volatile tempers denoting a problem with individuality; the readiness to violence, reminiscent of friedrich nietzche's famous hammer (****); are among signals that the society is actually pleading for a covenant to muster and conjoin around.

as that hope eludes people, moral (*****) disintegration worsens.

bleak picture eh? no, not really...

the "mind" seeks homeostasis, a "normal"ity, where in the course of life, perceptive shocks to the mental apparatus are tolerably minimized. sooner or later, not by military edict, not by divine inspiration from the imams of akp, not by arcane metaphysical obsessions that keep the souls of many turks under mortgage, not by the business sector with its eager greed to get rich fast, not by knowledgeable intellectuals or academics etc. either; but probably with the contributions of each and all of them, a movement toward a covenant that will establish the criteria of that homeostasis is bound to begin - of course, in the meantime, if you are not robbed, killed and then raped by a psycho, glue sniffing taxi driver, who mugs for profit on the side and also pimps prostitutes!...

except for or absolute idiots, being surprised is an exclusive luxury of societies with a sense of normalcy.

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(*) if i were a (michel) foucaultian, i'd write "auteur", with its emphasis more on authority than writing.
(**) no confrontation with the military is implied in this sentence. the message is that the akp has failed bad in inspiring confidence in its own faith in democracy or its consonance with ideas and life styles incongruent with its own ideology, or its fealty to the principle of rule of law. instead, its nepotism and partisan clientelism, its sub rosa and gradual policy of intimidating and suppressing difference in society, have alienated a sizable portion of the turkish society. there still are segments that align with akp, solely because they believe democracy can catch deeper roots if a counter-state social force can mature. still others siddle up to it because the other parties in opposition are even a sadder sight. those who essentially disaggree with akp's world view, but support it in the hope of pragmatic gains, constitute another category. if it had secured its position as a democratic and (since it is inevitable if democracy is to exist), an adequately secular party, any intervention in the akp's politics would be unacceptable even to the opposition (except, possibly, the republican peoples party).
(***) "normal" derives from "norm" (lat.), a carpenter's square, now used to describe a standard, a (social) rule.
(****) "to one who has a hammer for a tool, all problems look like nails."
(*****) less in the sense of universal ethics than a psychological source of repair where one justifies one's existence.