Herbert Marcuse starts his book One Dimensional Man by assessing the existence of an imposed “democratic unfreedom” (Marcuse, 1991: 1). Through this consented unfreedom, Marcuse suggests, an “advanced industrial civilization” yields any mode of critical, intellectual, scientific, creative or artful conduct to an understanding of mechanized rationalization. Such rationality directly determines the extent of the societies’ critical endeavours. His description of a modern society resembles the dystopic imagery of Metropolis—a vague blur between men and machine, where the capitalist mode of production takes over every aspect of life and death.
But how does the dominant ideology impose the unfreedom in such a way that the society accepts it democratically? According to Althusser, the dominant ideology establishes this consent through a process he names interpellation: “that ideology ‘acts’ or ‘functions’ in such a way that it ‘recruits’ subjects among the individuals (it recruits them all), or ‘transforms’ the individuals into subjects (it transforms them all) by that very precise operation which I have called interpellation or hailing…” (Althusser, 1971: 174). Althusser suggests that the call of a police officer on the street, that of the priest in the church, or that of the teacher in the classroom are all instances of hailing. These instances take place in and through what he calls the ideological state apparatuses (ISA): “number of realities which present themselves to the immediate observer in the form of distinct and specialized institutions” (Althusser, 1971: 143). Institutions such as religion, education, family, law, mass media and culture, all contribute to the process of interpellation—imposition of the dominant ideology to the subjectified masses as internalized universal truths. These universal truths, according the Althusser, are expressed in the “obviousness” of everyday language as indisputable facts. Everybody knows, for instance, that Turkish Republic is a democratic state of law; or that women deserve to be raped; or that every Turk is a born soldier; or that thinking too much will make you an infidel.
In Turkey, today, one of the most important intellectual movements centre around questioning the dominant ideology. Journalists, authors, thinkers and scholars from different walks of life, different ideological stances and from mostly contradictory positions of thought come together to criticize daily manifestations of the dominant ideology. There are newspapers, conferences and web sites dedicated for such a cause. Even AKP government, who now has been leading the establishment for almost a decade, still uses the rhetoric of criticizing the dominant ideology to gather supporters from liberal/left leaning constituents.
It is essential to correctly define the dominant ideology in order not to waste such an important intellectual momentum. Everybody knows, however, dominant ideology, roughly, is Kemalism among those who criticize it. The determination to focus on Kemalism, on the other hand, as the dominant ideology may make us miss another and an even more important point. Can’t we find another power behind Kemalism’s synthesis of European philosophy and Ottoman bureaucracy? If we analyse Kemalist discourse and liberal/leftist/conservative discourses that try to oppose it, we can give a definitive affirmative answer to this question.
Kemalism imported significantly from European philosophy. This has positive as well as not so positive consequences on Turkey. The fact that Kemalism did not stay blind to social and technological advances in Europe established the groundwork for the regional prestige Turkey enjoys today. Since any kind of import cannot be free of culture, European advances and philosophy were imported with Europe’s ethnocentric attitude. Kemalist ideology also has an Ottoman component—though most Kemalists would like to ignore this point. Ottoman empire’s legacy of an elite bureaucracy, emerged as Republic’s bureaucracy; militarism sharpened with War of Independence, emerged as an army-centred understanding of state; and a social structure based on ummah, emerged as the substance of Turk-Islam synthesis.
Kemalism thus synthesized the European and the Ottoman, and now is being regarded as Turkey’s dominant ideology. If we stop and examine the public discourse in media or social media about how people argue with each other, we see are faced with an ideology that far surpasses Kemalism, which lives in depths of social discourse, hidden from plain view. Because, the different sides of polemics in public discourse, although seem contradicting from a superficial level, they really are saying the same thing. Social and political discourse in Turkey today is based on creating and sustaining binary oppositions and competing discourses. Leftist against rightist, religious versus secular, conservative against liberal, Christian-Armenian versus Turkish-Muslim, Kurdish against Turkish, and as such the list goes on. The supporters of each side, though comfortable in their respective camps, are not yet aware that their discussions sustain the hegemony of another ideology.
It is important to make this point clear: although it seems like an impossibility to suggest that a supporter from one side actually agreeing with a supporter from a counter position, in essence—either consciously or not—they are making the exact same argument. It might sound like an extreme position to claim that someone who supports the court decision on Dink case, for instance, has indifferent discourses with a person who is protesting the same decision. First, however, it is important to examine the language each side uses for the designated other.
Following Turkish media and public discourse, for even a short period of time, is enough to reveal that different sides of the aforementioned issues see each other under the same light: incompatible others with whom it is virtually impossible to coexist. Moreover, in some cases, accusations go as far as suggesting that the other is a part of a much larger conspiracy designing “bad things” to Turkey. Without getting into the truth value of such claims, noticing the discursive positioning of the other reveals an important point.
While the respective sides blame each other with intolerance, those who stand beside such binary oppositions cannot see that the existence of the designated discursive other is definitely necessary for social pluralism as well as diversity. Each blame and othering utterance they make, is yet another creation of a common discourse they co-sustain against the idea of coexistence—and is more harmful in the short as well as in the long run to themselves and to the country they most certainly love more than the other. For this reason, it is impossible to limit the dominant ideology in Turkey to Kemalism. Such limitation would make us blind to the fact that those who are trying to oppose Kemalism are actually contributing to the same discursive structure which they believe to be the dominant ideology. Therefore, the dominant ideology in Turkey is best named as: The absolutist pattern of Turkish social and political culture (Erol, 2011).
When we consider the absolutist pattern of Turkish political and social culture, the opposition of those who sustain such binary oppositions can, at best, be interpreted as superficial illusions. Oppositions and counter oppositions, on the other hand, only work in the favour of the absolutist pattern—and it would not be too much of a stretch to suggest that the absolutist ideology lies in the root of most of our conflicts. Consequently, any road seeking social peace, harmony and justice has to pass from the awareness of how counter- and anti- discursive positions sustain Turkey’s problems; as well as from the acceptance that those who are considered as the other and opposing identities have to be reconciled as parts of the social diversity. That is, as peoples of Anatolia, the ideology that drives us to a gridlock is the over reliance to the binary oppositions that seem to be a part of our discursive and behavioural repertoire. From this perspective, every opposing position that are thought to be ideologies, are merely discourses, which sustain their existence under the safe umbrella of the real dominant ideology of the absolutist pattern.
In Turkey, children start internalizing the dominant ideology, which we will use with its new definition, at a very early age. That is to say, the dominant ideology of the absolutist pattern interpellates and subjugates children shortly after they are born. For instance, the national anthem and the “oath” that are being recited every Monday morning and every Friday afternoon from 7 to 17, is a way in which the dominant ideology “hails” the children. And children—who are, at that time, subjects of the education system, which is, perhaps, the most important ISA—with every repeated stanza, with every recited line, with every studied text of the Republic, positively respond to this hailing. Through their positive responses, they are well on their way to become “good citizens” that the Republic wants and shapes them to be. Although the dominant ideology might seem like Kemalism when such texts are concerned, it is not so hard to notice that the real ideology that is being internalized is the absolutist pattern. Because, although these texts amply have themes of nationalism and xenophobia, they impose a black-or-white outlook towards life with their polarizing discourses. To see everyone else, other than a narrowly defined self, as an enemy; and to suggest that only way to peace and compromise is through victory, are not exactly useful themes for social harmony. It is as a result of such education that we see those who are trying to oppose Kemalism are using the same binary oppositional language and discursive structure.
But, is there no way out of this? Is there no way out of the all engulfing grasp of the dominant ideology? Although Althusser suggests a way out, he does not share with us the how of we could go about realizing such a goal. His student Pêcheux, on the other hand, gives us a hand at that exact moment. According to Pêcheux (1983: 156-157), although the dominant ideology attempts to impose a universal reality, there are 3 possible outcomes between the interaction of the dominant ideological discourse and its subjects: Two of these modalities, according to Pêcheux, are evident: the modality of the good subject and the modality of the bad subject. The good subject accepts the subject position imposed by the dominant ideology—becomes the reflection of the predetermined universal reality through consent and acceptance, in other words, interpellation. The bad subject, on the other hand, becomes the negation of the imposed reality, however constrained by the scope offered by the dominant ideology in the first place. That is, the bad subject rejects or attempts to overthrow the interpellation through the negative, through what Pêcheux calls “counteridentification” (Pêcheux, 1983: 157). Counteridentification is visible through its anti- or counter- stance, challenging the dominant ideological discourse through its own vocabulary.
While Pêcheux suggests the first and second modalities are “symmetrical inversions” (Pêcheux, 1983: 157), he puts forth a third modality that neither accepts nor completely rejects the imposed universal reality: “disidentification, i.e., of the taking up of a non-subjective position…” (Pêcheux, 1983: 158, original italics). He suggests that the third modality engages the imposed subject position and the universal reality, not through a counter position, but rather through redefinition and “a subjective process of appropriation of scientific concepts and identification with the political organizations ‘of a new type’” (Pêcheux, 1983: 159, original italics). That is, disidentification can be practiced, not through counter- or anti- positions, but by constant subjective and critical scientific knowledge accumulation and by identifying with an alternative form of governance or politics.
When we observe discussions in Turkey, we see that most of them dialectically unfold through time by this counter and anti-counter opposing stances, which could be seen, for instance, in “we are all Armenian” vs. “you are all bastards” dichotomy. In Pêcheux’s terminology, these discussions are taking place between the “good citizens” and the “bad citizens” of the land. But, as we have explained thus far, such a competition only feeds and sustains the dominant discourse with its new definition.
The alternative that is not discussed so far, is the path of disidentification. The only way to get past and to move beyond the real dominant ideology of the absolutist pattern is not to get lost in day to day discussions that only sustain it, but rather, to see beyond the dichotomy of absolutisms and to understand that the “other” is actually a part of the “self.” What needs to be done cultivate such understanding is to deconstruct discourses that sustain the dominant ideology and to cumulate such critical and evaluative scientific knowledge. The space that would come out of such an endeavour would not be, by any means, free of ideology—that kind of space might be impossible. What Pêcheux proposes with disidentification, at least as we interpret it for the case of Turkey, is the awareness that the real dominant ideology is kept very much alive through discourses that are thought to be ideologies and the real alternative should be produced for this underlying and sinister dominant ideology. In other words, the aim is to produce alternatives to binary oppositions and to dichotomies—which is impossible to do without cumulating critical scientific knowledge—instead of countering each other. Only then, as peoples of Anatolia, we can talk about social peace, justice, harmony and coexistence; free from the chains of opposing discourses, only then we can truly start to shape our own fate.
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