If nationalism ought to be denounced in all its manifestations, as it should, then surely the wholesale attributes of a nation are outright rubbish. The projects for official histories in nation building and for hate campaigns as their counterpart have proven to be the least trustworthy. That is why one can follow Freud undertaking an archaeology of the Jewish mind late in his life, in analogy to the individual psyche and its formation that he had worked on for so many years. If there is a collective  unconscious of a nation, then mass hysteria is a possibility.

The ninety year history of the Turkish republic shows a case of mass neurosis in line with the symptoms laid out by Freud in Moses and Monotheism. Whatever remained in the unconscious of the nation comes back to haunt time and again in view of reflexes shown in the conduct of everyday life today. Although the brutal deeds of the Turkish state go back much earlier, the original sin for modern Turkey appears as the Armenian genocide of 1915. The cadres that have planned, initiated and justified the tone for the atrocities blended into the young republic and their train of hatred and xenophobia has persisted, rarely discretely, in much of the political class, their mentors and followers throughout these years. Unlike the holocaust, the banality of evil, in this case, is through an analogy to the vengeance of a repressed and abused child, that is the late Ottoman psyche, who with all its ‘innocence’ thought it could get away with murder. The practical outcome of such a purification of the population, that is the transfer of capital from Armenians and Greeks to the Turkish subjects is an intended but by no means the sole reason.

Apparently, these facts provide an answer as to why the modern Muslim/Turkish subject is subtly tormented by the signs left by the previous inhabitants of this land, a constant reminder of ghosts from a blurred distant past. This mostly shows itself in attitudes towards archaeology in Anatolia: long viewed as the place for treasure hunting, an ancient site is a constant reminder of a past that the current residents find harder to relate to or to totally forget. One would assume that this was not so in longer Ottoman centuries, where one’s neighbors personified the original builders of the ruins and other buildings, with a talent and craft to match, an object of envy.

In the light of Turkish history, one is pressed hard to explain atrocities committed in the name of the state, religion or the nation. The stereotype of the “Turk” that long circulated in the western world up until early 20th century does not offer a simple answer, just as the notions of Germanic or Slavic or Islamic or Cambodian or the Rwandan despotisms do not offer relief in the face of mass murders. Apart from the trials of  reconstructing the past ‘as it is’ in the form of official and non-official histories, and outside all the documents, counter-documents and insinuating circumstances, how should one to understand the the evil deeds of the political class and the frenzy of complacent subjects to commit atrocities? The just and unjust wars waged in the name of the free world, democracy, Islam or else aside, how should one to understand the bloodbath in Anatolia that extends to our time? Why is the human life so worthless in this part of the world? How do the masses turn into a lynching mob, as they did in Sivas, Maraş, Çorum and in larger scale in the rest of the Muslim world? How do groups develop ‘sensitivities’ that when pressed turn them into brutal gangs? How do these compare to the short history of Arab uprisings? How should one explain the brutality of the army in Egypt, and by the same token, the brutality of the police during protests in Turkey?

The Muslim/Turkish (male) subject is a schizoid personality, very much spoiled as a child, but at the same time whose will is frequently broken down brutally by the father whenever necessary. This oscillation in indefinite relations is transferred through generations, bringing up insecure subjects in the face of  the figures of authority, who in turn are of a similar mould. In the public sphere, the distrust of the authoritarian father figure in the form of political leaders either create complacent masses, insecure yet obedient, or a revolting camp, branded as the enemy of the state. In an extremely polarized political atmosphere, the ‘debate’ is dominated by accusation and indictment and the democratic culture of peaceful protest, settling disputes and co-existence can never be possible. The head-on collusion of moralizing and authoritarian world views among political actors is contagious and is easily transmitted from top to bottom. This is the state of affairs in the land of utterly insecure and neurotic masses, who, somewhere in between the unconscious and the ego, know well that the wrath of the father can, in an instant, be on the most obedient and the favorite son, as it is now unleashed on the rejected ones at Taksim Square. September 2013