Türkiye has been going through a long transition period since the beginning of our so-called "modernization" history. There is no other country in the world that has experienced such a long transition period. Even the countries where everything was destroyed by the colonialists yesterday have already entered the process of self-determination by finding their channels today, in one way or another.

However, Türkiye has not yet been able to decide what the so-called transition process is, and has not succeeded in entering a normalization process that is considered legitimate by the society in this regard, where the will of the society can determine the country's problems.

IF WE CAN'T FACE OUR PROBLEMS, IT CAN TURN INTO GANGRENE

Today, we continue to experience the same problems we experienced two centuries ago, as the elites, who started the transition (or modernization) process in Türkiye, started this process with Jacobin methods from the top, ignoring the will, dynamics of the society, and the rich civilization accumulation and experience revealed by the struggle of centuries.

Of course, this situation causes the country to grapple with problems that were invented artificially and compulsorily, and cannot breathe easily; therefore, as a society, it prevents us from looking to the future with more confidence by standing up on our own two feet.

However, we need to openly talk and discuss the problems Türkiye is facing, without resorting to methods of deception or imposition. Without confronting ourselves and our fundamental problems, it is extremely difficult for us to prevent the problems we experienced yesterday from recurring today and tomorrow, perhaps even bigger, and turning into gangrene.

First of all, we need to abandon the crude dream that no society can solve new problems in a permanent, radical, and rational way, ignoring its own basic civilizational dynamics, semantic maps, spiritual roots, and historical experience.

Of course, Türkiye needs to renew itself by taking into account the changing world conditions, confront the era and ourselves by stepping on the compass's stable foot on our civilization dynamics, and make a fresh move, a refreshing breakthrough.

However, it is a dry dream for Türkiye to be able to develop a deep-rooted and socially well-established innovation project that can be functional and legitimate in all respects, by ignoring its own rich civilizational dynamics and solid historical experiences, which were formed by the struggle of centuries; It is an adventure that will end in disappointment. For this, we need to come to terms with both Western culture and our own culture in rational and imaginative ways; We need to discuss in detail where our problems stem from and how these problems can be resolved.

Otherwise, regardless of whether the models developed by other societies in line with their own needs will fit our society, we must now know that we cannot develop a deep-rooted, long-term civilization that will give society a breath of fresh air and raise our region by ignoring our basic dynamics and values.

Otherwise, it will be extremely difficult for us to prevent the problems we have experienced so far from getting worse tomorrow.

The modernization/secularization project, which a handful of elites try to implement with Jacobin methods from the top, is experiencing a crisis of legitimacy and hegemony today, as it disregards our society, culture, history and civilization experience, and spiritual roots. It cannot be prevented that the demands of society and the elites come against each other in almost every serious issue. This is an extremely dangerous situation.

Since the priorities of a certain minority that steer the establishment in the country conflicted with the priorities of the society, the political, economic and cultural demands of the forces in the "periphery" formed by the society since the transition to multi-party political life have always been met with reaction and suspicion by the elites.

And the Jacobin elites, at every opportunity, reacted harshly to the demands of the society, which "exceeds" the interests and priorities of the country's ruling bureaucratic elite, sometimes by coups, sometimes by political maneuvers, and sometimes by using the media for their own interests, and tried to suppress the will of the society.

As society's efforts to suppress such demands were put into practice with perpetual panic psychology, society succeeded in disabling these suppression attempts with its own unique methods.

Finally, starting from the 1990s, absurd and primitive measures were taken through military and legal coups against the march of society towards the "center", especially through the RP. A highly primitive psychological war was launched against the identity and cultural dynamics of society through the media.

If this multi-faceted war, which ignores the society, the spiritual roots of the society, the dynamics of civilization and is waged against the cultural genes and semantic maps of the society, is not ended, it may not be possible to prevent the country from being dragged into a dead end, into the abyss and to the brink of disintegration.

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I am sharing with you again this lightly-tweaked column that was published here 23 years ago.