We all write for a purpose. The purpose of a columnist is to affect the thoughts and actions of the others. If I knew nobody would care enough to react to what I write, I would not go on taking all the trouble. I spend half of my time collecting material for my columns, the other half is spent to put those material to good use. I would not survive as a columnist if I stop getting reaction to my articles.
With this in mind, I had watched the developments surrounding Robert L. Pollock''s piece in The Wall Street Journal on Turkey with envy. After a one-day visit to Ankara accompanying Undersecretary of Department of Defense Douglas Feith, he diagnosed our country''s sickness. The title of his article ''The Sick Man of Europe --Again'' accused us, the Turks, of being mad. Mr. Pollock, the journalist, is nowhere to be seen in that piece; Mr. Pollock the polemicist as an arm of the US government is very much evident.
In whole time as a journalist, I myself have been at the center of many journalistic duels with my peers. I like to indulge in polemics myself, but I cannot remember any instance of so powerful public outcry generated by a newspaper article, not by me, not by any others in Turkey, which was created by Mr. Pollock''s piece. It was received with highly deserved reaction by all the parties concerned, it even forced the government to make our Ambassador in Washington send a letter of condemnation to the editor of WSJ.
Turkey is a democratic country with a free press. When I sit down to type my article into computer, I never think on whether I will please or displease anybody, I do not care. And nobody with his right mind can dare to think that I write to get praise from a politician or any interest groups. If I raise a subject for the purpose of criticizing the US actions in this region, the blame, if there is any, rests solely with me. I do not care at all if my politician friend appreciates my stand on any given issue.
Until I read Mr. Pollock''s article, I always assumed this was also the case for every democratic society and every journalist who works for free press. Mr. Pollock in his article tasks us for what we have been writing and urges us to tiptoe the Neo-Con agenda. A veteran columnist from Hurriyet who accompanied the Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan when he visited tsunami stricken areas was reprimanded by Mr. Pollock. Do you know why? Because he wrote from Jakarta that the people he encountered in the streets voiced their suspicion that the US military was there to literally occupy their country. I myself find it very difficult why reporting an impression can be called an offence, even if that impression sounds strange. Our basic duty as journalists is to report.
From time immemorial, regimes have tried to subdue their subjects by censuring the press. In the last year alone, many colleagues lost their lives in the line of duty, some were victims of the states where they live in. It is natural that most politicians would love to see us disappear. Mr. Pollock is the only journalist writing in a respected paper who asks from us obedience; the obedience not to the wishes of our own government but to a more supreme power''s: the US government. If we do not obey, he suggests we should get annihilated.
I do not want to downsize Mr. Pollock''s talent. When a journalist goes to a foreign city, the paper he works for does not expect him to file his first report in less than a week. He needs time to acquaint himself with the environment, to meet with people who would provide him with information, and the time is still necessary to test the acquired information with his own observations. Mr. Pollock is talented enough to write a piece which created havoc for US-Turkish relations, after only a brief visit to Ankara.
The people in the US Embassy in Ankara who briefed Mr. Pollock deserve to be praised too. They may have prepared a ready-made list of press cuttings offensive to American eyes and the reason why those news items and commentaries were given space in the papers. Their diagnosis is clear: "Islamism and leftism add-up to anti-American madness in Turkey."
Let us assume that the diagnosis about madness is right, but a question is still relevant: What if the policies of Washington towards the area where Turkey is located are maddening?
The WSJ article claiming that leftists and Islamists are hand in hand to bad-mouth Americans has given way to an opposite result: The editors of the papers who have supported the American line all along but nevertheless could not succeed to please Mr. Pollock and the Embassy people have become infuriated. They have taken his overall assault to Turkish media as an insult and have responded very harshly. Another assault in the same vein would result in more bleeding in American interests in Turkey.
Americans are not easy to please, we know this. We also know that Americans have difficulty to understand us. When Lyndon Johnson sent a letter to then Prime Minister Ismet Inonu in 1964, he did not comprehend afterwards the damage he caused to US-Turkish relations. The military embargo paused by Washington in 1975 after Turkey''s involvement in Cyprus did not help either. The last ominous incidence occurred in Northern Iraq last year, when 11 officers from the Turkish army''s special corps were forcefully hooded by US Cent-Com elements, that incident was noted by majority of the Turks with alarm. After each occurrence, many in Turkey remembered a long forgotten reality that the US Congress did not ratify the Lausanne Treaty, the treaty gave way to new Turkish Republic.
Why did the US Embassy in Ankara find it necessary to convince Mr. Pollock to write such an outburst? Is it because they are trying to cover their ineptitude in Iraq, which is already a lost case for the US, a point is evident looking at Iran''s jubilation after elections of March 30th? Or is it because the US has the intention of repeating his earlier mistake by attacking Syria and Iran and is after an accomplice in the region?
Is the question above also an offence and shall I be obliterated for asking it? I do not know from where I would expect an answer: from the Embassy people in Ankara, or from Mr. Pollock himself?
From ''The New Anatolian'', February 22, 2005.
