Among the elementary rules of courteous communication that respects one’s interlocutor, there is one that recommends, in the event of a misunderstanding, saying “I did not hear” this or that, rather than “you did not say” this or that. For after all, as a friend once remarked, the speaker is responsible for what he says, and the listener for what he hears.
There is another basic rule which recommends, again in the event of a misunderstanding, saying “perhaps I did not express myself well” instead of “you did not understand me”, so as not, of course, to offend the other person by casting doubt on their cognitive abilities.
Yet some not only disregard this rule but use an insulting tone, retorting to the Other: “You are disappointing, because you are not intelligent enough to understand me.”
That is exactly how an activist of the centre-left Turkish party CHP expressed herself this morning on Euronews. Commenting on the results of the previous day’s parliamentary elections, won by the AKP, she declared: “For me this result is a disappointment. I thought the people would be more intelligent; we are not there yet. It is not good for Turkey.” And another activist, of the ultranationalist MHP, added bitterly: “The country has got what it deserves!”
One has the right not to vote for the AKP. One has the right to detest it and to fight it politically. One has the right to be sad at losing an election. But does one have the right to insult the intelligence of an entire people – that is, 80 million human beings – because one was unable to persuade it to make a different choice?
In this morning’s press, some political analysts foresee an imminent intervention by the army and the trade unions to “deal with” the AKP’s victory. Perhaps the military and trade-union hierarchies do indeed have plans ready to instil their “intelligence” into the Turkish people. I say hierarchies, because the rank and file of these institutions are children of the Turkish people, and there is no reason why their political choice should differ from that of the population at large.
Were the Turkish brass to venture onto the political terrain, it would be a grave mistake that would cost Turkey dearly. And I say this on the basis of a similar case in the recent history of the Muslim world: that of Algeria.
Fifteen years ago, this Maghreb country held free and transparent parliamentary elections. They gave a large majority to the FIS, a party with the same ideological orientation as the AKP. Between the two rounds, the leader of an Algerian party said to stand “for Democracy” commented on the results with a phrase that became famous: “I got the wrong people.” The Algerian socialists took their troops onto the streets to warn of the danger the “fundamentalists” posed to Algeria; intellectuals fed by the regime and barons of the trade-union federation rallied to save the republic. The military hierarchy answered the call to “block the green peril”. The second round of the elections would never take place.
Did this act save Algeria? Alas, no. It was the “first violence”, which would open the gates to the hell of violence and counter-violence that was to last more than a decade, and whose toll – I shall never tire of repeating it, since repetition has its pedagogical virtues – is nearly a quarter of a million victims, tens of thousands tortured, thousands disappeared, hundreds of thousands displaced and exiled, and tens of billions of dollars in material damage.
Abbas Aroua, 23 July 2007
