What makes Turkey tick

I remember an American author once saying she wrote about love and friendship because, after all, these were the fundamental things that people talked about when they gathered around dinner tables. Not quite so in Turkey. Over lengthy breakfasts and suppers, lunches and drinks, we Turks tend to talk about something else: politics. The truth is, we cannot get enough of politics. Even though politics dampens our spirits and darkens our minds, we return to the subject, like moths to their flames.

Politics is a fast-running hare: we chase it as fast as our legs can possibly carry us, never quite managing to get hold of it. Everything happens too fast in Turkey. From one week to the next the mood alters. Yesterday’s heroes become tomorrow’s betrayers, and then suddenly, vice versa. There is barely any time to stop and contemplate and analyse. Instead we, millions of us, speed forward in confusion, trying to make sense of the next scandal, the next tragedy, the next political tension. In the span of one single summer, this nation has witnessed a series of terror attacks by PKK and Isis, a bloody and horrific coup attempt by a Gulenist cabal within the Turkish army, and sweeping purges in its aftermath that affected thousands of people. As a nation we are traumatised. Certainly depressed. But there is, as always, no time for any healing. Almost every day I hear about another journalist, writer or academic being blacklisted for this or that reason. Fear, paranoia and conspiracy theories abound. Many citizens try to plough their way forward, as though afraid that if they look back they will all turn into pillars of salt. Remembrance is cursed in this land. No wonder this is a society of collective amnesia. One would go mad if one kept it all stored in recent memory.