Daily Times

A half-hearted botched-up coup and its repercussions in the aftermath bring Turkey in the limelight yet again. As if Recep Tayyip Erdogan himself was not enough, his opponents in the army have shoved Turkey into the abyss of a totalitarian state, if it wasn’t there already. It’s no secret that a capitalistic democracy is not meant to alter the master-slave relations, yet once a red herring of popular contestants provided a sham source of expression, apparently a meaningful catharsis. As mediocrity in politics takes the central stage, the illusion of choosing one’s own masters with one’s consent is getting readily exposed. The web of domination, which became the web of reason, has come to reveal itself. Masters have overtly replaced the primal father. Hegemony is maneuvered through coercion and ruse of reason since consent seems impossible.

Contrary to the western nations, Turkey had never traversed the primrose path of democracy. From the malaise of caliphate, it fell straight into the lap of Kemalist dictatorship, a regime that both set and stifled the path of freedom. Without significant alteration to the mode of production, the sick-man of Europe was overdosed with the panacea of secularism and western relations of production. The panacea became a poison. Before the prescribed treatment could excel, it ended up killing the patient. The constitutional continuation of Kemalism laid the foundation of army intervention, and hence the dictatorship.

Whenever economic/hegemonic interests of ruling class were threatened, defying all democratic norms, the army, the guardian of Kemalism, paved its way to power. During the Cold War, both Bonapartism and Turkey were found intriguingly synonymous. The latest turmoil in Turkey yet again has its subterranean roots lying in economics. While Erdogan — a symbol of capitalism and religion — has provided the country much-needed economic stability under a civilian setup, it has ended up hoisting its own petard by invading Syria, supporting ISIS and attempting to annihilate the Kurds. It is always easy to commence a war of terror, but it is equally difficult to save one’s own house from getting alight with the same fire.

With the connivance of imperialist empire, the native bourgeoisie and the sacrosanct army, Erdogan invariably found himself breathing in the most clement climate. Since religion has no qualms about property relations, his chosen narrative remained a mere subsidiary of capitalism, a tool that helped him maintain his domination over disparate and desperate classes. But the economy based on loans and theft of neighbouring country’s oil — especially that of Mosul’s — cannot thrive for long. The armed struggle of Kurds, augmented by the US opportunism, is enhancing the fear of an economic bust. While the refugee influx has provided a source of cheap labour, it has enhanced the uncertainty and discontent among the middle class as well.

In the absence of Bonapartism, conditions such to these are most congenial for an upsurge of Caesaism, a fascism that swiftly becomes a cross-class phenomenon. According to Gramsci, under constant threat and fear, the “social classes become detached from their traditional parties… the traditional parties in that particular organisational form, with the particular men who constitute, represent, and lead them, are no longer recognised by their class (or fraction of a class) as its expression. When such crises occur, the immediate situation becomes delicate and dangerous, because the field is open for violent solutions, for the activities of unknown forces, represented by charismatic ‘men of destiny’. These situations of conflict between ‘represented and representatives’ reverberate out from the terrain of the parties throughout the State organism, reinforcing the relative power of the bureaucracy (civil and military), of high finance…”

In case of Turkey, this man of destiny was none other than a “consummate superman… a King Kong” familiar as Erdogan. A charismatic authoritarian leader, a born executive, a perfect Caesar who initially attained hegemony through consent but later found himself wanting in being able to sustain it, hence resorted to the campaign of fear and coercion. The crisis in the ruling elite — which led to an obvious cleavage of religious groups, both having the same ideology yet both vying for power (the US strategy of running with the one and hounding the other) — faltering economy and a dismally bankrupt internal and foreign policy of Erdogan led to an ill-planned coup that under the objective conditions was doomed to fail. Out of the ashes of the coup, the emergence of an invincible and bloodthirsty Caesar was inevitable, a foregone conclusion.

Cesarism, as Gramsci states, can both be progressive and regressive. Its nature can only be determined by a concrete analysis of history. Caesrism “is progressive when its intervention helps the progressive force to triumph, albeit with its victory tempered by certain compromises and limitations. It’s reactionary when its intervention helps the reactionary force to triumph — in this case too with certain compromises and limitations, which have, however, a different value, extent, and significance than in the former. Caesar and Napoleon I are examples of progressive Caesarism, Napoleon III and Bismarck of reactionary Caesarism.”

Both Caesar and Napoleon were the harbingers of a change that successfully overturned the socioeconomic system. The dark forces of feudalism were defeated while bourgeoisie prevailed. Napoleon III and Bismarck continued to boost the same system, consequently instead of revolution, restoration — a status quo — continued.

Modern fascism, according to Gramsci, tends to follow the Bismarkian course. But as fiercely antagonistic classes, the confronting forces have now assumed their historical shape. The irreconcilability of class antagonism makes the union of belligerent forces impossible. Capitalism, on the other hand, has learnt its lesson too, hence the latest form of Caesarism “always” maintains, as per Gramsci “marginal possibilities for further development and organisational improvement, and in particular can count on the relative weakness of the rival progressive force as a result of its specific character and way of life. It is necessary for the dominant social form to preserve this weakness: [this is why] modern Caesarism is more a police than a military system.”

The process of terror and purgation in post-coup Turkey seems to be a stark reflection of the draconian era of Pinochet with a lone exception of sparing the left, which hardly exists anyway. Does this Caserism have any progressive tendency is anybody’s guess. The signs of shifting loyalties are not far from obvious. The imminent expression of acrimony towards the US on the possibility of its involvement in the coup, withdrawal of forces from Iraq, an obvious endearing tilt towards the arch enemies — the Russians and the Iranians — and last but not the least, a nod to Assad, whose country Erdogan helped to annihilate, are few noticeable positives that can augur well for the stability of the Middle East, if stability means an end to the on-going holocaust.

This Caesrism will last till the very conditions of its existence survive. For now Erdogan’s ruthless rule is the bitter reality. Akin to Vietnam, the complete destruction of the Middle East has left little room for the progressive forces to redeem their programme. Marcuse states, “At the highest stage of capitalism the most necessary revolution seems most unlikely.” Yet in these moments of hopelessness, the possibility of dialectic theory finding its truth becomes the real possibility. The point, Hikmat says, is not to surrender.

The writer is based in Australia and has authored books on socialism and history. He can be reached at saulatnagi@hotmail.com