Fear empire

It was as if we were watching a modern-day adaptation of a black and white film from Adolf Hitler’s Germany or Benito Mussolini’s Italy. Yes, there was one, perhaps two marked difference between what we lived and what the communists in Italy or Jews in Germany had lived during those horrible years that no one would like to remember now but for obvious reasons just can’t do...

The first marked difference was during those years there was no TV. Thus ambushes on houses of the Jews or communists and the mass detentions were not done after as part of a psychological warfare the allegiant media was tipped beforehand and given time to gather in front of the house or office to be ambushed either by the notorious Schutzstaffel, or SS, forces of Hitler or the Ovra, an institutionalized secret police, of the Mussolini regime.

Psychological warfare during those times was mostly conducted by radio and leaflets, not by allegiant TV stations and a web of newspapers. Now, several hours before the house of a former top prosecutor was ambushed, the prosecutor and the rest of the society learn from the official TV channel of the state about what would happen within the next few hours.

Hitler’s propaganda master Paul Joseph Goebbels would envy the methods applied in the current propaganda war. Is it conceivable in any other country for a state-owned TV channel to broadcast for four hours a live interview with a fugitive who escaped to Canada and allow him make unverified accusations against leading political opponents of the government, former top generals, leading academics and use the TV screen to blackmail some eminent journalists and publishers?

A second marked difference is while we are complaining of gross violation of the procedures of trial by the Turkish prosecutor and judges, neither in Hitler’s Germany nor in Mussolini’s Italy, there was obligation to follow any procedures in detention, arrest, trial and even voluntary executions or mass killings.

Everyone living in fear
However, the way the present day psychological warfare is conducted in Turkey against elements refusing to enter into allegiance with the government appears to be as successful as the methods of Goebbels as well as the Ovra of Mussolini. People are either silenced or are talking with very low voice. It is a fact that people are scared with the waves of detentions, house arrests and intentional humiliation of respected personalities of the society.

People are scared. The country has been turned into an empire of fear. On Thursday afternoon, while the police search in the ART and Türk-Metal Trade Union buildings were still continuing, I spent several hours with some friends from the Ankara diplomatic community at a cafe on the Köroğlu avenue. I was explaining to the diplomat friends that people have developed a fear that their telephones might as well be listened by police, they might as well be taken in and that people are becoming more and more reluctant to criticize the government.

A diplomat friend asked whether I had a "genuine fear" that I might be taken in as well. No, I said, one may have genuine fear if he is involved in crime, but as the Ergenekon probe is being conducted it just appears to me and many other people that it is highly probable that anyone can be taken in just because someone mentioned your name in a telephone conversation.

The cafe was crowded, music was loud, discussion was interesting and I did not hear ringing of my mobile. After three hours, all of a sudden, a friend who knew I might be probably at that address dashed in with a white face. "Why are not you answering your telephone?" he said angrily.

"We thought something might have happened to you!" I checked my phone, there were 16 unanswered calls from my wife, daughter living in Amsterdam and friends from many parts of the country. Apparently one of them could not reach me, called some others and triggered an "alert" about my status...

What is this? Is it not a manifestation of the state of fear we are living through?