DAILY OPINIONS

Courage is contagious too

Fear is said to be contagious. But so is courage. This means that both fear and courage are dependent on social conditions and the political climate.

Courage is contagious too

Fear is said to be contagious. But so is courage. This means that both fear and courage are dependent on social conditions and the political climate. If a belief has started to develop that events will subsequently chart a different course, fear or courage will spread depending on the course they take, that is dependent on whether the move is for the better or for the worse. When the progression is for the worse, to change the situation the most courageous stick to their former positions, as do the most fearful when there is progression towards the good and correct.

Just now the political climate and atmosphere is changing. On the one hand the elections won, even if annulled, in Istanbul, and, on the other, the economic crisis that makes living conditions ever more unbearable. Both combined pull the ground on which the ruling party ascended from under its feet and turns everywhere it treads into scalding soil. The mighty one’s threats as events chart this course do not and will not suffice to reverse it. The era of pledges has turned into the era of threats.

Certain entertainers, including some entertainers who at one time made Palace visits on various pretexts and adopted a demeanour that would please the mighty one, have been threatened, blacklisted and accused of ingratitude for making “Everything will be just fine” posts. I mean, you have those football spectators, famous for their apoliticality or considered prey for reaction, and the stadiums that are their haunt. They are accused of taking everything for granted for shouting in unison what are held to be opposition slogans.

Seemingly “entertainers are not to go in for toadying!” This means they are “good entertainers” for as long as they crawl to the chap in the Palace and support him and become “toadies” on turning pro-opposition! So, the message is that you can only toady up to me. OK, but who and what are entertainers and celebrities who make what are deemed to be opposition statements toadying up to when they make pronouncements in opposition to the ruling party? I do not know about later, but just now the opposition do not live in palaces, do not hold power and have no goodies to distribute at the people’s expense. The ruling party is in place for the time being and has the means to up the dosage of threat, blackmail and violence.

This means that at the heart of the entertainers and celebrities’ pronouncements there is, despite the continuation of the existing situation, opposition in various doses to the single-man phenomenon and those in the opposition have in fact for years being doing this under all conditions. They, in other words, number among the courageous in the introduction to the article. As to the rest, they are now feeling disquiet at what is going on and are being influenced by the changing social and political atmosphere and want certain things to change. So, the basic issue here is not people changing and repositioning themselves. Conditions are changing and the atmosphere today is more conducive to courage becoming contagious than it was yesterday. Threat, blackmail and violence are losing their former effect.

Yes, entertainers will talk to entertainers, influential people and institutions will remember the roles they are supposed to play but had forgotten for a while and, more importantly, the wide popular masses will better understand that this ruling party has brought them poverty, privation and unemployment, condemned them to poor living and working conditions and they need to take to the road of struggle. In short, the Palace’s sultanate is wobbling and the means for managing things as before are slipping from its hand.

There is a famous saying speaking of the situation changing and being in flux: “Times they are a changing.” If it has not yet happened, it will. Events are on this course. Struggle cloaks everything in beauty. Neither the threat and blackmail, nor the won and annulled elections, nor the dodgy dealings to win this election can divert events from this course. Winning the future will be paved with the slabs that are to be won in the election and will come with more important wins. The flowers bloomed unstoppably in spring and now the trees are ready to bear fruit and this fruit will likewise ripen unstoppably.

(Translated by Tim Drayton)


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