Turkey will undergo an accelerated historical transition over the next two months. While the mechanisms of the political system will completely change, the democratic republic and the direct will of people will be strengthened. In this sense, the investment environment will improve further and Turkey's market economy will be settled on more solid foundations. Here, I would like to wander through history. The modernization of Turkey is a matter still being discussed today. In this sense, what is the significance of the June 24 elections? Does history repeat itself in Turkey and the world? Let us ask these questions in reference to famous Japanese thinker Kojin Karatani.

 

First of all, I must say that history does not repeat itself. As Friedrich Hegel said and Karl Marx reiterated, "History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce." In other words, when the tragedy of history faces humanity for the second time, it is not repeated again as a tragedy. When those who brought great tragedies to mankind in the past for their own interests try to repeat them for the second time, there is no new tragedy. What comes out is a farce for those who want to bring that tragedy to humanity again.

 

Karatani had written a preface for the Turkish edition of his work "History and Repetition." In that preface, he compared the development or modernization between Japan and Turkey, emphasizing that the two countries were in a similar situation in the end of the 19th century. As he stressed, despite being aware of the historic transition and the Meiji restoration process in Japan, Abdul Hamid II, the Ottoman sultan at the time, could not introduce a similar process in the empire. The Ottoman Empire, which was in the midst of Europe, then catching the industrial revolution, was not as lucky as Japan.

 

The withdrawal of the Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian and Russian empires from the stage of history paved the way for the new nation-states in Europe which gained strength with the Industrial Revolution, and these states' quest for new markets and raw materials brought imperialism immediately after the Industrial Revolution.

 

The Ottoman Empire first began to unravel in the Balkans in line with Europe's imperialist aims during the Abdul Hamid II period.

 

In the aforementioned book, Karatani says the European states' provocation of various nations in the Balkans under the name of ethnic independence is not a struggle for independence, but a downright imperialist market shaping. On the other hand, in an attempt to control the East, France and the U.K. wanted to drive an edge between the Russian and Ottoman empires and disintegrate both empires by leaning toward Europe and under the control of Europe. Here in 1853, the Crimean War was instigated by Western powers for this purpose.

 

When the Crimean War broke out in 1853, Britain was carrying out increasing number of exports to the Ottoman Empire and at least two-thirds of them were actualized though the Black Sea and Istanbul. Therefore, the Bosporus and Dardanelles straits were crucial trade routes. Back then, the entire Western press wrote that the convergence of the Ottoman and Russian empires would be very dangerous, suggesting that the straits should be under British control.

 

The Crimean War was fought for this. The U.K. and France pretended to side with the Ottoman Empire during the Crimean War. Although Russia could not achieve its goal, the Ottoman Empire took a major blow during the war - which resulted in the dissolution of the empire.

 

While talking about the necessity of setting Turkey and France at odds recently, French President Emmanuel Macron thought that history would repeat itself. However, as Hegel said, he fell into a farce.

 

In fact, it is claimed that Hegel's statement about history and repetition were derived from the sentences he uttered about Julius Caesar in his work "The Philosophy of History." Caesar saw that Rome was expanding and could no longer continue as a city-state. He wanted to maintain the republic as an empire. However, the former rulers of the slaver city-state, who wanted to settle with a slaver city-state, opposed to the growing Rome and Caesar. The murderer Brutus committed murder as the man of these former rulers. However, the murder was nothing but a waste of time for Rome. This is what they call the repetition of history. Caesar died once and Abdul Hamid II was dethroned once. If you try it again, it will be a farce, not a tragedy.

 

In the Turkish political history, Prince Sabahaddin is considered the founding father of liberal thought, but I do not agree with this idea. One of the historical figures who played a leading role in the dethronement of Abdul Hamid II was Prince Sabahaddin. Abdul Hamid II was dethroned on April 27, 1909, exactly 109 years ago. It is said that Prince Sabahaddin played a major role in the political formation of the right-liberal wing of Turkey - which the origins of the Free Republican Party and Democratic Party go back to. Also, the thoughts of Ziya Gökalp, a Turkish nationalist who lived in the same period, were formed as the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), the first political sphere of activity for Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, and the Republican People's Party (CHP). But, as it turns out today, it is a very reductive and falsified thesis. It would be wrong to address what Prince Sabahaddin and Gökalp said by taking it out of its historical context. Prince Sabahaddin's liberalism and decentralization and Gökalp's nationalism must be evaluated relative to their times.

 

The present day shows us that Prince Sabahaddin's liberal identity does not apply at all when the purposes of the period he lived in are considered. Rather than being a liberal intellectual, Prince Sabahaddin was a collaborator and a man of the Western imperialism that began to form in his time. As a result, liberalism was an ideological camouflage to legitimize his activism. The limits of Gökalp's nationalism were drawn by the awakening of oppressed nations at that time. Therefore, this nationalism has been never thrown into the CHP's national-socialist line. Today, many politicians and authors in Turkey under the name of liberalism are proposing a development policy for Turkey that will follow only the great powers and does not defend its interests even in its own region, ignoring a unique development policy. In fact, these views are not liberalism, but defending a monopolistic-autarkic economy and the oligarchy of a few capital-holding families. On the other hand, the nationalism of the Turkish thinker Gökalp certainly did not have a national-socialist context in the period he lived. Gökalp could have been considered the Simon Bolivar of Turkey during his lifetime.

 

However, it is very interesting that a strange alliance has been formed against President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan while Turkey is heading toward elections. This alliance advocates the so-called liberalism of Prince Sabahaddin who collaborated with imperialism. In fact, it has no historical or current relevance to liberal views. On the contrary, this fake "liberalism" meets the nationalist socialism of the CHP inspired by Adolf Hitler's Germany and Benito Mussolini's Italy. And this is accompanied by the U.S-backed Kurdish ethnicity, just like the Balkan ethnicity in the late Ottoman period. Actually, it seems repetition is definitely a contemptible farce that will be embedded in history.