clarividência

That is to say, terror is the root of evil. It is evil by nature. It can not be good. If it is good, it cannot be itself. When the good-bad distinction is so sharp and certain, there are not many options left in this case. The bad must be eliminated without any attempt to discuss or understand it. There are no intermediary options in this mentality. It is not sufficient to focus on the causes of terror either. While the causes, sources, methods etc. of terror are important, its elimination is essential and this can only be achieved through its own mentality, in other words, violence.

Terrorism is beyond the perceptions which we tried to summarize earlier. It is not a monster, not a devil. It is not an enemy that you can destroy or overthrow. Terrorism in fact is an indication, a symptom. It is a clue that something is going wrong. Just like the disorders of the body are revealed by “pain”, one of the “pains” of the social problems is terrorism. Especially a terrorist movement which attains a massive scale demonstrates that there are significant problems in the society. There is no one kind of pain in social problems just like the pains in the body. Hence, terrorist activities can not be grasped by a single formula. There are no fixed, unchanged causes for terrorism. As the head ache, stomach ache or tooth ache indicate different problems, kinds of terror similarly point to different problems in the society. In this regard, struggle with the terror itself is meaningless.

If we consider the body-society similarity, terrorism is a strong symptom for understanding the problems within the society and these problems may be solved more easily if diagnosed early. One thing to keep in mind is that terrorism is the result of the mistakes made by us, as the society. Attributing the crime to badness found in human being’s nature or to an unknown creature and then to oppress violence through violence by using security apparatus will not solve the problem. The problem lies somewhere much deeper. It is perhaps the political system, perhaps the economic system or perhaps the cultural atmosphere. And most of the time, it has its roots in tens of fields. In other words, terror stems from political, economic, social, cultural or similar fields rather than security. Therefore, a security-oriented approach to struggle against terror becomes insufficient right from the beginning. A struggle approach lacking in social, economic, political dimensions is in fact not a struggle, but it delays and deepens the problem.

After the bombings during the G8 Summit in Scotland, Tony Blair made statements taking the G8 leaders and the other guest leaders near him. Thus “entire world is against terror” message was wanted to give. The support for Blair was great: The leaders of the six richest countries in the world (USA, France, Germany, Canada, Japan and Italy); Russia (included to G8 because of its military and political might); India; China; Mexico and Republic of South Africa with their relative weights in the world affairs even they are not richest or most powerful, furthermore the President of the EU Commission, President of the IMF, President of the World Bank and the Secretary General of the UN supported Blair. “The bosses of the world” were altogether in the real sense. The interesting thing was the absence of a Muslim leader in that frame. While the most important problems of the world were experiencing in the Muslim countries (Iraq, Palestine, Afghanistan and Chechnya etc.), there were no Muslim leader among the rulers of the world and the ones asked for their opinions. There was no Middle Eastern voice in the G8 meeting and the bombs exploded. The territories that could not be represented through the legal ways, spoke through illegal ways (read through terror). Busses and metro stations were blown up. The leaders of the world were confused. They immediately tried to give unity messages. However the frame that was taken in the G8 Summit was vividly indicating the clear democratic deficit in the global governance.

Turkey could be claimed as the sole country to fill the representation deficit of the Middle East and Islamic world in governance of the world, because it has a lot of common points with “both of the worlds”. Leading by the United States some Western leaders are already trying to develop Turkey as a model for this geography. However Turkey should not be a model but the voice of the region in the West and the voice of the West in the region. In other words, Turkey should represent the region, not only impose anything. It should not be only an inspiring model for the East but a model for the West in the relations with the East.

por Sedat Laciner.

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