On July 17, 2016, local time, in Istanbul, Turkey, the funeral of the military victims was held, and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan attended.
Oriental IC | fig
Author: Shi Zhan
From: Shanghai Book Review
"If life and death depend on the soldiers, why do we pretend to recognize the supremacy of the king's power? ...... Power is in the hearts of the people. If you believe, you have, and if you don't believe, you don't. It is a trick to deceive people, like a floating shadow on the wall. Even small people can cast huge shadows. ”
- "Game of Thrones"
"How did Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan thwart the coup with new media?" After the article was published in The Paper, it aroused the discussion of some friends. The discussion fell into two categories:
First, many friends have questioned, one is whether Erdogan relies on new media, and the other is whether he can really win with new media, and they have reservations about this; On the other hand, after Erdogan's victory, a series of political purges began at home, and how to understand the political future of Turkey and even the Islamic world, the attitude of friends is very different.
Without being superficial, I would like to give a simple response to these discussions, talking about "how Machiavellian understands Erdogan" - the so-called Machiavellian understanding here, that is, putting aside ideological prejudgments and understanding only the actual logic of realpolitik operation.
First, what exactly is new media?
First of all, the first question, some friends proposed that Turkey does not have Twitter (this statement is wrong, of course Turkey has Twitter, Erdogan's Twitter account is very active), how Erdogan tweeted the revolution; And, although Erdogan used FacebookTime, he spoke through CNN, which is still traditional media, and the so-called "Erdogan's Twitter revolution" is an excessive association of scholars.
In response to this question, the author must first review the lack of clarity in his own expression, and only said in an unobtrusive place in the article: "We will use 'Twitter' as a symbolic collective term for self-media here." The author uses the term "Twitter" to refer to a variety of new media that are different from traditional media, generate and disseminate information in a distributed way, and have multi-directional interactive effects, and do not specifically refer to specific Twitter. So, "Erdogan's Twitter revolution", more precisely "Erdogan's new media revolution", only this expression is not as sonorous as the former, but this is not much to say.
What's more worth saying is, is CNN a traditional media in this incident? People's first reaction is that it is, of course, traditional media, but a closer look reveals that CNN does not work in the way of traditional media this time:
First of all, Erdogan is interviewed by CNN through Facebook in an "unknown location" and transmitted instantly, which completely breaks through the limitations of geographical space, and traditional media cannot complete the interview process and release it to the outside world. More importantly, how many people watched this interview through TV, and how many people watched it through social media and even through mobile?
Traditional media represented by television have been changed by new media characterized by "distribution"
With the increasing popularity of social media and smartphones, everyone can guess which viewing method will have a stronger influence. Therefore, we cannot rigidly understand what traditional media and what new media are, the boundaries between them are increasingly blurring, and traditional media is increasingly operating in the way of new media.
New media is a carrier here, which fundamentally changes the way of information dissemination, but it is not necessarily responsible for the production of content, and the content is mainly produced by users - which is also the basic premise of distributed operation of its information production and dissemination; As a traditional media, CNN produces content, but the dissemination of its content and its subsequent effects are inseparable from the carrier of new media - including through new media such as Twitter and Facebook, as well as through CNN's own APP on the mobile terminal - and the operating logic of traditional media is becoming more and more different.
In a word, the difference between new media and traditional media is not its name, but its channels. Whether it is instantaneous or professionally processed, centralized or decentralized.
Second, the legitimacy of "believing is there, and unbelief is nothing"
On the second question, can Erdogan win with new media alone? Of course, he has more conditions to win this time, but new media is a completely inescapable condition here, and it can even be said that it is almost a prerequisite for other conditions to work. There is a question that is very Machiavellian in its meaning.
To explain this, you may wish to quote a much-talked about line in the popular American drama "Game of Thrones" in recent years.
Game of Thrones stills
In the play, Lord Wallis asks the little devil: "Three nobles sit in a room: a king, a monk and a rich man. Between the three, there stood an ordinary mercenary, and each noble ordered the mercenary to kill the other two. Who lives, who dies? Little Devil: "That depends on the mercenary." Wallis: "Is it?" He had neither a crown, nor gold or silver jewelry, nor the favor of the gods. Little Devil: "But he has a sword and the power to decide life and death." Wallis: "If life and death depend on the soldiers, why do we pretend to recognize the supremacy of the king's power?" ...... Power is in the hearts of the people. If you believe, you have, and if you don't believe, you don't. It is a trick to deceive people, like a floating shadow on the wall. Even small people can cast huge shadows. ”
"If you believe, you have it, but if you don't believe it, you don't have it", what is this "faith" based on? It obviously relies on not simple violence (the mercenaries mentioned in the play), but on something that the author mentioned in the previous article when I was questioned: "legitimacy" - when people accept that you have legitimacy, you have power; When people don't accept your legitimacy, you have no power.
The coup itself is a denial of existing legitimacy, so for it to succeed, it must be able to make people accept that the putschist has legitimacy and convince people that the overthrown have lost legitimacy – that in modern politics, the meaning of legitimacy is whether you "represent the people." How can we "represent the people"? To exaggerate, it is whether it is possible to monopolize the channels of information dissemination that speak "on behalf of the people".
Therefore, one of the first things putschists do in modern coups is to seize television and radio stations and announce to the whole country that they have replaced the current government, which is necessary in a large number of coups in third world countries in the 20th century. It is not that the putschists made such a declaration that the coup d'état would succeed, because other conditions need to be matched; But without such a declaration, the putschists will certainly not succeed, because the force in their hands cannot somehow be transformed into legitimate rule over the country.
As long as the incumbent can still use television and other platforms to speak openly, the coup d'état cannot get rid of his identity as a "rebel", because after all, the incumbent has the existing legal legitimacy; But if those in power are deprived of this avenue of voice, the putschists become "representatives of the people," denouncing those in power as thieves and the force in the hands of the rebels becomes the power to rule.
"Believe is there, unbelief is nothing", here is like a trick, belief is defined by propaganda, pure verbal behavior, but conjuring up a huge real power.
In this coup d'état in Turkey, the coup d'état first occupied the television station according to the standard process and issued a statement saying that he had seized state power, which is an implicit statement "on behalf of the Turkish people". Erdogan's whereabouts are unknown at this time, the whole country is temporarily absent from legitimacy at this moment, even if Erdogan has a popular base, but his physical disappearance still makes people's belief in the country's allegiance for a while, and the coup d'état becomes the only person who claims to have legitimacy.
At this moment, even if there are opponents of the coup d'état, their resistance cannot be justified, because it is not based on orders from Erdogan, so this resistance can be accused by the putschists of treason against the interests of the people; Moreover, hasty resistance is bound to lead to an effective organization and, in general, difficult to deal with the putschists.
And the so-called "Turkish people", because they are not organized, it is difficult to really act and express their political will in this process; They may make the subsequent rule of the putschists costly, but they will not change the momentum of the putschists' success.
Unexpectedly, Erdogan used the platform of new media to still speak out to the world even when his whereabouts are unknown, and because his whereabouts are unknown, the coup d'état cannot even physically control him in order to deprive him of the opportunity to speak out. In modern politics, the "whereabouts" that mean defeat has been decided has become a huge advantage in Erdogan's postmodern response.
Due to Erdogan's legal legitimacy as a democratically elected president, his voice was naturally "representing the Turkish people" at this moment, so the people's allegiance belief had a pivot on which to maintain, and he took action to the streets, and the coup d'état was instantly reduced to a rebel; At the same time, in the face of the people on the streets, the soldiers instantly lost the desire to resist. The "whereabouts unknown" Erdogan, relying on new media, has cast a huge shadow on Turkish soil.
In this sense, the history of future network development should be marked by Erdogan. The Twitter revolution in the Middle East and North Africa a few years ago, and Erdogan's "Twitter revolution" this time, fully presented the transformation of traditional politics by new technologies from the two directions of mass dispersion and government centralization.
The new technology itself is neutral and does not necessarily lead to decentralization or centralization, but it puts an end to the traditional model of meritocracy based on one-way transmission of information, and there will still be meritocracy in the future, but it is redefined here. Machiavellian vision, where we see the continuation of the essence of politics, but also the change in the appearance of politics.
Why did Erdogan challenge Kemal?
Kemalism runs deep in Turkish soil
Erdogan's elected legitimacy was a thrilling confirmation of the people's crisis action through his rivalry with the coup d'étatists. After experiencing the legitimacy of this baptism, no one can oppose for a while, and some of the political moves that Erdogan had carefully wanted to advance before can be carried out in a big way this time.
Erdogan had vowed to pay a terrible price for the insurgents, and as of July 17, at least 70 Turkish army generals, more than 3,000 soldiers and about 2,750 judges had been arrested. At this point, it is no longer possible to clearly distinguish how many people were indeed involved in the coup and how many were taken advantage of – after all, the vast majority of the 2,750 judges could not have been directly involved in a small gang plot like the coup. Erdogan's long-brewing constitutional revision now looks like he's on the verge of a kick.
The move has made some friends worry that Erdogan will use his totalitarian tactics to move Turkey away from secular Kemalism, which seems less optimistic in an era of growing Islamic revival.
But it has to be said that this anxiety implicitly implies an ideological premisposition, that is, secularization is good, so Kemalism is a bad choice if it is abandoned. We need to raise Machiavelli's razor again, rule out prejudgment, and see where the problem is:
Turkey had four coups between 1960 and 1997, almost once in a decade. The coups were all about overthrowing governments that risked departing from secularism, and after each military coup, the soldiers returned to the people, at least in these ways, and they were staunch defenders of Kemalism.
But let us ask from another angle, why did coups have to happen repeatedly? Why is the choice of the people always inconsistent with the choice of the military? Does this inconsistency imply some problem with Kemalism?
Professor Zan Tao of Peking University said in an article just now, "Turkey's Military Coup Attempt, What Are the Misunderstandings About This Incident", Turkey is a country with a population of 99% Muslim, and under such circumstances, its political arrangements are completely devoid of Islamic elements, which is almost impossible. The author is deeply convinced of this.
Any successful constitutional order must contain a matching relationship between its form (constitutional statutes) and material (social reality), and if it is poorly matched but still adheres to its form, it will inevitably lead to violent imposition, in other words, the so-called enlightened autocracy. If the enlightened autocracy is considered preferable because it has a secular appearance, it is undoubtedly inconsistent with the idea of constitutionalism.
Fundamentally, constitutionalism is to allow every individual to live with dignity and happiness, but the question is what is dignity and happiness? This is not something that can be defined abstractly, but is deeply related to the socio-cultural traditions in which individuals grew up. Of course, even any cultural tradition has some common values, but the individual's understanding of dignity and happiness is more complex and diverse than these common values.
Turkey with coups d'état in recent years
Specifically, it is inconceivable for a Muslim to talk about his understanding of dignity and happiness entirely in isolation from Islam; And using authoritarian methods to dictate to him what his dignity and happiness are, even under the premise of enlightenment, it is not easy to imagine that he will accept it calmly. These are some of the problems inherent in Kemalism.
In a review of Professor Zan Tao's book Modern State and Nation Construction: A Study of Turkish Nationalism in the Early 20th Century, I wrote a few years ago that Mustafa Kemal's highly secular ideas and his thunderbolt tactics led to the suppression of Islam. However, for Turkey's majority population, Islam is not something that can be so easily discarded.
Moreover, if Islam is truly lost, then what will the Turkish people use to correct the hearts of the world? Science, democracy, industrialization, none of them have this function; The Turkish nation, which was constructed through Mustafa Kemal's efforts, did not provide ethical standards for daily life in its national philosophy. So, after Mustafa Kemal's death, especially after the 60s of the 20th century, the influence of Islam began to revive in Turkey.
However, because of the unshakable conceptual premise of the Turkish nation, represented by Mustafa Kemal, a revival of Islam could no longer be the basis of public order. At this time, the value of Gecalp, a thinker at the end of the Ottoman Empire, who had conceived of a functional transformation of Islam and its return to a purely social dimension, came to fruition.
Mustafa Kemal forcibly forged the Turkish nation, and Gekarp found a proper place for Islam, and together they should shape the public character of today's Turks.
Erdogan's current approach is a sort of correction of one-way Kemalism. Professor Zan Tao also believes that "the secularization of Turkey by the Erdogan clique is not to completely subvert and establish a clerical state, but to redefine secularism, from the past emphasis on state control of religion to the emphasis on freedom of religious belief and equality of all faiths under the premise of separation of church and state."
That is, from positive secularism to negative secularism. This, of course, is a correction to Kemalism. "The effort that Erdogan represents is to return to the question of how to reconcile Islamic tradition with modernity in the modern Islamic world as it faces the challenge of Western modernity." ...... For the time being, Turkey's secularist system does not see any major and fundamental danger, but the secularization of Kemalism is about to be adjusted. ”
How exactly Erdogan himself is thinking about whether he can actually do this is another question. But if the jump from doubts about Erdogan himself to denial of the real problems he is dealing with, this jump is clearly not serious.
Epilogue: Understand Machiavelli's correct posture
As an outsider, one can have a detached state of mind and take a Machiavelli gesture to discuss Turkey's issues. But, lest some friends misunderstand me and question my unprincipled approach to these issues, I am compelled to say that Machiavelli wrote not only The Monarch, but also On Livy. He is not only about art, but also about the Tao. Without the art of the Word, it will degenerate into shamelessness; Without the Dao, it will also degenerate into incompetence.
Author's note: Both this article and the previous writing were inspired by the discussion of the "Daguan" academic community, especially the discussion of Zan Tao, Yu Xiangdong, Liu Qing, Zhang Xiaoyu, Li Yun and other colleagues, which benefited the author a lot. Of course, the text is at your own risk.