“Analar milyonlarca Mehmetçik doğurabilir ama bir Skorsky helikopter doğuramaz…”
“Turkish mothers can give birth to millions of Mehmetciks (Turkish soldiers), yet they cannot give birth to a Skorsky helicopter…”
(A Turkish military commander’s response to his injured soldiers, who asked for a Skorsky helicopter to carry them immediately to the hospital)

Introduction:
In this paper I aim to analyze the ways in which the sovereign-image of the Turkish state is formed. My basic question is: Why in Turkey the survival of the state (‘devletin bekaasi’) is always considered as more important than the survival of the citizens when there is a conflict between their interests? Furthermore, what are the conditions of possibility that allow Turkish state officials to express this fact publicly as the words of the Turkish general quoted above bear witness?
To be sure, one can rightly argue that in many other countries, too, the survival of the state cannot be risked because of individual citizens’ interests that conflict with the interests of the state. Yet, it is unusual to hear this statement explicitly from the officials of governments and armies where the public image of the government appears as the protector of its own population. Thus, in such countries it is expected that the government should be even prepared to sacrifice itself for the sake of the well being, security and survival of the population. For instance, in France, in July 2008, when it was realized that during a military exercise 17 civilians were injured by mistake because of the use of real bullets instead of fake ones, the chief of the general staff of France, General Bruno Cuche declared his resignation, and the resignation was confirmed immediately by the President of France, Nicholas Sarkozy . As a more recent example, on December 6, 2008, when a 16 year old anarchist was shot to dead by the Greek police, the Greek government declared a public apology, the Ministry of Interior decided to resign though his resignation was not approved by the Prime Minister. The two police officers who were claimed to be responsible for the death of the young anarchist were dismissed from the police department and started to be tried. When demonstrations against the government began the Greek Prime Minister stated: “Democracies aim to protect their people, and not to kill them. What the police did is an individual but a shameful act. Therefore, I understand the protests of the people.”
To be sure, both the resignation of the French chief of the general staff and the statement of the Greek Prime Minister reflects an understanding of a liberal democratic government, whose target is the survival, security, and well-being of both each member and all the population of the nation. Such kind of a power regime that takes care of the health, security, welfare and efficiency of the population is defined by Michel Foucault as bio-power or governmentality. For him, what is distinctive of bio-power/governmentality is its aim to secure the whole population. Foucault traces the roots of such kind of power regime in the western tradition of pastorship and in the image of the shepherd-king, who sacrifices himself for the sake of the survival and well-being of his flock. Similar to the image of the shepherd-king of ancient times, for Foucault, modern liberal western state appears as a mechanism of governmental management that aims to maximize the common benefits and improve the conditions of life and the possibility of the survival of the general population. According to this formulation population is the primary target of bio-politics; and government is just the institutionalized form/effect of the management of this population. Foucault claims that bio-power designates the dominant mode of power in contemporary West, and nowadays we are witnessing the progressive ‘governmentalization’ of the power relations.
However, the situation in Turkey is different.

When the French military commander signed his resignation and when all the riots against the government took place in Turkey’s neighbor country Greece, the public opinion in Turkey was watching the incidents with both a surprise and a fascination. In Turkey, a country that officially presents itself as a democracy just like France and Greece, it is unimaginable to hear an apology of a Turkish minister because of a mistake of the state or because of using extreme state violence. It is also unimaginable that a state official in Turkey says that people’s protest against the state is understandable. on December 10, 2008, just four days later after a young anarchist in Athens was killed by police and people of Greece started to organize massive demonstrations against the Greek state, in Istanbul, Turkey, a small group of young anarchists carrying the banner, “we are 16 year old, too” protested the violence of the Turkish police. The protestors expressed that just in the year of 2008, 9 people were shot to dead and 12 were injured by the Turkish police ‘by mistake’, 8 people died when they were under police custody, and 36 people died in the prisons, yet no public official declared an apology for these killings. Moreover, none of the police officers who were accused of killing civilians ‘by mistake’ were dismissed; they still continue their jobs as police officers.

A) Formation of the Sovereign-Image of the State in Turkey
To be sure, the government’s denial of being mistaken is not specific to 2008’s Turkey. On the contrary, this denial is just an effect of the formation of the sovereign-image of the Turkish State. I argue that, the sovereign-image of the Turkish State is based on the denial of any weakness (zaafiyet gostermeme), since the state assumes that any apparent weakness can put the survival of the state (devletin bekaasi) in danger. Thus, the Turkish state never apologizes and can never be mistaken, since this would mean a deficiency and a weakness in the sovereign-image of the state.

Here, by the sovereign-image of the state I mean the discursive and institutional formations that make the state be seen/perceived as sovereign, strong and independent enough in the eyes of both its own citizens and other countries especially the ones that are historically constructed as enemies or potential colonizers. To be sure, the perception of the state by its own citizens and by other states is directly related to how the state perceives, and thus, constitutes an image of the citizens and other states. Now, before discussing the Turkish state’s imagining of its own citizens, I firstly want to examine the ways in which the Turkish state constitute its sovereign-image in response to another image, namely the image of the West as both an idealized and a frustrated figure. To be sure, Turkish state’s imagining of its own citizen as a burden and obstacle in the race of modernization or as a potential enemy in the struggle for the defense of independence is strictly related to the state’s imagining of the West both as the ideal model of modernization that should be caught up and imitated through a fast and intensive development and as a threat of absorption/colonization that should be prevented through strengthening sovereignty and independence of the state. That is to say, a sort of Occidentalism, which designates a discursive formation developed in response to a constructed image of the West, plays a crucial role in the formation of Turkish identity and in determining relations between the state and its citizens as well as the state and the nation.

A.1.) Occidentalism in Turkey
It is Edward Said, who argues in his groundbreaking work Orientalism that “the Orient is neither an inert fact of nature nor essentially an idea”. On the contrary, Orientalism creates the European identity as against all ‘those’ non-Europeans, by drawing a strict boundary between East and West. However, despite his crucial contribution to the elaboration of the problem, Said does not consider the agency of non-Europeans in reproducing or resisting this Orientalist discourse. Moreover, Said, does not examine the role played by the image or fantasy concerning the West in the formation and maintenance of power relations in non-European contexts.

Now, regarding this gap in post-colonial theory, in order to understand the ways in which the sovereign-image of the Turkish state as well as Turkish state’s particular approach to its own citizens are formed, one should trace the roots of the Occidentalist discourse in the Turkish context.

The Occidentalist discourse began to be institutionalized as the motive of modernization since the Tanzimat reforms in Ottoman Empire in late 19th century and also became one of the dominant discourses in the formation of the Turkish Republic and in the invention of a Turkish nation. In this historical framework the hegemonic interventions of the Turkish state, bureaucrats, and military through the management of dividing spheres, regions, and people along the axis of East and West, tradition and modernity, backward and forward becomes possible and justifiable with a constant reference to an imagined West as an ideal model.
It is Meltem Ahiska, who first underlined the relation between Occidentalism and the formation of state power and national characteristics. She describes Occidentalism as a power regime according to which the sovereign power of the state as well the image of the new Turkish citizen are reproduced on the border between the desire and frustration, celebration and avoidance, convergence and divergence toward the image of the West. Ahiska defines Occidentalism as: “the conceptualization of the ways in which the West figures in the temporal/spatial imagining of modern Turkish national identity” . Thus, unlike the Orientalist discourse that aims to provide a coherent picture of the Orient as backward and inferior, the Occidentalist discourse is based on a contested image of the West that is both idealized and frustrated. According to Ahiska, “Occidentalism can be best understood as describing the set of practices and arrangements justified in and against the imagined idea of ‘the West’” (Ahiska 2003: 16) In this sense, sovereignty and independence of the Turkish state appears as a performance for the imagined Western gaze.

A.2.) A Paranoid State
Thus, in order not to be ‘seen’ as dependent to and open for any intervention of the ‘modern civilized world’, the Turkish state feels the need for denying any claim concerning its deficiency or impotency. To be sure, one can read these denials as an affirmation of the actual deficiency and impotence of the Turkish state against the West. However, indeed, the state’s rhetoric concerning the denial of any weakness aims not to persuade the West but to rule Turkish citizens. Thus, while producing the image of the West as a superior power that threatens sovereignty and independence of Turkey, the state also reproduces its sovereign-image as the only protector of its citizens against a potential absorption and colonization by the West.

In accordance with this rhetoric, the Turkish state believes in that any concession, even a very small and unimportant one such as a public apology for state’s failure, will be seen as a weakness, and thus, will cause a chain reaction that will result in the total destruction of the Turkish state. In addition to the anxiety concerning absorption by Western states, the frustration about being divided by internal and external powers, supports the insistence on a permanent denial of any weakness and mistake in order to survive. The historical roots of these frustrations can be traced back in the last decades of the 19th century, when the Ottoman Empire, identified as ‘the sick man of Europe’, was struggling with both the separatist uprisings in the Balkans that resulted in major territorial losses of the Empire and economic capitulations and privileges that were previously given to the West European powers and soon converted the Empire into a semi-colony. Now, today, according to the official narrative, Turkish independence is constantly threatened by a possible Western absorption just like the Ottoman period when the Ottoman State was captured economically by capitulations, and moreover, Turkish state permanently struggles with the threat of separation by the powers that intended to reanimate the treaty of Sevr, which was the treaty enforced by the Western allies to the Ottoman Empire after the First World War and stipulated formations of independent Armenian, Kurdish, and Greek states in Anatolia, yet was undermined thanks to the war of independence, and invalidated by the subsequent Turkish Republic. These narratives concerning extreme frustrations do not merely designate a rhetorical strategy of the state but also constitute the very pillar of the hegemony of the state that constantly shapes the national project and controls the body of the individual citizen.
One of the recent and extreme description of this official narrative concerning eternal threats was expressed by the former chief of general staff Yasar Buyukanit, who said that “Turkey, now (in 2007) is experiencing even worse conditions than the years of the war of independence (1919-1922) when the country is directly occupied by allied forces. Today we are surrounded by both external and internal enemies. Greece and Bulgaria on the West, Russia and Armenia on the North, Iran on the East, Iraq, especially the Formation in the North (he means Iraqi Kurdistan), Syria, and Cyprus on the south are potential external threats against the sovereignty of Turkey. On the other hand, the PKK, the communists, some betrayers within us who go and blame Turkey to the European Courts are internal threats against the integrity of our country. To be sure, the Turkish army will fight to death against those who devoted themselves to divide Turkey”. To be sure, the content of his speech reflects the very idea of a popular nationalist saying that was invented after the Turkish war for independence: “there is no friend of the Turks but the Turks!”

While reproducing these statements concerning permanent threats, successive Turkish governments constantly denied any claim about the historicality of Armenian genocide. Kurdish presence as a political and cultural identity group was permanently denied at the cost of an ongoing civil war in the eastern and southeastern provinces of Turkey that started in 1984 and by now resulted in the death of 40.000 people from each side and internal displacement of 2 million Kurds by force. Turkish governments also denied any demands of the communist participants of the longest hunger strike of the world history that took place between 2000 and 2007, aimed to protest and prevent to be transferred to F-type prisons, resulted in 122 deaths and more than 500 permanently injured prisoners, yet did not be able to change any single condition in Turkish prisons. Moreover, Turkish successive governments constantly denied any negotiation concerning the sovereignty claim of the Turkish northern side of Cyprus with the southern Greek government of Cyprus at the cost of undermining Turkey’s candidacy for the membership to the European Union. Thus, today Cyprus is a member of European Union, and represented just by the Greek government.

As a result of these official denials, a very ironic and crippled picture of Turkey and its neighbors comes on the scene. According to the official discourse, which was reproduced constantly by the mainstream media everyday, some of Turkey’s neighbor countries are “the so-called Kurdish Formation in Iraq”, “the Greek Administration of Southern Cyprus” and “the Armenian State that is based on the ideology about the so-called Armenian Genocide”. As one can expect, all these three states are still not officially recognized by the Turkish state. Moreover, in Turkish newspapers one can often come across a sentence such as “the Turkish state is fighting against the so-called separatist organization (they mean the PKK)” or “Turkish lobbying organizations in the US are fighting in order to disprove the so-called claims of Armenians” (they mean claims concerning Armenian Genocide that took place in 1915 in Anatolia.)

To be sure, by now, I mentioned only political entities and discourses that are denied because they are explicitly defined as dangerous formations for the survival of the state. That is to say, these formations are already considered as enemies of the state that should be eliminated for the defense of the sovereignty, integrity and independence of the state.

A.3.) The Tension Between the State and the Nation
Yet, what is distinctive in the Turkish case is Turkish state’s possible approach to its own citizens as potential threats, even though citizens are in fact identified as objects of the protection of the state. Members of the nation, namely individual citizens can be considered as a threat or danger against the survival of the state, if they do not or cannot identify themselves fully with the state’s projects of development to catch up with the West or with state’s concern of security in order to prevent a possible absorption by the West or a potential separation by the enemies. According to the state rhetoric, for the sake of the survival of the state, the nation should follow the state, and sacrifice itself if it is necessary. Here, I argue that the sovereign-image of the Turkish state is also based on a tension between the nation and the state. The patronizing state is formed on the basis of the idea concerning the primacy of the survival of the state even at the expense of the sacrifice of the nation/people. That is to say, the nation can be sacrificed for the survival of the state, but there is no chance for the survival of the nation if the state fails. Thus, the Turkish state appears as the prior, superior and separate power that both cultivates and protects the nation. This discursive separation between the state and the nation that subordinates the nation to the state produces the nation as an always already backward, deficient and weak entity that should be disciplined by the state. As a result, the nation appears as a burden or an obstacle in the eyes of the state in its race with the West/civilized world both in terms of development (catching up with the West) and security (preventing itself from being colonized/absorbed).

To be sure, the official Occidentalist discourse helps to reproduce a certain image concerning the lack of the nation/people in following state’s projects and projections that aim to catch up with the West/Modern World. It is thought that the nation/people constantly fall behind the expectations of the modernizing state elite. As a result, Turkish nation is always already sentenced to fail against the model of the West. A permanent failure, and a constant belatedness, which are the effects of this Occidentalist discourse, threaten the pride of the nation, and cause a feeling of inferiority before the superiority of the West. This is the injury attached to the Turkish national subjectivity by the official Occidentalist discourse. This discourse about ‘the failure’, which produces the impure and injured subjects as an effect, opens the space for state elites to intervene into, manage and exercise power over the nation and over individual bodies in the name of the filling the gap with the West, so that the injury can be rehabilitated. However, simultaneously it is the same power which reproduces this gap and this injury. As Ahiska reminds us, “the state elites constituted their power through a projection of the West in affirming their construction of a modern society.”

B) Turkish State’s Approach to Its Own Soldiers
As a result, in Turkey, where the nation is subordinated to the order of the state, the survival of the state is always taken more important than the survival of the people. I think, one of the best example of this attitude can be observed in the military, where the body of the Turkish soldier is considered as nothing more than a resource for the fight of the state. That is to say, the calculations of the military are primarily based on the aim to reproduce the sovereign-image of the state that never loses, is never mistaken and never compromises. Thus, the concern for the survival of every single soldier and the protection of soldier’s body comes always secondary, if the survival of the state is at stake. Unlike other strong military powers such as the US or Israeli armies that publicly declare that the protection of every single soldier is their primary concern, the Turkish army officers do not hesitate to publicly declare that a Skorsky helicopter can be more valuable than the soldiers, if the survival of the state depends on this calculation. As it is known, Israel declared war on Hezbollah in 2006, when two Israeli soldiers were kidnapped by Hezbollah guerilla. To be sure, there were many other and more historical and structural reasons of this war. Yet, the public discourse created by Israel in order to legitimize this war was based on Israeli state’s concern about the survival and well-being of its two soldiers. A similar incident took place in the southeast Turkey, in October 2007. After an attack of the PKK-guerilla forces to a Turkish military station in Daglica in Hakkari region, 8 Turkish soldiers were taken as prisoners of war by the PKK. A day after the attack, the Turkish army officially declared that “8 of its soldiers are missing”. To be sure, according to the official discourse there is no PKK but the ‘so-called separatist organization’, and what is going on in the southeast of Turkey is not a war but “an act of cleansing the mountains from the beats.” Since beasts are not human beings, they also cannot commit the act of kidnapping the Turkish soldiers. A week later, the PKK put the videos of the 8 Turkish soldiers on the popular video-sharing website YouTube, to prove that Turkish soldiers were with them, and their health conditions were well. In response to that, the Turkish state banned YouTube immediately. (Today in Turkey, one still cannot access to YouTube, since the official ban of it continues). The PKK assumed that the Turkish state would care about the lives of its own soldiers. Yet, this was never the case in Turkey. In the period when the Turkish soldiers were held by the PKK, an officer of the Turkish army publicly declared that “we now count these 8 soldiers as death.” About two weeks later, on November 4, 2007, the PKK released all of these 8 soldiers. When these soldiers arrived to Turkey, the Minister of Justice Mehmet Ali Sahin said in his speech in the Turkish parliament: “Members of the Turkish Armed Forces should not fall in such a situation. Therefore, I did not feel happy about their return.” That is to say, the Turkish state prefers that these 8 soldiers rather died (maybe they should commit suicide) instead of being kidnapped by the PKK, because being kidnapped by the PKK marks a weakness on the side of the state and undermines the sovereign-image of the state. Just after their arrival, these 8 soldiers were sent to the military court, since they were accused of being traitors of the country. ‘Crossing the border without the permission of their commanders’, ‘insistence on violating military order’, ‘violating duties of being a state official’ were accusations among many others that were directed to the 8 soldiers. The state also banned the access of the media to the court, since possible news about the case can violate the security of the state, that is to say, these news can make the state appear as weak, deficient, and impotent.
As it is obvious now, in Turkey, soldiers who are not strong enough, or who did not willfully sacrifice their very being for the survival of the state can appear as obstacles for the security of the state. In that sense, the Turkish military commander’s justification of the rejection of his injured soldiers demand for a helicopter that would carry them to the hospital through a statement that “this will cost much for the state” should not be thought as a single decision of a person, but as a reflection of the foundational logic of the Turkish Republic. A very popular saying within the Turkish military officers repeats: “To pity on the soldier means to betray the country!”

B.1.) Similarities Between Turkish State’s Approach to the So-Called Terrorists and to its Own Soldiers
In another paper, I showed that during the civil war in Turkey’s eastern and southeastern provinces between the Turkish army and the Kurdish guerilla, the PKK, state’s sovereignty operated in the zone of indistinction between the citizen and the terrorist, between the loyal one and the betrayer, between the human and non-human. The exercise of the state’s sovereignty is multiple: The state exercises its constituted power through the inclusion of the guerilla activity into the domain of the rule of law as the object of criminal investigation. Thus, the so-called terrorists who were captured dead or alive by the Turkish state were subjected to official identification and legal criminal investigation since they were citizens of Turkey. Yet, at the same time, the state exercises its sovereign and constituting power through creating states of exceptions and transforming the criminal-citizens into terrorist-subjects. In these moments killing or torturing of the bodies of the so-called terrorists can take place without any threat of legal sanction.
Testimonies of two Turkish soldiers about different treatments of guerillas’ dead bodies provide a remarkable example for the indistinctness in the exercise of sovereignty .

“Once I saw a dead PKK member, some were kicking it. I couldn’t stand it and I cried. My friends asked, “Why are you crying?” I said, “How can you treat a dead person that way and kick it?” He was left naked; a friend took his sport shoes from his feet. Under such situations the dead body is usually taken to the nearest station. The highest-ranking officer orders the soldiers to come and see him. When they come, he kicks the dead body and says, “I leave him to you.” Some tear off his clothes, some take his shoes…” (–Testimony of an anti-aircraft commando who served for the military in Van region between 1995-1996, Mehmedin Kitabi P. 179, Voices From the Front, P.217)

“The corpses that are captured in the operations are placed on the ground in the helicopter landing area. They are identified by the public prosecutor and than it was recorded how the battle took place.” (–Testimony of a medical sergeant who served for the military in Bingol, in 1996, Mehmedin Kitabi P.192, same quote in Voices From the Front, P.232)

What is distinctive of Turkish state’s approach is its insistence on the inclusion of the Kurdish people into the rule of law as Turkish citizens who are considered belonging to the sphere of protection by the state, and state’s simultaneous persistence on the exclusion of the Kurds as active or potential terrorists that should be eliminated for the sake of the survival of the state. Even when the civil war is at its peak in 90s and when hundreds of people died from each side every month; and the majority of the Kurdish population in the region turned their back on the state, the Turkish state never gave up on its instance on including the population of the eastern and southeastern provinces into its rule of law. Thus, continue to exercise its sovereign power through the management of the ambiguous separation between the citizens of Turkey in the region and some ‘monstrous terrorist who are inveigled by foreign forces that dedicated themselves to divide Turkey’. Even though a certain part of the PKK militia who fight on the mountains at night are the tradesmen in the streets during the day; and although the militia are sons, daughters, fathers or mothers of the ‘Kurdish civilians in the streets’, the formation of the so-called ‘civillian’-‘terrorist’ distinction within Kurds allowed the Turkish state to continue its military interventions ‘on account of the security of the population in this region’. For instance, Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan often repeated this so-called distinction between civilians and terrorists, by arguing that “the Turkish state is the protector of the civilians in the region against the PKK” .

After I examined Turkish state’s treatment of the so-called terrorists during the years of civil war, I realized that state’s approach to its own regular citizens as well as to its own soldiers is also somewhat similar to its approach to the state of war in the southeast. Since the Turkish state constantly reproduces the discourse about living under the permanent threat of being divided and absorbed, the everyday treatment of regular citizens by the Turkish state reminds treatment of people under conditions of war. In the eye of the Turkish state, its own regular citizens as well as its own soldiers are considered not only objects of state’s protection but also as potential dangers for and possible enemies of the state. Thus, the state exercises its sovereign power through the management of the distinction between the loyal-citizen and traitor-criminal. That is to say, in the eye of the state every loyal-citizen has the potentiality to transform into a traitor, either in the form of a burden, an obstacle or in the form of an enemy. For instance, soldiers can be a burden or an obstacle for the state since they are assumed as ignorant, weak and able to be inveigled easily. Moreover, their education, protection, health and even their death cost for the state.

According to the testimony of a gendarmerie private, who served for the military between 1996 and 1998 in Tunceli, during the most violent years of the war in the southeast all military personal received an official communication by the army that more or less says: “Don’t become wounded and don’t die because martyrs and veterans cost much to the military. Do not put this burden on the state budget!”

Moreover, just like the case of 8 soldiers who were kidnapped by the PKK, ordinary soldiers can appear easily as sings of the weakness of the state. As a result, they are considered as enemies of the state.
Nevertheless, the state aims to include all Turkish men into the sphere of the military. In Turkey, military service is obligatory for every Turkish male citizen, and rejecting to go to the military service is considered as a big crime and counted as betraying to the country. The state insists on including every citizen into the domain of the rule of law. Yet, it is also expected from you to sacrifice yourself if the survival of the state is at stake. Otherwise, you will be considered as a potential danger for the survival of the state. In the military you are living under the auspices of the state but not only as an object of protection of the state, but also as an integral part of the state instrument as a material resource that carries always the risk of causing a weakness or deficiency that will undermine the sovereign-image of the state.

As a sniper corporal, who served for the military in 2006, in the border station in Dogubeyazit, Agri, expressed in his testimony:

“In the military, they see you just as a resource. For instance, there is a list of things about what a watchman should not do during his guard duty. The rules are written on a paper that you see during all this long guard duties. You know, you have not many things to do there. So, you read and read the rules again. The tenth rule says: ‘It is forbidden to commit suicide during the guard duty. Soldiers, who commit suicide, will be punished’. Can you believe in this? They write it on the paper and put it on the wall. So, if you commit suicide you should be sure that you will definitely die. Otherwise, they will punish you.”

As all these testimonies of soldiers indicate, in the eyes of the military commanders there is no difference between the value of soldiers and military equipments. The question for them is how to use soldiers and equipments in such a way to secure the survival and sovereign-image of the state.

There are several examples of such a calculation of the military which primarily aim to conceal any visible weaknesses of the state at any cost. A recent tragic example disclosed again the logic of the military. At the midnight of October 3rd, 2008, the Kurdish guerilla - PKK, raided the Turkish military station in Aktutun in Hakkari region, killed 17 Turkish soldiers according to official records, injured more than 30 soldiers and completely destroyed the station. This last one was the fourth destruction of the same military station by the PKK since the beginning of the civil in Turkey in 1984. After all of the former three attacks military commanders insisted on rebuilding the station in the same place, near the Aktutun village that was located in the bottom of a valley surrounded by steep mountains. So, each time, in order to attack to the military station the PKK guerilla crossed the border of Iraq that is just four kilometers away from the Aktutun station, easily took up position on the mountains, surrounded the station on the day and started to attack after the sunset while soldiers in the station got panicked and even could not respond. The military commanders insisted on rebuilding the station in the same place, because they thought that to change the location of the station could be considered as a weakness of the state and a victory for the PKK. Thus, they rebuilt the station in the same location for four times and each time they sent there about 50 soldiers whose lives are already prepared to sacrifice.

One day later, a small group of liberal writers and intellectuals in Turkey turned their anger not only to the PKK but this time also to the military commanders. They asked, “how can life be so cheap in the military?”, “are not these soldiers sons of this nation?” At that moment, the liberal critics of the army remembered again the statement of the military commander who said years ago: “Turkish mothers can give birth to millions of Turkish soldiers, yet they cannot give birth to a Skorsky helicopter.” To be sure, what happened in Aktutun reflects the same logic that is intrinsic in this former statement. Shortly after, some reports about military stations that were raided by the PKK more than one time appeared in the liberal media. The results were extremely surprising: According to the official record, the military station in Uzundere (in Hakkari) was raided by the PKK for 127 times. The military station of Uzumlu was raided 38 times, the station of Alan was raided 30 times, and the station of Samanli was raided 20 times. All of these stations were located in geographically improper places that make guerilla attacks very easy and secure for the PKK. In fact, most of these military stations were constructed long before the presence of the guerilla. They were regular military stations that aim to prevent border smuggling. Yet, after the civil war started in the southeast, the military persistently rejected to change the location of any station since they thought that this would mean that the state was not strong enough in controlling every single part of the country. As a result, hundreds of soldiers died with eyes open because of the repeated raids of the guerilla.
To be sure, these were all known facts. Yet, the location of stations and the value of life of the Turkish soldier were not problematized until Aktutun station was raid for the fourth time. Still the critics who question the logic of the army compose a very small minority. Nevertheless, the question concerning which historical and political conditions did allow the introduction of the value of life of the Turkish soldier as a problem deserves another detailed research.

Conclusion:
In this short paper, I just tried to introduce the problem concerning the subordination of the lives of people to the idea about the primacy of the survival of the state as an effect of the formation of the sovereign-image of the Turkish state. In Turkey sovereignty of the state is based on the idea of the supremacy of the survival of neither the nation nor the people but the state. This idea marks one of the foundational discourses of the Turkish state that was formed in 1923 over a very small territory left from the ruined, separated, razed and collapsed 600 years old Ottoman Empire. And maybe therefore, this time, the Turkish state is so afraid of being separated and lost again. Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, founder of the Turkish Republic, who is the embodiment of the sovereign-image in Turkey, once said that “To be sure, one day my worthless body will be part of the soil, yet the Republic of Turkey will survive eternally” Here, he underlines the importance of neither the survival of the nation nor the survival of the people but the survival of a sovereign state, a sovereign regime, a republic. Even though about 85 years were passed after the foundation of the Turkish Republic and the expression of this statement of Mustafa Kemal, his words and his cult still rule Turkey. Unlike all other examples of self-criticism and questioning of the past that took place in post-Franco Spain, post-Mussolini Italy, post-Hitler Germany, post-Soviet Russia, post-Mao China or post-Pinochet Chile, in Turkey, the sovereign-image of the state and its embodiment in the figure of Mustafa Kemal have never been problematized radically.

Today, Mustafa Kemal, the first president of Turkey, the military commander of the war of independence, and the hero of the war of Dardanelle, who in this war said to his soldiers, “I order you not to fight but to die!” still lives as the sovereign-image of the state. He is everywhere, on the banknotes, on the walls, on every corner, as a picture, as a label of a street or neighborhood, as a mask, as a statue, stares in our eyes and orders us to die again and again for the sake of the survival of the state.

Maybe it is the time to begin not to obey but to reverse this order: “Do not die for but fight against the sovereign-image of the Turkish state.” Perhaps, introducing the problem concerning sovereignty in Turkey and questioning the sovereign-image of the Turkish state are good starting points for such a fight.

Bibliography

a) Sources in English

-Ahiska, Meltem, 2003 Occidentalism: The Historical Fantasy of the Modern, in The South Atlantic Quarterly 102:3/3, Spring/Summer 2003, Duke University Press.

-Foucault, Michel, 2007, Security, Territory, Population Lectures at College de France 1977-1978, Picador Pres

-Foucault, Michel, 2000, ‘Omnes et Singulattim’ Toward a Critique of Political Reason, in Power, ed. By Paul Rabinow

-Guney, K. Murat, “The Body and Politics, the Power of Death over Life”, unpublished MA thesis, May 2008, Columbia University

-Said, Edward W., 2003 [1978] Orientalism, Vintage, New York

-Mater, Nadire, 2005, Voices From the Front: Turkish Soldiers On The War With The Kurdish Guerrillas, translated by Ayse Gul Altinay from the Turkish Original of: “Mehmedin Kitabi: Guneydogu’da Savasmis Askerler Anlatiyor”, Palgrave Macmillan Press

b) Sources in Turkish

-Ahiska, Meltem, 2005 Radyonun Sehirli Kapisi: Garbiyatcilik ve Politik Oznellik (The Magical Gate of the Radio: Occidentalism and Political Subjectivity), Metis Yayinlari, Istanbul

-Bila, Fikret, 2007, Komutanlar Cephesi (The Front of the Commanders), Detay Yayincilik, Istanbul

-Istanbul.indymedia.org, December 10, 2008

-Mater, Nadire, 1998, Mehmedin Kitabi: Guneydogu’da Savasmis Askerler Anlatiyor (The Book of Mehmeds: Soldiers Who Fought in the Southeast Are Talking), Metis Yayinlari, Istanbul

-Milliyet Newspaper, issues of February 16, 2007 / October 22, 2007 / November 5, 2007 / February 2, 2008 / July 2, 2008 / October 4, 2008

-Ntvmsnbc.com –news website- http://www.ntvmsnbc.com, December 6, 2008 & December 10, 2008

-Ozgur Gundem Newspaper, issue of June 23, 2005

-Taraf Newspaper, issues of October 4 and 5, 2008

-Taraf Newspaper, October 8, 2008, “Aktutun’un Kara Talihi” (The Tragic Destiny of Aktutun)