Why Should You Do Peaceful Protests?

I was 15, if my memory isn’t mistaken, when I first got beaten by police: I, together with my cousins, was out of a basketball game, without the supervision of our parents for not only Istanbul was a safer place back then but also that we weren’t that young anymore, yet neither old enough to know or do the exact right thing most if not all the time. A small fight, which I’d not even call a fight as it didn’t even last for two minutes and no more than swearing happened, one of the groups suddenly rushed ahead where there was a police car. How can there be a problem for us, couple of boys 14 to 17 years old?

Well, that wasn’t what the police thought. They walked towards us. No, not towards those that the group fought with but towards us. Again: 14-17 years old 5 boys. They approached and, without a word, I got a punch to my stomach, then the guy took my arm, twisted it, and asked why I did what I did. “I didn’t do anything, sir. It wasn’t us” I said, thinking he was a normal human being. Yes, there was such time that I was that naive. “Will I call your parents? Will I bring them here” he asked, realizing I’m but a stupid boy who surely wouldn’t get into a fight, at least not just so, yet still keeping my arm twisted, with a voice full of hatred, and a face accompanying the voice to the fullest extent possible. I knew what the state was able to do, but upsetting my parents was more of a worry. “Don’t sir” I said, kind of begging as he was dragging me away not only from my cousins but also from the police car, towards the little park covered with trees. I, at that moment, somehow gathered my courage and got ready for some torture, as is the habit of the police, as I very well knew even back then, yet something unexpected happened: He punched me in the stomach once more, shot a lengthy swear at me, threw me towards the ground, turned his back and left.

I was free again and had learned a valuable lesson: The state is not to trust. My experiences in coming years proved me right. I was only eighteen when I was told, again by the state, that I am a second-class citizen. There were the party members, there were the Gulenists and other religious organizations’ people. Who could I be, an ordinary father and ordinary mother’s son whose brother was no less ordinary than his parents, compared to these special people? Yes, there were laws to avoid and prevent such corruption, but laws are no more than piece of letters came together on some fancy paper kissed by some seal unless they’re respected by those that swore to uphold them. At eighteen I was told that I should seek alternative ways than asking and defending my legal rights. My legal responsibilities surely were there, I was no more than some slave for them masters of me.

“Avoid politics at all costs, no good ever came out of it” my parents had taught me, and I followed them. Their generation was rotted with a low-scale civil war. Hundreds of thousands were physically tortured, times more were tortured mentally, thousands died either at the hands of their neighbours or the state, and fear was the central feeling they had. They learned to fear everything, for it was fear that helped them go through the hard times unharmed – or so was what they thought. They weren’t mentally well anymore; the country had given them traumas that last a lifetime. The courageous dies one day and the coward every day, we say. My parents were dying every day so that I wouldn’t die one day, and I understood them. I wasn’t that much of an obedient boy, but I tried to be the much I could in this sense. The much I could – albeit they were full of fear, they were politicized people, and I was their child. I learned to remain silent, not not to think. Things grew inside me and others, children of similar parents. Then came a time when we exploded, when I learned that suppression from outside is easier to take than the suppression from the inside – or what they call self-censor.

It was the Gezi Park protests times.

No, I won’t tell much about it. I may only say one thing, which summarizes the whole story to me. I got shot on my left shoulder by a gas capsule. Had the police better training, hence better aim, it’d have came only twenty centimetres above, to my head, and I’d not be able to write these for I’d have the simple excuse of being dead, just like the seven boys they killed during the time. My name is just in the list of the thousands that got injured. What hurts is that not only I but also the killed are but statistics.

20th century brought drastic changes in many aspects of the social, and one of them is the invention of peaceful protests. Throughout history, human groups fought against other human groups with the much amount of power deemed necessary, or at full power when loss was certain while fight wasn’t avoidable – except, of course, when full power was deemed necessary for a victory – up until late 20th – early 21st century. The end of history told us that what was need not be what will be, the future holds utterly different things at hand – and in this new future the state was not an oppressive but supportive actor for the ordinary person and what was expected of him, or her if you’d rather, was cooperation with this gentle giant. It knows the best, as did all states in history, but this new one is unlike any other, is on the side of the people and not against. The state, for the first time, is the servant and not the master. Is the friend and not the enemy. If your interests cross, you need not prepare for war, just tell it what you want peacefully, and get what you want peacefully.

Indeed, it worked – for a while. Fall of Berlin Wall brought some sense of peace to the Western mind. Balkans might have been at war, Iraq-Iran-Kuwait trio might have been butchering each other, Georgia might have been in the middle of civil war, Armenians and Azeris were fighting for Karabakh… but there was peace in the end. The archenemy of 20th century had fallen, Western Europe somehow was uniting, United States’ superiority was proven right, so its allies’, there was wealth, there was prosperity, there were jobs, there was hope… What more could have been asked for?

Economics as a science is grounded on a simple fact: Needs are unlimited, resources are. There always is something more we can ask for. Once they are asked for, it was easier to fulfil them in the earlier days of the absolute victory of capitalism, but it wouldn’t, and couldn’t last forever. Capitalism is an economic-political system and good times can roll as long as there is surplus that is enough to be shared. Once there isn’t, problems appear – and they did. The rise of populism in the second decade of 21st century, and democracy’s consequent fall, is directly related.

Be it any form of government, when all cannot be happy, some needs to be unhappy – and it’s better to make the many unhappy in favour of some few. The numbers on each side differ, the fact does not change. Anarchists are against even the best state, for the power of state is so enormous that the individual becomes next to nothing – so are groups of individuals in almost all cases. Other times the group is either so large in numbers or so powerful in terms of arms, and they already, at this very point, are but terrorists. In the end terror is the 20th century postwar form of warring and the best excuse for the governments, hiding behind the state, to protect themselves against the people. Isn’t it?

Tolerance hides some hidden superiority in it. That who tolerates does so out of will and power, and also of position: S/he will not tolerate any more when s/he desires, for it’d be acceptance if it was inferiority or equality. The state, with all its apparatus, tolerates any disobedience. The leviathan is not only a giant but also is a master. It’s superior to anything and everything within certain borders and what happens does happen with its allowance, and what does not happen cannot happen for either it’s not possible, or it cannot be dared for the state does not let. Opposition to government acts and decisions are tolerated at the best. What happens when they aren’t tolerated?

I’m yet to see a non-violent demonstration that got out of hand and became violent before state violence took place – and most remained non-violent even after. The best example for me, because I was a part of, is the Gezi Park protests in 2013 in Turkey. I wrote above a bit; I needn’t tell more. Just remember that I didn’t attack anywhere, I didn’t harm anyone, and I would be lying dead had the police been better trained and had better aim.

Am I an exception? By far not. Those of you that had ever took part in demonstrations would know that there are some that are “part-time protestors”, and they are a minority in such large-scale protests. The majority are the silent people. As the saying goes: The sound of thousands overcomes the silence of millions. The silence is rarely broken and once broken, its sound is so scary that returning to the normal becomes the priority – not by finding an agreement but by silencing the silent. Every norm presupposes a normal said Carl Schmitt, and normal is the (opposing) masses being silent. The easiest way to re-silence ordinary people is first by ignoring them, then by peppering and watering them. So is done in (almost) all countries: Those claim to be democratic do both, and those that do not jump to the second step directly. Some others, like Iran, start with the second and finishes the job by hanging people, especially the youth, but such regime and people cannot be considered human, hence I prefer excluding them and those alike.

Here comes the question: Why should we, the ordinary masses that are silent almost all the time, be peaceful, even after the state attacks us? Georgians are the last that enjoyed the brutal attacks of the police, and they remained as they were: On the street, standing tall and still, and non-violent. This returned to them with more violence. Why should they, or we as I’m part of the protests, remain peaceful?

Those on the theoretical side of things argue that 1) the state is the organized form of the society, and 2) government is one thing, state is another. Being a non-voluntary organization, states cannot be defined or justified by, with, or for the society. At the best, it can be argued that states form nations, which isn’t exactly what Benedict Anderson argued for, but is close if we add Tilly’s famous wars make states and states make war argument. In such case we not only separate the society from the state but also say that the state is superior to the society over which it rules. This anyway is the case, the problem for our question appears at this point:

Sovereign is he who decides on the (state of) exception Schmitt wrote – and sovereign, albeit is argued to be the society in almost all constitutions, is the state, hence the government: State’s survival is more important than that of the society, and when needed, the state, at which point becomes synonymous with government, can suppress, or even give up on its own people for its high self. Conscription, for example, is a result of this: For the sake of the state’s survival, ordinary people that has no idea about holding a gun might be conscribed, trained for a month or two, and sent to death. Here were find the answer to the question: We need to be non-violent for it’s the well-being of the state that matters the most, society is the second – and society is not a monobloc unit, some of its members’ well-being does not matter because they’re the easiest to give up on.

Non-violence, or peaceful protests, are of extreme importance simply because the state does not need to respect the very basic human right: The right to life. I can’t but ask: Aren’t anarchists right, then?