Author: Ophelia Benson

It’s scary when they start shooting up judges. Very scary, in the same way it’s scary (terrifying, actually) when there are Congressional representatives willing to try to pass legislation as grotesquely unconstitutional as the mockingly-named Constitution Restoration Act, and when an angry (and thoroughly corrupt) senator threatens judges from the floor of the Senate. It’s scary when theocrats start to target the judiciary, because in a secular state, the judiciary is the only institution that can block majoritarian moves to establish theocracy.

And they know that in Turkey. They are scared, and they’re pissed.

Tens of thousands of people have marched through the Turkish capital, Ankara, in protest at the killing of a judge by a suspected Islamist gunman. Protesters waved Turkish flags and chanted slogans that the country must remain a secular state. A man calling himself “a soldier of Allah” shot dead Judge Mustafa Yucel Ozbilgin and wounded four others at a top administrative court on Wednesday…Correspondents say the attack may have been linked to the court’s record in upholding the ban on Muslim headscarves in universities and government offices – a decision condemned as illegal by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose ruling party has Islamist roots…The gunman reportedly burst into a committee meeting of the Council of State, shouting “Allahu akbar!” (God is great) as he fired his weapon…”This massacre attempt is directed against the secular republic. We strongly denounce it,” said the statement read by Sumru Cortoglu, chairwoman of the Council of State.

Bad, bad, very bad.

The Turkish newspapers are interesting. Bekir Coskun in Hurriyet for instance:

Whether they have a gun or a bomb in their hand, their target is the same: To wipe out the secular republic, to prevent modernity and civilization and push Turkish society into a way of life from the Middle Ages, to make Sharia law dominant.

Bad.

So I suppose right now somewhere in the middle of London (where is the ICA, anyway? I forget. Piccadilly? Bedford Square? next to Hatchard’s? I have no idea) some people (how many, I wonder? fifty? a hundred? two?) are listening to three or four guys talking about truth. I wonder what they’re saying about it. That it can be hard to get at, perhaps. That it’s in a well. That Bacon named an essay after it. That it’s not a bad thing to aim at, on the whole. That people who play certain public roles have a particular obligation to aim at it, and to avoid aiming at the other thing. That it’s just a matter of common sense, when you get right down to it. No, not that last one, that one’s a joke.

Well, I hope they’re all enjoying themselves, at any rate.