ANKARA- Regarding the state discourse blaming the people being "ignorant", Levent Ünsaldı says it is a way to out the blame on public and the government tries to raise its power by the charity propaganda. Ünsaldı adds that the solidarity campaigns such as the "Fellow Family" campaign has a chance to spread the solidarity among people.

Currently lecturing in the Université de Lille, sociology professor Levent Ünsaldı spoke to our agency regarding the state policies and social solidarity chances during the COVID-19 pandemic.

•  Many thinkers seem to agree over the systemic grounds of the pandemic crisis. What would you add to the discussions regarding the capitalism and the coronavirus?

In such crisis, moments there are always impatient analyses and reductionist arguments. For instance, there was the famous "end of history" and "victorious capitalism" discourse in the post-cold war period. Merely saying that "This is the result or outcome of capitalism" is not an analysis itself, because there is a one-way relation between two variables in this discourse. However, what we should do is to elucidate the issue. We should be explaining its mechanisms and how this process is formed. I think it was in the Le Malade imaginaire of Molière, they ask to the doctor: "Why do the drugs make people numb? Because they are drugs." This a tautological answer. This gives you a hypnotic principle, but does not make you comprehend.

There are a number of connections and a huge mechanism special to coronavirus process and these are, for sure, related with capitalism. We live in no other context than capitalism. The thing is not to build a chain of causality, which does not serve to any further comprehension. An analyses, as what we call it, gives an answer to the question of "How". Therefore we should not get into oracle-like discussions.

Political actors should set free from an illusion, especially for the sake of the oppressed classes and peoples. Coronivirus is not our saciour. Our saviour is ourselves, our struggle, our political apprehensionsi our toil and moil. What will Erdoğan say after the outbreak? Will he say something like, "We have harmed the nature so badly, I have stuck in quarantine in my Palace for so long, from now on I will not repeat the same mistakes"? Or what about Macron, will Macron say "We behaved so absurd, we oppressed and impoversihed the people a lot and now we have learned our lesson" after the gets out of Elysée?

We should not expect any hope from the sovereigns. We always wait for a super-hero to take down the governments and distort capitalism. Coronavirus is perceived as such a hero, let's say if coronavirus manages to change the world any better it may be announced as a super-hero of the left-wing. However, coronavirus has its own mind, its own world and its own trade, so it acts independently on its way.

•  You drew attention to the "take it easy" approach of the government in such a way that it let the things slide. How would you evaluate this approach considering the political perspective of AKP?

Yes, I think I can reflect on more fundamental ideas on this issue. There is an understanding in case of the AKP government block that is very basic and very elementary with short-term cheap tricks and that takes into account very small stuff. We have seen the narrative they on with Süleyman Soylu. Like the game of thrones, someone poisons someone and you have no idea what is going on inside the empire, it is something like that.

AKP has no definite doctrine or what so ever. AKP has always been a party of alliances. It has never walked alone. This ia like a formation similar to fishes, who needs other fishes tu mutually survive. We have tried to comprehend AKP with the theoretical frames and models we have. We want to see in AKP what we have read before. Hence, we see what we want to see in AKP. For example, we, the academics, we understand the capitalism and the modernity very well, but we could not foresee the dismissal process was coming and what we were about to face.

AKP is like a play-dough, which always changes shape according to the shape of the cup it goes in. In my opinion, what has been going on in Turkey seems to be a system built on the eudemonia of a person and of a family and a block consolidating around them. The sovereigns have always want the exploitation mechanisms to remain secret and the science has always revealed these mechanisms. That is right, but for some time now, what is going on in Turkey is so explicitly done. A very last example of that is that they have sent to a family in Diyarbakır the deceased body of their son by the post office. They kill explicitly, they murder explicitly, they dismiss explicitly and they steal explicitly.

The practices of the affairs of AKP is very simply nepotism, basic clientelism, a very ordinary type of clientelist and cronyism. The African version of this is "tribalism". You know, in the story of the modern state, some bureaucratic principles are to be conformed to and one cannot act at their own sweet will. This is the story of the bureaucratic rationality. However, in the case of cronyism, things do not work that way. I would not put your papers into operations, because you are not a supporter of AKP. I just serve my fellow townsmen! We are at this phase. This is their practics of affairs.

•   Other than the optimistic or pessimistic appraisals you criticize, what do you think could be the horizon of act for the opposition? Would you have a solid suggestion to organize a corona escape plan?

One of the major problems of the intellectual circles in Turkey, especially on the left, is the theoreticism. However, we should understand the logic of the things, for instance. This is a well-known discussion in epistemology. We should approach the phenomena from a certain distance, not so close, not from so afar. This is like a sprinkle of salt in the recipes of the mothers, which is learned by experience. To comprehend an object on knowledge, one should neither fully hate nor love it. Unfortunatelly, what is going on in our case is that, our intellectuals always substitute their logic to the logic of things.

So this can be a suggestion that when we come together from now on, we can try not to theorize the issues on the table, but to discuss over the problems within practical terms. Then we can discuss how to built resistance and struggle mechanism, again pratically, first at a local, then at a wider degree.

• Well, let's give a concrete example; HDP launched the "Fellow Family Campaign" and is trying to organize a solidarity. In this way, what are your suggestions to create a culture of solidarity in the neighborhoods exercised by all the citizens against the charity propaganda of the government?

A good question to be adressed. This year I have given the lecture of "Economic Anthropology". In the lecture we have also worked on Marcel Mauss and he can give us some ideas, especially his "gift theory". Gift theory is based on a principle of reciprocality. I give you a gift and you have to give me a gift in return. As this has a financial meaning, in the sense of the division of property, also embodies very rich mechanisms to form alliances  both inside and outside the tribe.

This is also a mechanism, which embodies dense relations of power. Because in the case of giving an receiving the gift, one side holds the power. If you can not give any gift back, so you are oppressed. The giving hands, is the hand of the power. Potlatch culture in America, for example, reaches to extreme applications of this gift-giving, so much so that in the end families may even burn their properties.

Therefore, the one, who holds the power, is always on the giving side and they serv it as a generosity. If someone keeps giving you gifts, you feel the domination. You know, when a neighbor gives us a plate of food, we would never give the plate back empty, the same logic here. A relationship of allegiance due to a giving-receiving process. This may help to explain the situation in Turkey.

The campaing of HDP you mention, may also develop alternative practics differing from charity as such. Such a campaign could rather be adirect act of "what can we do", which may have a chance to spread by the culture of neighborhood and many common grounds. However, one should err the side of the caution to stay away from the forms of relationships, which we well know since the primitive societies to be the relationships that strengthens the giving hand.

•  We see that the mistakes made by the government have created a practice of creating a social perception to "put the blame on the society". As in the latest curfew or as in the discussions reflecting on the hygiene awareness of the ordinary citizens, as if the spread of the virus merely depends on that, but not on the management of the health crisis. What discourses and approaches should we come up with instead of this accusing language against society?

This question is comprehensive and has deep roots. This is totally a matter of classes. They have their mass media to manipulate. This is the propaganda as an ideological tool, in the very basic sense of the 19th century as we know it. Some people, even the leftist, the one from oppositions, the liberal or the emocrat, sometimes show some reflexes that their class rage shows up immediately. Sometimes the poor people also show an approach of "our society is hopeless". This is an expression of a break and getting sick and tired from the country.

There are also reasons for that, because this state agonizes the people so much, cause people suffer so much. There is a grudge by turn. As a result, there is logic behind the emotional or cognitive break of the people from the country. Can you send a deceased body with a post box? This is a tragedy. There is a break here. And above the discourse of "ignorant society" or in the relationship with the Kurdish society, there are complex discourses. Here we see the approach of the upper classes of the Turkish society.

If it were France, where a curfew was announced two hours before the actual begin of the curfews, people here would also have hit the streets buy some stuff. There is nothing weird here and this has nothing to do with the society. We should ask the question of "who" are the ones and which social classes they occupy, who put the blame on the society.

MA / Eylül Deniz Yaşar