On March 31, when I was preparing for bed, I watched fireworks light up the night sky in my neighborhood in Istanbul. It was around 11 p.m. As the sky put on a show, I thought about how life can surprise us sometimes when we least expect it. Earlier in the day though, a sticky air of despair blanketed the city, a feeling all too familiar during election times in Turkey–for those like me who hopelessly desire a change.

Just that afternoon, my friend from Lebanon and I were discussing over coffee the death of democracy as a global phenomenon. I had cast my vote in the local elections a few hours prior, and I was telling him about the irony of the election day falling on March 31, the end of winter symbolizing a period of change. Perhaps I should’ve taken it as a sign, but over the past few years every time I felt hopeful about something, I ended up disappointed. This time, however, I should’ve taken it as a sign because–

that night, fireworks went off in celebration to

let us know that the change was already secured even though half the ballots were yet to be counted.

The following morning on April 1st, the moment I blinked my eyes open, I checked to see whether it was all a dream. No? April Fool’s, perhaps? No. I then looked at my Turkish friends’ posts on social media celebrating and reveling in the opposition party’s unprecedented victory across the country. Like those longing for a change in the political landscape, I, too, breathed a sigh of relief. It felt as if a heavy burden was lifted off my shoulders– its weight so immense that after the May 2023 presidential elections, which extended the government’s over-20-year-rule, those of us who advocated for a solid system of checks and balances in the country, were left feeling visibly depleted. We were left feeling exhausted, questioning the very validity of voting and the multiparty system.

The whole experience last year brought to mind the question Gandhi asked once, “What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?” (Non-Violence in Peace and War 1942). It is true, after all, those who are marginalized, including women, animals, minorities, and LGBTQ communities, have continued to be pushed further to the fringes of the society after a seemingly democratic election. Not much would change due to the government’s resistance to legal and legislative reforms.

I have long maintained a skeptical stance about politicians and political parties (can you blame me?). So, for a while now, I’ve adopted a strategic “indifference” to politics, one akin to the methodological indifference proposed by Virginia Woolf in “Three Guineas” (1938), an anti-war, feminist manifesto she penned in response to the rise of fascism right before World War II.

In her epistolary essay, Woolf responds to a letter sent to her three years prior by an unnamed (possibly fictional) male correspondent who asks, “How in your opinion are we to prevent war?” One of his proposals, which she addresses throughout her work, is that women, like Woolf herself, should become involved in anti-war institutions and societies.

Woolf stops him in his tracks by raising the important question, whose society are we exactly talking about here? “The very word ‘society’ sets tolling in memory the dismal bells of a harsh music: shall not, shall not, shall not,” she writes, “You shall not learn; you shall not earn; you shall not own; you shall not–such was the society relationship of brother to sister for many centuries.” The societal system “so kind to you” as a man, she continues, yet “so harsh to us” as women, perpetuates a male-centric reality representative of its biases–particulary against women.

Woolf’s goal here is to reveal the systemic ways in which fascism, war, and the oppression of women are all fueled by patriarchal values that have for centuries prioritized men’s interests. Her response to the question of how to prevent war is thus simple yet complex: the establishment of a new society, “the Outsider’s Society” as she calls it, which transgresses the patriarchal norm of conformity can be a productive step in the right direction. In this sense, the essay can serve as a roadmap that demonstrates how women as marginalized “outsiders” can engage in the crucial process of reshaping social and political narratives. Woolf asks women to start by investigating and challenging the close link between patriarchy and other forms of control. This critical thinking is an integral component of the “indifference” she prescribes to women who should “make it her duty not merely to base her indifference upon instinct, but upon reason.”

She writes as follows:

When he says, as history proves that he has said, and may say again, “I am fighting to protect our country” and thus seeks to rouse her patriotic emotion, she will ask herself, “What does ‘our country’ mean to me an outsider?” To decide this she will analyse the meaning of patriotism in her own case. She will inform herself of the position of her sex and her class in the past. She will inform herself of the amount of land, wealth and property in the possession of her own sex and class in the present-how much of “England” in fact belongs to her. From the same sources she will inform herself of the legal protection which the law has given her in the past and now gives her. And if he adds that he is fighting to protect her body, she will reflect upon the degree of physical protection that she now enjoys when the words “Air Raid Precaution” are written on blank walls. And if he says that he is fighting to protect England from foreign rule, she will reflect that for her there are no “foreigners,” since by law she becomes a foreigner if she marries a foreigner. And she will do her best to make this a fact, not by forced frater­nity, but by human sympathy. All these facts will convince her reason (to put it in a nutshell) that her sex and class has very little to thank England for in the past; not much to thank England for in the present; while the security of her person in the future is highly dubious. 

She urges women to ask, whose “society,” whose “country,” whose “rights and freedom” are really, truly at stake during a war? It is crucial that women contest the fallacy of justifying military mobilization under the guise of protection, particularly when women are denied basic legal and social rights they need to feel safe and secure in their own society. According to Woolf, to disengage from the patriotic discourse by taking an outsider’s stance can help one to criticize, expose, and contest the corrupt sociopolitical system and thus is one of the crucial steps we can take to prevent war. Woolf’s argument in “Three Guineas” is often misread, though; she does not suggest that women are inherently passive or pacifist. On the contrary, the methodological indifference for which she advocates is an ironic reaction to the mobilization of troops in the name of defending women. Her famous lines from this essay, “as a woman, I have no country. As a woman I want no country. As a woman my country is the whole world” are, in fact, a plea to secure women’s right, and a significant call for peace on a global scale.

The critical issues faced by women and minorities have -unfortunately- only changed in shape and form since 1938. Thinking about Turkey’s presidential election last year in relationship to the recent local elections inevitably invokes Woolf’s proposal, particularly as the government’s victory highlighted the age-old link between patriarchal values and the systemic oppression of minorities. What scared me the most about the government’s reelection in 2023 was watching on T.V. its leader, amid a predominantly male crowd, deliver a balcony speech where they all passionately rallied against “the Others.” By “the Others,” they clearly meant those who voted for the other parties, but such terms as “LGBTQ” and “terrorism” were ambiguously thrown into the chants, fallaciously labelling the citizens who didn’t vote for the government as “social terrorists.” The superficial condemnation of violence against women that followed was even more alarming; the persisting issue of femicides and the shortcomings of existing laws were not addressed at all. This inflammatory rhetoric seemed to promote hate in the society, demonstrating the leader’s divisive, othering strategies that would deepen societal and political fissures in the country. As Gandhi said, “The hater hates not for the sake of hatred but because he wants to drive away from his country the hated being or beings. He will therefore readily achieve  his end by non-violent as by violent means” (Non-Violence in Peace and War 1942). The disconcerting narrative of “us” vs. “them” after an election won by a mere one or two percent margin was terrifying, draining, exhausting, as well as disheartening. It highlighted once again how the political discourse can be wielded as a weapon to divide and oppress, to oppress and polarize, just as Woolf had suggested.

This is all to say–

For me (and possibly for many others), the opposition’s strong comeback this week in the local elections isn’t about this party or that. Without a doubt, what prompted this significant shift is the dire state of the economy. But, as an idealist, I cannot not mention that, for many of my fellow citizens the election results have sparked a much-needed sense of belonging, filling us all with some hope. In fact, the election this week has restored my faith in people’s capacity to be on the right side of history and to demand some sort of accountability from both parties. Nevertheless, now, the opposition needs to prove themselves, to meet our high expectations. Who knows, perhaps, the government and the president will even have to revise their rhetoric, moving away from the idea that they own and run the society.

Politics cannot be trusted, I know, but this week and until it lasts I only want to bask in the light of hope and in the possibility of change–which brings me to Turkish writer Ece Temelkuran’s book Together: 10 Choices for a Better Now (2021). Despite the fact that the radical patriarchal system is all prevalent around the globe, she suggests in her brilliant book, a beam of light is simultaneously cutting through its darkness.

And I will wrap up with her concluding lines which deeply resonate with me:

This book is my solid reason to forgive my own kind; a testimony to remind myself in times of doubt that I have to sustain my passion for infatuation with my own kind for my own sake. This is an attempt to protect my own joy of life. I was after all, and I am. And it takes writing a book titled Together to say, I will be. 

It is a dangerous sentence, but it is the most freeing. 

So hereby, I chose to say: 

I believe in you. You were. You are. And we will, together be.” (p. 197)

You can read my reflection on Temelkuran’s Together which I loved reading and writing about here.