In 2008, I met my future husband, Abidin, a Turk who had fled to Austria thirty years earlier, after the coup in 1980. Although he seemed firmly rooted in his host country, Turkey would not let him go. He was concerned about the future of his homeland, hoped that his country would turn towards democratic values and saw how it was moving further away from this every day.
In the 1970s, Abidin was part of the student movement that wanted to shape Turkey into a free and democratic country in which social justice prevailed. His activities as an opposition activist led to him being shot by a far-right militia. As he fell to the ground, one of his attackers stepped close to him to kill him with six more bullets at close range. But Abidin survived. He resumed the fight after his convalescence until the military coup on September 12, 1980 put an end to the dream of an entire generation.
I didn't know much about the political complexity of his country. I had images of Turkey in my mind's eye of the banks of the Bosphorus, the sweetness of life in the shade of olive trees and the scents of the Orient. Turkey appeared to me as a secular nation with a diverse natural beauty and a fascinating cultural richness.
In 2008, when Abidin and I met, Erdogan was prime minister and the Western world wanted to see him as the man who would create the synthesis between Islam and democracy. But Abidin was more aware than anyone else of the authoritarian tendencies of the Turkish state and the inevitable regression that a political project like this could mean: “Political Islam as such is an overall project that regulates society as a whole, and its application in politics naturally leads to a totalitarian state.” He raged against the Europeans who supported the prime minister instead of helping an opposition that had been suppressed for years.
Europeans had fallen into the Islamists’ trap. Today, they watch in amazement at the authoritarian drift of Turkey into a country with an ultra-liberal economy.
Europeans had fallen into the Islamists’ trap. Today, they watch in amazement at the authoritarian drift of Turkey into a country with an ultra-liberal economy. An economy that solely serves the interests of a grateful oligarchy whose power is based on the influence of radical Islam. Supported by this, Erdogan sees himself in the role of an international spiritual leader. His religious conservatism has become a strong mobilizing force, and his “neo-Ottoman” foreign policy is opening up spheres of influence in the former territories of the Ottoman Empire, especially in the Middle East.
For Abidin and his fellow fighters at the time, the decline of Turkey began after the coup of September 12, 1980, when the junta laid the foundations for political Islam and prepared the ideological ground for a man like Erdogan. This is not just Abidin's subjective personal feeling. Turkish historians agree on this point, and I am always amazed at the ignorance of Europeans towards the countries of the Middle East, especially Turkey. I do not exclude myself from this. And that in view of the hundreds of thousands of Turks who have become our citizens or neighbors. I have realized how little I knew about the life of my husband, this former “revolutionary”, even though we had been married for ten years.
This film has offered me the rare and special opportunity to experience and present a great European history through the personal story of Abidin's life. It was my desire to understand the process that brought Turkey to where it is today and to find meaning in the scars that cover my husband's body. After 45 years of ignorance, it was time to connect the threads of the great story, break the silence and look back at this fundamental event that had been forgotten.
Nathalie Borgers
