This Sunday past I mulled over the idea of writing about the increased vilification of “non-western” societies by Western intellectuals and their ideological affiliates around the world. The world and the abundance of reality have a habit of intruding on life… on Monday the horrors and hopelessness caused by the earthquake that shattered homes and lives of people in south-eastern Turkey and north-western Syria, returned reality.

On Sunday, a red mist had descended over me when I read the column by Simon Tisdall in The Guardian/Observer, in which he called upon “the West… to play hardball” with the “two-faced ‘sultan’” — Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. 

The basis for Tisdall’s advice to the West was that Erdoğan “betray[ed] Western interests in a pretence of partnership” that he be “treated as a liability, a threat — even ostracised as an enemy?”

Tisdall continued that “Turkey’s reliability and usefulness as a trusted Western ally is almost at an end,” saying that it was time to “admit that two-faced Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is no friend of the West” and that he be punished accordingly.

Let’s face it, that we refer to some countries as an “axis of evil” whether or not we like them or their leaders, is a construct of the Western gaze. 

Just to be clear, in his column Tisdall listed very many domestic febrilities, frailties and fractures in Turkish society which cannot be ignored. However, to call upon “the West” to play hardball with Erdoğan because he no longer could be relied upon to secure “Western interests,” that he was “no friend of the West,” and he had outlived his “usefulness as a trusted Western ally” smacks of foreign policy advice that smacks of arrogance, bullying, stereotyping and a risible Ptolemaic parochialism.

Bluntly put, states that enjoy internal and external sovereignty do not exist for the sole purpose of being friendly and useful to the leading powers, and when they have outlived their usefulness, they should be disciplined and punished.

Reading Tisdall’s column, I was reminded of how General Augusto Pinochet carried out some of the worst post-war atrocities, but Washington and Whitehall continued their relationship with the Chilean dictator because he was a friend.

While Pinochet was under house arrest in Surrey in 1999, the former Chilean military dictator received a fine malt from “an old friend” Margaret Thatcher. The accompanying note took an apparent swipe at the government of Tony Blair for allowing the arrest of Pinochet while he was in London for medical treatment, overriding his diplomatic immunity.

“I don’t know when or how this tragedy will end,” Thatcher told the 1999 Conservative Party conference to warm applause, “but we will fight on for as long as it takes to see Senator Pinochet returned safely to his own country. The British people still believe in loyalty to their friends.”

Let me stress, again, that (as with Pinochet) there is no getting away from Erdoğan’s domestic or regional failures – and there can be no easy comparisons between the late Chilean dictator and the Turkish leader. Suggesting that would be cheap and malicious.

In his column, Tisdall goes beyond Ptolemaic parochialism and slips into stereotyping Erdoğan as a “sultan” with “neo-Ottoman” ambitions. This feeds into the spurious belief that non-Western societies cannot be trusted to abandon their “old ways” and become “modern” like their counterparts in Western Europe and North America (and the antipodes, for that matter).

Tisdall represents Erdoğan (as a putative Ottoman Sultan) as if the Turkish leader cannot be expected to represent himself. And then earthquakes hit south-eastern Turkey and north-western Syria; reality intervened in life. The earthquakes cut short my ruminations about Tisdall’s column; who knows where I would have ended up, conceptually. None of that mattered on Monday.

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Hopelessness and the sounds of crying

The first 72 hours of this week have been horrifying for the people who lost their homes and family members amid the rubble of collapsed buildings in Turkey’s worst-affected regions.

At the time of writing, the death toll of the earthquake is creeping towards 10,000. Looking at the images and the sounds (the audio-visuals) that stream across media platforms there is a sense of hopelessness and an emptiness.

When going through the images, you keep having to remind yourself that the tragedy in Turkey and Syria is not about you; it is about the man holding the hand of his daughter, dead and crushed between slabs of concrete; it’s about the baby born in the rubble, now the only survivor of a family the child will never know; it’s about the hundreds and thousands of people, now in the freezing cold, homeless and helpless, who have lost all hope.

One report by the Financial Times, reads: “The diggers had been working around the clock in a side street of the Turkish city of Şanlıurfa when a sudden hush descended and the grinding of heavy machinery came to a halt. Then the rescue team cried out in unison: ‘Is there anyone under there?’

“They stood still for a minute in eerie silence, listening for a response. When nothing came, they returned to their work undeterred.”

Undeterred. Yes, life has to go on, never mind reality’s intrusions; when reality collapses a building, and shatters the lives of people. In the Turkish town of Şanlıurfa, known for the “glorious” way in which it resisted occupying French forces after the First World War, glory died in the rubble, as families struggle with grief, sadness, despondency and helplessness.

“I feel like this world is meaningless,” said Hacı Bulut, a retiree with bloodshot eyes, as he waited for news of six missing relatives outside a collapsed apartment block. “By now I’m just hoping that half of them come out safe.”

A few hours later, all six were pulled out of the rubble dead.

It all makes you wonder just how useful hope and prayer are. Never mind, now, the public policy mistakes and maladministration of governments and leaders; death and dying will always remind us of how temporary and ultimately devoid of meaning life can be.

Across the border, in Syria, the earthquakes piled disaster upon disaster for millions of war-weary Syrians.

“I lived for seven years in Idlib [province] through shelling, bombardments, you name it — but this earthquake… in one moment, entire neighbourhoods came crashing down,” one voice note sent from the northern city of Afrin explained. “At least half the buildings [in Afrin] are not safe to return to and so many residents are sleeping on the street.”

In the nearby town of Jindaris, 250 buildings have collapsed and only a handful had been cleared, she said. “We’re hearing the screams of people — entire families — still trapped under the rubble,” said a mental health worker.

In Turkey, Erdoğan has been able to mobilise state institutions to support the search-and-rescue operations. In Syria, however, the state has all but collapsed and society has been fractured by years of fighting.

Suddenly, Simon Tisdall’s column in The Guardian/Observer, and my responses to his policy advice, seem utterly meaningless. Policies really are meaningless amid the immediacy of saving lives in the rubble of collapsed buildings, when dreams are shattered and when families have lost all hope. Hope dies when reality crashes upon you.

As one anonymous observer explained: “After we’ve dealt with the pain, we’ll talk about blame… Right now we just want to see our loved ones and give them a hug.” DM