Crisis, Common Sense, and Boredom: A Critique of Neoliberal Hegemony in Turkey

Abstract

In the last decade crisis and Kulturkampf have become two essential notions defining the neoliberal transformation Turkey has been going through since the 1980s. Crisis is a recurring concept that has been used in defining the state and condition experienced by Turkish society, following the 1980 coup d’état, which opened the way forward to neoliberalization. Kulturkampf is a relatively new notion that has been put into operation in describing the political culture of Turkey, specifically the last decade with a reference to historical modernization process of the country. Both notions have an explanatory power in understanding the construction of neoliberal populist hegemony of the governing party, the Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi (Justice and Development Party). Sıkıntı yok is a rather new expression which gained widespread usage in the everyday language, popular culture, and politics to the extent that, according to Tanıl Bora, (2018, 36), it has become a sort of milli düstur (“national norm”). In this chapter, Begüm Özden Fırat traces “the prestige and utility” of this new expression, by pondering upon the relation between its literal and figurative uses in the historical context within which it has been invented and spread. Firat first reads sıkıntı yok as an instance of a historical articulation of the common sense as a response to the crisis of culture, and then moves from crisis to critique by conducting a “coherent and critical” analysis of the expression’s literal meaning. Firat argues that this “hidden” literal meaning of the expression lays bare the historical truth of our neoliberal times, that is, there is no time and place to get bored. Intellectual critique, Firat argues, should pay attention to this “good sensical” nucleus in the expression so as to manufacture a counter-hegemony that would face the crisis of neoliberal populist regimes.