Ortadoğu'da Dönüşüm': Demokrasinin çıkmazı

Toplumsal yapılardan kopuk, hatta toplumu boyunduruğuna almış bir piyasa ekonomisi, Polanyinin ifadesiyle, en başından beri, ütopik ve karanlık bir siyasi projedir. 2008den beri dünya-ekonominin yaşadığı kriz, siyasi konjektürü de aşağı yukarı eş zamanlı olarak görülen karşı-hareketlerle sarsmaktadır. Bu karşı-hareketler, toplumların medeniyetsel bilinçlerine, tarihi deneyimlerine ve kurumsal evrim süreçlerine göre biçimlenen ideolojilerle ortaya çıkmaktadır. Ortak noktaları ise bize Polanyinin uyarısını hatırlatır: ahlaki ve siyasi olarak kabul edilebilir olmayabilecekleri gerçeği. Bu bağlamda, makale, bugün Ortadoğudaki halk hareketlerine, hakim Batı paradigmasının söylemleri yerine, o paradigmanın ideolojik temel taşlarını netleştirme ve eleştirisini kuramsal olarak oluşturma amacıyla siyasal ekonomi perspektifinden bakmayı önerir. Hakim Batı paradigması, Ortadoğu diye belirlediği bir coğrafya için ki zaman zaman bu coğrafya, coğrafi olarak dışında kalan Pakistan ve Afganistanı da içerir- gerektiğinde örneğin vicdan özgürlüğü, kadın hakları adı altında toplanan tüm hak ve özgürlükler, bağımsız yargı, hukukun üstünlüğü, basın özgürlüğü gibi esas kavramları dışlayabilen farklı bir demokrasi anlayışı geliştirmiştir. Bu demokrasi tanımı gerçek bir demokrasi tanımı olamayacağı gibi bugünkü kritik durumun ya da buhranın karşı-hareketi olan ve anti-demokratik bir içeriğe sahip olan oluşumların yapısını da gizler niteliktedir.

Transformation in the Middle East: The impasse of democracy

For Polanyi, the act of creating a market society, that is the mis-guided effort to disembed the economy from the society and further subordinate the society to the economic logic, was, in and of itself, a stark and dark utopia; a political project since inception. The systemic crisis of the world-economy since 2008 has been agitating the political conjuncture with a simultaneous wave of counter-movements in many societies, which emerge in various forms of ideology, each shaped distinctly by the civilizational consciousness, historical experience, and institutional evolutionary path of the society in question. Their common grounds, however, reminds us Polanyis warning: that they may not always come within a morally and politically acceptable package. In this context, the essay proposes -in lieu of the discourses of the hegemonic Western paradigm- a political economy perspective to the contemporary peoples movements in the Middle East for the purpose of delineating the ideological cornerstones of the said paradigm and forging, theoretically, the base for a critique. The hegemonic Western paradigm, for the geography that it deems the Middle East and that geography, from time to time, extends to non-geographical borders, i.e. Pakistan and Afghanistan-, has developed a concept of democracy that can (when and if necessary) readily externalize such crucial foundations of democracy as freedom of conscience, those rights and liberties congregated as womens rights, independent judiciary, rule of law, freedom of press etc. While such conception cannot constitute a true definition; more importantly, it serves to conceal the anti-democratic content of some formations within the counter-movement of the current critical juncture or depression of our times.

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