About “A National Education Nonuple”

I was going to be in front of a luxury restaurant in Yeniköy, one of the beautiful districts of the Bosphorus. The pedestal sign on the ground would read “VALE, PARKING, FOAM WASH” in capital letters. Behind the sign, three young men, ages 17 to 20, would be looking at their screens, with cell phones in their hands. Then a big jeep was to come. One of the youth would pick up the car from its owner and set out to park it. Upon this incident I witnessed, a configuration of the Turkish Republic would appear in my mind. In the middle of the triangle would be national education and on three corners of it, parking lot, foam wash, and sex in heaven would be written respectively.

National Education

I was going to imagine quickly being a valet, and the first concept that would come to my mind would be “NATIONAL EDUCATION.” In a privileged country, young people aged between 17 to 20 could study at university, travel the world, receive vocational training by a master, or kiss their lovers. But young people in an oppressed country would park the cars of the rich on the sidewalks, instead of doing the things I just mentioned. National education would not only fail teaching kids English, it would actually want young people to work in the parking lot. With the national curriculum, it would ensure to keep kids unskilled and oppressed. The goal of “national education” which is written with a hat on its second “i” in Turkish, was to raise an oppressed youth.

Car park

With the word “CAR PARK” written on the sign in front of the restaurant, I was going to think of auto-industrialization of elegant districts and viaductization of nature. This oppressed country would be a place to be passed over by a huge network of roads connected by bridges. The remaining places from roads, overpasses, underpasses, viaducts, tunnels and bridges would be auto industry venues and parking lots. Parking lots would be like temples where the oppressed and privileged would come together.

Foam Wash

The word “FOAM WASH” on the sign was going to take me to the television of the country’s former period. I was going to watch programs whose generic name is “Televole.” In these magazine shows, vacationers would dance in their swimsuits and bikinis to the anthem on the boat. In the most lively moment of the dance, foam would be sprayed over on the dancers while the anthem continues. Founded with incomplete material and theft, the founding ideology, which is already barely standing, would rot on a boat at sea. Immediately after rotting, it would sink into blue waters with the anthem. This sinking would bring to the fore the town morality previously not included in the center.

Sex in Heaven

A new trio of configurations would appear in my mind with Televole: Bikini, anthem and foam. This emerging image was the ejaculation not as a result of the copulation of the body and the state, and desire and power, but throughout the entire action. But for the oppressed, ejaculation was not an easy-to-reach biological event. In the public sphere, desire was forbidden. Oppressed people would not kiss freely. They were to serve, wash dishes, dump trash, clean houses, or park cars in back streets. In this world where sexuality is almost completely forbidden, this great distress which had to be endured, would be forgotten with a giant orgy in the other world, with “SEX IN HEAVEN.” This would be an afterlife ejaculation aimed at making the oppressed forget their suffering in the world. The oppressed would not ejaculate into the world, of course, they would ejaculate into the heaven.

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The Story of the Future Tense

The tense used in the five paragraphs on the right is called “the story of the future tense.” This tense is used for events that did not happen at a time in the past, although it was declared or agreed to happen in the future.

Memed Erdener

2019

translation: Nazım Dikbaş

Inspirational quotes

“Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.”

—Rainer Maria Rilke

“All failures of civilization are erotic failures. Plato (428-347 BC) and Augustine (354-430) knew this and we cannot afford let this wisdom perish.”

—Marthinus Versfeld