How it begins, how it ends

I borrowed the title of today's column from an old essay by the late Umberto Eco. The Western reaction to the Gülenist putsch attempt in Turkey last year made me go back to it. Eco was a columnist for Il Verri, an Italian literary magazine, between 1959 and 1961. "How to travel with a Salmon & Other Essays" is a translated English language collection of his essays from that period. Just have a look at this particular essay and see what I mean.

The reasoning is very simple, mind you. If you missed the first act of Hamlet for some reason, you'll never understand "why he was so down on his uncle, who seemed a perfectly nice man." Look at the way Western media is still depicting the self-exiled Turkish cleric Fethullah Gülen and you'll know what I mean. "Why is Erdoğan so tough on this peaceful little man?" a casual observer of the Western press might say. 

Then you "saw Othello perform his dread act, but had no notion why such a docile little wife was being placed beneath a pillow and not on top of one."  Whenever I see reporting about the excesses against the Gülenist network, this bit of Othello comes to mind. Why are there so many purged from the military, judiciary, and police forces? There's often a sense of disbelief in the question, as if whoever is doing the purging must be some sort of a madman, torturing people for the fun of it. But I've been in Ankara long enough to know that the network is very real and I was there when Turkish jets were bombing the parliament. I've seen the first act, so what's happening now makes sense. 

Missing the first act of a play is exactly like experiencing art as real life, said the essayist. "Where we enter after the trumps have been played, and we leave without knowing who's going to win or lose...