By Ihsan Gursoy
ISTANBUL
Slavoj Zizek, in his new article entitled “Is something rotten in the state of Turkey?” published on Dec. 31 on the website of the U.K.'s New Statesman magazine, preferred to avoid criticism regarding the ethics of proper citation and also triggered a new political debate instead of apologizing or defending his previous article, “We need to talk about Turkey”, which is regarded as black propaganda.
Zizek's use of the same excuse - “a friend told me” - in his latest article just like in the previous ones shows that someone must admonish him to change his circle of friends. Unable to realize that his first article is a part of an international smear campaign against Turkey, Zizek did not shy away from labeling a few criticisms directed against his article as a coordinated campaign.
He concluded his latest article by saying, “An observer has to make a choice here: are all these accusations reported in hundreds of texts part of a gigantic plot -- or is there effectively something rotten in the state of Turkey?” Even by analyzing the method he employed in his own article, he could realize that all these allegations are part of a much broader smear campaign. His article, “We need to talk about Turkey”, contained monumental fabrications since he attributed claims of a website of questionable origin to Anadolu Agency and, at the expense of trampling on the ethics of proper citation, he added new lines when he quoted David Graeber’s baseless claims in an article that appeared in the U.K. Guardian newspaper.
Anadolu Agency’s In-Depth News Analysis Department criticized Zizek in its piece entitled “Slavoj Zizek’s shameful bid to tarnish Turkey’s image” published on Dec. 15 by saying that Zizek wrote an assertive article while deploying claims of a website of questionable origin not recognized internationally and that was probably established to produce fabricated news for intelligence wars.
However, Zizek defended himself – apparently mocking the readers’ wisdom - with the following words: “After friends informed me about these statements, I searched for them on the web and found a couple of sites with them, plus I did not find any sites denying them. So I quoted the statements, mentioning the website where I found them.”
In fact, Zizek was criticized exactly because of this method in an article published on Dec. 15 by the agency: He does not know how to properly cite his sources and tends to believe every online piece of information as true without cross-checking with other sources. He was also asked in the same article: How can such a well-established publication – and such a prominent intellectual as Zizek – so easily risk their dignity and reputation?
Zizek’s defense reveals that his committing of that sin – a violation of proper citation – is deliberate, not accidental. When we check Zizek’s sentences again, we see that he said: “So I quoted the statements, mentioning the website where I found them.”
In fact, he mentioned the source of Turkish Intelligence Chief Hakan Fidan’s interview as “Anadolu News Agency” not AwdNews.com. When clicked on “Anadolu News Agency” link, the page took readers to AwdNews.com – a website of questionable origin that produces fabricated news.
Obviously, the renowned Slovenian philosopher was left with no other choice but conceal a crystal-clear fact. Zizek did not mention the website’s name that he quoted. On the contrary, he mentioned Anadolu Agency since he knows that the website he cited is disreputable. Namely, he pasted the Anadolu News Agency's internet address, aa.com.tr, to the AwdNews.com link.
Anadolu Agency’s In-Depth News Analysis Department checked up on Zizek’s citation record after his violation of ethics of accurate citation. The article, entitled “The Passion of Zizek” published on Dec. 24 by Anadolu Agency, proved that Zizek did not only violate but also utterly breached citation ethics; he does not know how to properly cite his sources and even if he did, he insisted on referring to unknown sources.
Trying to circumvent every documented claim raised by Anadolu Agency, he chose to address the most frail accusation: “Furthermore, I find totally out of place the attempts to locate this accident into a series which allegedly demonstrates my 'passion for plagiarism and fabrication', and where I am accused even of plagiarizing myself [in one of my columns for NYT, I used two passages from a book of mine].”
Actually, “The Passion of Zizek” reveals far more troubling claims that the Slovenian philosopher tried to attribute racist comments to Noam Chomsky that he had never made, plagiarized a paragraph from Jean-Marie Muller’s book entitled “Non-Violence in Education”, and plagiarized an article written by Stanley Hornbeck where Hornbeck comments on Kevin MacDonald’s book.
Unable to back his baseless claims, Zizek belies himself, saying, “I did not say that,” or “I did not mean that”. Actually, he quoted Graeber’s article in his article where he later preferred to say: “I did not say that”. Further than that, he added things that Graeber did not even say in his article. Graeber confirmed that by tweeting on his account: “Really he just added a couple things I hadn't said but were equally true”.
In his first article, Zizek said: “As David Graeber pointed out recently, had Turkey placed the same kind of absolute blockade on ISIS territories as they did on Kurdish-held parts of Syria, let alone shown the same sort of 'benign neglect' towards the PKK and YPG that they have been offering to Islamic State, Islamic State would long since have collapsed, and the Paris attacks would probably not have happened”.
In his last article, Zizek defended himself in this way: “It attributes to me 'the laughable claim that Turkey is somehow responsible for the Paris attacks' [which I never made], plus the claim that 'Turkey buys oil from ISIL' [which I also never made] as well as the claim that 'Turkey is fighting the Kurds fighting ISIL in Syria' [also never made by me].”
Actually, he wrote the following sentences right after the previous quote on the Paris attack: “Instead, Turkey was not only discreetly helping IS by treating its wounded soldiers, and facilitating the oil exports from the territories held by IS, but also by brutally attacking the Kurdish forces, the ONLY local forces engaged in a serious battle with IS. Plus Turkey even shot down a Russian fighter attacking Isis positions in Syria.”
In reality, Zizek did not blame Turkey for oil export with Daesh. As the previous citation shows that Turkey was blamed for facilitating “the oil exports from the territories held by IS.” Well, who blames Zizek for that? Nobody! He came up with an allegation that nobody had made and then tried to respond to that because Ibrahim Kalin, the spokesperson of the Turkish Presidency, had criticized Zizek by quoting him verbatim: “Zizek accuses Turkey of supporting the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant [ISIL], treating its injured militants, facilitating its oil go through Turkish territories and even insinuates that Turkey shot down the Russian warplane on November 24 because it was bombing ISIL targets.”
Clearly refuting his aforementioned quotes, Zizek said: “I mention Turkish attacks on Kurds in Turkey itself, not in Syria" and he says he never claimed that Turkey is somehow responsible for the Paris attacks. But, Zizek linked Turkey with the Paris attack. Worse, while it is clear that the Kurdish forces he refers to by saying "the ONLY local forces engaged in a serious battle with IS” are Syrian Kurds, he denied himself saying: “I mention Turkish attacks on Kurds in Turkey itself, not in Syria”.
As for the rest of Zizek’s article, we are not its respondents. As we clearly stated in our first article published on Dec. 15, we have taken care to evaluate his articles from the perspective of ethics, and particularly from that of media ethics and the ethics of accurate citation. The first two articles had served to prove that Zizek is a writer who tramples on the ethics of accurate citation and makes references to fabricated sources. We think that this short article is enough to show that Zizek distorts crystal-clear facts, openly denies himself, and chooses to spark off new arguments when confronted with these crimes. For this very reason, we find it fruitless to engage in discussion with him as long as he keeps from slandering Anadolu Agency.
