In his cult novel "1984," George Orwell described a dystopian world of people under constant government surveillance. In a letter to an American trade unionist, Orwell wrote he believed a society similar to the one he imagined could one day become a reality. The world we live in today may not be the exact nightmare the writer imagined, but it often fills us with fear that our lives are closely monitored. This may explain why "1984" has been back on the best-seller list in Turkey in recent years. Its popularity may surge even further after the country’s more than 50,000 mukhtars — leaders of neighborhoods and villages — were tasked with informing the government on fellow residents.
Since January, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has delivered monthly speeches to mukhtars, invited in groups to his palace in Ankara. At the eighth meeting on Aug. 12, he spoke about the need to boost intelligence-gathering against Kurdish militants amid a surge of terrorist attacks since the June 7 elections, and tasked the mukhtars with a new duty. “I expect support on this issue from our mukhtars as well. I know my mukhtars [are aware] what kind of people live in which house. They [need to] go to their governors or police chiefs and report this to them in an appropriate and calm manner,” he said.
About 400 mukhtars from different provinces have been invited to each meeting. Ahead of the meetings, the mukhtars were briefed about the electronic Mukhtar Information System, supervised by the Interior Ministry, in a bid to make them branches of the state’s intelligence system that penetrates each village and neighborhood, along with official intelligence bodies.
During the Aug. 12 meeting, Erdogan also warned government officials that they must facilitate the jobs of mukhtars and respond to their needs. “A smart administrator is supposed to listen carefully to all demands mukhtars raise for their neighborhoods and the people who live there and do what is necessary. You see what happens to those who fail to hear the voice of the people, don’t you?” he said.
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