Adile Hanım: History Was Found at Göbeklitepe — the Report Found Öcalan, Again
RastinewsNew structures and settlement traces have been uncovered at Göbeklitepe. Rather than simply reporting the archaeological findings, the Mezopotamya Agency pushed the story further, framing it as: "Öcalan said this years ago, and the excavation has proven him right."
Yet there is no new historical thesis here that originated with Öcalan.
The Neolithic Revolution, the shift from hunter-gatherer societies to settled life, the organization of production, the division of labor, social stratification, the emergence of power structures and the rise of patriarchy — historians, archaeologists and anthropologists were debating these questions long before Öcalan. From Gordon Childe to Engels, and across the modern literature of anthropology and archaeology, an entire body of scholarship already exists on these subjects.
The debate over whether Göbeklitepe was merely a "temple" or a periodic ritual center is not new either. The view that the site also served residential and settlement functions has been discussed in academic circles for years.
But the Mezopotamya Agency's report follows a different method:
A rectangular structure is found: Öcalan's thesis is confirmed.
Large monoliths exist: the "hunter caste" is confirmed.
Traces of housing are found: the "Neolithic counter-revolution" is confirmed.
Female figures are scarce: the "first sexual rupture" is confirmed.
Archaeology does not work this way.
The discovery of a rectangular structure is not proof of a caste system. The transport of twenty-ton stones is not proof of forced labor. The emergence of housing does not show that the state was born. Nor does the scarcity of female depictions, on its own, prove a "counter-revolution" carried out by men against a woman-centered society.
These are not findings — they are interpretations built on top of findings.
A thinker's reading of history can be discussed, taken seriously, and some of the conclusions can even be considered compelling. But presenting theses that were already put forward and debated for decades as that person's original discoveries, and then turning every new archaeological find into proof of that person's correctness, is not journalism.
Turning a 12,000-year-old site like Göbeklitepe into a laboratory for validating the views of a present-day political figure is not telling history — it is rearranging history around one person.
Öcalan's theory was not found at Göbeklitepe. History was found at Göbeklitepe.
Science does not excavate to prove one person right. It follows whatever comes out of the ground.
The moment a leader's words are placed ahead of the archaeological evidence, and every stone that emerges is made to confirm those words, science steps back — and a cult of personality begins.
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