Democracy and Education (And An Evermore Divided Turkey)

PHOTO from Vatan

The parliament took up the proposed education law (see past post for background) yesterday just hours after 20,000 demonstrators gathered in Ankara's Tandogan Square to protest what opposition groups view as a unilateral attempt by the ruling AKP to overhaul the education system.

The law the AKP is trying to pass is publicly referred to as "4+4+4" because it seeks to make 12-year education mandatory for all children. Yet that is not the full story. Under the current system, public education is mandatory for the first eight years, after which students may opt to attend imam-hatip, or religious high schools that teach a mixture of standard education and theology, and which are subject to different standards -- and, naturally -- a different ideological/pedagogical atmosphere. The proposed law, which has been amended since my last post, also includes provisions that would pave the way for children to opt to attend imam-hatip  as early as 10 years of age, as well as enter special vocational schools. The original law had included a measure that would allow children to opt into "open education," or home schooling, as early as 10 years of age. That provision has since been amended under pressure from women's another groups that introducing open education at such an early age would lead to an increase in child labor and young girls being kept from school to work at home -- a problem in conservative communities that activist groups have long sought to remedy.

The proposed system seeks to effectively divide education into three tiers -- first, middle, and high school. The government also plans to introduce a year before primary education akin to what in the United States is known as "pre-school," and which AKP politicians have haled as a major selling point of the new law. Under the proposal, children would also be able to join private religious education courses, often held during the summer, after their fourth year in school.

For AKP policymakers, the new system is to be celebrated not only as a means to further the quality of public education but also "democracy" -- a word much heralded by AKP politicians, but which for all intents and purposes, seems simply to mean rule by the majority, and a majority as the ruling party interprets it (for more on this, see this past post he AKP's sparring with TUSIAD, the leading business association in Turkey which has puts itself squarely in opposition to the new arrangements).

Much at the heart of the AKP's framing the issue is the fact that the current system is largely the product of the 1997 "postmodern coup" that toppled the country's former Islamist-led coalition, in which the AKP has its roots. Under military tutelage in the years after the coup, the government sought to guard secularism against what the generals saw as the rising tide of political Islam and the current education system was a major concern, in particular the increasing popularity of imam-hatip. The system prior to the coup allowed parents to place their children in imam-hatip at the age of 10, a policy to which the AKP is returning. It also forbade children to take private religious courses (for example, during summer vacation) before completing five years in school.

Though the reform process at the time was far from democratic and involved a major abuse of power by the military, as well as persecution of numerous educators and students haling from conservative Muslim backgrounds, the new policy did yield some positive results, including an increase in the enrollment rate of girls in the first eight years of public education (from 34% to 65%). While the coup-driven education reform of the late 1990s should in no way be celebrated, the AKP should at the least explain how its new policy will not seek to imperil the success of the past decade in this regard. Yet rather than explaining how the new system (or devising one alternative to that proposed) might build on increased enrollment rates while adopting a more sensitive approach to religion, the party has instead simply decried opponents of the law to be against "democracy."

Polarization over the new law reached a new high two weeks ago when the parliamentary commission responsible for education policy ramrodded the proposal through the commission amidst fistfights between the ruling party and the opposition. Knowing that debate could delay the law's passage through the commission, the AKP blockaded opposition party members' attendance in attempt to forestall efforts to frustrate passage to the parliament's general assembly.

Soon after the brawl, the opposition CHP petitioned to annul the commission's vote, arguing that procedural rules had been violated. Yet parliament speaker Cemil Cicek seems to have no intention of returning the law to commission, and the party's plans at this point are to pass the law in the general assembly by the end of the week.

The protests yesterday reveal just how divided Turkey is becoming. Speaking at Tandogan, CHP leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu said the law is not "4+4+4," but "8/2." Kilicdaroglu was referring to the two different standards of education children would be receiving after the first eight years (and, in reality, after the age of 10 given the planned introduction of vocational schools and imam-hatip at so young an age). Yet there is another element to the leader's words worth exploring.

Though some of the AKP's policies have aimed to strip national education of some of the more distressing nationalist/ideological aspects of public education (for example, military-designed national security education courses and celebrations of national youth day, which liberals have long considered quasi-fascist), the fact that the government's most recent effort seems to setup a system parallel to that of national education (that is, imam-hatip and vocational education), there is real concern that the secular/conservative divide could grow deeper.Further, there is the very real possibility that a large number of Turks (future voting citizens) as early as age 10 could receive an education that is sub-par when compared to their counterparts that finish 12 years of public eduction. While these students might be more likely to constitute the "pious generation" Erdogan envisioned a few weeks before the education debate started in full, it is highly unlikely that they would demonstrate the same level of political efficacy and sophistication as their more educated counterparts.

Among the groups protesting the new legislation at Tandogan is Egitem-Sen, the left-leaning teachers' union, as well as the Rightful Women's Platform and the Federation of Turkish Women's Associations. The Confederation of Public Sector Workers (KESK), of which Egitem-Sen is a part, is also present. Egitem-Sen has called for two days of teachers' strikes to demonstrate against the proposed law, and is the chief organizer of the demonstrations alongside the CHP.

Ankara's governor, who is a member of the AKP, has questioned the legality of the assembly, and though he has yet to break up the gathering, he has threatened to do so. The municipality has removed banners and placards put up in the environs -- a move CHP parliamentarian and women's rights defender Binnaz Toprak described as a violation of freedom of expression. And so it seems there is potential for the fighting in parliament to soon bleed onto the streets -- a country divided indeed, and with neither liberal nor consensual democracy anywhere in sight at the moment. For more coverage in English of yesterday's protests, click here.

Calling Places

PHOTO from Milliyet

One of my favorite political/rhetorical theorists, Kenneth Burke, reckons rhetoric -- and, more specifically, the politics it facilitates -- as akin to theater. According to Burke, life and politics are theater, and we all, as political actors, are on a stage. Though accusing someone of making political theater is pejorative, for Burke, we all make theater. Think Arendt and her Greek-influenced notion of politics as action -- as individuals appearing to each other in public fora whereby they put forward their thought and ideas, and wherein those thoughts and ideas, though sometimes agonistically incommensurable, are negotiated in communication with others.

For Burke and Arendt, while we may all be actors on a stage or in a public forum, no one has the right to call places. In a liberal democracy, politicians, civil society activists, and citizens all have a right to express themselves in the public sphere -- to partake in politics on any range of issues without being bounded. Tracing the development of civil society's relation to the state, this sort of boundlessness is key to civil society's ability to challenge the state -- to have and take advantage of the space necessary to enact truly democratic politics capable of holding the state accountable to those it governs.

Yet, for many politicians in the AKP, this idea is strange -- and, for too many, anathema. See, for instance, the recent comments of AKP parliamentarian Nurettin Canikli in response to the Turkish Businessmen and Industrialists' Association (TUSIAD)'s criticisms of the government's plans for 4+4+4 education reform. TUSIAD is one of the most important NGOs for Turkey, and has proven a tremendous force for the country's European Union accession process and the democratic reform/EU harmonization packages that have so changed Turkey (and, which, contrary to so much of the coverage one sees in Western media, commenced in 1999, more than two years before the ruling AKP came to power).

According to Canikli, TUSIAD, as a business association, has the right only to speak on matters of business and economic policy -- not education. For Canikli, it is no matter that the quality of education is indubitably connected to both, as the boundaries he would place on the organization are quite strict. But that said, why might TUSIAD not also be able to speak on other important political issues, including human rights, the Kurdish conflict, freedom of the press, and a host of other issues on which it has in the past, should, and hopefully will continue to voice its opinion? For Canikli, if this happens, the association "should not only throw punches, but be ready to get punched."

Canikli, in stronger terms, is echoing remarks Prime Minister Erdogan delivered last Tuesday at his party's parliamentary group meeting. Though Erdogan laid off the issue during yesterday's party meeting, the prime minister stirred a series of heated exchanges between the AKP and TUSIAD when Erdogan lashed into the organization, accusing it of being a supporter of the Feb. 28 process (Turkey's 1997 postmodern coup) and telling it to "mind its own business." TUSIAD responded with a calmly generic explanation of the important role civil society plays in a democracy, and rhetorical clashes between the organization and the AKP continued throughout the week. (Here, and to his credit, note that on Saturday President Gul defended TUSIAD's role to engage in the education debate.)

Though there is nothing necessarily improper about a civil exchange of views between the government and civil society organizations, there is something quite wrong about the government circumscribing the activities of organizations, a frequent action taken by authoritarian governments around the world to restrict civil society and the freedoms it enjoys under international law. Here, it should be noted that associations law in Turkey has undergone a series of meaningful reforms under AKP rule, including a major overhaul in 2004 to the Associations Law. The AKP should be lauded for these changes, but rhetoric such as that coming from Erdogan and Canikli is threatening.

In stirring defense of liberalism and the role of civil society, Milliyet columnist Mehmet Tezkan digs into the implication of Canikli's comments: that civil society organizations might only speak on issues related to their particular focus. According to Canikli, this would mean labor unions speak on workers' rights, bar associations speak only about matters of the judiciary, and doctors' associations speak only about medical issues. Such narrowly consigned responsibilities not only restricts the space in which civil society may act, but to some extent, also neutralizes them. Canikli seems to be saying that if civil society organizations get involved in politics, there will be consequences. Doing so not only sends a signal that civil society organizations should be apolitical, but that there might indeed be costs for being political.

If politicians in the government wish to criticize TUSIAD and other organizations within the public sphere, they should, of course, be free to do so. Yet, if these "punches" involve restrictive measures such as libel suits, criminal charges, and troubles registering and operating, there is a problem. Given Prime Minister Erdogan and others' understanding of the role of the press, there is little reason to think that the government's approach to civil society is much different -- and, indeed, leaders of numerous civil society organizations, at least in regard to the Kurdish problem, have been rounded up alongside journalists. Taking on an organization with the kind of international clout of TUSIAD is a different matter, though Erdogan and Canikli's statements in regard to the organization are revealing of the AKP's liberal democratic deficit (not that many political parties have proved much better upon coming to power).

This is the first clash this year between the AKP and TUSIAD, and the vitriol of Erdogan's rhetoric has raised serious eyebrows given that TUSIAD is a mainline pro-reform/pro-Europe organization that has in the past loaned support to the AKP's reform initiatives. In 2010, before the country's constitutional referendum in September, Prime Minister Erdogan demanded that TUSIAD take a stand for or against the constitution, arguing that those who stayed neutral would be "eliminated." EU Chief Negotiator Egeman Bagis followed up, declaring that he would challenge "the mental health and patriotism of anyone who intended to vote against" the referendum.

TUSIAD's position at the time was that Turkey needed a brand new constitution -- not simply a series of amendments designed to benefit the AKP. It should be remembered here that the amendments in 2010 were largely aimed to break the old establishment's hand on the judiciary, and in many ways, have since allowed the government to exert increased control of the organization. I know several Turks who opted to boycott or vote no against the referendum given these remarks and others like them. The latest set of exchanges is but a continuation of what has become prime minister's increasingly hostile stance toward the organization. More evidence of a rift between the AKP and TUSIAD emerged this week when news broke that a joint panel the two were planning to hold this month in Mardin had been cancelled.

And so what of the rhetoric of elimination? It is curious that Erdogan used this word when it also is the main accusation launched by Kurdish nationalists against the government -- they claim the government is trying to eliminate them, too. If the AKP respects these views, why the rhetoric? Is it mere populism against organizations like TUSIAD that are perceived by some AKP supporters as "elite"? Is it the prime minister's well-known tendency for rhetorical lavishes, and what many consider to be his quick temper? The government is clearly not intent to eliminate TUSIAD, but will it respect the organization and value its opinions? Most are not holding their breath.

The new film Fetih: 1453, which depicts the Ottoman conquest of Istanbul, has been used in the past two weeks as political capital against what Erdogan's critics receive is his sultan-like attitude toward politics. In the past couple weeks, videos have been circulating on YouTube and elsewhere of the film's caricature of Fatih Sultan Mehmet, the great Ottoman conqueror, juxtaposed with Erdogan (like this one). And while sultanism is in no way unique to Turkey or to the AKP in Turkey (the country's history of political leadership is a great testament to the truth of Lord Acton's famous axiom), the sheer number and intensity of these criticism and others like them represent a shift in how those fifty percent whom Erdogan and the AKP do not represent (see my election analysis) are increasingly alienated and wary at the prospect of the AKP's seeming strict majoritarian conception of democracy.

Some AKP politicians, including Erdogan, often seem baffled by this. Are they not democratizing the country? Have they not led the country's economy to be one of the strongest in Europe and the Middle East? Is Turkey not a great success story to be modeled elsewhere in the world? One might expect these party officials to bow down in gratitude to Erdogan as Orthodox Greeks do to Fatih Sultan Mehmet in 1453.

Such disbelief is not altogether uncommon for politicians who, often well-intentioned, place ends over means, and arrogantly, if not condescendingly, approach politics as if they know what is best for the direction of the country they govern and the citizens therein. But there is no such ijtihad. The prime minister and other AKP officials, not to mention those in opposition parties (which have their own democratic deficits and sultanist legacies!), represent the people -- they are not elected to tell the people what is best for them, or so says many of the criticisms launched against the party.

Yet the AKP and its dominant narrative of conquest and victimage (see past post) continues. Too often not only Prime Minister Erdogan, but all Turkish politicians, seem like great figures on a stage, players in some great drama that ordinary Turks simply sit back and watch. But real democratic politics, while perhaps dramatic as Burke argues, involve the citizens, too -- the citizens are players, too (not mere spectators), there is no director, and most importantly, no one gets to call places. No one can simply be eliminated.


(Note: An incomplete, draft version of this post appeared earlier today when I accidentally hit "Publish" instead of "Save Draft." Hopefully this complete version reads better, and makes a bit more sense.)


UPDATE I (3/8) -- Hurriyet Daily News columnist Gila Benmayor offers a bit more perspective on the recent clash between TUSIAD and the government, as well as criticism of the government's rushed attempt at this bill. As Benmayor argues, this is once again another example of the government pushing through massive reform packages with little consultation of civil society, especially civil society groups with whom it disagrees. The education package has now also lost the support of the Education Reform Initiative (ERG), which again, is not a Kemalist organization diametrically opposed to the AKP, but a moderate/reformist group that adopts a practical and non-ideological approach to the potential harms of the proposed legislation.

Religious Education and 4+4+4

PHOTO from Birgun

Fast approaching the anniversary of the Feb. 28 process, or the 1997 "postmodern coup" that brought about the fall of the Islamist Refah government and a slate of reforms to defend secularism against what was perceived by some as the encroaching threat posed by political Islam, the government has announced plans to restructure Turkish education.

Reforms include provisions that would allow school children to receive education at religious (imam-hatip) high schools after completing four years of primary education or pursue distance learning (essentially "home school") courses. At the moment, students are required to complete eight years of education before being allowed to complete the final four years at imam-hatip, which combine traditional and religious education. Under the new law, education would be structured into three four-year segments: four years primary (ilk), four years middle (orta), and four years high school (lise), and hence the 4+4+4. The government is arguing the new law is an improvement since all 12 years will be mandatory even if it is to be completed at home.

The problems with the law should be apparent, and late this week earned the denunciation of the Turkish Businessmen and Industrialists' Association (TUSIAD) and prominent opinion leader and entrepreneur Guler Sabanci. In rural areas, particularly in the east and southeast where children, particularly girls, already do not go to school, the law would greatly diminish educational standards. Parents in these areas are often not well-educated themselves (this is an understatement), and would not be capable of providing a quality education. Further, child labor is a tremendous problem (see past post) and girls are frequently kept at home (for more on this, see past post; see also the above advertisement from a 2010 campaign launched by Milliyet urging fathers to send their daughters to school).

The proposed law also allows for provision that would reduce the age of apprenticeship to 11, though it is still unclear to me as to how an apprenticeship works. (Is it pursued concurrent with other curriculum? Does it allow one to withdraw from school entirely? Would this possibly trigger more child labor?) The apprenticeship is also chief among TUSIAD's concerns (for more, click here).

On Wednesday, the parliament sub-commission for education took up the bill after a debate by a wider debate by a larger commission. Though the AKP has been sensitive to criticisms coming from groups such as TUSIAD and has expressed some willingness to compromise, it is unclear just how many of the proposed provisions could be made law. The sub-commission is scheduled to take the draft up once more on Feb. 28 after some tweaking from party officials. For an account in English, click here.

Cumhuriyet columnist Utku Cakirozer frames the recent move within the context of the Feb. 28 process. Cakirozer refers to measures put into play soon after the coup that required all students to attend eight years of primary education (from five to eight) before dropping out or enrolling in imam-hatip. The generals also restricted Koran courses. Students were not allowed to enroll in Koran courses until after their fifth year of school, and courses were subject to inspection by the Directorate of Religious Affairs, or Diyanet. Penalties, including prison sentences for parents who did not send their children to schools or sent their children to Koran courses before they were old enough. In addition, operators of illegal Koran courses were also subject to penalties.

Gradually, the AKP government has whittled away at what some might read as particularly intrusive restrictions, particularly on religious education. In 2003, prison sentences were replaced with fines; in 2004, parliament reduced the sentence for running an illegal Koran course from three years to one and ended and authorities ceased closing down illegal courses; in 2005, the Diyanet ceased inspecting Koran courses; and after last June's elections, the minimum age for Koran courses was eliminated. According to Cakirozer, the goal is now to do away with the eight-year rule for uninterrupted education.


As it inevitably does, the headscarf also falls into the debate. As Cakirozer points out, young girls wearing the headscarf (as young as fifth grade) will now be allowed to do so at imam-hatip, effectively ending the ban. I care more about the fact that these children will simply not receive the same quality of education as I do about an effective end to the ban after that age (the ban was one of the reasons driving the government to do this to begin with), but it is important to note that is also important for many critics of the new law (for another example, see this coverage from Hurriyet).

Other columnists and opinion leaders see the law as a broad-based effort to increase the influence of Islamist education, particularly imam-hatip and Koran courses. For an example, see Egitim-Is head Veli Demir's comments in Melih Asik's column in Milliyet.


UPDATE I (2/27) -- Nicole Pope's column in Today's Zaman offers a solid English-language analysis summing up the threat the proposed law poses to Turkish education.

The Headscarf and Women's Employment

The Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation (TESEV) has released a new study authored by Dilek Cindoglu and Ebru Ilhan documenting discrimation faced by female employees wearing the headscarf. Bianet gives a summary of the results:

* According to research conducted by KONDA and MetroPOLL in 2008, 71-72 percent of all women cover their head, while only eleven percent of female university graduates wear headscarves. A study by World Bank and the State Planning Organization revealed that these women's participation in labour dropped from 50 percent in 1998 to 35 percent in 2006.

* The two working areas in which women are represented the most are as unpaid family workers in agriculture and as trained professionals.

* The women wearing headscarves at university are not a homogenous group. Religious affiliations of these women differ as well as their level of political interest, adoption and level of traditional values, the level of individual religiosity and their economic and social capital.

* The headscarf ban is the most basic field of conflict for young professionally trained women with headscarves.

* Wearing a headscarf at work is part of these professional women's religiosity and individuality. They are respected by their colleagues and especially by men in lower positions. The headscarf makes them feel safer on the street and at work.

* When women wearing headscarves have to include a photograph in their CV, they are more likely to face difficulty related to salary policies or when they are made redundant. They hear things such as "It is anyway a blessing to work here" or "You do not have to financially support a family", respectively.

* Employers want women wearing headscarves to be 'invisible'. They should either be 'invisible', take off their headscarf or should not publicly represent the company. This means that they are not participating in meeting with clients or in training courses and that they are kept away from work related to state offices.

* Employers focus on traditional patriarchal patterns thinking that even though the woman is working, she does not actually have to support the family. This way, employment of women wearing headscarves is being marginalized.

* Women wearing a headscarf in business perceive that they experience discrimination and obstructions almost entirely by reason of their "headscarf".

See also this report from Hurriyet Daily News that includes pieces of an interview with Cindoglu.
The headscarf has long been seen as an obstacle to women's employment, though camps on both sides of the issue face the issue differently. Pro-headscarf advocates argue that limitations on headscarved women entering university poses a serious hindrance to their position in higher-level unemployment, and that once out of university, women continue to face discrimination, and often, outright ridicule. Proponents of restrictions on headscarves, including some women's rights groups, argue the headscarf is a function of conservative, patriarchal attitudes, and that frequently it is the attitudes of headscarved women's families, most importantly, their husbands, that keep them out of the workplace.

This study very much disputes this notion in documenting cases where women choose to work, and in many cases, where their employment is necessary to the livelihood of their family.

Keeping Daughters (and Sons) In School

A recent report put out by the Education Reform Initative takes a look at the nubmer of children who either do not go to school or do not go onto receive a seconday education. As expected, the document confirms that the percentage of girls not in school is much higher than that of boys, though the number not attending seconday school is quite high for both groups. Bianet summarizes the report's findings:

* In the age group of 15-19-year-olds, 26 percent of the boys and 50 percent of the girls neither are going to school nor to work. In international comparison, this ratio amounts to 8, respectively 9 percent in other OECD countries.

* Access to secondary education is dependent on significant regional disparities. 78 percent of the 14-17-year-olds are enrolled in high school in the Southern Marmara region, whereas this ratio reaches a mere 44 percent only in the South-East of the country.

* Also the parents' education level is an important influence: 17 percent of daughters of illiterate fathers and 94 percent of the daughters of university graduates go to a secondary school.

* 15 percent of all male high school students enrolled in the academic year of 2008/2009 dropped out of school. The proportion rises to 23 percent at vocational schools.

* A total of 360,000 students dropped out of high school in 2008/2009. Considering the number of school days, more than 2,000 students dropped out of school every day.

* In 2009, the per capita expenditure for secondary education amounted to TL 2,273 (€ 1,136), the figure for vocational and technical schools lay at TL 2,937 (€ 1,558) per student. For 2010, the budget is planned at TL 2,051 and TL 2,188 respectively. The reduction stems from increasing secondary education to four years and trying to make it more prevalent without allocating sufficient resources.

* Per capita expenditures for students significantly vary among different provinces: Public spending on secondary education per student in 2009 amounted to TL 1,379 (€ 690) in Istanbul and TL 3,508 (€ 1,754) in Amasya (northern Anatolia).

* In comparison to the previous year, 175,000 more children benefited from pre-school education in 2010. Three out of five 20-72-month-old children were enrolled.

Many families do not simply refuse to send their daughters or sons to schools because they see it as unnecessary, but because the children's labor is viewed as necessary for the family's sustenance. Too often, I suspect it is the daughters that make the biggest sacrifice in this regard. Interesting here also are the regional disparites in terms of the total amount spent on each student.

For a video from a campaign the Turkish daily Milliyet recently did to encourage families to send their daughters to school, click here.

Another Portrait of Abdullah Demirbas

Abdullah Demirbas, Mayor of Diyarbakir's Surici municipality

Writing for the Middle East Information Project's Middle East Report Online, Oxford University Professor Kerem Oktem produced an insightful profile last fall of Abdullah Demirbas, the BDP mayor of Diyarbakir's Surici municipality. From Oktem:

Abdullah Demirbaş is the mayor of Suriçi, a district of Diyarbakır. With more than 600,000 inhabitants, many of them war refugees, Diyarbakır is the political and cultural center of Turkey’s troubled southeastern provinces. The district comprises the entirety of the old walled city; hence its name in Turkish, Suriçi, which translates literally as intra muros.

Suriçi is the historical heart of Diyarbakır and the repository of its multicultural past, with once substantial Armenian, Syrian Orthodox and Jewish communities whose presence, if largely diminished, lasted well into the 1980s. Yet it is also a particularly disadvantaged part of the city, as it was a gateway for tens of thousands of refugees who lost their homes and livelihoods during the hottest years of armed conflict between the Turkish army and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in the 1990s

Today, the middle classes have all but left the old town. The vast majority of the district’s residents are recent immigrants from the countryside with few or no skills for the urban job market. Elderly women in particular speak only Kurdish, and the dirt-strewn alleyways resound with the rural dialects of Kurmanchi and Zazaki.

. . . .

The space for Kurdish politics in Turkey has always been constricted by an unsympathetic state and zealous judges who seek to ban every party that explicitly refers to Kurdish identity. The space is also contested by the more maximalist PKK and its supporters and by radical Islamist groupings such as the Kurdish Hizbullah. DTP mayors are often torn between the realities of urban politics in Turkey and the nationalist demands of the PKK. Myriads of court cases are brought against them, often by the Ministry of Interior, and the central state skimps on public services in their districts. Yet many also succeed in carving out spaces of resistance, where they establish and make visible a distinctly Kurdish and left-wing political discourse. Such is the case with the newly opened Mehmet Uzun Library, named after the leading Kurdish contemporary novelist. Abdullah Demirbaş and Osman Baydemir, mayor of metropolitan Diyarbakır, are two of the most prominent of these officials.

Demirbaş was also the first mayor to introduce Kurdish as a formal working language of the municipal administration, honoring the inhabitants who speak little or no Turkish. He had tourist brochures published in Kurdish, as well as in Armenian, Syriac and Arabic. Because of these bold steps, he was deposed after an Interior Ministry inquiry in 2008. He was, however, reelected in April 2009. The cases against him have not abated and once again, he faces removal from office, and even imprisonment for his project of “multilingual municipality services” and support for the advancement of Kurdish culture.

For the full piece, click here. For an earlier profile of Demirbas by Meline Toumani that ran in the New York Times in February 2008, click here.

Council of State Concludes Coefficient Dispute (For the Moment)

From Today's Zaman:

The Council of State rejected an appeal yesterday for the annulment of the Higher Education Board’s (YÖK) recent decision to change a system that uses a lower coefficient to calculate the university admission examination scores of graduates of vocational high schools.

The 8th Chamber of the Council of State, which had rejected YÖK’s previous attempts to end the lower coefficient system, this time ruled in favor of the latest change proposed by YÖK, which is supposed to make it difficult, but not impossible, for students to pursue an area of study that differs from their vocational training.

The coefficients previously employed were 0.3 and 0.5, putting vocational school graduates at a significant disadvantage when they tried to pursue other fields.

YÖK previously attempted to reduce the difference in the university entrance exam score coefficients used for regular and vocational high school graduates. After a series of decisions were blocked by the Council of State, YÖK decided on March 17 that the new coefficients would be 0.12 and 0.15 instead of the previously proposed 0.13 and 0.15. With the court’s decision, new coefficients will apply in this year’s university entrance exam.

For more background, see this more in-depth article from Today's Zaman's Sule Kulu. See also Feb. 10 post.

"The Rabbi of Jews in Turkey" and Combating Anti-Semitism

Rabbi Isak Haleva

From the JC.com:

The Turkish Chief Rabbi, Isak Haleva, has complained to the government after it stalled for months on authorising elections for a new holder of the office.

Rabbi Haleva's seven-year term of office expired last autumn, but elections could not be held because of a row between the Turkish authorities and the community over the official title of the post.

The authorities refused, for reasons that were never explained, to allow the next holder of the post to be called "Chief rabbi of Turkey", and insisted instead on simply "Chief rabbi".

A compromise was eventually reached in which the post-holder would be called "Chief rabbi of Turkish Jews", and a letter was sent allowing the Jewish community to go ahead with the election. A vote should take place shortly, with Rabbi Haleva widely expected to win a second term.

Liberal Turkish paper Milliyet reported that the row was part of a wider governmental strategy to stop non-Muslim communities appointing leaders and force all minority faiths to appoint one joint representative.

Rabbi Haleva made the complaint to the government during a meeting with the Turkish Minister for EU Affairs and Chief Negotiator Egemen Bagis about the problems of non-Muslim communities in the country.

The meeting was also attended by Greek, Armenian and other religious leaders.

Other issues he raised include the legal ban on Jewish and other minority schools admitting students of foreign nationality.

The Jewish High School in Istanbul, like the Greek and Armenian schools, cannot admit students who hold foreign citizenship, including Israelis.

He also asked the government to consider including provisions in the penal code to justify legal action against antisemitic material in the press, a particular problem in some pro-Islamist publications.

The official view over complaints about antisemitic articles in the past has been that there is no legal basis for legal action.

Jews in Turkey are an officially recognized minority under the Lausanne Treaty, and the United States Department of State's International Religious Freedom Report estimates their number at 23,000. Anti-Semitism in Turkey has been rising since Israel's invasion of Lebanon in the summer of 2006, and took a dramatic turn for the worse following Israel's invasion of Gaza in December 2008. Anti-Semitic comments, as the JC.com article notes, are common in Islamist newspapers and the political rhetoric of religiously conservative parties.

The Council of State and Coefficient Reform

The 8th Council Chamber of State has again ruled against reform that would make it easier for graduates from imam-hatip schools to enter universities. These schools are theological, but also have curriculum equivalent to that at Turkish public schools.

Following the infamous Feb. 28 process, which is considered by many Turkey's "postmodern coup," measures were put in place to curb the influence of imam-hatip, including the now contested the lower coefficient applied to the scores imam-hatip students receive on the Student Selection Examination (ÖSS). The lower coefficient places these students in the same field as those graduating from vocational schools, significantly reducing their chances of entering public universities.

In July, the Higher Education Council (YÖK) eliminated the lower co-efficients altogether. However, in December, the 8th Chamber of the Council of State reversed the YÖK policy change following an application from the Istanbul Bar Association. YÖK then moved to reduce the difference in the coefficients, the change again affecting both imam-hatip and vocational students. It is this most recent reform that the Council annulled.

Some Turks see the coefficient system as inherently unjust, discriminating against students who receive the same education yet are treated differents in the university admissions process (for example, see news coverage from Today's Zaman and this column from Fatma Sisli Zibak.) Yet, other Turks fear overhauling the coefficient system would result in a flood of religiously-oriented imam-hatip students entering university, and thus the state establishment.

For more on mam-hatip schools, see TESEV's 2004 report, "Imam Hatip Liseleri: Efsaneler ve Gercekler" (Imam Hatip Schools: Myths and Realities). Some of the report is in English, and gives a history of imam-hatip schools, as well as explains their popularity, explores attitudes of their students, and discusses their relationship with public universities.

UPDATE I (2/20) -- A student from Konya has applied to the European Court of Human Rights. The ECHR has affirmed Turkey's headscarf ban, though this is a different issue entirely. Not to politicize th ECHR, but a ruling in favor of the student and against the coefficient system here could help the image of the Court and Europeaniation in the eyes of religious Muslims who used to be more inclined to see Europeanization as a means to protect "their" rights against a "secular" state. As always, more details on the boy's human rights complaint and the legal grounds for bringing it here are appreciated.

Victory for Graduates of Imam-Hatip Schools

From Jenny White at Kamil Pasha:

Graduates of theological high schools and other vocational schools will now be able to enter college on the same basis as graduates of academic high schools. On Tuesday, the Higher Education Board’s (YÖK) General Council abolished the system of using a lower coefficient to calculate the university admission examination (Student Selection Examination [ÖSS]) scores of graduates of vocational high schools. Entrance to a college and field of study is decided exclusively by the student’s score in a single nation-wide exam, leading to an entire separate industry of private cram schools that remains unaffected by this ruling. In the old YÖK system, graduates of vocational high schools had points deducted from their admission scores when they applied to a university department unrelated to their curriculum. This system made it more difficult, for instance, for an imam-hatip high school graduate to gain entrance to medical school than a student from a normal high school with the same ÖSS score.

Professor White goes on to explain the formation of imam-hatip schools and the lower co-efficients, as well as to note that the reform will have little impact on türban-wearing women whom are restricted from entering public universities. For coverage from Today's Zaman, which has a pro-headscarf perspective, click here.

Virginity Tests Discriminate Against Female Students

From Bianet:

Virginity tests are back. Lawyer Yasemin Öz and President of the Education and Science Workers Union (Eğitim-Sen) Zübeyde Kılıç think this practice victimizes the girls and the female students.

A principle of a dormitory forced a father to get a virginity report for her daughter C.G. who is a university student (18 years old) in Avcılar Istanbul. The incident happened when the principle of the dormitory where the said university student was staying called her father and told him that he should come and get her daughter, on the grounds that the reddish marks around her face and neck were obvious signs of a sexual relationship. The father had to come and take two virginity reports for her daughter from two different hospitals. The father said he was going to file a complaint.

A similar incident took place in another private student dormitory in Beşiktaş, Istanbul, when an official from the District Education Board visited the dorm. Thirty girls were picked randomly by the official and asked questions regarding the dormitory, if there were pregnant girls, if they were drinking, getting drunk and yelling on the streets, and if boys were coming to the dormitory.

For full story, click here.

Gül Takes EU Lead on University Reform

From TDN:

The appointment of university rectors leads to serious problems in universities and should not be the responsibility of Turkey's president, President Abdullah Gül said yesterday.

Gül's remarks came at a meeting in Ankara yesterday to discuss issues in higher education. The meeting was hosted by the Turkish Industrialists' and Businessmen's Association, or TÜSİAD.

Speaking at the event, Gül said he was dissatisfied that universities' appointment of rectors had become the business of the nation.

“The issue of rector appointments should be revisited. It creates deep problems in the universities. It is not how these issues are handled in the most developed countries and universities. Such issues shouldn't be left to the authorization of the president,” he said. “I would like to state that I am ready to turn over these appointments to more appropriate institution.”

. . . .

Gül pointed to the importance of cooperation with leading universities around the world, especially those in the European Union, in order to reorganize Turkish universities. The education standards of the EU should be adapted to the Turkish education and university system, Gül said.

Gül further said universities could benefit from EU funds for scientific research and Turkish universities should be integrated with European universities in many senses.

For full article, click here. For more on the rectors polemic, see August 9 post.

Contestation In Public Education

President Gül recently appointed new rectors to 21 universities and did so on apparently political grounds. Although the president has the authority to choose rectors from among a list given to him by the Higher Education Counicl (YÖK), Gül is being criticized on grounds that his selections were political. Rectors at public universities are chosen in a three-step process. First, the university prepares a list of six potential candidates who are elected--and ranked accordingly--by faculty vote. Second, YÖK narrows this list to three candidates by eliminating half of the candidates on the list. In the last phase, the president determines the rector from the list of the final three candidates supplied by YÖK. The criticism of Gül follows his selection of candidates that were not opposed to lifting the headscarf ban in universities earlier this year. Out of the 21 rectors chosen, Gül refused to appoint nine of the 21 top candidates chosen by universities and later approved by YÖK. YÖK, now chaired by Gül appointee Professor Yusuf Ziya Özcan, is also being criticized for removing three universities' first picks from the lists that were sent to Gül.

The charges of politics are familiar and are, of course, particularly fervent since they occur in the area of education--one of the most contested areas of public life. As political sociologist Berna Turam has written, contestations over education are especially fervent and numerous insomuch as what Turks are really debating is "the future direction of the Turkish Republic. The Turkish state, like many other centralized states, is indeed institutionally unified. However, it is a "unified disunity" to use [Joel] Migdal's term" (Turam, Between Islam and the State: The Politics of Engagement (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2007), 87-88). This "unified disunity" places great stress on the Turkish state since it is easily pulled in different directions. As the state accommodates an increased number of conflicting interests, and in Turkey's case, possibly worldviews, the social actors who were once in conflict become state actors in conflict. As Turam further quotes Migdal, as various actors are incorporated into the state, if those actors are opposed to the status quo, what is likely to develop is a game of push and pull between the new and old actors that will alter the social and ideological underpinnings of the state. However, as Turam dismisses the fears of "hardcore secularists" as unjustified, arguing instead that such contestations are "organic extensions of a transition from authoritarian rule," it seems that the degree to which both sides--not just the established Kemalist class--are willing to work together "will determine the limits of cultural diversity and political pluralism in Turkey." If Turkish politics becomes reduced to factions in which one side shamelessly promotes its interests and ideas over that of the other with no real dialogue or desire to compromise existent between the two, the balance between cohesion and disunity that Turam lays out will surely tip in favor of disunity and therefore reduce democratic possibilities.

Instead of such fights over appointments, analysts on both sides of the aisle have suggested that the president's appointment of university rectors unnecessarily entangles universities in state politics and sets up state educational insitution's to become political fighting grounds (see the columns of Yusuf Kanlı and Fatma Dişli, the latter of whom seems to think wise the recommendations of Milliyet's Fikret Bila). While the entanglement of higher education institutions in high state politics is unavoidable to some degree, the suggested decentralization of state involvement in university governance might indeed bring welcome relief to stress that almost reached a breaking point earlier this month, especially as I am not at all convinced that contestations in the area of university appointments can be dismissed as a benign and ordinary part of transition from authoritarian rule.

History as Ideology

In recent months, I have been struck by how little many Turks know about Ottoman history. Most of the Turks with whom I am in contact tend to hale from more "Kemalist" families and are the products of an educational system that tends to place republican history over Ottoman history. For those who might not be aware of the difference, republican history can be said to start with the Turkish war for independence from those European empires who desired to see Anatolia divided as spoils in the aftermath of World War I. Of course, the most critical figure in republican history is Atatürk, who as founder of the republic, built the nation-state that was to become the Republic of Turkey. While learning republican history is no doubt critical to the education of future Turkish citizens, Ottoman history is largely undermined in the Turkish educational system. This is not to say that young Turks do not learn about the Ottoman Empire or that educators should spend more time on the Ottoman history than that of the Turkish republic. However, it is to say that there is a deficit in the teaching of Ottoman history and this shortcoming is no doubt partly motivated by ideology.

It is in this context that Abdullah Gül's appointment of Professor Ali Birinci to head the Turkish Historical Association (TTK) is controversial. Unlike his predecessor, Professor Yusuf Halacoğlu, Birinci is not a staunch Kemalist of the old variety, but rather is known for his critical opinions. Most polemical is his working friendship and support of colleague Atilla Yayla, who was recently found guilty of insulting Atatürk when he criticized Kemalism and intimated that it was backward to have so many pictures of Atatürk on display.

When Atatürk founded the Turkish Republic out of the ruins of the Ottoman Empire, he was left largely with Anatolia, the traditional Turkish heartland a large swath of which had been traditionally ignored by the Ottomans. However, before Atatürk, when the Ottomans were ruling from Topkapı, and later Dolmabahçe, most sultans spent their time looking toward the Balkans. The lands to the west, to which some Turks still refer as Rumeli ("Land of the Romans"), were the center of Ottoman focus--the pride of the Ottoman Empire outside İstanbul, largely regarded as the jewel in the center. However, as the "Sick Man of Europe" entered decline in the nineteenth-century, these treasured lands were largely dwindled by Ottoman failures at the hands of the fast-emerging European empires of the nineteenth-century. By the time World War I came and the Ottomans made the catastrophic choice of allying with Germany, the Ottomans realized they were fighting for survival. Already faced with the ideological challenge of the Young Turks, of whom Atatürk was a member, the conclusion of World War I called for a new ideology by which to unite Anatolia. As the Turkish heartland of the vanquished Ottoman Empire, Atatürk imposed the European ideology of the nation-state and built a country among the largely Turkish-speaking peoples which would soon be asked to rise to their new position of citizens of the young republic.

As a Young Turk, Atatürk had decried Ottoman failures to keep pace with European technological developments as the result of the Ottoman's outdated politics. Since its founding, the main source of identity in the Ottoman Empire had been that of religion. While the Ottomans established zones of religious freedom and tolerance within their imperial rule, these zones were predicated on religious identity. Called millet, the Ottomans granted legal recognition to a variety of religious communities, including Greek Christians, Armenian Christians, and Jews. Although millet is translated in modern Turkish as "nation," under the Ottomans the idea was quite different. The Muslim majority did not belong to a millet, but as Ottoman historian Norman Itkowitz elucidates, existed as the community of the Prophet, the umma as described by Islamic political theory. While members of the umma were regarded as Muslims, they were not necessarily regarded as Ottomans. As Itzkowitz further explains, Ottoman identity was something to be attained through climbing the stratified ranks of the landowner class. Thus, citizenship and identity in the Ottoman Empire can hardly be said to be pluralistic, as some Turks nostalgic of Ottoman history have told me, and modern political terms simply do not make sense when describing Ottoman realities. In marked contrast, Atatürk--and the Young Turks who came to power in the oft-ignored coup of 1913--sought to replace Ottoman notions of political identity and citizenship with conceptions that had been developed in Europe and that were quite outside Ottoman or Islamic experiences. While there is a dearth of research about the continuities between Young Turk/CUP ideology and Kemalism, it can be said simply that the state Atatürk built was quite radical insomuch as it forced a modern nation-state model on a society to which the idea of ethnic nationalism was quite foreign. The social engineering in which Atatürk engaged to make this possible is that extant in the Turkish educational system today, and it is also a reason why education is perhaps the most critical battleground to be drawn between the Kemalists of the "secular" old guard and the emergent political Islamists. Atatürk's abhorrence for the Ottoman-style of governance is reason for why so many Turks who are my age have little knowledge about Ottoman history.

In contrast, if I have questions or want to talk about Ottoman history, there are a few individuals to whom I know I can turn and it is little coincidence that many of these people are more sympathetic to political Islam and AKP. I must also say that some of the friends I have met here who are well-versed in Ottoman history are not necessarily sympathetic to political Islam or AKP, but at the same time, would not call themselves "Kemalists" or adopt the Manicheanism typical of leaders like Deniz Baykal. While they might dislike the "green capitalism" of AKP and Islamic leaders like Fethullah Gülen, find the radicalism of the Nur movement and older Islamic leaders like Erbakan off-putting, and be flatly opposed to any kind of Islamic governance, they are usually interested in Islam's religious values and are quite comfortable with using Islam as a source for political guidance. For many of those Turks who are proponents of AKP and a greater role for Islam in politics, many do indeed turn to examples of Ottoman greatness for examples of how an Islamic society can achieve parallel success. Despite that many of their analogies are sometimes more than a bit overdrawn, many Turks are coming to be interested in Ottoman history both for its own sake and for the exemplary value knowledge of Ottoman governance might have in generating arguments that challenge the status quo.

Gareth Jenkins discusses this dynamic and to what historian Andrew Mango has referred as the new "Ottoman nostalgia" in his recent article in the Eurasia Daily Monitor:

In recent years, the long-running struggle between the government of the moderate Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP) and Turkey’s secular establishment has tended only to attract international attention when there has been a major public confrontation, such as the AKP’s ultimately successful attempt to appoint Gul to the presidency in 2007 and, more recently, the closure case against the AKP itself (see EDM, July 31).

Such major confrontations are important indicators of a continuing shift in power in Turkey. In the long-run, however, the more decisive struggle is probably occurring on the margins of the political process, as the AKP gradually entrenches both its supporters and its ideology in the state apparatus, by means such as the appointment of its supporters to key positions in the bureaucracy.

The TTK was established by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk (1881-1938), who founded the modern Turkish Republic in 1923 from the rump of the Ottoman Empire following the latter’s defeat in World War I. Ataturk sought to create a Turkish nation state. At the time, outside the empire’s tiny educated elite, there was little sense, or even awareness, of a “national identity.” Under the Ottomans, the primary determinant of identity had been religion, which for the majority of the population meant Islam. Ataturk associated the Ottoman Empire with obscurantism and regarded Islam as one of the most important reasons for its failure to match the pace of technological and intellectual development in the West. The TTK’s main purpose was to create an historical pedigree for a new secular nation-state, which would be based on language and race. The TTK wrote a new history, in which the Turks’ origins were projected back beyond the Ottoman Empire to the nomads of Central Asia. Over the years that have followed, the TTK has remained the custodian of official Turkish history and one of the main ideological bastions of the secular state.

The attitude of the secular establishment to the Ottoman Empire can be seen clearly on the website of the Turkish military, which has always regarded itself as the guardian of Ataturk’s legacy, known as Kemalism. Although the Ottoman Empire lasted for 600 years, only one of the 13 “Important Days in Turkish History” listed on the website of the Turkish General Staff is from before World War One (for reasons that remain obscure, the day is the anniversary of the conquest of the island of Rhodes). The majority are associated with Ataturk’s life (Turkish General Staff website, www.tsk.mil.tr).

In contrast, Turkey’s Islamists have always been unabashed Ottoman nostalgists. Although it has not yet dared to confront the personality cult that grew up around Ataturk after his death, including the compulsory inculcation of his teachings at every level of the educational system, the AKP has certainly been less vigorous than previous administrations in terms of promoting it.

In recent years, there has also been a noticeable shift in the historical reference points in official statements, ceremonies and speeches. Before the AKP came to power, the reference point was invariably a quotation from Ataturk or an event from his life. Now it is increasingly the Ottoman Empire. The change has been most marked at the local level. For example, ever since pro-Islamic political parties first took control of the Istanbul Municipality in 1994, the Ottoman conquest of the city in 1453 has been celebrated with increasing enthusiasm each year. Conferences and symposia on Ottoman themes have proliferated, and large budgets been assigned to the preservation and restoration of the city’s Ottoman, particularly religious, architectural heritage. Tulip festivals, including the planting of three million bulbs across the city, are now held each spring to commemorate the “Tulip Era” of the early 18th century. The municipality has even begun to use Ottoman vocabulary and grammatical constructions on billboards.

This Ottoman nostalgia has always been extremely strong among followers of the Islamic preacher Fethullah Gulen (born in 1941), who is currently in exile in the United States. Gulen has long portrayed the Ottoman Empire as a paradigm of religious tolerance and social harmony, although the historical record would appear to indicate otherwise. Over the last decade, the Gulen movement has grown rapidly to become the most powerful non-governmental network in Turkey, which includes media outlets, schools, universities, businesses and charitable foundations. It has also established increasingly close ties with the AKP. Several ministers and many AKP parliamentary deputies are known to be Gulen sympathizers.

Although he had often courted controversy through his aggressive denial that the treatment of the Armenians in the late Ottoman Empire constituted genocide, Halacoglu was undoubtedly committed to Ataturk’s ideological legacy. In contrast, Ali Birinci is known to be very close to the Gulen movement and has played an active role in several of its NGOs. He first came to prominence in 2006 when he publicly supported another pro-AKP academic, Professor Atilla Yayla, who described Kemalism as taking Turkey “much further backward than forward” and, in a reference to the Ataturk personality cult, asked “why are there pictures of this man everywhere?” (Vatan, July 25).

As a result, the replacement of Halacoglu with Birinci will undoubtedly be regarded by many secularists in Turkey not merely as a bureaucratic appointment but as another indication of creeping regime change.

For one of the most recent examples of this "Ottoman nostalgia," see Sabancı University's creation of grants for the study of Ottoman heritage.

Education in the Turkish Republic

Not having grown up in the Turkish educational system, I can say little about the many claims I have heard asserting that Turkish education discourages critical thinking. The general characterizations of Turkish education are centered on its use of rote learning and rigid demands for factual regurgitation. Many Turks my age have told me that public education even at the university level largely conists of memorizing great amounts of material and being able to spit out the information you were given on highly-weighted exams. Mustafa Akyol touches on some of these claims in what is a very polemical column in today's Turkish Daily News.

WHY MOST 'EDUCATED' TURKS ARE HOPELESSLY ILLIBERAL?—Mustafa Akyol

One of the great benefits of Turkey’s EU adventure is that it unveils some crucial yet often unnoticed facts about this country. Thanks to the accession process, Europeans are taking a closer look at Turkish society, and realizing who is really who in this very complex and often confusing nation.

One particular discovery of Europeans has been that the secularist Turkish elite is not sharing some of their fundamental values, such as democracy and individual freedom. These European-looking Turks are also quite militarist and nationalist according to Western standards.

The curious point is that this illiberal elite of Turkey is also the relatively better educated part of the society. The Republican People’s Party (CHP) is often the political choice of such Turks, and, interestingly enough, study after study shows that the CHP gets tons of votes from university graduates and urban professionals. The incumbent AKP (Justice and Development Party), on the other hand, whose political base is relatively less “educated,” is less nationalist and more pro-EU.

Why is that? Or, why, one might ask, are educated Turks more close-minded?

Indoctrination via education:

To find the answer, you need to realize what “education” really means in the Turkish context.

It actually means indoctrination. In others words, the education system is not designed to raise individuals who believe in democracy, freedom, pluralism or critical thinking. It is rather designed to inculcate all students with the “state ideology.”

Just spend some time in a Turkish primary or high school, and you will see what I mean. Students start and end every week by swearing an oath of allegiance to Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, around whom our state ideology has built a cult of personality. “O mighty Atatürk who has given us this day,” all students recite, “I swear that I will walk relentlessly on your path.” The oath ends with a collectivist promise of sacrifice: “Let my existence be a gift to Turkish existence!”

The education system, which constantly praises the “Turkish existence,” curiously says nothing about the existence of other ethnic identities in Turkey. The society is portrayed as a homogenous entity. The Kurds and other groups are never mentioned, and when you finish your education, you simply know nothing about them.

Ah, sorry, actually the term “Kurd” exists in Turkish textbooks at least only once: You are told about the Kürt Teali Cemiyeti (Society for the Advancement of Kurdistan), which, supposedly, collaborated with our enemies during the War of Liberation. So, when you graduate from high school, the only image you have in mind about Kurds is that they are a shadowy group of “traitors.”

Actually the whole education system gives you the impression that everybody except the Kemalists are traitors. The War of Liberation, which was in fact a popular national resistance against occupation, is portrayed as if it were only carried out by the ancestors of today’s CHP. Sufi orders – let alone the Kurds and “the Arabs” – are depicted as internal enemies bought by the British and other allies. This propaganda is carried out by a conventional method: Selective usage of facts. There were just a few Sufi leaders, Kurdish groups or Arab tribes who indeed collaborated with the occupiers. But the students are told only about these ones, not the others who constituted the majority.

The system is very proud of itself. The Ministry of National Education officially notes that its aim is to “raise generations who are loyal to principles and revolutions of Atatürk.” The Higher Education Board (YÖK), which runs all universities, just reiterates the same goal. But among these “principles and revolutions,” concepts such as democracy or individual freedom simply do not exist. You can’t blame Atatürk for that, because in his time, other ideas such as “statism” were popular and he naturally embraced them. Yet, times have changed, whereas the system stays untouched.

The lack of individual freedom as a value in this whole doctrine is really interesting. I actually recall that when I was a kid, I could not make a distinction between the terms “independence” (bağımsızlık) and “freedom” (hürriyet), and rather used them interchangeably. The reason was that the education system had told me that we all became free with the founding of the independent Turkish Republic in 1923. Whether that republic has granted us the citizens freedom was a question that was remarkably ignored. What really mattered was the freedom of our state from foreign powers. Our own freedom was not a value worth mentioning.

Just another brick in the wall:

Now, this is how the Turkish system “educates” its people. Citizens, as Pink Floyd once put it, are supposed to be just another brick in the wall. And many of them do become so. Or at least they carry the traces of the decades-long indoctrination. That's why quite many Turks, who are otherwise smart and reasonable people, will go irrational when you start to question the national myths of nationalism or ultra-secularism.

Of course, there are also many people who have gone outside the box. There are, first of all, the self-declared liberals who have realized that the system is authoritarian and it needs to be liberalized. They are influential, but very tiny. Moreover, other elites, the Kemalist ones, see them as either naïve or treacherous.

The much larger parts of society who have not bought into the Big Lie are those whose very identities were suppressed by it: The conservative Muslims and the Kurds. It is no accident that the political parties which represent these groups, the AKP and the DTP, are much more reformist and pro-EU than others. And, again, it is no accident that these two parties are right now on the death row of the Constitutional Court, whose mission is to protect “the regime.”

One problem with the Kurdish side here, of course, is the terrorism of the PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party), which creates yet another obstacle to democratization. The conservative side, on the other hand, is not only free from such a violent tradition, but is also growingly moderate, democratic and globalist.

Therefore, the only way out for Turkey remains what it has been since the times of Turgut Özal and the first period of the AKP: Liberal democracy promoted by the EU, articulated by the liberals, and supported by the conservatives. Even if the AKP is closed, this momentum will go on under another party. And the Kurds will be much better off if they jump onto this train instead of playing Che Guevara in the mountains of the southeast.

As the potential of the illiberal elite to accept liberal democracy, though, I am not very optimistic. As evidenced by their unbelievably reactionary stance, their minds are just too “educated” to breach.

For more on Turkish education, see Nicole Pope's recent columns in Today's Zaman:

"A Window of Opportunity" (25.3.08)

"Changing Perceptions" (28.3.08)

See also my thoughts last week on political participation (May 13 post).

Opportunities Missed

Demands for more than bananas . . .

From Today's Zaman:

Sezgin Tanrıkulu, the head of the Diyarbakır Bar Association, says a considerable part of the Kurdish population sees armed struggle as legitimate because they think they are excluded from the democratic process.

According to Tanrıkulu, it is possible to change this understanding by taking democratic steps. He and the representatives of 17 civil society organizations from eastern and southeastern Anatolia met with President Abdullah Gül and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to share their views on economic and democratic solutions to Turkey’s Kurdish question last week. At the meeting with Erdoğan, he and Tanrıkulu exchanged harsh words on the subject of education in Kurdish. In an interview with Sunday’s Zaman Tanrıkulu explains the situation in eastern and southeastern Anatolia and his concerns about the possibility of local Turkish-Kurdish clashes.
At your meeting with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan you had a discussion about “mother tongue” education. What do you mean by that?

There are different points about it. “Education in one’s mother tongue” means using the language in all levels of education. But “mother tongue education” means simply to teach this language. Although I defend the right of “education in one’s mother tongue,” under the given circumstances, Turkey can only reach a consensus on “mother tongue education.” But the problem is that now, in Turkey there is categorical objection to all mother tongues except Turkish. The prime minister says only minorities have the right to mother tongue education. [According to law, only non-Muslims are considered minorities in Turkey.]

What is the situation in Turkey now, and what do you want, exactly?

Turkey opened the way for mother tongue education, but only in private courses. Most of these courses have been closed, anyway, because the regulations were restrictive. They were open only for people older than 15, and finding teachers was very difficult. Mother tongue education should be done in all public schools. There should be elective courses in the public schools. We are also asking for the establishment of Kurdish departments and institutions at the universities. Also, all the obstacles and restrictions on broadcasting in languages other than Turkish should be removed. Regarding the broadcasting, there are no legal obstacles, actually. The law indicates that this kind of broadcasting is allowed. But the regulations of the Radio and Television Supreme Council (RTÜK) say that it is done only by the TRT. We opened a court case against this regulation with the Council of State, but our application was rejected on the basis that we didn’t have a right to open such a case.

What exactly happened in the discussion between you and the prime minister?

He said the problem only has an economic aspect. He told us that Kurds can be presidents, prime ministers and deputies. I told him that there is a cultural aspect to the problem, too, and that not just Kurds but anyone in Turkey who feels different should be able to learn, broadcast and get services in his language. Then the prime minister told me that I was wrong and that there is nowhere in the world where this is possible and he gave the example of Germany. But I told him that in Germany it is possible to learn Turkish in schools. He said that in Sweden Turks can learn Turkish only in private courses. I replied by saying that in Sweden it is even possible to learn the Laz language. Then he told me that I was lying, so I left the meeting.

When you are talking about providing public services in the mother tongue, are you suggesting official languages other than Turkish?

There is no discussion about that, and there is no reason for that. There is only one official language of the Turkish Republic, and it is Turkish. The situation of the Diyarbakır Sur Municipality is very dramatic. Their council made a decision to provide some services in Kurdish. The mayor has a court case against him because he published some fliers in Kurdish. This is absurd. If this is a crime, then English-language publications from the Ministry of Culture is a crime, too. The Interior Ministry did an investigation and claimed that the municipality was being used as a political place, so the mayor and the city council were removed from the office by the Council of State. Turkey should not have to deal with these kinds of things anymore.

You mention that there is a categorical rejection of the Kurdish language, but if we consider the demands of Kurds, where can there be consensus?

Actually it is not that difficult. There are some steps that have to be taken on the cultural level. I mentioned the ones related to Kurdish. There is a fear on the part of the state and the government: What will we do if everybody wants the same accommodations? If we start, will it take us to chaos? But there is no reason for this. If the people get their rights, why should they ask for more? Kurds are losing their faith in democratic solutions, and there are a considerable number of people who think that the armed struggle is legitimate. We should look for ways to change this situation.

On one side, there is an understanding that is rejecting everything. On the other side, there is another understanding that thinks the armed struggle is legitimate. Why is a third way not emerging?

Kurds do not have a dialogue amongst themselves. There is a lack of tolerance. Also, under the circumstances it is not possible. Neither the state nor the organization [the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK)] want this. There are only civil society organizations but, of course, by nature they cannot have the same spirit as a political party. But, yes, there is a vacuum; so far it is being filled with civil society organizations, and I think they are getting stronger.

Why do some groups consider violence legitimate?

Because of the policies related to the Kurds. For 20 to 25 years there has been no change in the situation. Over time this led some people to think that if there are no guns, we will be suppressed. This understanding has now become the dominant understanding. I never think that the violence is legitimate, but it has social legitimacy in the region. The state should be aware of this, and it should take steps accordingly. It is very important to create faith in democratic solutions among these people. This will lead to the strengthening of a feeling of belonging. Otherwise, it will be very difficult.

If the state implements such a strategy, who should it talk to about this?

There is no need for a counterpart. The only counterpart is the citizens. The state can say, “I do it for my Kurdish citizens.” Then the citizens can turn to those who are thinking that the armed struggle is legitimate and say, “Don’t use guns in our name.” Once the democratic atmosphere develops, then Kurds can have dialogue among themselves without hypocrisy. Today, all the Kurdish parties are hypocritical. They are not able to share their real agenda with society. It is not possible under the circumstances. Kurds are not able to say what they really want because of the lack of a democratic atmosphere.

There have been many recent developments in Turkey, like the closure case against the AK Party and discussions about the economic situation. But the Kurdish question is not on the agenda that much, is it?

This is exactly why we decided to visit Ankara. Before these developments, the Kurdish question was on the agenda and seriously under discussion but, because of some coincidences -- interestingly, every time the Kurdish question is on the agenda these kinds of coincidences always come up -- the closure case against the AK Party was opened and the discussions on the Kurdish question were once more postponed. According to us, they should not be postponed. Because to postpone the solution opens wounds that cannot be healed. Think about the Nevruz events. There was nothing in Diyarbakır or İstanbul, but events in Van, Siirt and Hakkari reminded us of the images that we are used to. The women who are beaten up, the children whose arms are twisted and a security official who is saying that he will not shake hands with a deputy; all these things have led to more social indignation. This indignation leads to social disengagement. Everybody is asking if we will go back to the old days. The government has no excuse; these officials are appointed by them. If they were judges or army officers, the government could say, “It is not under my jurisdiction.” But they can easily remove those officials from their posts. I never saw a governor who was removed from his post for this reason. Turkey should give up this kind of understanding. We mentioned this in our meetings, too. The prime minister himself also mentioned that there was no problem in Diyarbakır or Ankara. But he added that in other places the public was holding illegal demonstrations. Even if this is the case, this should not be the attitude toward citizens. In a state of law, the understanding cannot be “If the citizens do this, I will act like this.”

How do you evaluate the recent clashes at Akdeniz University? For some it was a simple crime of passion, while for some it was a Kurdish-Turkish clash.

This is exactly the point where we should be hesitant. This is why we have to find a solution before it is too late, because the prospect of clashes between the two societies is increasing. The feelings of the police and soldiers’ families during the March 28 events [in 2006 after a funeral for some PKK members, there were demonstrations in which 10 people were killed] are on the one side and, on the other side, in İstanbul and Ankara, Kurds are withdrawing into their own ghettos. If it goes like on this, it can turn into Turkish-Kurdish clashes and it would be the end of the country.

For some people it is hard to believe that there are many mixed families. The two societies have been interwoven for years. Do you agree?

Recently I had a chat with a prison guard in Van. He is originally from the Black Sea region. I asked him if he will stay in Van. He told me that his father told him that he does not want anyone in the family who has Kurdish friends. Also, the Kurds who migrated to the west a long time ago have started to buy houses in Diyarbakır because they don’t think that these places are safe for them. This kind of sentiment can turn into clashes. Recently I saw a security official on TV who was saying that the Mediterranean coast had been captured by Kurds. If this is the mentality, there could be clashes -- maybe not in general, but local ones.

What could be the possible impact of these events for the upcoming local elections in the region?

One year is a very long time for a country like Turkey, but I can say that among the Kurds who voted for the AK Party in the general elections there has been a huge amount of disappointment. If it goes on like this, it will be difficult for the AK Party to capture the same success in the region. It is true that it is not easy to deal with the Kurdish problem, but the AK Party should take steps on the issue. To be the architect of peace is a very rare opportunity. The AK Party has this chance, but it is not using it properly.

For more on the Tanrikulu-Erdoğan spat, see April 12 post.

Language & the Modern Project of "Nation-Building"

Sezgin Tanrikulu, leader of Diyarbakır's Bar Association, recently met with Erdoğan and sparked a fury of criticism when he walked out on the Prime Minister during an argument about education in Kurdish. While the prime minister has offered less than eager support for private language schools that offer classes in Kurdish, he remains very much opposed to the use of Kurdish in public schools. This is a comfort to most Turks who view proponents of education in Kurdish as separatists and express grave fear that a southeastern population educated in another language apart from Turkish would pose a serious threat to national coherence. Although the fears of the latter are not without ground, it seems reasonable to conclude that at the very least Erdoğan might endorse limited Kurdish education in public schools. Most Kurds are very poor and private language courses are out of the question. Not only is there not much investment capital to found such schools, but few could afford the enrollment. It is not out of the question to imagine public funding being allotted to after school programs and other educational initiatives taken to ensure that Kurds are able to preserve their language.

Interesting to the Erdoğan-Tanrikulu exchange is Mustafa Akyol's recent column. Akyol considers the importance modern nation-states vest in the formation of and education in a national language and compares the Turkish case to education in Europe, most especially France. The column speaks to the legacy of European nation-building and as I have written about before, the influence of the French on the policies of the Turkish state.

KURDS, TURKS, AND THE TOWER OF BABEL—Mustafa Akyol

One of the interesting episodes in Turkey’s past week was a quarrel between Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Diyarbakır Bar President Sezgin Tanrıkulu. In a gathering of NGO’s and government officials, Mr. Tanrıkulu, an ethnic Kurd, asked from the prime minister “not only economic, but also political reforms” for Turkey’s southeast, including the right to “Kurdish education.” Erdoğan didn’t like the idea and, instead, replied with an argument: “Education in a mother tongue does not exist anywhere in the world!”

I disagree with Mr. Erdoğan on this, and I think his government should consider at least a form of what Mr. Tanrıkulu had asked for. (Not “education in Kurdish,” but “education of Kurdish” might be the best formula.) I bet many readers of the Turkish Daily News, especially the ones from Europe, would also disagree with Mr. Erdoğan, and even express their dismay in the face of Turkey’s unwillingness to grant Kurds the right to get education in their mother tongue. But one should also see that there are reasons to be lenient on Turkey’s fixation on the “national language.” It is, after all, something that Turkey not invented, but imported – and from nowhere but good-old Europe.


From Babel to Paris

In the beginning, mankind had a single language. Or, at least, the Bible says so. According to the Book of Genesis, it was God who first gave a single language to humans. But then, after the Tower of Babel affair, He created other tongues. “That is why it was called Babel,” says Genesis, “because there the LORD confused the language of the whole world.”

Therefore, from a Judeo-Christian point of view, the existence of multiple languages was simply a result of divine will. Islam, not too surprisingly, confirmed the same wisdom. “Among [God]’s Signs," the Koran declared, “is the creation of the heavens and earth, and the variety of your languages and colors.”

Perhaps that was one reason why different languages and tongues co-existed in the pre-modern, religiously-defined era. Both in Christian Europe and in the Islamic Middle East, native languages were regarded as a part of the divinely ordained natural order.

Things started to change with modernity. The modern mind was a constructivist one – it aimed at re-creating the natural order as it willed. Yet some moderns, especially the British ones, decided to carry out this construction in harmony with pre-existing forms. They, after all, respected the natural (or, say, divine) order. Other moderns, especially the French ones, preferred to destroy all existing traditions and re-construct everything right from the beginning. They were, as they proudly declared, revolutionaries.

Native languages would be one – only one – of the many victims of the revolutionary modernists. Actually in the early stages of the French Revolution – that bloody archetype of revolutionary modernism – liberty of language was declared for all citizens of the French Republic. Yet soon, this policy was abandoned in favor of the imposition of a common language aimed at destroying local tongues. The ideology was expounded in the “Report on The Necessity and Means to Annihilate The Patois and to Universalize The Use of The French Language,” written by a Henri Grégoire and presented to the National Convention on June 4, 1794.

From that point on, the French Republic initiated a long war against the “non-French” languages and cultures – a policy which lasted until very recently, and whose traces arguably still survive. The basic idea behind “national education” in France has been the eradication of plurality. After 1918, the use of German in Alsace-Lorraine would be outlawed. In 1925, Anatole de Monzie, minister of public education, declared, "For the linguistic unity of France, the Breton language must disappear." Only in 1964 the French government would allow Breton on regional television – and only for one and a half minutes. Yet even in 1972, President Georges Pompidou would autocratically announce, “There is no place for the regional languages and cultures in a France that intends to mark Europe deeply."

France might have been the inventor of forced assimilation, but it was not its monopolist. “In the 19th and 20th centuries, most European states conducted politics of forced assimilation against their ethnic and linguistic minorities,” reminds Wikipedia. Even Norway, a beacon of peace and good life, carried out a “Norwegianisation process” on its ethnic minorities such as the Sami and the Kven – well up to the 1970s. (1972, by the way, was the year that homosexuality was decriminalized in Norway.)


Outgrowing Nation-Building

So, when Europeans criticize Turkey’s mistakes about its Kurdish citizens, they should be a little bit restrained. Yes, Turkey has taken huge missteps on this issue, and it needs fundamental reforms. But the mindset that led Turkey to the denial and forced assimilation of Kurds was not homemade. It was invented and first implemented in Europe.

Alas, before the arrival and dominance of that idea – i.e., revolutionary modernism – the Kurds existed in these lands and nobody forced any assimilation on them. The Ottoman State was a multi-ethnic and multi-religious empire. Pluralism, if you will, was the hallmark of the Ottomans. Then came the Turkish Republic, whose founders were, unfortunately, inspired by the French way of nation-building. Hence started the Kurd’s drama.

Today, the bright future of Turkey lies in its capacity to outgrow that early revolutionary modernist paradigm. We should not cease being a modern nation-state, to be sure, but we have to make it more liberal and pluralist. Europeans, of course, should help Turkey’s walk on this thorny path – but do this humbly and patiently. They just should keep in mind how long their liberalization has lasted, and how recently their illiberalism ended.