I have recently published an article in this January's issue of the Journal of Democracy on Kurds in Turkey. The article argues that while progress has been made in recent years to recognize Kurdish ethnicity as a reality and advance cultural rights and economic development, the Turkish state has yet to come to terms with the national dimension of the problem. The article also includes a critical discussion of the positions taken by Kurdish nationalists and the government, as well as the role liberalism will play in any resolution of the conflict if it is to be settled within current boundaries.
Unfortunately one needs a subscription to Project MUSE in order to access the article, but here is the abstract.
Turkish state policy toward the Kurds, the Republic of Turkey's largest ethnic minority, has evolved from denial and mandatory assimilation to cultural recognition to acknowledgement of the Kurds' contested status as a political problem demanding political solutions. The election of 36 Kurdish-nationalist lawmakers, most of whom now sit in parliament as representatives of the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP), bolsters the salience of Kurdish nationalism and the need to accommodate it through normal politics rather than attempt to suppress it through violence. How state authorities and politicians handle the Kurdish question will continue to say much about both the success of Turkey's efforts at democratic consolidation and, more generally, the potential for democracy to manage problems involving self-conscious and mobilized national minorities dwelling within the borders of strong and highly centralized nation-states.
Many thanks to Umit Firat whose insights helped inform this article, and whose work to find solutions to transform the conflict I greatly admire. And many thanks to executive editor Phil Costopolous for his incisive editing and to managing editor Brent Kallmer for providing the abstract.
I would also like to point your attention to the three other articles in the larger cluster of articles of which mine is but a part, including Meltem Muftuler-Bac and E. Fuat Keyman's overview of AKP rule in an era of "dominant party politics," Ersel Aydinli's commentary on the current state of civil-military relations, and Berna Turam's incisive essay on civil liberties in an era in which religious and secular Turks are learning to live together. The overarching theme of Turam's article and my own is the need to settle democracy and difference, a topic I touch upon often in this blog and elsewhere.
Turkey's environment ministry is changing the names of three species of animals bearing Turkish and Armenian names. From the BBC:
The environment ministry says the Latin names of the red fox, the wild sheep and the roe deer will be altered.
The red fox for instance, known as Vulpes Vulpes Kurdistanica, will now be known as Vulpes Vulpes.
Turkey has uneasy relations with neighbouring Armenia and opposes Kurdish separatists in Turkey.
The ministry said the old names were contrary to Turkish unity.
"Unfortunately there are many other species in Turkey which were named this way with ill intentions. This ill intent is so obvious that even species only found in our country were given names against Turkey's unity," a ministry statement quoted by Reuters news agency said.
Some Turkish officials say the names are being used to argue that Armenians or Kurds had lived in the areas where the animals were found.
Diyarbakir's BDP-governed municipality welcomed President Gul with a banner in both Turkish and Kurdish. The banner welcomes "our respected president." PHOTO from Hurriyet Daily News
President Gul is scheduled to end the year with a trip to Diyarbakir, the de facto capital of Turkey's largely Kurdish southeast. While things have significantly calmed in the region since the PKK's declared ceasefire in August, memories of a particularly violent summer remain vivid, both in the region and the rest of Turkey.
Gul's visit comes just two weeks after the Democratic Society Congress (DTK) announced proposals related to autonomy and language rights. In recent months, the DTK has been messaging that the region should adopt bilingualism. Gul, as expected, did not address the DTK proposal directly, instead returning to what the president has said before about diversity and a nation of many ethnicities. From Hurriyet Daily News:
peaking at a dinner with local businessmen in Diyarbakır late Thursday, Gül focused on unity, but said diversity should not be perceived as a threat.
“We are all pieces of a huge nation. There are differences in a big nation. However, we should see [our] diversity as richness,” Gül said. “If we see those differences as a threat, there may be problems.”
. . . .
The president also said there was nothing to be afraid of as long as each citizen saw Turkey as his or her homeland.
“However, there are things we should be afraid of. If we start to behave as if our beliefs, traditions, and opinions on major matters are different, or as if this is not our shared homeland, that would sow the seeds of factionalism in this nation,” he said. “Then an atmosphere to be afraid of might emerge. Therefore, we should all act responsibly.”
As I have written here before, the difference between nation and ethnicity here is important to understand. Gul's understanding of "one nation" would be much more palatable to Kurds if it was based on civic identity. However, under the current constitution, all persons who belong in Turkey are a member of the "Turkish nation" and should be "happy to call [themselves] a Turk."
Turkish nationalists have long argued that Turkish identity is not based on ethnicity, but on a sense of being wedded to a larger Turkish nation, one defined by "one language," " one flag," and "one people." It is no coincidence that interviews with Kurdish nationalist groups reveal the same sentiment about the Kurdish nation. Resolving the two nationalisms in a common civic identity free of ethnic chauvinism will be the challenge over the years, but so far nothing new from Gul here.
The president did gain the scorn of ultra-nationalist MHP leader Devlet Bahceli for visiting Diyarbakir's multilingual city hall, but scorn from the MHP's variety of ultra-nationalism is also nothing new.
Prosecutors have filed a case against Turkish actress Sevda Demirel after she became pregnant upon using an American sperm donor.
On March 6, the Turkish Health Ministry effectively made it a criminal offense for women to use a foreign sperm or egg donor to conceive a child using artificial insemination (see March 21 post). The law is premised in protecting Turkey's soy, or patrilineal bloodline.
Demirel is not the first Turkish actress to use a foreign sperm donor and attract this kind of attention, but she is indeed the first to be prosecuted under the new law. To add to the controversy, Demirel used an African American sperm donor.
For my analysis on the law, click here. Also, see Jenny White's commentary at Kamil Pasha.
The ancestry of Mimar Sinan, the famous architect responsible for building numerous mosques throughout 16th-century Ottoman Turkey [including Sultanahmet ("The Blue Mosque") and Suleymaniye in Istanbul], has long been subject to debate. The architect is said to have been Greek and Armenian while some Turkish nationalists have long insisted in his pure Turkish patrilineage. It was no doubt this insistence that led zealous Turks to dig up his grave in the 1930s and remove his skull from the rest of his remains in order to finally prove his "Turkishness." From Hurriyet Daily News:
According to Professor Selçuk Mülayim from Marmara University, the corpse of Mimar Sinan, best known for the 16th-century Süleymaniye Mosque in Istanbul, was taken from its modest tomb next to that building Aug. 1, 1935, in order to measure the famed architect’s skull.
Documents show that the team, headed by Turkish Historical Society Director Hasan Cemil Çambel, society member Şevket Aziz Kansu and historian Afet İnan, conducted the excavation in an hour, Mülayim told the Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review recently.
“The purpose was to prove he was an ethnic Turk,” the professor said. “Kansu took measurements with compasses and other tools and from these measurements it was decided that he was an ethnic Turk.”
At the time of the team’s foray into the tomb, there was a rising appreciation of Mimar Sinan in Europe, where people were increasingly claiming that the great architect could not have been Turkish, Mülayim said. “The excavation was an answer to these claims.”
To this day, few members of the Turkish public know that the man hailed as the greatest of Ottoman architects was actually a Muslim convert of Armenian origin.
Following the excavation of Sinan’s tomb, the Turkish Historical Society team took its findings to Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the Turkish Republic. “He refused to look at the results, saying, ‘Instead of measuring his skull, make a statue of the architect,’” Mülayim said.
The idea that Sinan’s skull is missing from his tomb is not a new one, but one that many experts have avoided repeating in public.
For more on the construction of Turkish identity, click here. Though Turkey has come a long way, defensive notions of "Turkishness" are still at the heart of much of the country's identity politics.
The Greek Orthodox orphanage now in disrepair at Buyukada is Europe's iggest remaining wooden building. PHOTO by Hasan Altinisk / Hurriyet Daily News
A European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) decision ordering the Turkish government to return an abandoned orphanage and its grounds back to the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate after it was seized in 1995 has again brought attention to the issue of real estate owned by religious minorities in Turkey. From Hurriyet Daily News:
The 112-year-old orphanage, Europe’s biggest remaining wooden building, was built in 1898 as a hotel and casino on the largest of Istanbul’s Princes’ Islands, then purchased by a prominent Greek family that donated it to the patriarchate for use as an orphanage.
“The orphanage was opened in 1903 by Sultan Abdülhamid and remained so for a long time,” Osman Doğru, a law professor at Marmara University, told the Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review. “Yet in 1964, it was emptied for security reasons and then left to its destiny.” For almost 30 years, the building simply rotted away. In 1995, Turkey’s General Directorate of Foundations took over ownership – and the court cases began.
“The decision to transfer the orphanage building’s ownership to the foundations directorate was based on the claim that the Greek Patriarchate didn’t do any maintenance work on it. However, it was the Turkish state that didn’t allow any restorations during that period,” said Kezban Hatemi, a lawyer for the patriarchate.
“Such a transfer is legally very problematic, and this case is not the only one,” Hatemi told the Daily News. “Since the 1960s, there have been many violations to the rights of properties owned by minority foundations.”
According to a 2009 report by the Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation, or TESEV, there are approximately 1,000 “immovable properties,” essentially land parcels and buildings, in the country that originally belonged to Greek foundations but were confiscated by the Turkish state.
Foundations administered by other minority groups have been affected as well; some 30 properties belonging to Armenian foundations have likewise been seized, an issue that Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink tried to raise awareness about before his assassination in 2007.
“In 1936, the Turkish government asked all minority foundations to declare their properties. Yet, in 1975, the Supreme Court of Appeals decided that minority foundations do not have the right to hold any property and ordered all properties gained after 1936 to be returned,” Dink once said. “Yet these immovable properties weren’t returned to their [original] donators either, because they were already dead. So many of these properties were transferred to the General Directorate of Foundations.”
According to law professor Doğru, the case of the Büuükada Orphanage was complicated by the fact that the patriarchate claimed the building in 1936, when the government asked minority foundations to report their holdings. “However, the Supreme Court of Appeals found a very creative solution to the issue and said the building was actually claimed by the orphanage foundation, not the patriarchate itself, so they could transfer it to the General Directorate of Foundations,” he said.
After the building was confiscated in 1995, the Fener Greek Patriarchate applied to have the court decision cancelled. When this application was rejected, the patriarchate took the issue to the European Court of Human Rights.
“Minority foundations in Turkey did not have any property problems until the mid-1960s,” said patriarchate lawyer Hatemi. “But this situation completely changed when the Cyprus crisis started during that period. Only then were the declarations of 1936 remembered and minority foundations were used as a tool to gain power over Greece.”
In spring 2008, the Turkish parliament passed major reforms of Turkey's Foundations Law, under which both the Greek and Armenian minorities are governed, though the reforms are largely argued to have not gone far enough in addressing such issues as real estate.
For more on how minority foundations are governed in Turkey, see also Today's Zaman columnist Orhan Kemal Cengiz's two-part op/ed series. In the first part, Cengiz lays out the history of minority foundations, while turning his attention in the second part to the 2008 reforms -- which the CHP, in one of its more overtly nationalist overtures, opposed -- and the current climate for further reform.
In the more than two weeks that have passed since the flotilla crisis, AKP government officials continue to pound Israel, raising concern with Western alliances, favor in the Arab Street, and just as significantly, political points at home. Milliyet columnist Semih Idiz weighs in on the domestic side of the equation in today's Hurriyet Daily News:
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan appears set to milk the popularity he gained in the streets of Turkey and the Middle East after the Marmara crisis in which nine Turks were killed by Israeli forces in a seriously botched up military operation.
It is almost as if he was waiting for a new crisis with Israel to be able to work the streets in order to regain some of the political ground his ruling Justice and Development Party, or AKP, has been loosing over bread and butter issues at home.
He and his party executives are clearly worried that the reinvigorated Republican Peoples Party, or CHP, may make headway given the successful manner in which its new leader, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, has been hitting at the government over topics that really matter for the average man on the street. He is also concerned that the Saadet (Felicity) Party, the other Islamist party, may steal votes from the AKP given the rising dissatisfaction among the public.
Turks are fickle though, and easily swayed emotionally even if this means that the bread and butter issues of vital importance to them are pushed to the background. It is clear that there is great public animosity towards Israel today. As for the almost endemic anti-Americanism among Turks, this is also adding grist to Erdogan’s populist mill.
So we see him increasingly turning up the volume of his demagoguery, and hitting at Israel and the United States at every opportunity that presents itself. No doubt he is keeping a close eye on the “political rating meter” as he sends his crowds to paroxysms of delirious applause with his remarks, some of which smack openly of anti-Semitism and reflect a growing anti-Western tendency.
After the Marmara incident he was not only quick to use the harshest and most insulting adjectives when referring to Israel, but also had thinly veiled warnings to Washington, suggesting openly that those who stood behind Israel were also culpable in the crimes committed by that country.
Over the weekend he went further and openly named the U.S. this time, thus revealing what lies in his heart-of-hearts. This is what he had to say while addressing an adoring crowd in Rize, on the Black Sea coast, where people are not only religious but also ultra-nationalist.
“They are asking us what Turkey is doing in the Middle East, in Palestine. Why is Turkey bothered about Gaza? But could they not be asked in return what America is doing in Iraq? What is it doing in Palestine? Could it not be asked what is it doing in Afghanistan? What are France, Britain, and Holland, and so on, doing in these places?”
Erdogan went on threateningly to say, “I am calling on the Israeli supported international media and their subcontractors at home: Turkey is not like other countries.” His only tribute to sophistication during this show of demagoguery was his reference to “the Israeli supported international media.”
Previously he had made references to the “Jewish controlled international media” but must have been warned by his advisors that this was too overtly “anti-Semitic,” and thus politically incorrect. This no doubt forced him to make a slight modification in his nevertheless anti-Semitic reference to the international media.
A survey conducted by METROPoll on June 3, just four days after the flotilla raid, found that nearly two-thirds of the 1,000 Turks surveyed thought the government response was too weak, a finding the AKP is no doubt aware. Winning votes is important for any government, and with the possibility of early elections looming as the constitutional reform package waits to be ruled on by the Constitutional Court, no doubt figures into AKP decisionmaking.
Additionally, there is reason to be concerned. A rejuvenated CHP might well take economically-minded and liberal (those that are left) voters away from the party at the same time the Israel issue has mobilized the Islamist right, possibly bringing votes to Saadet Partisi. Though Saadet has finished far under the 10 percent election threshold since the AKP came to power, an increased vote for the party could all the same take critical votes away from the AKP even if it does not pass the threshold. The question for me here is why did Erdogan let the Mavi Marmara sail knowing that what happened on May 31 was a definite possibility. If domestic politics figured in at all, a calculation may have been made to divert attention away from the Kurdish front and score political points, but was thought not given to what effect such a move could have on those right of the AKP, namely strengthening the hand of Saadet Partisi? Is this perhaps what was behind the warnings of Fethullah Gulen in his interview with the Wall Street Journal (see June 7 post)?
It is hard to say to what extent this figures into the AKP's anti-Israel rhetoric and foreign polcy posturing, but the domestic factor should not be ruled out. Injured by its failed Kurdish initiative and increasing PKK violence, the Israel imbroglio helps the AKP at home at a time when it needs all the help it can get, which might explain why the government is focusing on the larger Palestinian issue and the Mavi Marmara incident (though this has been more or less the case in its relations with Israel since the latter's incursion into Gaza in December 2008), often conflating the two, rather than the growing conflict in the southeast. Nationalism has always been a powerful force in Turkish politics, but now the Israeli flag also serves a potent a force at the moment as the Turkish one.
UPDATE I (6/18) -- Istanbul's municipal council has accepted a proposal made by the Saadet Partisi to make Gaza a sister city.
Bogazici University and the Open Society Institute have released a study assessing intolerant attitudes in Turkey toward ethnic and religious minorities and LGBT people. The survey, released in report form as "The Otherization and Discrimination in Turkey (in Turkish)" ("'Biz'lik, 'Oteki'lik, ve Ayrimcilik: Kamuoyundaki Algilar ve Egilimler"), was conducted between Feb. 15 and April 25, in 18 provinces with the participation of 1,811 interviewees. Hurriyet Daily News summarizes the results:
The most striking result of the survey concerns the question on “who deserves a restriction on their rights?” The answers given by the respondents indicated that the discriminatory tendencies and the level of tolerance have changed little in the last five years.
An astonishing 53 percent of participants strongly believed that the right to freely express a different sexual orientation should be restricted. Similarly, 37 percent of the people sampled denounced the right of believing in no religion, with 59 percent standing against atheists flaunting their lack of religion. Moreover, 28 percent denounced the right of non-Muslims to be open about their religious identity.
The results showed that 72 percent of the sample supported the idea that “those who have a different sexual orientation, like homosexuality, should be open about their sexual identities.”
According to the 2005 results of the survey, 58 percent said non-heterosexuals should not be equally free. The percentage of those who say the rights of those who have a different native language other than Turkish should be restricted is 19 percent, the same figure as the 2005 survey.
Those who say that all ethnicities, religions and sects should be secured by the Constitution make up 74 percent.
Some 36 percent of the interviewees said their primary identity was “being a citizen of Turkey,” whereas a 29 percent thought “having a Turkish national identity” was most important.
Meanwhile, 66 percent said they have no other ethnic culture and they are rooted completely in Turkish culture, while 20 percent said their ethnic culture and language were secondary to Turkish language and culture. Some 8 percent said their language or culture came before Turkish culture while 2 percent said they had absolutely no connection to Turkish culture and language.
59% of respondents in the survey said they did not feel any sort of neighborhood pressure. And, the rest?
Such surveys should boost concern about the arguments of "strong democrats," those who continue to stress democracy with little reference to rights protections and difference. See my March 26 post on the need for Turkey, and the AKP as the government in power leading up constitutional efforts, to come to a sophisticated of rights-based democracy. Until the "democrats" start talking about protecting everyone's rights, promoting difference and diversity in Turkish society, and adopt an open, articulate discourse that encompasses all of Turkish society, many Turks are likely to fear rule by the majority -- and, if the respondents in this poll hasd their say, for good reason. Leadership requires taking risks and promoting new understandings, most especially in conservative societies where difference is seen as something Other. The AKP has taken some positive steps in this direction, but how genuine, far-reaching, and reflective of an overall attitude appreciative of diversity is still very much in doubt. When combined with a general societal ambivalence toward liberalism and a lack of tolerance, many Turks' fear of rule by majority should be taken seriusly. Turkey might not end up like Iran, but it could certainly end up a more closed, oppresive society should majoritarian democracy continue to take a stronger place without attention to rights. For more on neighborhood pressure, see also Feb. 10 post.
Professor Jenny White recently gave an interview to the new blog Changing Turkey in a Changing World in which she discusses the existing literature on Turkish politics and history, including on the question of nationalism and Islam. She also discusses her most recent book in the Kamil Pasha series, The Winter Thief, which was just released.
Yet another Diyarbakirspor game was called off as a result of riotous fans. In a game against Istanbul Buyuksehir Belediyespor on Sunday, appoximately 40 Diyarbakirspor fans began to charge the field and/or throw objects during the last minutes of the game. Diyarbakirspor made it into the Super League this year, but has been plagued by troubles since a game played in September resulted in some Bursaspor fans spoiling the game. In apparent retaliation, some Diyarbakirspor fans caused grief for Bursaspor at a game played in Diyarbakir about a week ago. Diyarbakirspor is used to people shouting anti-PKK slogans, wrongfully associating the team with the terrorist group, but the Bursaspor provocation was unprecedented. Such an association is not correct since the PKK no doubt does not approve of the team.
There is some question as to whether the referee should have called off the game so close to its end. Now that he has, Diyarbakirspor faces being booted out of the Super League since the Turkish Football Federation (TFF) has a rule that teams cannot lose by default more than once. The TFF is already set to discuss the game played in Bursa.
Istanbul Governor Muammer Guler criticized the referee's decision, saying that the low number of fans and the high level of security at the game made calling off the game unnecessary. Guler further said that the referee was "paving the way for provacateurs." Kurdish BDP leader Selahattin Demirtas also weighed in during Newroz festivities in Diyarbakir, urging the TFF to take care in making its decision about Diyarbakirspor. Demirtas said the TFF should take steps against fans who shout harassing and "discriminatory" slogans at Diyarbakirspor players. Today's Zaman reports that State Minister Faruk Ozak is said to be working on a new law on hooliganism, as well as implementing measures to control fans at football games. Meanwhile, Diyarbakirspor and organizations in Diyarbakir are arguing that the continued problems are the result of a failure of TFF to properly punish Bursaspor for the September game.
UPDATE I (3/19) -- The TFF ruled not to push Diyarbakirspor out of the Super League despite the two defaults the team has received.
In a 2009 article penned by Seyla Benhabib, the prominent political theorist touches upon many of the grand level questions encompassing Turkey's admission into the European Union. Foremost among these is what Benhabib identifies as "the instability of all forms of identity." Rather than a clash of civilizations, which reduces identity to opposing cultural hegemonies, Benhabib alludes to both Turkey and the European Union's discomfort with difference -- with the kind of heterogenity that is true to the historical and present realities of the people living within both political entities. Though some citizens of Turkey and the European Union have concerned themselves with efforts to protect a core culture or identity, Benhabib writes optimistically that Turkey seems to be opening up in terms of looking back to what she calls its "authoritarian nationalist heritage." (See Ferhat Kentel's recent interview with the Institute for Policy Studies' Balkans Project.) Benhabib seems less sure about Europe, which she writes "is attempting to stabilize its momentous political experiment by conjuring up the ideals of a 'core Europe' and the 'European nation,' Judaeo-Christian values, the Renaissance and the Enlightenment and the like."
Ibrahim Kalin takes up some of these same questions in a piece he authored last week on conviviencia in Muslim Spain. From Kalin:
In a world of diminishing certainties and increasing chaos, we need a “presiding idea,” a central value system around which the world’s misplaced resources can be mobilized to inculcate understanding, tolerance and humility. The most difficult challenge of our age is to hold on to one’s own belief system while respecting the right of others to have different views. Put simply, it is the challenge of pluralism without giving up on truth. Sacrificing the truth in the name of pluralism creates a sense of loss which in turn leads to more reactionary positions. Furthermore, it invites moral relativism. Defending one’s truth to the exclusion of others lands us in oppression and violence. It creates epistemic hegemony, which easily turns into violent extremism.
I am not sure if "truth" is the correct operative word here, but indeed, eschewing relativism while recognizing a fluidity of identities (for me, not just within a country, but within a culture and within oneself) is the perhaps the most important project of the twenty-first century. Turkey's future is key to its success.
A Saturday night football match in Diyarbakir between Bursaspor and Diyarbakirspor again resulted in chaos when Diyarbakirspor fans began hurling objects at Bursaspor players. Police used teargas to disburse some Diyarbakirspor fans rioting outside the stadium. On Sept. 26, another match between the teams -- also in Bursa-- resulted in violence following the actions of some ultranationalist Bursaspor fans.
UPDATE I (3/9) -- Diyarbakirspor is asking the Turkish Football Federation (TFF) for a re-play of Saturday's game, arguing they should not be blamed for the actions of fans and citing the provocation of Bursaspor fans during the earlier game as the proximate cause of Saturday's disturbance. According to Hurriyet Daily News, the TFF is expected to announce a 3-0 victory for Bursa and order Diyarbakirspor to play at least three games behind closed doors. The decision will be announced Thursday.
Reuters' Simon Akam reports on a coming sequel to the very popular 2006 film, "Valley of the Wolves" (see March 17, 2008 post). The films followed the popular television series, an episode of which recently featured a Turkish child kidnapped by Israeli soldiers and sparked the Celikkol controversy last January. Both the film and the television series play on Turkish nationalist sentiments, including the destructive Sevres syndrome. From Akam:
"Valley of the Wolves: Palestine" is projected to cost over $10 million, making it one of the most expensive Turkish films.
Scheduled for a November release, the new project follows the 2006 feature "Valley of the Wolves: Iraq."
That film, which showed American soldiers running amok in northern Iraq, racked up 4.2 million ticket sales in Turkey and accusations of rampant anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism.
"After Iraq, we decided that in the next Polat movie we are going to tell again an international story," said scriptwriter Bahadir Ozdener, sitting in an office lined with antique cameras in Nisantasi, an upscale Istanbul neighborhood.
The series' hero is Polat Alemdar, a gun-toting agent with a fondness for sharp tailoring and a dearth of facial expressions.
Played by Necati Sasmaz - who had never acted before - and dubbed by another actor, Polat is sometimes described as the Turkish James Bond. Millions of young Turks idolize him, imitating his mannerisms and speech.
In the new film Ozdener says his intention is "to shed light on the history, on what's really going on in Palestine." He described the conflict as "a very good example of the imperialists' targets."
. . . . .
The Valley of the Wolves franchise - made by production company Pana Film - has enjoyed tremendous success in Turkey.
The title evokes mythological images from a story beloved by nationalists of a lone wolf that guided Turks out of a Central Asian valley where they had been trapped by enemies. The television series, known as 'Kurtlar Vadisi' in Turkish, first aired in 2003. The initial, mafia-focused plot saw Polat Alemdar tasked to penetrate Turkish organized crime.
With a regular quota of gunfights and mayhem the series rapidly gained and maintained an enormous following. Today, Pana claims between 20 and 40 million Turks watch each week.
Then came Valley of the Wolves: Iraq, the 2006 feature film, which saw Polat Alemdar avenging in fiction the real-life events of July 2003, when American forces captured and hooded a team of Turkish Special Forces in northern Iraq.
Styled like a Hollywood blockbuster, the film prominently featured abuse at Abu Ghraib prison.
After Iraq, Pana Film began a series about Turkey's long conflict against Kurdish separatist guerrillas. But government pressure forced them to shelve Valley of the Wolves: Terror after just one episode as the subject was too sensitive.
The next series cast Polat as a secret agent defending Turkey against foreign threats.
Styled like a Hollywood blockbuster, Turkish film critic Alin Tasciyan believes Valley of the Wolves carries a very different message.
She called the 2006 Iraq film, "Anti-American in the most American way possible."
Ferhat Kentel, Professor at Istanbul Sehir University / PHOTO from the Balkans Project
The Balkans Project recently featured a fascinating interview with Ferhat Kentel, a sociologist at Istanbul Sehir University. Working on the construction of Turkish national identity, Kentel is examining one of the most controversial and heuristic themes in Turkish politics -- in many ways, a theme that defines, and most certainly pervades, every aspect of political discourse, be it Turkey's efforts to come to terms with its minorities (Muslim and non-Muslim), its attempts to reconcile Islam and the Turkish naton-state, its ongoing EU accession process, its confrontration with ultra-nationalist elements like Ergenekon, its international relations, etc. I have provided excerpts in this post, though I most definitely recommend reading though the whole interview.
This new situation is not just about the disappearance of the old Turkish national identity. Someone can feel that he or she is Kurdish, another Turkish, another Moslem, and these all together. All are negotiating identities. Turkishness is a negotiation as well. It becomes a crisis situation for the integration and unity of this society. I am working on this polarization between the early national construction and the new emerging complex identities and trying to find if there is a possibility of a new language, another way of speaking about this society.
I’m not just focusing on identity, but also people’s relationship with everyday life. Everyday life is the humus that lies beneath these identities. These different identities emerge from everyday life.
What does it mean to be a Turk today? The most prominent aspect of this established modern identity is a defensive one. When it emerged at the end of the Ottoman Empire, Turkishness was new. It was promoted in the name of a modernizing subject, in the name of enlightenment. It was connected to the creation of a new modern nation-state, to Ataturk, to Kemalism, to secularism, to the flag. To be Turkish was to be something modern. But today, it is more and more defensive. It refers to an older time. For that reason, it is more and more aggressive against the new voices.
Kentel goes onto discuss the origins of Turkish national identity, and the haven Muslims in the Balkans found here in the face of Christian racism and European nationalism following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. As Kentel notes, these Turks are the most keen to identify themselves as Kemalists, and eager to embrace Turkey as a newfound home, largely left their old identities behind for something new and modern. In the epigram of his epilogue to Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945, Tony Judt quotes Ernest Renan:
Forgetting, I would even go so far to say historical error, is a crucial factor in the creation of a nation; thus the progress of historical studies is often a danger for national identity . . . The essence of a nation is that all individuals have many things in common, and also that they have forgotten many things.
Turks, like other European nations, have forgotten many things. At the same time, what awaited those immigrants was a refuge from the discrimination, suffering, and war they had known in the past; in Turkey, they found a new home. Kentel's analysis of ultranationalists is different: not having immigrated from the Balkans, they were often left outside of the Kemalist project. According to Kentel, ultranationalists generally look to the Caucasus and Asia for their roots, often pointing to Central Anatolia as the origin of Turkish identity. Yet, I have met plenty of people who share both perspectives, often the products of mixed marriages between Balkan and Anatolian Turks, merely all the more proving Kentel's argument of the negotiation, multiplicity, and inherent complexity underlying Turkish national identity.
Kentel also explores the lack of understanding between Turks and Turkish minority groups, who are all too routinely bifurcated from one another in the literature into the oversimplified categories of "majority" and "minority." One need only to look at Hrant Dink to see how reality is far more complicated. Dink, proud of his Armenian heritage, never rejected his "Turkishness," but rather understood it differenty; sadly, it was this "different" understanding that led to his murder by people who adopted a defensive understanding of what it meant to be Turkish, and in turn, conspired to kill Dink. Similar kinds of negotiation and multiplicity also hold true for Kurds, Alevis, Greeks, Circassians, Laz, Roma, all of these groups and the diverse individuals in them approaching what it means to be Turkish differently. Many of the identities overlap, and few break down into the nice, neat categories in which they are often placed. Yet, for those Turks who did leave so much of their history behind, the issue of settling these multiple identities and the insistence that they be recognized is difficult. Kentel explains:
These Balkan-origin Turks are also the most reticent on the Kurdish issue. It seems to be a psychological dimension: These Turks left behind their traditional sense of belonging, so they cannot accept another people claiming their original identity. “We gave up ours,” they say, “why can’t you give up yours?” I hear this even from the Uyghur-origin people who came to Turkey during the last decades. “We were oppressed by the Chinese state,” they say. “We came to Turkey and this state protected us. We cannot betray this state. How can you Kurds do what you are doing?” Of course, the Kurds were not migrants to this country. Nor were the Armenians. They are autochthonous peoples of the Anatolian territories.
Holding the traditional/pre-modern construction of Turkish national identity in opposition to the modern, Atatürkist understanding, Kentel highlights the conflicts and convergences between the two. Though Kentel does dwell too much on Ottomanism in his analysis, I think it too is probably worth examining in the mix, conflicting and converging with the other two in all sorts of ways relevant to political identity. And when religion is added into the mix, identity becomes all the more complicated, pushing and pulling with all of these other elements in what I have described elsewhere in this blog as a kaleidoscopic fashion, shifting and turning to suit the situation at hand or whatever the mood of the moment may be. Identity not being something intractable and constant, but rather adaptable and changing, Turks may well be all the richer for the multi-dimensional complexity of their specific identity(ies) despite the difficulties in its negotiation.
And, yet, though Turks have long negotiated these identities, and too often with a good bit of phobic defensiveness, the increased travel and business between countries (which Kentel assesses as weakening the defensive posture of Turkish nationalism -- see my post, "Article 301: An Imperialist Discourse," on the Sevres syndrome), the rise of political Islam, and European discourses about a postnational, multicultural Europe have all drastically pushed that negotiation into a new realm. I perhaps too optimistically evaluate the role of Europe, but the former two have certainly had a tremendous impact on just what observers of Turkish politics are seeing. Yet, as Kentel describes, this "opening" is not unqualified.
There are two contradictory tendencies, each one feeding and reinforcing the other. As we open up, the fear inside becomes more intense. Imagine all the people living under this ideology that says that we are alone, that we are superior, but that everyone fears us. What do you with the burden of this ideology? The opening of frontiers – in the world at large and in our minds – radicalizes the Turkish defensive identity. We are now living in the middle of this clash.
What I mean by a new Turkish identity is not just a global, liberal, or cosmopolitan identity. It is more complex. Part of this new identity is the overcoming of the ruptures of Kemalism. Kemalism required a rupture with the Ottoman era that defined it as an ancien regime. It involved a rupture around borders. It created a Turkishness on this territory with Arabs, Kurds, and others, but this required a rupture with the Arabs of Arabia, the Kurds of other countries and so on. Today it is not necessary for a nation-state to isolate itself this way. Our task is to reconstruct the bridges with all those populations and histories with which we have ruptured.
This new identity is looking for new words, new definitions.
As Barrington Moore described the transition to democracy as wrought with discord and violence, so perhaps is the journey to new, more open, more complex cultural identities. Much has been made of the rise of ultranatonalism in Turkey in recent years, the street protests and ethnic clashes that have erupted on the streets of Turkey's cities with an unwielding, defensive sort of hatred (see Ece Temelkuran n the Guardian, 2007); yet, is this perhaps a sign that things are getting better, that Turkey is moving forward in some sort of cultural transition of which we have yet to see the arc?
Provocatively, Kentel lays out a possible journey, eschewing cosmpolitianism, liberalism, and racist traditionalism for something far more intriguing -- and perhaps, liberating.
So we can make a three-fold distinction. The first is cosmopolitanism or the loss of specific Turkishness. The second is the concentration, redefinition, and reshaping of Turkishness in a more racist way. And the third is an open-ended alternative: we don’t know where we are going but there is another way. This third situation, the creation of new meanings, is the revolutionary tendency.
This new identity, if we summarize, is made also by linking to the past. It doesn’t involve returning to the past but, rather, struggling against the ruptures of history, against the categorizations of old/new, rational/irrational and so on, and against all the modernist constructions created by these categories.
Examining the construction of Turkish identity as affected by a series of historical ruptures, Kentel goes onto explore how Islam is bringing to light the ruptures of Kemalism.
Right now society is caught midway between Islam and modernity. Or, rather, there is no distinction between Islam and modernity as it was defined by modernist approaches. When you listen to some Islamic actors who focus on the authenticity of the Islamic message, they say that the majority of Muslims are lost now, that they have become almost like Protestants, that they only think about symbols of wealth, that they have lost the original message of the religion. But other, modernist voices inside the Islamic universe say that, no, the religion is not frozen in the 7th century, that Moslems as individuals must adapt to the new situation. This is a more liberal, maybe “Protestant” Islam, more individualized. They don’t forget that they are Moslem. They are still good believers. “I am essentially a businessman,” this kind of believer will say. “But five times a day I pray and then it is finished. My practice of Moslemhood doesn’t take more than one hour a day.” There is no difference with people who do gymnastics for one hour a day or do Indian meditation. This person’s identity is that of a businessman first.
So, they are not just Moslems, but they have a class position too. The Moslem businessmen’s union and the labor union of Moslem workers do not necessarily share the same communitarian Moslemhood. They are in conflict. The bourgeois Moslems say, “We are all Moslems, so accept your salary.” But the workers say, “No, we are not all Moslem brothers. You are rich and we are poor!”
There was a declaration recently launched by three Moslem women. “We are not free yet,” they said, referring to the liberalization of headscarves for a couple months before the constitutional court forbad them again. During this period, they said, “We will not be free until the Armenians, the Kurds, the Alevis are free too. We will not be free until the rights of shipyard workers are recognized.” They are very Moslem. They wear headscarves. They dream of living in an Islamic society in which Islam is recognized totally. But in their minds there are other possibilities for how to live with others. If someone doesn’t want to wear a headscarf, she is free to do so. This is something new. This is not the traditional Islam or the Islam of Kemalism. This third version has links with the new Turkish identity, which in turn has links to the past. They are important actors for this new Turkishness. Their Turkishness is not defensive. It is not racial. They are Turkish because they live in Turkey.
Turkey can be perceived as a model or a laboratory for the whole world.
Just what that model will be or laboratory yield remains to be seen, but it truly is incredible, not to mention intellectually humbling, to be the midst of it.
A crowd of around 3,000 people gathered on Tuesday to commemorate the third anniversary of the murder of Hrant Dink, the prominent Turkish Armenian journalist who was slain outside his home by an ultranationalist youth in cooperation with a larger group of ultranationalists speculated to have links to local and national security forces. The Dink murder is speculated to have ties to deep state elements currently being investigated as part of the rather unwieldly and broadly encompassing Ergenekon investigaton. Dink's assassination and the possibility of a wide-reaching coverup have become a rallying cry for progressive reformers. At the end of the commemoration, demonstrators replaced a Sisli street sign reading reading "Ergenekon" with another, re-naming the street for Hrant Dink
The photo posted here is of Dink's assasin, Ogun Samast, and the officers who arrested him. This photo and similar video footage, along with withheld and disappeared evidence and documents like this one proving that security forces iknew about the assassination plot before it took place, have all given reason to think that Dink's assassination involved a large number of people, some perhaps deep within the state structure. The Dink murder trial is still underway, hampered by a variety of difficulties, including the harassment of Dink's family, supporters, and attorneys. Last July, the Prime Ministry Inspection Board released its report of an investigation into security forces' potential neglect/involvement in the Dink assassination. Though critics claimed the Ministry watered it down, the report does indicate that security officials had reason to think the assassination was impending. Much has been made of whether evidence was properly shared with police in Istanbul, and whether officials of the Istanbul Intelligence Unit were also involved.
20 suspects in addition to Samast are also on trial, but in different courts, including eight gendarmerie officers on trial in Trabzon for negligence. Dink's supporters want the trials merged and a comprehensive investigation into all possible elements involved in the murder, arguing that their own future security is also at stake as long as responsible parties enjoy impunity for their crimes. In July, a court in Istanbul ruled against a petition that an investigation be opened into the role of Istanbul Police Chief Celalettin Cerrah and seven other officers, one of many examples cited of officials' refusal to conduct a proper investigation. Friends of Hrant, an organization of Dink's supporters, this week issued a statement reiterating its demands. Lawyers have applied again to the European Court of Human Rights on the grounds that Dink's right to life was violated by the state's failure to protect him, as well as other rights that have been violated in the course of the investigation and trials.
For more on Dink's murder and its aftermath, see this excellent 2009 documentary, "For Hrant, For Justice," by Umit Kivanc. (Thanks to Jenny White and Bulent, who posts on this blog as well.)
UPDATE I (1/27) -- In a speech commemorating Hrant Dink, Canadian journalist and human rights activist Naomi Klein used the podium to argue the government of Turkey gives Israel a public relations weapon when it violates the rights of Kurds and Armenians while at the same time criticizing Israel. A strong critic of Israel, Klein lauded Prime Minister Erdogan's denunciations of Israeli war crimes, but noted what she considers the hypocrisy of the Turkish government's position. Hürriyet ran a piece covering the speech, though I doubt it got more attention outside of the English-language press.
UPDATE II (2/8) -- The investigation launched by the Interior Ministry at the behest of the Prime Ministry Inspection Board has cleared 19 police officers working in the National Police department's intelligence unit and the Trabzon local police. The Prime Ministry Inspection Board prompted the investigation at the petition of Dink's wife.
Two recent mob attacks, one on leftist students in Edirne thought to be PKK supporters and the other on Roma in the Selendi district of Manisa, have again put the question of lynchings front and center. In both cases there are plenty of questions about the police response, accusations arising that the police did little to nothing to curb the violence. According to Bianet, the Dec. 27 Edirne attacks sparked a second wave of protests on the same street on Jan. 3, as well as in Erzincan and Kars. For a video of the Edirne attacks, click here.
Jenny White has an excellent post documenting recent lynch attacks, tieing the Edirne and Manisa mobs to a greater lynching phenomenon. Both lynchings were sparked by the same rising racial-based nationalism that I have written about here before (see, for example, June 26,2008 post), but the increased frequency, and possibly, organization, of these attacks should be cause for concern. In November, convoys of DTP politicians in the cities of Izmir and Canakkale were also attacked by mobs.
UPDATE I (1/15) -- The MHP mayor of the Selendi district in Manisa visited neighboring Gördes district, where up to 76 displaced Roma were re-located, and asked them to return. Some have accused the mayor of refusing to adequately respond to the attack and/or helping to foment it. Any other details as to just how the mayor did the latter are appreciated.
On the evening of July 11, the world-renowned classical pianist Idil Biret and the Whitehall Orchestra performed at the Topkapi Palace, one of the early palaces of the Ottoman Empire, now a museum that contains the artifacts of empire — among them the Ottoman crown jewels and important Islamic relics. For decades parts of the palace, especially the vast courtyards, have been the site of world-class music concerts. The day before, a far-right Islamist newspaper Vakit had fomented against the fact that alcohol was to be served at this concert in the hallowed halls of an Ottoman palace in proximity to the relics and at a time of concern for outrages against the (Muslim) Turkic Uighurs in China. A group of fifty to a hundred protestors led by an ultranationalist group called the Alperenler Hearth rampaged in front of the concert doors, calling out Allahu Akbar and tearing down and burning the concert posters. They knelt on a Turkish flag (the Vakit account states they knelt on an Alperen flag) to pray. The show went on as planned, but the performers had to escape out the back door. The Alperenler crowd, held in check by the police, then made its way through local neighborhoods shouting Allahu Akbar.
State Minister Mehmet Aydın says a precedent has not been set with the launch of TRT 6 and broadcasting in other languages is not about to commence. He says individual assessments need to be made on the need for TV channels in other languages before making decisions.
Turkish state television’s new Kurdish channel will not be followed by similar channels in Laz, Georgian or other languages spoken in Turkey, or by a channel broadcasting in Zazaki, a Kurdish dialect, said the state minister responsible for Turkish Radio and Television Corporation, or TRT, Mehmet Aydın yesterday.
"It is too early to make a comment," Aydın told reporters at Parliament, avoiding any comment that could be perceived as a green light to other state TV channels in non-Turkish languages. "We must weigh the necessities carefully. Why was TRT-6 born? Is there need for television in other languages or dialects? These must be carefully thought out," Aydın said.
Turkish citizens speaking Laz, Zaza, and Georgian requested Parliament’s human rights committees to launch channels in their languages after TRT-6, the first Kurdish state channel, was launched at the start of the year.
"TRT-6 airs a dozen types of programs 24 hours a day. We need to consider how suitable the content and quality of these programs are in meeting the demands of other languages and dialects," Aydın said.
The minister said the Laz, Georgian, and Zazaki people would not insist on state channels in their own languages. "Why should they ask for this? There are people in Southeast and East Turkey who cannot speak Turkish. Kurdish is used in all corners of the country. Are these languages used as much?" the state minister asked.
Aydın said the request submitted to Parliament’s human rights committee was the exercise of a democratic right by these groups.
Similarly, Circassian groups requested broadcast time earlier last month, the heads of the Caucasian Associations Federation (an umbrella organization for 56 Circassian groups) sitting down with President Gül at Çankaya to discuss broadcast time on TRT-6 or another channel. The demands for Zazacı to be included are also important in that the Zaza are a minority Kurdish group; at the moment, TRT-6 is broadcasting primarily in Kurmancı, the dialect of and group to which the majority of Turkey's Kurds belong. For more on Zaza, see Wladimir van Wilgenburg's analysis of rising Zaza nationalism in the EDM.
Interesting is that Aydın acknowledged the petition as a democratic right exercised by these minority groups. Turkey has been reluctant to vest minority groups with rights, though the growing number of minority rights' claims from Turkey's multiple ethnic groups is likely to raise the ire of old-fashioned, state-centric Kemalists who have long decried that such rights will lead to ethnic fragmentation, a bugaboo which still very much influences Turkish politics. Such fear is manifest in a statement made last January by the Atatürkist Thought Association (ADD) , a hardcore nationalist organization. From the statement:
Learning Turkish, speaking Turkish and being educated in Turkish is a citizen’s responsibility. With the Kurdish broadcast channel, the TRT will play into the hands of those domestic and international powers who want to divide and ruin our country. We invite our people and administrators to see that Kurdish broadcasting, Kurdish language and literature departments, the Kurdish Institute, an autonomous region, a federation and an independent Kurdish state are all phases of a game. We strongly decry attempts by the [Higher Education Board] YÖK to establish Kurdish language and literature departments even as there are serious higher education problems in our country. The ADD will forever remain bound to the secular, democratic, social republic that the great leader Atatürk established, the unitary structure of the state and its indivisible entirety, and we will continue the ideological battle for this purpose. How happy is he who calls himself a Turk.
The ADD and the Turkey Public Employers’ Trade Unions Confederation (KAMU-SEN) have both filed lawsuits to fight TRT-6 in the Turkish courts, though victory is unlikely and the prevailing political sentiment against them (see Jan. 7 post).
My inbox filled up quickly this past weekend after Prime Minister Erdoğan walked out of the World Economic Forum in Davos on Friday. Although insistent in his desire to normalize relations with Israel damaged by previous remarks (see Jan. 22 post), Erdoğan lambasted Israeli President Shimon Peres in a panel discussion on Gaza.
David Ignatius of the Washington Post moderated the panel, which also included UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon and Arab League Secretary-General and Egyptian Foreign Minister Amr-Moussa. After Erdoğan condemned Israel's indiscriminate targeting of civilians in Gaza and its illegal use of white phosphorus gas in populated areas, Peres angrily responded that Turkey would do the same if Istanbul was faced with rocket fire. In retort to Peres' raised voice and finger-pointing, Erdoğan asked Ignatius for time to respond. Regretfully, Ignatius denied the request, giving Erdoğan only a minute to respond to Peres' scolding. A visibly frustrated Erdoğan ignored Ignatius, who rather thoughtlessly responded that it was time "to get people to dinner," patting Erdoğan's shoulder for a while in a move that some read as disrespecting. Talking over Ignatius, Erdoğan proceeded to excoriate Peres, prefacing his remarks with the Sixth Commandment and Peres' "guilty conscience." Throwing up his hands, the Prime Minister then indignately remarked that Peres had been given 25 minutes to speak while he had been granted only 12. (Ignatius had, in fact, given Peres more time, but by five minutes.) Erdoğan -- the crowd, including Obama advisor Valerie Jarrett, now stupefied -- declared himself done with Davos, soon after walking abruptly off the stage. Shortly after, Erdoğan's wife, Emine, reinforced her husband's sentiments, dramatically standing before reporters in tears to denounce everything Peres said as a lie. The whole panel discussion can be viewed on the YouTube link above. To skip ahead to Erdoğan's fiery, yet surprisingly crisp retort, go to 1:01 on the video.
Ecstatic crowds made for a hero's welcome when Erdoğan arrived in Istanbul later that night. (Click here for video footage from the BBC.) Talking before thousands of people, Erdoğan struck a nationalist tone, calling his response a matter of honor for Turkey and her people, but also urged that the future of Turkey-Israel relations should not be determined in anger. Turkish television and newspapers cheered the Prime Minister throughout the weekend, his actions viewed as demonstrable of an independent foreign policy. Even those who have been commitedly in opposition to Erdoğan and the AKP lauded his response at Davos, largely a function of Turkey's national pride and sense of itself being under siege. CHP opposition leader Deniz Baykal praised Erdoğan at Davos, forecasting that AKP is likely to win with a majority of the vote. Self-identified "secularist" friends have sent emails extolling Erdoğan, and Davos makes it highly unlikely that AKP will lose votes to the ultra-nationalist Nationalist Action Party (MHP) and the conservative Felicity Party (SP), the latter of which received an injection of popularity during the war in Gaza (see January 14 post).
The future of Turkey-Israel relations is yet to be determined. Taken in light of Peres' raised voice and finger-pointing, it would have been politically disastrous for the Prime Minister not to respond strongly. Wisely, after the meeting, both leaders qualified their exchange: Erdoğan said his choler was directed mainly toward Ignatius and the uneven format of the debate, while Peres apologized for raising his voice, explaining he had raised it because he was told it was difficult to hear in the auditorium. And, though the conservative Israeli press has pounded Erdoğan in the past few days, the reaction could have been much worse. Israeli Foreign Minister and Kadima's candidate for PM in upcoming Israeli elections did argue that Erdoğan should show more respect for the important strategic partnership that premises Turkey-Israel relations, but criticism has for the most part been tempered.
Also to be seen is how Erdoğan's remarks will impact Turkey's ambition to mediate between Israel and Syria, not to mention Hamas, and just what Turkish diplomacy in Gaza means for its position in the Middle East. Ironically, now a hero in the eyes of many Arabs, Erdoğan has placed Turkey in a potentially precarious position. While popularity in the Arab World should be welcome, the authoritarian leaders of Arab States are unlikely to sit by and watch Erdoğan's popularity grow lest it further undermine the legitimacy of their own regimes. And, even more problematic is that Turkey's diplomatic capital is now largely dependent on Hamas. Should Hamas leaders provoke Israel and/or act in any way particularly unbecoming to international norms, Turkey's support of Hamas -- as it is being read in the Arab World -- will need to be re-evaluated. In such an event, it is highly unlikely that Turkey would stand by Hamas, as doing so would devastate relations with Israel and the United States, raise important questions in Europe (which has been laudatory of Turkey's engagement with Hamas), and further discomfit Arab leaders (whose skill in maintaining the status quo should not be underestimated). If Hamas acts foolishly and loses the support of the international community it has garnered thanks to Israel's disproportionate response, Turkey will be placed in an untenable situation, and surely this reality is not lost on Hamas leaders.
Another problem in the wake might manifest itself come expected efforts by the Armenian diaspora in the United States to renew efforts to pass a resolution in the United States Congress recognizing as genocide the 1915 massacres of Armenians during the last days of the Ottoman Empire. The powerful Jewish lobby has historically come to the assistance of Turkey to counter such pushes.
Peripherally, it will be interesting to see how Erdoğan's indignation will effect Turkey's policy toward the Kurds and its hosting figures like Omar al-Bashir, hypocrisies involving which have been pointed out by foreign and domestic press alike. It will also be interesting to see if ICC Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo's announcement that he is exploring ways to prosecute IDF commanders guilty of war crimes commited in Gaza will bolster support for the ICC.
Anti-Semitism
As before, there is concern that Erdoğan's remarks at Davos will fuel anti-Semitism, though the Prime Minister has repeated that Jews and Israelis should not be confused with the Israeli state. Before Friday prayers, Mustafa Çağırcı, head cleric of Istanbul's mosques, reportedly urged all imams to refrain from any comments that might be interpreted as anti-Semitic. Despite Erdoğan's repeated rejection of anti-Semitism, Yigal Schleifer is understandably troubled by the Prime Minister's mention of anti-Semitic performer Gilad Atzmon, asking the question of just where Erdoğan picked up Atzmon's name and whether it is reflective of who is advising him on Middle East policy. While Erdoğan also cited the work of Avi Schlaim, dropping the name of the less than savory figure of Atzmon understandably disconcerts Schleifer. Bemoaning evidence of a flurry of anti-Semitism, Schleifer explores the "online conversion" of Ignatius, who was falsely reported to be Jewish by the secular-leaning Hürriyet. Turkey is rife with what Schleifer calls "citizen propaganda," and correct in drawing attention to the proliferation of virulent anti-Semitism in discourse as of late.
UPDATE 2/3 -- The Jerusalem Post is reporting that the Israeli Defense Ministry's Foreign Defense Assistance and Defense Export Organization (SIBAT) is re-evaluating several recently submitted arms requests made by the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK). The paper cites an anonymous official in the Defense Ministry: Turkey is eyeing moderate Arab countries and is hoping to strengthen its ties with them . . . . Just like we don't sell advanced military platforms to Jordan and Egypt, we may decide not to sell to Turkey." According to the Post,
In December, subsidiaries of IAI and Elbit Systems signed a $140 million deal to supply the Turkish Air Force with targeting pods. Israeli Military Industries (IMI) recently completed a $700m. deal signed several years ago with Turkey to upgrade the country's fleet of aging Patton-series M60 tanks. IAI also recently supplied Turkey with its advanced long-range Heron unmanned aerial vehicle.
Sources in defense industries expressed hope that the crisis with Ankara would pass and would not have a negative impact on sales to Turkey.
UPDATE 2/4 -- Evidence of discomfited Arab leaders thanks to EDM's Emrullah Uslu:
Foreign ministers of nine Arab countries-Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Jordan, Bahrain, Egypt, Palestine, Yemen, Tunisia, and the United Arab Emirates-met in Abu Dhabi as part of a growing Arab process of consultation and increasing Arab solidarity. A statement issued after the meeting noted, "We are working to overcome this difficult time in the Arab world and ensure that unwelcome, non-Arab parties do not become involved in our affairs in an unconstructive manner" (www.khaleejtimes.com, www.haberturk.com, February 3). The Turkish press maintains that this "unwelcome, non-Arab party" is Turkey and that Arab leaders are not happy about Erdogan's response to the Gaza crisis (www.haberturk.com, February 4).
For full article, click here. On Jan. 15, Uslu wrote that Erdoğan is positioning himself as a new Nasser, and as noted above, a Turkish Nasser is not a prospect likely to be passively accepted by Arab leaders.
Also, I wrote above that Israeli press coverage has been much less incendiary than it could be. While I still think this is for the most part true, Yigal Schleifer writes today of some pretty shoddy coverage that made its way into Ha'aretz. The paper recently reported that vandals burned down a synagogue in Bursa, an event that simply did not happen, but which Ha'aretz did not correct.
Last year Parliament passed a bill that allowed television broadcasting in languages other than Turkish -- specifically aimed at introducing Kurdish, Arabic and Farsi programming -- and this month TRT 6 began Kurdish programming to appeal to the nation’s 20 million Kurdish citizens. Work is also under way to create Kurdish literature and language departments in Turkish universities. Circassian Turks, who account for an estimated 6 million, are now asking for similar steps to be taken to recognize their culture.
On Monday, President Abdullah Gül received the heads of the Caucasian Associations Federation (an umbrella organization for 56 Circassian groups) at the Çankaya presidential palace. The representatives, Turkish citizens of Abkhazian background, told the president that Turkey had implemented a de facto embargo on Abkhazia and that they had started a signature campaign to reverse it.
The group presented a file to the president containing their requests, and Gül said he would look into and consider their requests. Caucasian Associations Federation Secretary-General Cumhur Bal told Today’s Zaman that the meeting had “passed positively,” adding: “The esteemed president has been informed on the topics. We didn’t see any hint of a negative reaction.”
According to Bal, Gül had responded positively in particular to their requests for Circassian language and literature departments in Ýstanbul and Ankara universities and broadcasts on TRT, saying, “Why not?” In his interview with Today’s Zaman, Bal said the TRT’s current once-a-week, half-hour broadcast in Circassian languages on Thursdays was insufficient. “The programs broadcast soccer match results from a week ago. We know Turkish, we already know about this. Our request is for programming containing news,” Bal explained.
Recalling that the newly started TRT 6 channel was to broadcast in many languages, Bal was quick to point out that his federation was not trying to constitute competition for Kurdish in TV broadcasting. “We see the start of Kurdish broadcasting positively. Broadcasting in Circassian can be on TRT 6 or on other channels. It’s not competition [with Kurdish broadcasting] -- it’s something that we also deserve,” he said, adding that broadcasting in native languages was a way to perpetuate culture and tradition.
Circassians comprise approximately 6 million of Turkey's estimated 72 million people. Hürriyet quotes MHP leader Devlet Bahçeli, " "Everybody can speak in their mother tongue in their private lives. There is nobody preventing this, we respect this." The issue of using languages other than Turkish in the public sphere is widely opposed by those concerned that it will lead to the deterioration of Turkish nationality, which for many people underpins the basis of Turkish citizenship. Demands for cultural recognition from Circassians and other ethnic groups in addition to the country's Kurdish minority, which constitues 20 percent of its population, will prompt Turkey to give more thought to its accomodation of minorities.
Turkey is in a state of flux. Founded in 1923 amidst the ruins of the Ottoman Empire and very much a product of modern nation-state ideology, the emergence of Turkey is one of the great stories of the last century.
Although the Turkish state is still quite strong, an increasingly globalized, albeit incipient, civil society has come to challenge its hegemony and singular notions of "Turkishness." Growing numbers of Turks are demanding human rights reform and a more democratic society. At the same time, politics remains a largely elite affair, minority and cultural rights go largely unrecognized, nationalism remains a potently virulent force, and political stability is still a matter of concern. Unrest in the Kurdish southeast, anti-democratic maneuverings to curb civil liberties and close political parties, repression of political dissent, and a questionable human rights regime raise real concerns for the future of Turkish democracy.
A candidate for accession into the European Union, Turkey stands at a crossroads—will it move toward the postmodernity of Europe, or will it forge an ultimately separate path? Will Turkey provide one of the amazing political stories of the twenty-first century, and what does its political development and changing geopolitics have to say about the future of world politics?
Ragan Updegraff has closely followed Turkish politics for over six years, working as a political consultant, journalist, and analyst along the way. His work has appeared in the Journal of Democracy and the Jerusalem Post, among various other publications, and he has been interviewed by Voice of America, The Guardian, and The Telegraph. In 2009-2010, he was a United States Fulbright Research Fellow and studied the impact that Turkish legal reforms undertaken as part of Turkey's European accession process were having in transforming Turkey's relations with minority groups, in particular its nationalist Kurdish population. He also studied EU assistance to Turkish NGOs working on minority right issues. He continues to closely monitor events in Turkey from Washington, D.C.
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