Turkey's Debtors

From the New York Times' Mark Landler as part of a series on global credit card debt:

In Turkey, where borrowing money was until very recently a family affair, being in debt carried a fearful stigma. Some here even likened it to the disgrace that drives people to commit the honor killings that still occur in parts of this society.

“People who would kill their sisters or daughters for bringing shame on the family would do anything to avoid being labeled a debtor,” said Nazim Kaya, the president of Consumers Union, an advocacy group that helps those who fall into debt.

But in a cultural shift that has swept aside centuries of tradition, credit cards have become commonplace here. Only three decades ago, Turkey had fewer than 10,000 cards; today it has more than 38 million.

As the American blessing of credit cards became widespread, so did the American curse of debt. Outstanding card debt here ballooned to nearly $18 billion last year, six times the level five years earlier. Default rates spiked and consumer groups protested sky-high interest charges. Newspapers were filled with stories of desperate card holders killing themselves or others.

In 2006, a fierce outcry prompted Turkey to pass a law clamping down on credit card marketers.

“We did not listen to our ancestors’ proverb,” Mr. Kaya said. “ ‘Stretch your leg only as far as your blanket.’ ”

For the whole article, click here.

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.

Another Potential 301 Trial

From Today's Zaman:

A prosecution case file concerning an article penned by lawyer and human rights activist Orhan Kemal Cengiz has been sitting on Justice Minister Mehmet Ali Şahin's desk since late April.

The article subject to prosecution is titled "Time to question the role of the military!" and was published March 5 in an English-language newspaper. Only 14 days after the article was published, the Gendarmerie Command in Ankara filed a complaint addressed to the chief prosecutor in İzmir. Cengiz's official residence is still there, though he has been working and living in Ankara since autumn 2006.

In his letter of complaint, a copy of which was obtained by Today's Zaman, military judge and judicial councilor Gazi Koçer wrote, "Press freedom … doesn't give anybody the right to attack state institutions' honor and dignity. This situation necessitates the limitation of press freedom within specific limits and obliges that the report be rooted in reality." The document has the official stamp with the word "classified."

Here is a link to the column that Gazi Koçer thinks constitutes a crimes.

Support for EU On Rise, Skepticism About AKP and the Future

From Today's Zaman:

A clear majority of society supports Turkey’s bid to join the European Union, a new opinion poll has found. Public support for Turkey’s EU membership rose to 66.2 percent in this month, up from 55 percent in June of last year, according to a survey conducted earlier this week.

The Social and Political Situation in Turkey survey, conducted by the Ankara-based MetroPOLL Strategic & Social Research Center on Aug. 4-5, surveyed 1,226 people across various provinces in Turkey to find out people’s views on a closure case against the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party), which concluded last month, and on an ongoing trial of suspected members of the terrorist organization Ergenekon, whose members are facing various charges over trying to topple the government.

. . . .

In response to a question on whether they would vote for or against Turkey’s EU membership if there were a referendum today, 66.2 percent said they would vote ‘Yes,’ while only 28 percent said they would vote against. In June of 2007 38.3 percent of those polled were against EU membership while 55.5 percent supported it.

The poll supports the notion that the general tendency of the Turkish public is to increase support for EU membership in the face of processes perceived to be anti-democratic.

. . . .

In response to how they saw the ruling of the Constitutional Court, 27.6 percent of those polled said they were not pleased with the decision while 69.7 percent said they were happy with it. In response to a question on whether they thought the AK Party indeed threatens secularism in Turkey, 35 percent said yes while 60 percent said no. However, an overwhelming majority of 73.4 percent said the AK Party should change its policies in the future to avoid a similar situation, while only 22.6 percent said the party should stick to its past policies.

. . . .

However, optimism about Turkey's future was not high. In response to the question "In which direction overall do you think Turkey is headed?" 37.2 percent said Turkey will change for the better, while 58.2 percent said for the worse. The figures, however, mark a slight improvement from those in June, when 28.6 percent had expressed hope that things in Turkey would get better in the future and 66 percent had said they believed things would get worse.

In response to a question on how the respondent would rate his or her sense of trust on a scale of 1 to 10 for various individuals and state agencies, the highest trust rating went to the military (8.7), followed by the police (7.7) , President Abdullah Gül (7.1), the judiciary (6.9), the Constitutional Court (6.7), Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (6.4), Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) leader Devlet Bahçeli (4.0) and finally CHP leader Deniz Baykal (3.1).

Asked who they would vote for if there was an election today, 42 percent of respondents said they would vote for the AK Party, followed by the CHP (13.9 percent), the MHP (8.4 percent) and the DTP (1.8 percent). Of the remaining respondents, 12.5 percent said they were undecided, while 7.2 percent said they would simply vote a blank ballot; 3.8 percent said they wouldn't go to the ballot box at all, while 5.4 percent said they had no opinion.

The poll was conducted Aug. 4-5 by telephone among a random national sampling of 1,226 adults residing in cities, towns and villages. The margin of error for the full poll is 2.5 percentage points, at a 95 percent confidence level.

A Third Pole and the Possibility of a Socialist Republic

An interesting analysis that eschews the traditional dichotomy drawn between Islamists and secularists, discusses the negotiation that seems to be occurring between the two as anathema to the emergence of Turkish democracy, and raises the question of a forgotten third pole. I have qualms with much in this analysis, but there is also much here that is valid and the sheer provocative nature of piece makes it heuristically valuable. From Ertegrul Kurkcu of Quebec's Socialist Project thanks to BIA-Net:

Turkey's recent politics appears to revolve around two court cases. In the one case, the ruling AKP (Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi – Justice and Development Party) stands behind the bar in order to defend themselves in the Constitutional Court closure case against charges by the Head Prosecutor of the Turkish Republic of “having become a focus of fundamentalist Islamist threat against the secular republic.”

In the other, the defendants are headed up by former army commanders, who during duty may have mobilized the power they exercised within the state security and intelligence services for crushing the ruling Islamist-rooted AKP government. The complex web, built up under the leadership of a retired four star general, comprises of a vast array of figures from Turkey's broad political spectrum including covert killers, fanatic ultra-nationalist agitators, former-Maoist political figures, solemn academics, retired paramilitaries, and others.

Struggle for Power

The involvement of courts, judges and prosecutors in the ongoing strife may surprise an onlooker who is unfamiliar with the particularities of Turkey's political background. What unfolds before our eyes is not simply a legal process as such, yet a war for power ‘pursued by other means.’ Seen through the eyes of European or U.S. media, Turkey appears to being torn apart between secularists and Islamists.

But this ideological approach misses the real nature of the ongoing strife in the country: the warring parties' programs are related to the restructuring of Turkey's socio-economic relation in a globalized world economy, rather than particular worldviews toward secularism or Islam, though the latter has indeed had a considerable impact on the course of the conflict.

In the one camp stands a contradictory alliance of Turkey's big capitalist class – who strive to ascend a higher level for competition in the global market through membership in the European Union (EU) – and the ‘Anatolian Tigers’. The Anatolian group is made up of middle scale businesses generally owned by the conservative local bourgeoisie of central Turkey of an Islamic background.

They have been competing in the global market since the 1980s when Turkey adopted export oriented development strategies to replace the statist and import substitution approach of the previous two decades. The ruling AKP has had an eye to further influence in the Middle East as a NATO member with a 'strategic alliance' with Washington, contrary to neo-conservative paranoia of Turkey adopting the ‘Taliban model.’ In the last six years in government, it has been able to coalesce with the interests of the big capital from its Islamist power base, although there have also been at times fierce frictions between the allies.

In the other camp is a complex political and social network of Turkey's bureaucratic and military elites in alliance with certain sections of the bourgeoisie whose domestic interests are endangered by the influx of international finance-capital in the Turkish markets. They derive their power from their manipulative capacity over Turkey's powerful state apparatuses – from the military to judiciary, from the academy to administrative bureaucracy – rather than from their role in social production.

The recent crackdown on the secret special organization 'Ergenekon', however, has apparently inflicted a heavy blow on the most criminal elements of this network. This group, with their extensive network across Turkey among staunch secularist-republicans, and with their control over the military-industrial complex, still represents an attractive – even if irrational from the standpoint of the globalization – perspective particularly among white collar occupations, who comprise the urban base of Turkey's political landscape. They have argued for a future for Turkish capitalism in Eurasia – the giant political-geographical space between Russia and China.

The influential generals who have inspired this new direction had already in 2002 stated that “instead of bidding for membership in the unreliable EU, Turkey should turn towards cooperation with Russia and Iran.” The following years would prove that these were more than mere words.

Between November 2002 (the first year of the pro-Islamist AKP in power) and July 2007 (the general elections which gained the AKP even broader victory for power in the parliament), a huge counter-current against Turkey's EU membership bid and against Turkey's military alliance with the U.S. swept across the country. The movement, in spite of its 'anti-imperialist' rhetoric, said very little against Turkey's NATO membership.

It mainly targeted democratic reforms for freedom of speech and organization, broader rights for Turkey's Kurds and non-Muslim minorities (believing that these made Turkey more vulnerable to Western influences and open to Islamic fundamentalism) and agitated against a peaceful solution in Cyprus for the fear of what might result from the withdrawal of Turkish troops from the divided island.

On the eve of the July 22, 2007 general elections, when they seemed to have the full backing of Turkey's armed forces, the national and international media image of the 'Eurasian' camp (labeled as 'secularists') was so bright and powerful that political analysts could not have predicted their present collapse. Indeed, the media they control or influence – including TV channels, dailies, magazines – and the main opposition CHP (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi – The Republican People's Party) have converged around the opinion that the defeat is caused by AKP-backed persecution of the “patriots” through “slanders” and “false accusations.”

A more coolheaded analysis, however, shows that their initial rise and dramatic collapse as was directly related to a major shift in the balance of power, particularly with the political stand of the armed forces high command. The unexpected consensus reached between the present Chief of Staff General Yasar Buyukanit and Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan on May 5, 2007, marked the beginning of the withdrawal of the support of the armed forces for the ‘Eurasianists.’

In spite of baseless arguments by the liberal supporters of the AKP, the Turkish armed forces' interventions in daily political life have not stemmed from an anti-EU reflex inherent in the army mentality. It has stemmed from their 'perception of threat' that Turkey's territorial integrity is at risk as long as Iraq's prospective dismemberment remains on the agenda in the aftermath of the U.S. occupation of Iraq.

EU Membership: A National Security Policy Principle

Indeed, the National Security Policy Document – a 'top secret' strategy document jointly drafted by the government and the armed forces which was leaked to the press in 1997 – posed, among others, several strategic aims: Turkey's westward orientation should not be modified by any means; Turkey's bid for full EU membership in the EU should be kept (although the negative attitudes of some EU countries should not be underestimated); and efforts directed at integrating Turkey into the world market, including via privatization of state assets, should be increased. This has framed Turkish state policy before and after the AKP government came to power.

In spite of Turkey's favorable strategic approach towards economic integration with global capitalism, Ankara-Washington relations worsened over this period, as the U.S. occupation reinforced the drive toward Kurdish autonomy in Iraq. Due to the fragility of Iraq's territorial control of its borders, the Turkish military perceived a growing threat from the prospective of Kurdish independence in Northern Iraq. For the Turkish military and ruling classes, this was a negative example for Turkey's own 12 million Kurds. The U.S. presence in Iraq, Ankara's military elite believed, also gave the insurgent guerrilla PKK (Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan –Kurdistan Workers' Party) a relatively greater sphere of action on the other side of Turkey-Iraq border.

Having missed the 'chance' to enter into Iraqi territory as part of 'Allied Forces' after a 'no' vote in the Turkish Parliament in 2002, the Turkish military continued its de facto military presence in Northern Iraq to prevent the area from becoming a safe-haven for the insurgent Kurdish guerrillas. Yet, the breaking point was reached when Turkish 'special forces' were embarrassingly arrested by the local U.S. occupation forces in their bases in Suleimania. Turkey was forced to accept a U.S. ban on its covert actions against the Kurds of Iraq and the insurgent Kurdish guerrilla PKK.

The Turkish army responded to the ban from its 'greatest ally' with a mobilization of its political influence against the interests of United States of America in Turkey. From 2002 to 2007, an anti-American and anti-Kurd 'nationalist' psychology and political effort swept across the country. Turkey's NATO trained generals praised “the popular support for the indivisible unity of Turkish Republic.”

The campaign peaked in 2007 when Turkish Armed Forces regained their right to launch cross-border air and land force operations inside Iraqi territory against PKK guerrillas with intelligence support from the U.S. occupation forces. With their security position regained and Washington's recognition of the PKK as an 'enemy', the Turkish Armed Forces consented to a new approach in handling Turkey's ‘Kurdish question.’ In order to balance the PKK influence in Turkey's mostly Kurdish populated provinces, the Turkish army (even as a stronghold of secularism) adopted the ruling AKP's perspective of forging an 'Islamic Brotherhood', with the aim of ideologically integrating the Kurds into the Turkish state. The strategy would be completed by Turkey's recognition of the Northern Iraqi Kurdish administration, whose support Ankara desperately needed to block PKK infiltration into Turkish territory.

The start of the massive Turkish air forces operation over PKK-controlled areas of Northern Iraq in the spring of 2007 marked the end of the 'nationalist campaign' against U.S. interests under the auspices of Turkish Armed Forces. There was no more need for 'anti-U.S.' agitation. The 'subversive organizations' mobilized to campaign against Kurds had to be removed from the scene. The sabotages, arsons, lynching attempts and assassinations directed at Kurds and pro-Western liberals were to be persecuted. The nationalist NGOs and manipulations within political parties, trade unions and the media were not as useful and they should be ended. The eccentric organizations formed during the five years campaign were denied former support and/or tolerance by the Turkish armed forces and by its 'special security apparatuses.'

The road to the 'Ergenekon' operation was wide open. It was revealed during the prosecution that an aborted military coup was in the making from 2002-04. It failed to develop for the fear of international isolation as well as the lack of full support of the army high command. The Turkish Armed Forces Chief of Staff General Buyukanit, in his last public statement bluntly said: “Those who are guilty will pay for it. The Armed Forces is not a criminal organization!” The crackdown on the Ergenekon organization halted at the gates of Turkey's Chief of Staff's military campus, with the police having to suffice with the handcuffing of retired generals.

To the surprise of the once all-powerful 'secularist' camp, the Armed Forces also refrained from publicly backing the charges of anti-secularism against the AKP. Deniz Baykal, the leader of the main opposition CHP, sharply reacted against the Chief of Staff's silence as the AKP moved to lift the ban on wearing the veil in the universities: “We have been left only with the judiciary to rely on.”

The Head Prosecutor of the Republic charged the AKP with “attempting at establishing an Islamic state,” and this indictment was indeed a call for action in legal terms for the armed forces to play its historic role. It was not an ordinary legal document as such. It is highly unlikely that this indictment will retain its initial weight as the political forces are realigned amidst military operations in the southeast, police operations in the capital Ankara that are handcuffing the once almighty generals, and the deadly blasts in an Istanbul suburb which have claimed the lives of innocent civilians.

There Exists a Third Pole!

Although the two parties to the ongoing conflict would like to ally these social forces to their respective individual camps, there is a third party in the social struggle. This is the party of the labour, the oppressed, the poor, the Kurds, the Alevites, the women, the youth, and others.

Those who have marched towards the banned Taksim Square and paid the price of police brutality in May 1st; those who have poured out to the streets to protest against the neoliberal Social Security Law that deprives the workers of the last gains of the social welfare state; those who challenge the ecologically hazardous mining industries and nuclear power plants; and those who for decades have fought for the brotherhood of Turkey's peoples and for a peaceful solution to the 'Kurdish question' comprise the bulk of this camp.

Taking sides with one of the parties to the present conflict who strive for articulating Turkey with one or the other pole of capitalist globalization will not promote – and will actively be against – their social, political, economic and cultural interests. This third force is fighting to build its own capacities to address the people, and oppose playing one of the tunes in either of the bourgeois choruses.

The present situation throws up discussion of mainly two options. On the one hand, the restoration of a 'military guardianship' regime, which may or may not get along with the AKP government, is posited. Turkey, however, is not faced with an imminent military takeover as there exists no real social-economic pretext for such an extraordinary regime, in terms of the present balance of class forces.

On the other hand, the AKP is often posed as deepening Islamic solution to the impasse. But while the AKP pursues a social-cultural policy of pushing Islamist values in daily life as an instrument of its ideological-cultural hegemony, it is highly skeptical that they are aiming at an Islamic state, simply for the concrete reason that this would inflict more harm on their power base than their secularist opponents. An Islamist Turkey would inevitably be ousted from the negotiations table for EU membership (a major guarantee for the free circulation of Turkish capital and goods within the Euro zone, Turkey's major foreign trade partner).

That is why a 'third pole' is necessary to widen political options in Turkey. It is also necessary to bring to justice the Turkish political and military authorities responsible over the last decade for encouraging the secret Ergenekon organization. The military and political elites did so either through tolerance for extra-legal forces or by abusing their power to assist such forces for the sake of the survival of the military 'guardianship' regime. They did so at the expense of the lives of hundreds of people and the uncountable waste of human and material resources.

Such Herculean tasks can only be undertaken by a force that is not the accomplice of any bourgeois government, and that has no tolerance for oppression either by the political Islamists or by the ultra-nationalists. This task can only be assumed by those political forces that fight for a Social Republic. Such a pole in Turkey is emerging.(EK/EÜ)

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.

Big Brother is Watching . . . and Recording

Not that the United States is much better in this regard, but kudos to MP Akın Birdal . . .

From BIA-Net:

Akın Birdal, Diyarbakır deputy for the Democratic Society Party (DTP), submitted a motion of question for keeping files on hundreds of people in Istanbul, which was described by retired major Fikret Emek, one of the accused in the Ergenekon case, as “a routine job of the Special Forces Command Post.”

Talking to bianet, Birdal says the government should show the necessary will to go against this unlawful practice and to uncover the perpetrators: “AKP should want this and we should support it.”

Did keeping files go on?
Birdal’s questions, which he wants to be replied by Interior Minister Beşir Atalay, are:

1. Is it true that the units responsible for the internal security kept files by subjecting individuals and institutions to political evaluation?

2. Which institution kept files on people?

3. Does keeping files cover only the period of 1999-2000? Or, is keeping files on people comes all the way to the present?

4. Is it legal according to the official regulations that an institution can keep files on individuals and institutions? If it is legal then which institutions can keep files on people? What is the purpose of keeping files?

5. Was your ministry aware of this procedure of keeping files on people?

6. Has the individual or the institution which keeps files on people ever been investigated because of keeping files? If there has, then what was the result?

7. Has there been an administrative or judicial investigation about the individuals or institutions that have been politically evaluated through keeping files on them?

8. Do you think keeping files is justifiable in the context of human rights and freedoms and personal safety and freedom, including the right to live?

9. Do you think there should be a parliamentary inquiry about this unlawful practice that is against democracy and human rights?

DTP will want an investigative commission
Birdal says there must be an investigative commission and the parliamentary group of the Democratic Society Party (DTP) told bianet that they were planning to form an investigative commission.

According to the documents uncovered in the Ergenekon investigation, individuals are filed with descriptions such as “PKK, DHKP/C, TİKKO, MLKP, radical left, reactionary religious, Nakşibendi, Süleymancı, Nurcu” across their names. The acronyms represent the radical leftist and Islamic congregations deemed dangerous.

Retired major Emek, in whose house these files were found, describes the whole thing as one of the routine duties of the Special Forces, which he had to do when he was assigned to this post. (TK/EZÖ)

Insulting Atatürk

I first posted about Canan Bezirgan in June. After saying she did not like Atatürk on television in November 2000 and becoming the center of a media frenzy, Bezirgan made the decision to move to Canada. With the help of Human Rights Watch, she gained asylum status in Canada. In 2006, Bezirgan returned to Turkey--she found Canada much too "liberal" in morals--and soon became faced with prosecution for her 2000 remarks. Under the Turkish Penal Code, it is a crime to insult Atatürk and the Supreme Leader's legacy. From BIA-Net:

Beyoğlu/Istanbul prosecutor Muzaffer Yalçın saw no need to try Nuray Canan Bezirgan and Kevser Çakır, who were accused of insulting Atatürk, founder of the Turkish Republic, because of their statement that “I do not like Atatürk, I like Humeyni.”

According to the report by ntvmsnbc, prosecutor’s reasoning was that there was no need for special laws to protect Atatürk’s value.

Although the prosecutor says this, the Law 5816 About Crimes Against Atatürk, which went into effect in 1951, is still in place. Many people, among them writer Mustafa İslamoğlu, journalist Hakan Albayrak, owner of Peri Publishing Ahmet Önal, Professor Atilla Yayla, journalist İpek Çalışlar, publishers Ragıp Zarakolu and Fatih Taş, translators Lütfi Taylan Tosun and Aysel Yıldırım, administrator of Özgür-Der Children’s Club Zehra Çomaklı Türkmen, journalists Mehmet Terzi and Oral Çalışlar, were tried because of this law. Some of these individuals received jail sentences.

Liking is a matter of heart
In the television program she was interviewed, Bezirgan had asked if she had the right not to like Atatürk.

According to Prosecutor Yalçın’s reasoning:

“Mustafa Kemal Atatürk is a national hero. As a national hero and a revolutionary, he took his place in the histories of Turks and Turkish Republic as well as the World History. As Atatürk’s value will not diminish just because someone said a bad thing about him, there is no need for special laws to protect his value. It is true that there are those who do not like Atatürk. Liking someone is a matter of heart; it is inside one’s heart.” (EÜ/EZÖ/TB)

Although Yalçın made the decision not to pursue Bezirgan's prosecution, another prosecutor might have just as easily brought the case to court. The most notable case to be brought to trial under the Atatürk statute this year was that of Atilla Yayla. Yayla was found guilty in January of this year and sentenced to 3 months in prison (although the sentence was suspended).

It is very difficult to talk or write about Atatürk, and it is something I have been careful to avoid (and advised to avoid). However, Turkish Daily News columnist Mustafa Akyol has not been so reluctant to launch criticism of how Turkey handles Atatürk's legacy, which he has described as characterized by a kind of personality cult--indeed, it is one of the columnists most frequent touched upon subjects. It cannot be stressed enough that Akyol's criticism is not of Atatürk, but rather of how the leader's legacy has been handled throughout the country's history. Akyol's treatment of Atatürk's legacy sometimes shocks even me--an outsider--in its strong criticism of what the columnist sees as a set of practices that hinder Turkey's political development, but his obervations hold weight and the problems he isolates certainly join the other obstacles Turkish democracy must struggle to overcome. Here are four most provacative columns Akyol has authored:

The Atatürk Silhouette on the Holy Mountain

Why Most 'Educated' Turks Are Hopelessly Illiberal

'How Dare You Not Love Atatürk?!'

The Heinous Attack on the Penis of Atatürk's Horse

Başbuğ Takes Top Military Post Amidst Larger Surprises

It is now official that Land Forces Commander Gen. İlker Başbuğ will become chief of the General Staff on Aug. 30 when Gen. Yaşar Büyükanıt is forced into retirement. While the latter 67-year old general reached the mandatory age of retirement, he had also gained a reputation for his compulsiveness. In contrast, Başbuğ is largely considered a "cool" general, but a military leader just as fervently secularist and tied to Atatürkist ideology as Büyükanıt. Başbuğ is likely to serve until 2010 and speculation is rife as to just how the new appointment will color military-AKP government relations. The appointment was ratified by President Gül after the annual meeting (held every August) of the Supreme Military Council (YAS), which meets to consider promotions and transfers.

In a much more surprising happening of the YAS meeting, the generals did not decide to conduct its annual purge of of its officer corps. The purge has long been used to dismiss people who the military top brass thinks are ideologically-suspect (usually meaning Islamist). The military has long feared infiltration of its top ranks by political Islamists, and the annual YAS meeting has traditionally been an easy way to rid of unwanted officers without having to conduct open hearings. While the AKP government has protested these dismissals in recent years and argued that the dismissed officers should be tried in standard military courts, the absence of such a purge this year is largely being read as a conciliatory gesture toward the government. The Islamist press including Zaman and Vatan are also speculating that there might be a 'quid pro quo' arrangement between Başbuğ and Erdoğan: if Başbuğ does not dismiss top Islamists, Erdoğan will ensure that nobody at the top of the TSK will be pursued as part of the Ergenekon investigation. While doubtful, there is very little reason that has been made public as to why the YAS forewent what had become a sort of annual rite performed in the name of preserving the sanctity of the secular state. Could this be indicative of a new working relationship that is developing between AKP top brass and the TSK? If such a détente is indeed incipient, what are the conditions for its emergence? What new covenant might be in the process of negotiation and just what does it mean for Turkey's pursuit of EU membership (there are Euro-philes and Euro-skeptics in both camps)? What does it mean for human rights protections?

More from Gareth Jenkins / More from the London Times

German Marshall Fund Initiates New Turkey Forum

Here are abstracts to three excellent articles brought to you thanks to a new initiative being taken by the German Marshall Fund.

Turkey After the Verdict: Back to Normal?
Written by Ian Lesser
July 31, 2008
The decision by Turkey's constitutional court to warn and sanction, but not close the Justice and Development Party (AKP), offers an opportunity to Turks and Turkey's international partners. After almost a year of distraction and disarray, Ankara may now be able to focus on the most pressing problems facing the country. Europe and the United States may now be able to treat Turkey as a "normal" country again. Much will depend on whether the court's decision ushers in a period of moderation or renewed polarization, and whether the AKP government uses its renewed freedom of action to think strategically about external policy.

After The Constitutional Court Ruling: Whither Tayyip Erdogan and the AKP?
Written by Amberin Zaman
July 31, 2008
As the dust begins to settle in the aftermath of the constitutional court's surprise decision not to ban the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), the most pressing question in the Turkish capital, Ankara, is what impact it will have on the country's prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The Court Blinks
Written by Soli Ozel
July 31, 2008
Turkey's Constitutional Court decision not to ban the AK Party, in spite of ten members being convinced that they were indeed guilty of some political wrongdoing, means that Turkey's political problems and its struggles for power will now have to be settled in the political realm, by the ballot box and not by extra-political means. In its own peculiar way, Turkey is clearing its own path toward becoming a better democracy and the thorny issue of Turkish secularism will need to be settled through political bargains and processes rather than judicial fiat.

Click here for the GMF site.

Just Another Conspiracy Theory?

Someone with whom I frequently speak ran an interesting idea by me before I left Turkey last week and I have yet to share it. While conspiracy theories are rife in Turkey, especially when it comes to covert United States intervention in Turkish affairs and the "hidden hand of global capitalism," this particular narrative came to me not as a conspiracy theory, but as a possible explanation for how AKP so narrowly survived closure. Further, the person from whom it originated is not someone from whom I expect to hear vast conspiracy theories, and is in no way normally hostile toward the United States or a frequent commentator on the "hidden hand" aforementioned. Here goes: AKP was saved by the Constitutional Court after a consensus was reached between Erdoğan and Washington over Iran. After gaining Turkey's support for a hard-line stance against Iran at a time when relations between the two countries are improving (see July 2 post), Washington uses its considerable influence over the TSK to in turn push the latter to send a message to the Constitutional Court to issue the razor-thin majority in opposition to closure that was delivered.

I post this scenario not because I or the person who relayed it to me thinks that this is definitely explicative of the verdict, but rather because it is food for thought at a time when the American neoconservative crusade against AKP has raised tensions here and amidst the anxiety so many Turks feel that the United States is determined to use Turkey for its own designs in relation to Iran. While Washington still seems very much undecided as to what exactly it is going to do about Iran, fears that its hawks might come to power in the near future give rise to considerable concern. This concern is further legitimated by reports that some U.S. policymakers are determined to wage war against Iran. For an example of such reportage, see Seymour Hersh's most recent coverage of Cheney plans to initiate a Gulf of Tonkin-style affair in the Persian-Arab Gulf. No wonder the Turks are so prone to worry.

Goodbye Gül, Hello Erdoğan-Babacan . . . Goodbye Europe?

Now that AKP has been saved, relations of the party with Europe become a very important point of consideration for the party and Turkey's future . . .

With Gül now president and more excluded from AKP's ruling structure, many observers have noted that his aggressively pro-Europe foreign policy stance has been replaced by a much more antagonistic attitude toward the European Union. When Euro-phile Gül was foreign minister, rhetoric toward the EU was largely conciliatory. However, with the rhetoric of the Erdoğan-controlled Ali Babacan, Turkey has continually injured its chances at eventual EU membership by continually choosing to focus on the EU's alleged discriminatory treatment toward Turkey.

Often iterated are accusations that the EU holds Turkey to different standards than it held its new Eastern European members and that EU politicians are constantly seeking to undermine Turkey's membership status by attempting to draw it into accepting an offer less than full membership. While there is some warrant to these charges, they focus only on those EU politicians who are against Turkish membership and, in fact, play directly into these Turkophobes' hands. If Nicolas Sarkozy wants ammunition to use against Turkey's application, Erdoğan and Babacan have certainly given him plenty.

Instead of focusing on meeting the requirements of the EU acquis, Erdoğan and Babacan have instead antagonized Europe and even made accusations that European demands are constantly and unfairly changing. However, all one has to do to realize that this is indeed not the case is to take the time to actually sit down and read the annual progress reports coming from the European Commission. The demands have not changed, and much to the shame of both politicians, little has been done to meet the conditions of the acquis since Turkey was granted accession status in 2005. Consequently, while the reports sound remarkably the same, what is present is a growing tone of frustration.

If AKP is serious about membership, the goal is best served by focusing on meeting EU demands rather than criticizing the EU. While much of this criticism is directed toward politicians like Sarkozy, such diplomatic moves make it more difficult for pro-Turkey EU politicians, many of whom are in the EU Commission, to respond effectively to their anti-Turkey cohorts. Rather than being constructive, Turkish criticism of the EU gives Turkish diplomacy a semblance of childishness and detracts attention away from the real work to be done. When this criticism is added atop Turkish refusal to implement an agreement to implement the agreement it signed to open up its ports to Cyprus in accordance with the Customs Union, many Europeans are growing increasingly perturbed.

Instead of worrying about Sarkozy, Turkey is best served by focusing on the European Commission and the acquis, the real fulcrum on which Turkey's membership rests. Surely Erdoğan and Babacan know this, and their reluctance to move forward with the EU accession process in any real and meaningful way casts doubt on their true intentions. Unfortunately, like the growing Erdoğan-led authoritarianism that has come to shape the AKP with Gül out of the picture, the prime minister's control over foreign policy is also a cause for concern.

As I have repeatedly argued, the best thing for Turkey to do at this point in the game is to appoint a full-time representative to the European Union instead of having Babacan balance this tremendous responsibility along with a foreign policy portfolio that is growing and, as Gareth Jenkins writes, seems increasingly out-of-focus. Inşallah, Turkey will do the right thing by those who are hopeful that Turkey will again vigorously pursue EU membership.

From Gareth Jenkins at the Eurasia Daily Monitor:

From July 15 to 18 more than 200 Turkish diplomats, including 103 of the country’s ambassadors and heads of missions serving in different countries around the world, met in Ankara to discuss Turkey’s short and long-term foreign policy goals.

The unprecedented gathering of virtually all of the high-level personnel from the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) was the brainchild of Turkish Foreign Minister Ali Babacan, who described it as providing “a setting for a focused exchange of views and consultation” in order “to make coordination between the headquarters and our missions abroad more efficient and productive” (Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs website, www.mfa.gov.tr).

Since he succeeded Abdullah Gul as foreign minister in August 2007, Babacan has often appeared out of his depth. He has also frequently been upstaged by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. In Gul’s absence, Erdogan has assumed a much more active role in foreign policy, retaining tight personal control over what he regards as important foreign policy initiatives and meetings and only trusting Babacan to assume complete responsibility for relatively minor issues.

As a result, the four-day conference in Ankara was probably designed as much to assert Babacan’s authority as to improve the coordination of the country’s foreign policy. Nevertheless, both Babacan’s opening address and the 19-paragraph statement released at the end of the conference underlined what appears to be an continuing shift in Turkey’s foreign policy priorities since the Justice and Development Party (AKP) first took office in November 2002.

. . . .

Perhaps more revealingly, Babacan insisted that the EU was solely responsible for Turkey’s stalled EU accession process. “Turkey should not be subjected to discrimination and different treatment in this process,” he said. “The messages coming from EU countries on the subject of Turkey’s membership should be of a consistent and encouraging nature” (www.mfa.gov.tr).

In contrast, Babacan absolved the AKP of any blame for problems in relations with the EU. “There is no deviation from our full membership goal,” he said. “Turkey will do what falls upon it and will continue with its reforms. There has not been the slightest change in the determination of our government in this respect” (www.mfa.gov.tr).

Few would deny that the EU is partly to blame for the slow pace of Turkey’s accession negotiations, particularly given the reservations about Turkish membership expressed by key member states such as France and Germany. However, Babacan’s claim that there has been no change in the AKP’s determination to fulfill the criteria for EU membership is contradicted by the contrast between the battery of democratizing reforms passed before Turkey opened accession negotiations in October 2005 and the virtual absence of any since. Nor has Turkey yet fulfilled a 2005 agreement to open its ports and airports to Greek Cypriot ships and planes; a failure Babacan has repeatedly defended on the grounds that the EU only asked Turkey to sign the agreement not to implement it.

In this context, Babacan’s glittering vision of Turkey as a global power threatens not only diplomatic overreach but also the diversion of time and energy from more pressing concerns. It is impossible to argue that in the short or medium-term, Africa and Latin America have more to offer Turkey than EU membership. Nor is there any disputing the disparity between the enthusiasm with which Turkey has recently been cultivating closer ties with Africa and Latin America and its manifest failure to take any steps to restart the stalled EU accession process.

Can Salvation Bring Redemption?

ART WORK: Peter Schrank / The Economist

Although Constitutional Court chairman Haşim Kılıç sounded off that Tuesday night's close decision is a strong warning for AKP, it is yet to be seen that AKP will take the opportunity to mend fences and rebuild ties with reformers who have been critical of the ruling party's recent politics. It should be noted that Kılıç is the Court's only member to opt not to sanction AKP for allegedly anti-secular activities, but his announcement of the Court's decision was quite strong and the close verdict should not be taken lightly. While AKP can do little about those who are stubbornly set in their opinion that the party is nothing but a smarter reformation of Refah, the party does have a critical opportunity to prove itself a center-right party determined to expand economic opportunities and contribute to the development and institutionalization of a healthy set of democratic norms--namely, the protection and expansion of individual and press rights and attention to the EU's demands for human rights reform.

Although many point to the party's restrictions on alcohol, fewer in Turkey have paid attention to AKP's treatment of the country's religious and ethnic minorities, in particular its Director of Religious Affairs recalcitrant stance on Sunni Muslim education for the country's Alevi religious minority (and contrary to multiple decisions by the European Court on Human Rights) and the party's stubborn denial of Kurdish cultural rights (despite the fact that granting these rights was strongly advocated by Turgut Özal, who many AKP members deeply respect and see as a predecessor of their own style of political rule). To my mind, some of the party's more Islamist tendencies, while certainly contradicting the strict laicism that defines the state's treatment of religion, vary little from the advocacy of Christian parties and seem in many ways less threatening than reforms advocated by religious conservatives in Christian countries. (If one compares Erdoğan to the likes of Christian Coalition conservatives in the United States, the former is surely less threatening.) A center-left party that might more rationally oppose AKP's plans to expand the role of Islam in Turkish society is surely welcome, but the party can hardly be characterized as any more religionist than many other center-right religious parties.

However, in a country where civil liberties have yet to fully take root and where truly liberal reformers are desperate to expand traditionally denied freedoms of expression and political participation, AKP finds itself in a much different political context than other conservative political parties. It seems that in order to truly gain legitimacy as a center-right party, AKP must join with other, perhaps more liberally-minded reformers to fix the country's constitutional structure. While AKP is a coalition of religious conservatives and an odd assortment of liberals and pro-market reformers (think pre-Jacobin classical liberalism), it is the religious conservatism of the party that causes, and perhaps rightly so, the most concern among its detractors. When AKP shelved constitutional reform for a last-minute deal with MHP on the headscarf (see Jan. 20 post), the country's arch conservative political party with a quasi-fascist political history, it seriously undermined its self-espoused liberal credentials. Further, as the party has done little since 2005 to move boldly forward with EU-inspired reforms aimed to harmonize Turkish law with EU standards, these credentials are subject to further criticism. For those skeptical to affirm AKP's center-right identity, the party must move away from the intra-party authoritarianism that characterizes all of Turkey's political parties, open its eyes and ears to the complaints of liberal reformers, and renew its commitment to constitutional reform—change that seeks to expand personal liberties and redefine Turkish citizenship along lines much more agreeable to contemporary understandings of democratic pluralism. Additionally, the party must also answer for the absence of women in high-level political posts. There is only one woman in the entire AKP-formed cabinet, and she is charged, not surprisingly, with women's issues. If AKP can meet these demands, it might one day avoid such crushingly stupid indictments as the one that almost brought about its closure. Further, it will surely eschew oft-sounded harangues about it being an Islamist party hell-bent to bring theocracy to Turkey. Such arguments fail to realize the fundamental differences between AKP and Refah and the complexity of AKP as a political party capable of bringing about broad and positive change.
(Important to note is that AKP is currently the only political party capable of such doing).

Along these lines, more food for thought is an op/ed from Serg Truffaut in Quebec's LeDevoir via TruthOut.org:

By one vote and one vote alone, the ruling government party in Turkey, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's AKP, has avoided a judicial ban. Although the Constitutional Court judges agreed not to outlaw this party in order to avoid a major political crisis, they did, on the other hand, deem the accusations leveled against the party to be well-founded. Thus is it written that the fierce struggle between Islamists and secularists will continue with renewed vigor.

. . . .

To return to the subject of the day - the court's decision - one must understand that the event that instigated it was not an isolated event. It was also not a primary event that previewed a chain of events, but an event that shines a light on the AKP's desire to broaden religious presence in spheres of activity it had not yet been involved in. One thinks, of course, about the wearing of headscarves in universities - which the AKP proposed and this same court moreover prohibited several months ago.

Before, well before, Erdogan attacked the university world through the interposition of the headscarf, he had applied himself meticulously to handing Turkey's crown jewels over to businessmen sharing his religious views. His first target? The media. He exploited all the holes observed in television legislation to "pass along" the Sabah-ATV conglomerate - the second-most-important in the country - to a pro-AKP financier. You won't be surprised to learn that the latter appointed Erdogan's son-in-law president of that company.

After the media, it was the banks' and big companies' turn. Every time Erdogan and the current president, Abdullah Gul, had the opportunity to place AKP intimates at the head of influential entities, they hastened to seize it. The same rule held true for the apparatus of the state as for the private sector: AKP militants were given preferential treatment. That program's distinguishing feature? The number of women occupying important positions has melted like snow in the sun. In passing, let it be said that among the ministers, assistant ministers, secretaries of state and undersecretaries of state, one finds one woman and one woman only. Of course, she is responsible for Women's Issues.

Strong from the hold they have over the country, Erdogan and his intimates have found nothing better than to brutally strike out at those who criticize them. Notably journalists, some of whom are today in prison. The victory, however narrow it may be, that the prime minister has just won on the legal front will certainly encourage him to continue down the road of Turkey's Islamicization, unless he should renounce the ideas that are at the heart of the AKP. Eventually, it's likely that Turkey will be more like Jordan - half-secular, half-religious - than like any democracy of the European Union that Turkey nonetheless still wants to join.

(A note: In a section of this article not excerpted, Truffaut mentions that the Turkey of the 1980s moved closer to religion in response to the PKK. This is not really explicative of the entire story, as the government's more tolerant stance toward Islam and religion in politics had much more to do with being distracted by the fear of communism (see "Where Have All the Leftists Gone?" Feb. 12 post.) Another critical note is Truffaut's reference to imprisoned journalists. While some journalists have been imprisoned under Turkey's harsh speech codes, I know of no case where a journalist has been imprisoned for criticizing AKP.)

I take objection with Truffaut's notion that AKP "attacked the university world through interposition of the headscarf" and the general tone that the party is highly-organized and is planning a slow, but sure Islamicization of Turkish society. Truffaut's suggestion that Erdoğan must renounce the founding idea of the AKP if further Islamicization is to be avoided oversimplifies what is actually going on here and takes it for granted that AKP has some sort of set, Islamic ideal. In fact, the party's public language and what might best be interpreted as an articulated political platform is not so much about Islam, but about democratic liberalism and an expanded space in which Turkish citizens might exercise fundamental freedoms (religious and otherwise). However, what the party stands accused of by more knowledgeable experts of Turkish politics is "creeping Islamicization" and this in spite of its repeated public assertions that it has no such Islamic agenda. AKP does not at all have to renounce its heart to save Turkey from Islamicization, but rather match rhetoric with action. Most importantly, the rhetoric itself must be more sophisticated, rising above platitudes about the virtues of liberal democracy and instead communicating a clearer idea of how it envisions resolving the eternal conflict between majoritarian democracy and rights-based liberalism—what Robert Bork famously called in American politics the "Madisonian dilemma" (see May 14 post). If AKP can come to a reasonable consensus in this regard, my mind, for one, would surely rest much easier and Truffaut could be dismissed with Rubin and other detractors.

AKP Saved by One Vote

PHOTO: Constitutional Court Chairman Haşim Kılıç, the only judge who ruled against any sanctioning of the party.

The Constitutional Court has just announced its decision regarding AKP's closure, which fell one vote shy of the seven judges required to close down a political party and consider banning the 71 politicians prosecutor Abdurrahman Yalçınkaya accused of violating the Turkish Constitution's protection of secularism. The 11-judge panel instead issued a decision that denies some treasury funding to the party. The fact that the vote was so close testifies to the case's divisiveness and the high drama that accompanied it. With financial markets actually gaining the past few days on expectation that the Court would rule not to close the party, the Court's decision affirmed expectations and surprised many commentators and several AKP politicians who were predicting closure.

Six judges voted for closure, four for penalities to be imposed on its state funding, and the Court's Chairman, Haşim Kılıç, voted against any sanction.

Kılıç did say that despite AKP's eventual salvation, he believed the party will get the message and curb activities that might be considered anti-secular. He also criticized press coverage of the closure case, which he felt was unfair to the Constitutional Court, and blamed Turkish politicians for not making it more difficult to bring a party closure case to the Court.

For coverage from the Turkish Daily News.

For coverage from Today's Zaman.

More on Objectivity and the Turkish Press

Difficult to follow indeed . . .

From Yigal Schleifer at the Eurasia Daily Monitor:

In many ways, the Turkish press has been making news, as much as it has been reporting it. Several journalists were among those arrested in the Ergenekon affair, including the chief columnist and the Ankara bureau chief of Cumhurriyet, a secularist daily that has been extremely critical of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). Meanwhile, columnists and editors have been slinging serious mud, publicly accusing their rivals of distorting the truth. Four newspapers have even initiated a lawsuit against a competing paper that accused the plaintiffs of being "pro-coup."

"It appears that some parts of the Turkish media have been in support of Ergenekon," says Bulent Kenes, editor-in-chief of Today’s Zaman, an English-language newspaper that belongs to a media company closely linked to an influential Turkish Islamic movement and which publishes Zaman, the country’s largest circulation newspaper.

"Some of the big media organizations have been trying to blacken the case and trivialize it by producing fabricated news about the Ergenekon case, saying it was a tiny gang and that the government is trying to use it to create pressure on its opposition," he adds.

The pro-government press has been particularly critical of the Dogan Group, a media giant that publishes four of Turkey’s top-ten circulation papers, including the influential Hurriyet and Milliyet papers, and which has been less eager than its competitors to run with the Ergenekon story.

Sedat Ergin, editor-in-chief of Milliyet, says he has tried to take a more "cautious" tack on what has frequently been a sensationalized story. "When we have had reliable information, we have not been afraid to run with it. The accusation (that Milliyet has downplayed the Ergenekon story) is not fair. On the contrary, a series of articles we intended to publish on the issue was officially banned by the [case’s] prosecutor on the grounds that it might compromise the secrecy of the investigation," he says.

Adds the editor: "When such a polarization is rampant, in such a political atmosphere, every debate is held captive by this divide. Journalistically, it makes our job difficult. Ideology and strong political convictions become dominant and usually take precedence over the facts."

Indeed, when the Istanbul chief prosecutor, Aykut Cengiz Engin, recently released the Ergenekon indictment, he took the media to task for its reporting on the affair. "A great portion of the reports and commentaries [on Ergenekon] were not factual," he said at a press conference. "These reports, to a large extent, led to information pollution and the public was misinformed."

The use of disinformation in the Turkish media is nothing new. Planted press reports were instrumental in the Turkish military’s non-violent ousting in 1997 of the Islamist Welfare Party government -- an event that has come to be known as the "post-modern coup."

But the emergence of a powerful Islamic press and some questionable moves by the AKP, such as the recent sale of the bankrupt but influential Sabah ATV media conglomerate from state receivership to a business group run by the prime minister’s son-in-law, have given the government an unprecedented level of influence over media coverage, critics charge.

In the Ergenekon affair, for example, pro-government papers have been on the receiving end of a constant flow of sensational leaked information -- some of it patently false -- about the case. "The AKP is utilizing all its tools to control the media, either directly or indirectly. The government has learned how to manipulate the media -- you can see this especially in the Ergenekon case," according to SAIS’s Kaya.

"There is no balance in the support for the government by the pro-government media in Turkey," he says.

But Today’s Zaman’s Kenes contends that the aggressive reporting that his paper and others have done on the Ergenekon case does not mean they are blindly following the government’s lead. "We’re pro democracy. If the government does something wrong in terms of democracy, everybody will see that the Zaman group will resist that. We are independent of the government," he says.

What seems to have been lost in Turkey’s increasingly bitter journalistic scuffle is the chance for readers to find news they really can believe in, observers say.

"Everybody has had to take sides in one way or another," commented Bulent Aliriza, director of the Turkey project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank in Washington, D.C. "It’s becoming harder to say that there is an independent media with an objective view."

For background on the press coverage of the Ergenekon investigation, see July 9 post.