Falling Out of Love

Signalling that the Western media is falling out of love with the AKP, The Economist has endorsed the CHP ahead of the June 12 elections. In 2007, and in the midst of seriously high tensions with the Turkish military over the election of President Gul, the magazine endorsed Erdogan. Now it seems the magazine has turned an about-face. An excerpt:

That Turkish voters are poised to return Mr Erdogan to power in the general election on June 12th is thus not surprising. It is, however, worrying. Mr Erdogan is riding sufficiently high in the polls to get quite close to the two-thirds parliamentary majority that he craves because it would allow him unilaterally to rewrite the constitution. That would be bad for Turkey.

This judgment is not based on the canard that a theocracy is being built. Nine years ago Istanbul’s secular establishment fretted about AK’s Islamist roots—and some early squabbles over religious schools and allowing women to wear the Muslim headscarf at university were indeed troubling. But since then the pious Mr Erdogan and his party have been pragmatic. No matter what the army and too many Israelis (and Americans) whisper, there is scant evidence that AK is trying to turn a broadly tolerant Turkey into the next intolerant Iran.

The real worry about the AK party’s untrammelled rule concerns democracy, not religion. Ever since Mr Erdogan won his battles with the army and the judiciary, he has faced few checks or balances. That has freed him to indulge his natural intolerance of criticism and fed his autocratic instincts. Corruption seems to be on the rise. Press freedom is under attack: more journalists are in jail in Turkey than in China. And a worrying number of Mr Erdogan’s critics and enemies, including a hatful of former army officers, are under investigation, in some cases on overblown conspiracy charges.

On top of this, on the campaign trail Mr Erdogan has begun to take a more stridently nationalist tone: he and his party are no longer making serious overtures to the Kurds, Turkey’s biggest and most disgruntled minority. Mr Erdogan has hinted that if he wins a two-thirds majority next week, he will change the constitution to create a powerful French-style presidency, presumably to be occupied by himself. In a country that is already excessively centralised, that would be a mistake.

It would be better if a new AK government were to take a more broadly inclusive approach. Turkey’s constitution does indeed need a makeover, but it should be rewritten in consultation with other political parties and interest groups, and not as an AK project. The best way to make sure this happens would be to push up the vote for the main opposition party, the centre-left Republican People’s Party (CHP). Assuming that two smaller parties also get into the grand national assembly, that should be enough to deny AK its two-thirds majority.

As it happens, the newish CHP leader, Kemal Kilicdaroglu (nicknamed Gandhi for his ascetic ways), has been a huge improvement on his dinosaur of a predecessor, Deniz Baykal. He has weeded out much of the party’s old guard, shown himself intolerant of corruption and shifted the party away from its instinctive sympathy for the army’s role in politics. Even more remarkably, Mr Kilicdaroglu has been attracting more supporters than Mr Erdogan to election rallies in the mainly Kurdish south-east, where the CHP has long been weak, by talking more openly of giving all of Turkey’s 81 provinces greater autonomy (it probably helps that he is from the Alevi Muslim minority and that he may have Kurdish forebears).

The AK party is all but certain to form the next government. But we would recommend that Turks vote for the CHP. A stronger showing by Mr Kilicdaroglu’s party would both reduce the risks of unilateral changes that would make the constitution worse and give the opposition a fair chance of winning a future election. That would be by far the best guarantee of Turkey’s democracy.

The Economist has a Turkish-print edition and the endorsement matters. There are already items in the Turkish press that the prime minister is denouncing the magazine, a move that will likely earn him only more scorn. For the story that ran with the op-ed, click here.

In addition to The Economist, Erdogan has also caught the attention of the New York Times, which, while not endorsing the CHP, expresses many of the same concerns about the prime minister's ironclad rule. From the Times:

Turkey does need a new, more democratic constitution. But if the AKP gains 330 of the 550 seats, it will be able to push through a constitutional draft without support from the opposition and put it straight to a referendum. (If the AKP gained 367 seats, it could even to adopt the constitution in a parliamentary vote.) A “one-party” constitution would lead to further divisions in Turkey’s already-polarized political system. The opposition parties, together representing half of Turkey’s electorate, might well boycott a constitutional process dominated by the AKP.

Even among AKP supporters there might not be much debate: Erdogan has single-handedly struck 220 of the current 334 AKP MPs off the candidates’ list and replaced them with little-known loyalists. In a party that was once proud of its local roots, the top-down sweep has left many members cross.

Many observers suspect that Erdogan’s main objective in the new constitution is to move Turkey from a parliamentary to a presidential system along French lines. Already, the AKP has amended the current Constitution so that future presidents will no longer be elected by Parliament but by the people. The new constitution would presumably give the presidency bigger powers, commensurate with its popular mandate.

Most Turks expect that Erdogan himself will want to become president when Abdullah Gul’s term expires.

In Turkey’s already highly centralized system, a move toward a presidential system does not look like a good idea. It could lead either to rivalry and paralysis between a strengthened president and a traditionally powerful prime minister, both backed by a popular mandate. Or it could further erode checks and balances and reinforce autocratic tendencies.

For my own thoughts, along similar lines, see past posts on the AKP's simple majoritarian conception of democracy and burgeoning authoritarian tendencies. What Turkey is faced with should the AKP continue on its current trajectory is illiberal democracy, or perhaps better (worse?) put, electoral authoritarianism.

I laid much of this out in March 2009 when the AKP first introduced the major constitutional overhaul it pushed through in last September's referendum.

Syrian Opposition Meeting Concludes

PHOTO from Syria Comment

The three-day meeting of Syrian opposition in Antalya concluded today with a common declaration of principles and agreement to form a committee of 31 members representative of different groups in the opposition. The Turkish government is still denying that it had any role in planning the meeting and Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu has made it clear that he has held no meetings with Syrian opposition figures. That said, the meeting's presence on Turkish soil indubitably adds to the pressure Turkey is placing on the Assad regime.

Turkey had been instrumental in alleviating Assad's virtual isolation, but in recent years has taken steps to distance itself from the leader. Prime Minister Erdogan has continually called on Assad to restrain from violence and implement democratic reforms, which the Turkish pro-government papers such as Zaman say has been effective. At the same time, as Assad's regime kills more and more people, bringing an end to the conflict with simple reform becomes more and more unlikely -- a reality not taken for granted by the Turkish government.

At the same time the Syrian opposition was holding its meeting, pro-Assad forces were holding another meeting at a hotel in the same city in attempt to convince the Turkish people that Assad is an Ataturk-type figure deserving of respect and patience.By my estimation, Turks are not buying it.

For more on the meeting and Syria in general, see Joshua Landis's excellent blog, Syria Comment.

Two Steps Forward, Three Steps Back (Maybe More)

PHOTO from Radikal

It seems the AKP took two big steps forward when it announced what was initially billed as a "Kurdish opening" in July 2009 (the initiative later went through many name changes), froze in place (following the nationalist uproar in October 2009 after the Habur affair), and then three steps back in recent months as the party campaigns for the June 12 elections. Though Prime Minister Erdogan had a chance to re-set his approach to the Kurdish conflict during an AKP campaign rally in Diyarbakir yesterday, the prime minister instead sounded the same notes he did in Van two weeks ago when he denied the existence of the Kurdish problem and then proceeded to blame the CHP for its creation.

In addition, as Hurriyet columnist Sedat Ergin points out, the prime minister burned all bridges with the pro-Kurdish, PKK-affiliated BDP, making it near impossible for him to work with the party in the future. Accusing the BDP of basically behaving like a terrorist organization, he said the strength of the BDP came from the PKK and then proceeded to link the CHP with the PKK. Instead of denouncing violence and pushing forward a democracy agenda as CHP leader Kemal Kilicdarolgu did when he spoke in Diyarbakir the day before, Erdogan relied on attacking opposition parties. The CHP and BDP are fascists, according to Erdogan, bent on stoking separatism and tearing the nation apart. As in Van, he wrongly pinned the existence of the Kurdish problem on the CHP's association with the Dersim rebellion in 1937-38, going so far back as to attack former Ismet Inonu, who was not even in charge at the time.

Perhaps most disturbingly, the prime minister relied on the religious card, accusing the BDP of promoting Zoroastrianism in the region (still, I want to know where this comes from) and waging a campaign against imams (see past post). For Erdogan, it seems the Kurdish problem is solved. Nowhere in his address was there even a mention of carrying on the Kurdish initiative, which did little in actualizing all the hopes it initially engendered. Instead, the focus was on economic development (more "Islamist bananas," as Milliyet columnist Ece Temelkuran articulated in 2007), an old theme the AKP sounded in 2008 and that most observers thought it had transcended during the Kurdish initiative (for a history of Erdogan's addresses in Diyarbakir and the prime minister's recent nationalist turn, see this past post).

As Milliyet columnist and leading Kurdish expert Fikret Bila (in Turkish) postulates, for Erdogan, the Kurdish problem is in the past. The demands for constitutional reform put forward by the BDP are irrelevant, and are only used by the "bad Kurds"  to stir up trouble. Never mind that the CHP has also put forward serious constitutional changes, including mother tongue education and removing the ethnic chauvinism that currently defines Turkey's constitutional understanding of citizenship.

"How can Muslims ever follow the BDP?" asks Erdogan. In the prime minister's world, at least at the moment and in the midst of competing for the nationalist vote with the ultra-nationalist MHP, the days of denial and assimilation are over. It is too bad that there are plenty of Kurds who do not feel this way, and too bad that until their demands are met by the state, Turkey's Kurdish conflict will rage on.

For a good play-by-play (or, step-back, step-back) accounting of the speech, see Hurriyet columnist Ahmet Hakan's column (in Turkish). For an English-language news account, click here for coverage from Hurriyet Daily News.

A Matter of Culture

PHOTO by Jodi Hilton / New York Times

The New York Times has a piece today examining the expanded space given to Kurdish culture in Turkey despite existing obstacles. This space is, undeniably, to be owed to the AKP, which worked hard in its first years in power to curb the state's repressive attitude toward Kurds in Turkey at a time when no other major political party lifted a finger on the issue. However, as evinced by the CHP's announcement that it is willing to change the constitution to include a non-ethnic definition of citizenship, there are other players now, as well as, most importantly, an influential, albeit incipient and still quite fragile, Kurdish civil society that is paving a middle way between competing Turkish and Kurdish nationalisms. An excerpt:

Concessions by the government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in 2009 made way for the first Kurdish national television station, and the government also permitted the teaching of Kurdish language classes in private universities (but not public ones). Token gestures, they made front-page headlines: first because they were signals to the outside world that a democratic state run by an Islamic leader will not automatically become xenophobic or tribalist, and second because even small steps toward acknowledging Kurdish culture can provoke political firestorms inside the country. Turkish nationalists raised a ruckus. Nationalists regard even the most basic Kurdish demand — that their language also be allowed in grade schools and at official settings where Kurds are involved — as treason.

Turkish Kurds respond that increased cultural freedom only encourages their loyalty to the Turkish state. But in this deeply patriotic country, where sentiments are old and entrenched, Mr. Erdogan’s government, guarding its tenuous majority in Parliament on the verge of the elections, has assumed a more and more hawkish line lately. The arrests of large numbers of Kurdish political activists have fed the Kurds’ concern that the government never really had true democracy in mind for them but just cooked up some window dressing for Western consumption. Recent clashes in this city between the police and hundreds of protesters attending the funerals of separatist militants proved how fragile the peace is in the region.

As I have written elsewhere here, Kurdish disenchantment with the AKP is high. That said, perhaps the party will take a less nationalist posture once the elections are over and it is done competing with the MHP for nationalist votes.

Everyone is a Turkish Citizen

PHOTO from Taraf

The CHP has declared its support to amend the constitution in favor of a non-ethnic understanding of Turkish citizenship. Under the country's current constitution (drafted under military tutelage) all citizens of Turkey are members of the Turkish nation (click here, in Turkish). Further, according to Article 66, every Turkish citizen is considered to be a Turk. This is the first time that any major Turkish political party in the entire history of the Turkish republic has offered such a non-ethnic understanding of citizenship.

The change is proposed as part of a wide series of concrete constitutional reforms the CHP has endeavored to put forward. The proposed reforms were drafted by CHP vice-president Suheyl Batum with a team of 35 academics. Though some have speculated that the CHP is too diverse a coalition to generate concrete proposals (Batum himself hales from the center-right), the constitutional proposals are more solid in substantive than the rhetoric coming out of the AKP.

The CHP has also expressed its support for education in mother tongue, which requires amending Article 42, which stipulates that no Turkish citizen can receive education in any mother tongue language other than Turkish. Article 42 specifically targets languages native to Anatolia, such as Kurdish, while allowing for education in English, French, and other foreign languages.

Kilicdaroglu addressing a campaign rally in Hakkari. PHOTO from Milliyet


Meanwhile, for the first time in nine years, the CHP held an election rally in Diyarbakir a day ahead of the rally AKP is expecting to hold tomorrow. Though turnout was somewhat disappointing for the party (only ~2,000 people showed up), it is clear the CHP is performing a series of firsts that could find itself winning voters in the southeast and currying favor with liberal reformers who have since become disenchanted by the AKP.

For an accounting and history, as well as some more context, of the proposals the CHP is putting forward on the Kurdish issue, see this post from a few weeks ago.

Prime Minister Erdogan will hold a rally in Diyarbakir today.

Mass Protest in Hopa

PHOTO from Radikal

An election rally for Prime Minister Erdgoan in the Black sea town of Hopa (Artvin) near the border with Georgia resulted in mass protests today. Though the town was relatively calm during Erdogan's speech, the situation intensified later as the prime minister's convoy was leaving Hopa. Protestors threw stones at the convoy, seriously injuring a bodyguard. Police used teargas to breakup the protestors and fired shots in the air, which led to the death of demonstrator Metin Lokumcu (he had a heart attack).

According to news reports, protests spread to Ankara later in the day at word of Lokumcu's death. When protestors attempted to try to leave a black wreath at the Prime Ministry, police intervened. Clashes broke out that involved more teargas, more water cannons, and more detentions (around 60).


UPDATE I (6/2) -- For an English-language account of the protests from Bianet, click here. Bianet reports 54 people were detained in Ankara, four of whom were formally arrested. Protests also broke out in Istanbul and Izmir.

Return of the Mavi Marmara

PHOTO from Hurriyet Daily News

Thousands gathered in Taksim Square last night on the eve of the one-year anniversary of Israel's raid of the Turkish-flagged Mavi Marmara in which Israeli commandos eight Turkish citizens and one American of Turkish descent.

Yesterday morning, the International Relief Foundation (IHH) held a press conference announcing the organization is continuing to move forward with plans for 15 ships carrying 1,500 activists from 38 countries to sail to Gaza at the end of June. The Mavi Marmara is expected to be at the front-and-center.

Diplomatic relations also heated up around the one-year anniversary as Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said Turkey would retaliate should Israel once more carry out military operations on the ships. According to Israeli press reports, the Israel Defense Forces are mobilizing to meet the flotilla, though is focusing on counter-riot strategies. Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said the flotilla will not be permitted to land in Gaza and that force will be used when and where necessary.

The United States is attempting to break the impasse, though Turkish government officials are have maintained their argument that they do not have the legal power to intervene to stop a Turkish NGO from carrying out such a mission.

In the meantime, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has extended the working period for the UN Panel of Inquiry currently investigating last year's raid.


UPDATE I (6/2) -- Hurriyet reports (in Turkish) the United States is planning to submit a proposal to Turkey by which Turkey would block IHH's flotilla plans in exchange for making Turkey the place of upcoming Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.

UPDATE II (6/6) --  Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu has publicly called on the IHH to delay plans to send a flotilla to Gaza. The IHH rejected the foreign minister's request, arguing that the flotilla was necessary to providing Gazans with much needed aid and asserting sovereignty over their ports. The government is arguing that the IHH should wait to see what happens in the wake of the Rafah border crossing being opened (it is opened for civilian crossings, but not for aid supplies) and plans to install a new Palestinian unity government.

Grey Wolf Attacks on BDP Politicians

Ultra-nationalist youth attacked two people distributing waivers for Labor, Democracy, and Freedom Block candidate Emrullah Bingul in Izmit, a town just outside Istanbul (and where I spent my first year in Turkey). The attackers were reported to be Grey Wolves, a fascist youth organization connected to the ultra-nationalist MHP. The attack took place at a mosque near the main municipal building where supporters of the BDP and the Labor Party (EMEP) were distributing campaign material.

The previous day, the convoy of candidate Levent Tuzel, a member of the same party block, was attacked in Istanbul, also reportedly by Grey Wolves.

The Grey Wolves have a nasty past. Linked to numerous attacks on leftists since the 1970s, including assassinations and wholesale massacres of Turks who deviate from their Turkish-Sunni chauvinist idealism, the youth groups are still around and attack vulnerable targets when tensions are high.

In the wake of a massive sex scandal, the MHP is still hovering at around 10% in public opinion polls, the threshold parties must meet in order to enter parliament. If the the MHP falls under this threshold, ultra-nationalism, a force in Turkey that has been on the decline in recent years (though there were huge outbursts in 2007) will no longer be represented in parliament. However, there is legitimate fear that the party, which has renounced violence, might become more reactionary should this come to fruition.

For a bit more about the ultra-nationalist right, see this early post from 2008. An excerpt:

Although the early [MHP] was not particularly successful in electoral politics, it gained notoriety when it founded its youth organization, the Hearths of the Ideal (Ülkü Ocakları). Members of the group began to call themselves the "Grey Wolves" ("Bozkurtlar") and the group soon took on a paramilitary dimension when it opened camps to train members to engage in violent acts against the Turkish left. The enemy of the time was not Islamist, but communist, and the Grey Wolves became an increasing threat to those who it saw as opposed to their Sunni Muslim-Turkish identity. By the late 1970s, political violence against the left was rife and reveals itself most violently in the slaughter of Alevis that took place in Kahramanmaraş in December 1978 when well over 100 Alevis were murdered in a pogrom organized by the Grey Wolves. The Grey Wolves had two reasons to hate the Alevis: first, they practice a heterodox form of Shi'a Islam that was at odds with their Sunni bigotry, and second, the Alevis were generally aligned with the left. It is also likely that the group was responsible for the May Day violence of 1977 in which 39 people lost their lives when unknown gunmen opened fire on leftist protesters and operated with the cooperation of some sectors of the Turkish Armed Forces as part of the theorized "deep state" (see Jan. 25 post).

Violent acts were also engaged in on the part of the extreme left, but did not compare to the prolific heinousness of the Grey Wolves. Indeed, the violence of both groups attributed to the political instability that the military coup of 1980 claimed as justification for their political intervention. After the military seized control in September of that year, it closed down all political parties, began work on a new constitution, and arrested and tortured several people it claimed to be trouble-makers. Those arrested included Türkeş and members of the Grey Wolves, but the principal aim of the military was to end what it saw as an emerging threat coming from the radical Turkish left (a view it had in common with the Grey Wolves). As in Iran in the 1970s, several leftists were detained for indefinite periods of time in political prisons and subjected to tortured. Interestingly, there is evidence that implicates United States-CIA involvement in the coup and that puts these events in the Cold War context in which they occurred.

It is interesting to think of how exogenous the events at Akdeniz seems in the stalemate of the current political climate. The factors for this stalemate are twofold: first, the moderation of the radical right to a degree that it is now able to represent itself in the form of an establishment party; second, the demise of the Turkish left to such a degree that its policies now seem more in line with the far right than with its own history (see Feb. 12 post).

To explain the first factor, it is necessary to understand the development of MHP in the post-coup years. In many ways, the 1980 coup tamed it and with its reconstitution in 1983, MHP began to move past its involvement in paramilitary activities and at the same time seek a greater role in electoral politics. With the death of Türkeş in 1997, Bahçeli further moderated the party's positions while also seeking to expand its base by appealing to pious Muslim voters with strong natioanlist leanings. The party became declared its opposition to the türban ban at universities and argued that türban-wearing women should be able to work in government. In 1999, the party won 18 percent of the vote thanks to this more religious platform and promises to execute Abdullah Öcalan.

Some have attributed the rise of MHP as symptomatic of an increase in nationalist feeling in recent years, but others have pointed to the party's success as rooted in the turbulent political situation in which Turkey found itself when the old center-right parties weakened in the closing years of the 1990s. Worthy of examination is Bülent Aras and Gökcen Bacık's 2000 article, "The Rise of the Nationalist Action Party and Turkish Politics" in Nationalism and Ethnic Politics (Vol. 6:2, pp. 48-64), in which the authors argue the latter.

Given that MHP's meeting the 10% threshold is the big question for the upcoming June 12 elections, I thought it might be useful to link back to this so readers can get more of a sense of the party's origins and just where it stands in the Turkish political landscape.

The Impact of Turkish Culture in Iraq

Much has been written in both the foreign and Turkish press about the impact of Turkish television serials, particularly soap operas (dizi) in the Arab world. However, in Iraq, the interest in Turkish television series has resulted in an interest in Turkish literature and language for a growing number of students. From Hurriyet Daily News:

“The ever-developing relations between [Iraq and Turkey] and Turkish soap operas on Iraq TV have triggered this new trend. Students are eager to learn Turkish, while families also want their children to learn Turkish,” Professor Talib al-Qurayshi, the head of the Iraq University Foreign Languages Department, recently told Anatolia news agency.

When Turkish Literature and Language Department head Ziyad Tariq Abduljabbar took over his new department’s management in 2008, there were only 60 students but there are now 730 undergraduate students, 17 post-graduate students and three PhD students in the program.

Speaking about the links between Turkish soap operas and the country’s literature, Nilüfer Narlı, a sociologist at Bahçeşehir University, said Turkey had increased its “soft power” in the Middle East and Balkan countries.

“As the circulation of soap operas in the international arena has increased, learning Turkish language and culture have become very important in the Arab and Balkan countries. This is what we call ‘soft power,’ within the context of the culture industry,” she said.

Of course, there are other reasons for the increased interest in Turkish in Iraq, especially economic ones, said al-Qurayshi. “Growing investment and business opportunities draw people to learn Turkish in Iraq. Students are concerned about their future and the current investments have triggered the education in Turkish.”

According to a TESEV survey conducted last year, 78% of respondents throughout the region had watched a Turkish television series. It is good to see that this interest in soap operas is feeding into other aspects of Turkish culture . . .

Struggling to Make Sense of It All

As Turkey grapples to deal with all that is going on in the Arab Middle East these days, the Turkish media is having an equally difficult time keeping up. The following piece from the Foreign Policy Research Institute comes thanks to a post of Jenny White at Kamil Pasha. An excerpt:

Not surprisingly, the media plays an important role in both reflecting and influencing public opinion in Turkey. Since the outbreak of the first protests in Tunisia, Turkish media coverage of the Arab Awakening has portrayed a confused but ambitious picture of Turkey’s role regarding an intervention in Libya. Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu’s “zero problem (with neighbors) policy” and Turkey’s role model status for democratizing Middle Eastern countries have contributed to an optimistic and ambitious domestic environment. However, the pace of developments in the Middle East, which required swift responses from Turkey and the West, unfolded more rapidly than Turkey had expected, causing confusion in Turkish government and foreign policy circles, as well as in public opinion. This is particularly evident when examining some of the most popular newspapers in Turkey—Hürriyet, Milliyet, Zaman, Taraf, Radikal, and Haber Türk—and their portrayal of the Western intervention in Libya.

The Turkish media in general, and columnists and commentators in particular, are primarily concerned about Turkish foreign policy direction and an appropriate Turkish response regarding the recent events in the Middle East. [4] Pleased with Erdoğan’s responses to the uprisings in Tunisia and especially in Egypt, many columnists supported Turkey’s initial criticism of the Western intervention—regardless of their general attitude towards the government and its policies. However, while several columnists lost interest, others ceased opposing the intervention once Turkey began participating in it. They, then, shied away from criticizing government policies, which presented a complete reversal of its position vis-à-vis the intervention within a few days. So, the media’s initial criticism of the Western intervention in Libya—like that of the Turkish government—appears to have been rooted in opposing France’s leadership of the operation. [5]

However, the majority in the Turkish media—namely the Islamists, leftists, and nationalists, continue to oppose any Western involvement in the Middle East. This unifying position among various opposing blocs in Turkey reflects a general suspicion of Western intentions in the Middle East. This theme features prominently in the government’s own discourse, especially with the approaching elections on June 13, 2011. Moreover, the West is perceived as monolithic in Turkey; only rarely are distinctions made between the U.S. and the European powers. Rarer still are the policies of the European powers evaluated individually. News of America’s $25 million of financial aid to the opposition in Libya, [6] the death of more than 800 Libyans fleeing Gaddafi’s crackdown, [7] and NATO’s “indifference” [8] to the growing number of people dying or trying to escape has caused increasing suspicion in the media. [9] Coverage and analyses also usually focused on this type of headline grabbing news.

The Turkish media primarily covers the Western politicians and Western media rather than Arab leaders and Arab media. While most are suspicious of Western intentions in the region, it appears, the Turkish media remain disinterested in the details of this complex situation.

This disinterest is particularly troubling given Turkey's increased role in the region and frequent references to it as a model for the Middle East, something that Turks (and myself) are still having trouble getting their heads around, especially in light of the AKP's increasing illiberal attitudes.

As I have written here before, though Turkey's role in the Middle East has been expanding in recent years, few Turks think of their country as a heavy hitter in the region and fewer still no much about the complexities. Since the foundation of the Turkish Republic, the Turkish foreign policy establishment has generally aimed to keep Turkey out of the complex scene of Middle East politics, allying itself firmly with the United States and NATO.

Turkish news is still largely "Arab light" despite the AKP's recent efforts to build new relationships and pursue markets in the Arab world. This was more or less acceptable when the status quo was what it was before the Arab spring, a stagnate scene of disparate authoritarian regimes that provided the kind of stability that loaned Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu's "zero problems" with neighbors policy some kind of working feasibility. Turkey could approach its relations with each country bilaterally without so much having to worry with the larger regional picture other than Israel, which was seemingly excluded from the "zero problems" equation to begin with. However, given the emergence of the post-Arab spring and the likelihood that Turkey will continue to play a leading role in the region, better coverage of Arab politics and the complexities therein is most certainly welcome.

Bomb Explodes in Etiler

DHA PHOTO from Milliyet

A bomb exploded in Etiler, an up-scale neighborhood in Istanbul, this morning has injured eight people.

According to news reports, the blog was mounted on a bicycle and might have targeted police given that there is a police training school nearby. It is not clear at this time who or what organization is behind the bomb.

The bomb was the first in a long time to target citizens. The normal PKK has typically avoided hitting citizen targets, though the Kurdistan Freedom Falcons (TAK), a radical and much more violent PKK-offshoot, has been known to target civilians with regularity. Various leftist groups have also been associated with such attacks.

Syrian Opposition Meeting in Antalya

PHOTO from Hurriyet

News is breaking that Syrian opposition leaders are planning to meet in Antalya next week. According to Hurriyet, the meeting is scheduled for May 31 to June 2 at the five-star Falez Hotel. Ammar Qurabi, president of the exiled Syrian National Organization for Human Rights, has confirmed the meeting will draw together numerous members of the opposition from across different factions.

Turkey's role in organizing the meeting is unclear, though there is no word from the government or in the Turkish press that the government is doing anything other than allowing the meeting to take place. Travel to and from Syria to Turkey became visa-free in 2009.

In April, MUSIAD, the Islamist-affiliated Independent Industrialist's and Businessmen's Association, organized a conference of the Muslim Brotherhood in Istanbul. This meeting will apparently include more parties than just the Brotherhood.

An interesting tidbit (if true) from the hardline Debka website has also appeared. According to Debka, Turkey has taken is taking serious steps to distance itself from Assad.

1. The following message was posted to Damascus on Tuesday, May 24: Turkey is not a member of the European Union and is therefore not bound by its sanctions it has imposed freezing Assad's assets and barring him and his regime heads from travelling. Nonetheless, the Syrian ruler is advised not to try and test its intentions by trying to visit Turkey.

2. Assad's repression of the uprising in the Kurdish regions of northern Syria is causing ferment among the Kurds of southern Turkey. Unless it is stopped forthwith, Ankara will take overt action against the Syrian ruler.

3. Erdogan has discontinued his almost daily phone conversations with Assad. In any case, his advice to the Syrian ruler on how to overcome the uprising against him was never heeded.

Our sources report that he also ordered the Hakan Fidan, chief of Turkish MIT intelligence service, to stop traveling to Damascus with updates on Syrian opposition activities. Assad has thus lost his key source of information about what the opposition is up to.

My understanding is that this information should be treated with a grain of salt, and according to official Turkish government reports, Erdogan is still in regular contact with Assad.

More as it happens . . .


UPDATE I (5/26) -- Joshua Landis of Syria Comment has a few more details on the meeting, as well as some history of the MUSIAD meeting from April and its potential to seriously irritate Assad's Syria.

UPDATE II (5/27) -- More on the opposition meeting from Joshua Landis's blog can be found here. Still not much in the Turkish press . . .

An Opportunity for Citizen Journalism

Erkan Saka, whose English-language blog I feature in the blogroll ("Turkey in the Media") to the right, is leading a group of Bilgi University students in a social media project aimed to collect information garnered by citizen journalists monitoring the June 12 elections. From Hurriyet Daily News:

The website, http://secim2011.crowdmap.com, is a Turkish version of the Ushahidi website which uses the concept of crowdsourcing via multiple channels, including SMS, email, Twitter and the Internet, to provide citizens with a platform to upload their own instant media independently of mainstream networks.

“Our website allows the public to reach [campaign] reports in the easiest way,” media and communications student Metin Özer recently told the Hürriyet Daily News Economic Review.

Regarding recent protests in Taksim Square against plans to increase filters against the Internet, Erkan Saka, an academic at the university's Media and Communication Systems Department, told the Daily News that because no political parties were front and center during the demonstrations, it suggested that citizens were now experiencing a period of real activism and that such anti-censorship movements provided an example of mass collaboration.

“Turkish websites have become a refuge where hate speech or censorship is often protested [as evidenced by the] thousands who gathered in Taksim Square [earlier in May to demand a free Internet],” Saka said, adding that the group had launched the project not simply due to the protest but also because the website could be useful in promoting more productive uses of information technology.

Emphasizing the importance of the website, Özer said the project was a mission to support local journalism. The mainstream media collects its news from the wires, but it takes too long to format the information and post it for the public, he added.

“[The] purpose was to develop a collective mind through social media,” Saka said.

Saka has been active in the mass protests that have taken place throughout Turkey in reaction to Turkey's plans to introduce an Internet filtering and profile system set to launch Aug. 22. The protests in the Taksim Square and other places throughout the country evince the mass protest the government's plans have sparked.

However, what is needed in addition to the "real activism" of which Saka speaks is organization. The CHP has taken an active role in protesting the government's plan as well, and while there are a limited number of NGOs working on Internet freedom issues, in particular Bilgi University professor Yaman Akdeniz's Cyber-Rights.org and Bianet, which is challenging Turkey's already restrictive Internet law at the European Court of Human Rights, what is lacking are well-funded, well-organized civil society groups that are able to viably connect the protestors with the state.

Gul Urges Hamas to Recognize Israel

In reaction to Obama's Thursday speech on Mideast policy, President Gul has given an interview to the Wall Street Journal lauding Obama's seeming call for a two-state solution based on 1967 borders while calling on Hamas to recognize Israel. From Alternet:

Turkey's President Abdullah Gul has urged the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas to recognise Israel's right to exist, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday.

In an interview a day after U.S. President Barack Obama delivered a speech on the Middle East, Gul also hailed Obama's reference to creating a Palestinian state based on Israel's pre-1967 borders as "a very important step".

Turkey has regarded Hamas as a key factor in the Middle East peace process since it won Palestinian elections in 2006.

Gul said President Obama "has a point" when he said in his speech that Israel could not be expected to negotiate with a body that does not recognise Israel's right to exist.

Asked if he was willing to press Hamas on that issue, Gul said, "I already advised them."

In a meeting with Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal in Ankara in 2006, Gul said he told Meshaal, "you have to be rational" about recognising Israel's right to exist.

Gul said he believed Hamas was ready to recognise Israel in its pre-1967 borders but wants that to happen simultaneously with Israel's recognition of a Palestinian state.

The AKP government has had friendly relations with Hamas since 2006 when a five-member delegation led by Meshaal first visited Ankara. Since that time the AKP government has been committed to improving relations between Hamas and the international community, a policy that has won the party few friends in Israel and in certain Washington policy circles. For background on the AKP government's relations with Hamas, see June 10 post.

Obama's speech aired live on Turkish state television Thursday night at a time when most Turks are still very much trying to figuring out their own country's position in the post-Arab spring Middle East.

Ankara is expected to facilitate negotiations between Hamas and Fatah next week.

The Prime Minister's Curious Obsession with Inonu

Commemorations of the Dersim rebellion were held in the city (now known as Tunceli) on Wednesday. The Tunceli Cultural Association and Dersim Associations Federation organized the demonstrations. DHA PHOTO from Hurriyet Daily News

In an election rally in the southeastern city of Van, Prime Minister Erdogan once again took the opportunity to assail the CHP for its role in the massacre of thousands of Alevi Kurds in the fall of 1937/spring of 1938. Curiously, Erdogan focused his scorn on then-CHP leader Ismet Inonu, who was not president at the time (an error repeated here in Today's Zaman (also repeated in Zaman) -- in fact, Inonu, after a political fallout with Ataturk, resigned in fall 1937). Obviously the CHP, the oldest party in Turkey and the party of Ataturk, has undergone numerous transformations since 1938.

This Wednesday marked the annual commemoration of the Dersim massacre, an oft-overlooked event in Turkish history that has received increasing attention in the Turkish media in recent years as Turks begin to discover and constructively discuss the darker side of the republic's formative years.

The attempt by Erdogan to associate the CHP with Dersim is not the first. He made the same remarks last August while campaigning for Kurdish votes for the September referendum (see here, in Turkish).

Just as significant to the prime minister's remarks in Van was the religious tone of his speech, calling on Turks and Kurds to unite as Muslims and accusing the pro-Kurdish BDP of creating dangerous divisions. Particularly disturbing, and completely fallacious, the prime minister, speaking in Siirt, another southeastern town, accused the BDP of fostering Zoroastrianism. I would like to know more about the roots of this accusation (is there some Turkish/Kurdish cultural significance? where did this come from?), and so if anyone has any information, please send it onward.

In March, BDP leader Selahattin Demirtas warned Kurds from speaking openly at mosques, hinting that imams appointed by the Turkish Directorate of Religious Affairs, or Diyanet, might be spies for the state (a dangerous intimation given that the PKK was killing imams in the dirty war in the 1990s). Also curiously, the BDP, which is well-known for its neo-Marxist, secular views (not Zoroastrianism!!), has made efforts this election cycle to compete with the AKP for religious votes. From Hurriyet Daily News:

Erdoğan said the course in solving the Kurdish issue has been changed since 2002, as they have ceased to ignore the existence of the problem. Outlining five documents issued by İnönü in the late 1940s that prohibited the use of Kurdish and ordered the confiscation of books written in the language. “Dear residents of Van! When you were suffering this pain here in Van, we were suffering the same pains in Istanbul. This period of denial has lasted until we came to power.”

The police and gendarmerie have taken extraordinary security measures in the city in order to prevent a potential dispute between the ruling and pro-Kurdish party fans. However tight security measures in the eastern province of Van ahead of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s election rally Friday did not dissuade protesters from taking to the streets for a mass prayer.

Despite a crackdown resembling the days when the region was under a state of emergency, some 5,000 members and supporters of the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party, or BDP, gathered outside to hold their midday prayers at a park instead of in a mosque.

Imams in Turkey are selected and assigned by the state. The BDP has charged the government with using religion as a political tool.

Hundreds of police officers silently joined in the act of civil disobedience, held just hours before Erdoğan was set to arrive. The thousands of people who showed up for the prayer dispersed silently, without a trace of slogans or banners.

“They used to say the religion of Kurds is Zerdust, not Islam. Who said that? The man in İmralı and those who follow him,” Erdoğan said Thursday at a campaign event in Siirt, referring to the imprisoned leader of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK.

“What do they do now? They say, ‘You cannot pray behind the state’s imam; gather elsewhere.’ The Friday prayer is about being together. They try such things to break our togetherness,” the prime minister said.

Time will tell if the AKP will have any success maintaining its strong base of more religiously-inclined voters in the southeast. Kurds are indeed more conservative, especially outside the major cities, and the AKP fared well in 2007 parliamentary elections, capturing as much as half the vote even in the Kurdish nationalist stronghold of Diyarbakir. However, those victories were diminished in March 2009 local elections, and the BDP's new efforts to woo these voters from the AKP and shed its perceived strict secularist credentials could allow the Kurdish nationalist party to make serious inroads this time around.

As to Dersim, CHP leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu, engaged in similar electioneering efforts, has asked for a state-led commission of inquiry into what happened. Kilicdarolgu is himself Alevi, and his comments follow a remarked turn for the CHP. Last year, after denouncing fellow CHP party member Onur Oymen for insulting remarks Oymen made justifying the Dersim massacres, Kilicdaroglu was forced to back-down. However, Baykal's resignation as party leader and Kilicdarolgu's recent ascendancy to the party's top leadership position (in particular, his defeat of former Secretary-General Onder Sav, who was close to Baykal), have drastically changed CHP's role in the political scene.