Turkey beyond Islamism and Authoritarianism









Cairo Review of Global Affairs, 04 September 2013


As protests spread and grew first in Istanbul, then in other parts of the country, we all struggled to conceptualize what we were witnessing. Many in Turkey opted for clear and neat narratives, which often left out other aspects of the protests and burdened events with legendary meanings ascribed onto them.

A significant portion of commentary on Turkey in international media was by and large repetition of old positions with new 'proofs' found in protests themselves and Turkish government's handling of them. Many saw the fulfillment of long prophesied Turkish lapses on spectrums of Islamism-secularism or democracy-authoritarianism.

The resulting cacophony demonstrated that we were witnessing a new era in Turkey, and our intellectual tool kits were simply insufficient in making sense of it. Intense language of debates in Turkey and angry outbursts of emotions only helped to cloud our vision.

We had faced a similar situation in 2002, when the lenses we used to analyze Turkey hindered us from realizing that emergence of Justice and Development Party (AKP) in Turkey was far from victory of Islamism as we know it, but its end. The AKP was representative of a new paradigm for Islam inspired politics that blended historical romanticism, cultural identity with open markets and global integration. It had emerged from the rubble of collapsed Islamist movements and managed to move beyond their legacy.
Gradually, mainstream analysis caught up with what Turkey was going through. Many came to see a dynamic reconfiguration of power relations, socio-economic classes, place of religion in political and public space and balancing of military's involvement in politics. Finally, a 'model' Muslim-majority country was emerging with its unique way of attempting to adjust to the twenty-first century.

However, the AKP's performance took an interesting turn after the 2011 elections. The party's reform and the drive toward European Union accession began to be questioned. Worrying political steps and emotive public statements on issues that came to symbolize Turkish culture wars, such as alcohol and abortion, began unsettling the trajectory we foresaw for Turkey after 2002.

With increasing concern over freedom of expression and media and bold statements by government officials, many feared that Turkey was losing all that it has achieved since 2002. Yet, the tectonic build up that reached a breaking point during the summer of 2013 was no return to old Turkey. That is why reading through most commentary felt like going through the blurry test lenses one tries on at an optician before finding the right one.

The story of where we are now had began by the start of early 2000s, even before the AKP was on the scene. The Turkish public was discontent and in search of a new politics and social vision. The AKP’s genius, and hence the source of its wide appeal, was not religion or ideology but the instinctive realization of a vision that hit all the right notes. The party sought EU membership yet remained faithful to conservative culture, focused on economic growth yet enhanced social services.

The AKP quickly garnered unexpected levels of votes. The old regime and other political actors—now squarely in the opposition—attempted to stop Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s rise. But their old tricks backfired. With each passing year, the clear-cut power and social structures of 'old' Turkey crumbled, as did the narratives that anchored such institutions.

Nothing was left untouched, from Ataturk to the events of 1915. Tenuous issues like Kurds, headscarves, and the nature of Turkishness became intensely debated publicly, openly challenged, and officially altered.

The old elite and the new government clashed, shifting Turkey's rigid top to bottom political and cultural hierarchy to a polarized battle of equals. Now, those segments of Turkish society that were previously 'looked down' upon—average folk who live outside of Izmir, Istanbul and Ankara—were claiming equal ownership of every previously protected arena: culture, consumption, economy, employment, academy and media.

Within that, two cultural waves swept the country. On one hand, a positive outlook was expressed through new soap operas, restaurants, boutique hotels, house decorations, and clothing; romanticism over a long lost Ottoman heritage was blended with contemporary aspirations and tastes. On the other hand, there was a deep panic, anxiety and fear, full of conspiracy theories, weekly doomsday prophesies and a genuine mourning over an imagined fall of the once grand Turkish Republic.

Turkey was now truly showing signs of late-modernity: the modern nation-state was reconfiguring itself with all the stressful alterations this causes to individuals and society at large. For the first time since the creation of Republic of Turkey, solid and fixed horizons and clear and neat boundaries—and most importantly the powers that maintained it coercively—were melting away.

Increasing consumption and prosperity demands were being generously met. Social services were being successfully advanced to meet a demanding consumer public. However, each attempt by the AKP to undo decades long issues caused by the strong nation-state legacy, such as the grievances of Kurds, Alevis and women with headscarves, caused wide stress and anxiety in parts of Turkey where these issues were hardly seen as a ‘problem.’ Similarly, each AKP foreign policy adventure, which took Turkey to places the country had never been before, was met by excitement by some and grave worries by others.

The AKP unsuccessfully attempted to offer a new uniting narrative, an anchorage for a fast changing Turkey with appeals to heritage and traditional values. Yet, none of the efforts to develop a unified Turkey 2.0 vision eased the building tensions. For the AKP, however, the future looked bright with the record breaking results of the 2011 elections, utter absence of opposition parties and weakened pressure of the EU accession talks. But, it was a deceptive brave new world.

The AKP quickly found that even though it indeed enjoyed high vote rates and no competitor, it could not simply enjoy the same level of power that the system it fought against once had. Thanks to its own reforms, neither the public nor the realities of where Turkey was could go along with it. Thus, what we saw in the party’s 2012 and 2013 performance was not the ‘mastery phase’ that the prime minister had launched.

On the contrary, we saw increasingly weak attempts to exercise sovereignty. Prime Minister Erdoğan’s public tone and stand often gave the aura of harsh words of a strong man; in actual terms, they were anxious attempts to hold on to a power which is no longer possible in Turkey. Within that feeble position, politics of culture and public morality provided a sense of legitimate power base.

Autonomous state power has slowly disappeared, and power could only be provided by unshaken commitment of a substantial constituency and complex web of relations with the business world and interest groups. Now that Turkey was a country of consumers and suffered from the well-known postmodern curse of fragmented and absent ideologies, the emotive politics of culture was the only rallying point left both for the AKP and its mimesis die-hard ‘secular’ opposition.  Thus alcohol or building of a mosque became hyped symbolic battlegrounds over the soul of Turkey.

This difficulty of managing the new Turkey with ease, as well as socio-psychological turbulence of living in a country of constant change, became all the more apparent as the historic process of talks and agreements with outlawed Kurdish militant group PKK began. Beyond the smoke screen of ‘laicete versus Islam’ tension, the PKK peace process was an actual challenge and caused wide worries among Turks. Many Turks saw the AKP's gestures towards PKK and plans to end a decades long low-scale armed conflict as ‘selling out.’

Therefore, even though what we saw in Turkey during June and July 2013 looked to be truly chaotic outbursts of so many different grievances, aspirations, worries and reactions, on some level it made perfect sense. The social and political hierarchies that held these relations intact and dealt with them in far away places from the eyes of ‘modern’ Turks were no longer there. And each AKP attempt to utilize old-state tricks with heavy-handed social control only made things worse. Deep polarization and often unnamed or unfocused anger now dominated the public space.

It might be counterintuitive, but these developments are ultimately promising signs that, for the first time, Turkey is facing the challenge of democracy after decades of keeping all of the unprocessed issues under the carpet. Turkish state's strong micro-management had only postponed this inevitable stressful reckoning with all of the unresolved tensions.

The events of June and July also revealed the Achilles heel of Turkish success story: a weak democratic culture. All sides unleashed intense accusations and derogatory slurs in the utter absence of thoughtful public engagement. Any view beyond ‘either/or’ or any person who is not with ‘us/them’ became intolerable even for individuals who have often followed a liberal course. Thus, wholesale support or condemnation of AKP and Erdogan were the only options in Turkey this summer. Erdoğan was either the savior of Turkey or the new Hitler.

What has been demystified this summer is not simply Erdoğan or the AKP, but the state of Turkey and the Turkish public at large. It became clear that the modern nation state that had promised to be our ‘father’ and manage the state’s affairs on our behalf has left us ill equipped to be democratic ‘adults.’ It seemed that all of our glittering advancements or perceptions of our place in the global arena were beyond our actual capacity as a society to cope with plurality.

It is no surprise that many domestic and foreign readings of Turkey seemed only right to a certain extent, but not quite right. Turkey is confusing to capture, because she is confused herself. The country is going through a liminal phase, which heightens emotions and reactions. Even the most common policy issues or unconnected incidents across the country quickly turn into a Manichean battle between light and darkness.

How Turkey will come out of this new uncharted territory is not clear. As the country is gearing towards local and presidential elections in 2014, it is highly likely that we will see more protests, angry outbursts and intense public discussions. When they do happen, we'd do well by seeing them as signs of a healthy but painful process Turkey is going through and take the hyperbolic descriptions and analysis of events with a grain of salt.

Human Face and Cost of Violence


War and violence become abstracted the further we are away from them. All of our exposure boils down to news reports and research updates that try to capture in words, numbers and images a fact that can never be truly conceptualised; brutal destruction of individual human beings.

Amidst all the grandeur geo-political thought exercises, partisan condemnations of who really is the wrong one, victims of this ageless story melt into mere sub-points in an argument.

If numerical citations of how many people died numb us to the deep suffering behind each number uttered, theories and soundbites on why such suffering occurs also distance us from all that is taking place in the world. Human involvement and responsibility disappears as we blame it all on elusive categories, such as politics, religion, power and education.

TS Eliot is right; human beings cannot bear very much reality. All this destruction has a human face and a human cost; both the perpetrators and those who perish are human beings like you and me.

By blaming it on external factors, we are shielded from the knowledge that violence is human, and that you and I too have the potential to destroy. Most subversively, we are protected from facing the deep moral failure in our apathy and lack of action to stop and care for those in need.

It is that reality that I face everyday as a researcher on human rights, Middle East and violence issues. It is that reality that slips into the background in my own writings that offer grand explanations and theories.

So this time, let me do something else rather than telling you facts and figures. Let me tell you a story, a human story in the following half-baked poem I wrote after spending a busy week full of research and reports on violence.

This is a reminder for myself, whose entire education and professional formation taught him to be detached and critical; so that I never forget the weight and sorrow of what it is I am talking about. I hope it will be for you too. 


Violence and Beauty

In the middle of the destroyed town
in the pool of blood
decapitated bricks and mortars,
her dead body lay
in silence
bruised
defiled
covered in mud,
in sorrow.

Those who saw her
found no trace of her beauty
nor smelt the rose water
she often washed herself with.
Her eyes,
that once made every men drunk,
were frozen in the exact moment
she released her last breath
like a broken clock.
The smell of war filled the air
suffocating every flower,
ever memory
every dream.

She always had suitors, you know,
asking for her hand
from the age of sixteen.
Her father always found them wanting,
“Not good enough for you” he used to say.
Once, a young man-
with a steady job in a big city,
caught her heart briefly;
“No” said her mother,
“He has crooked teeth,
never trust a man with such!”

She awaited hopefully,
wearing her pale pink dress
when she felt it could be the day
fate would finally be kind,
till that day,
when the darkness covered the town,
swallowed her mother and father
and spit her on to the ground,
leaving ugly teeth marks behind.

Her torn dress is crimson now,
her face hidden
under the dark blue of death.
No longing man will ever knock on her door again
Wearing their best suits to woo her family.
Soon, she will be a number,
a fatality in a collateral story,
a story of the monster deep in me, in you, in us
always devouring old towns
to feed its ugliness;
A story that we will never own,
but blame on the aliens
we'd hoped to have possessed us.

She will lay there
and with her, humanity too
decaying
covered in dark blue
wrapped in crimson
in silence
in mourning
of the beauty deep in me, in you, in us
that the monster ate,
testifying.

The Limits of Erdoğanology

7 July 2013, Today's Zaman


Until the Gezi Park protests broke out, I didn't know there were this many Turkey experts in the world. Thousands of articles were published.

The vast majority of them were pretty much the same, used the same vocabulary, reached almost identical conclusions and had similar punch lines using different anecdotes.

Most articles had two major focal points: Gezi Park and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. As the protests spread across the country and showed tremendously complex and varied patterns even in different parts of İstanbul, all of the protests were reduced to clear and tidy narratives and observations inferred from the limited scope of Gezi Park, if not personal experience with tear gas.  

Much has been said about the protests and their different interpretations, although we still do not have a nationwide study and analysis of all the different types and phases of the protests. Yet very little reflection has been done on how quickly the most talked about issue was Erdoğan, both at home and abroad, and whether this helped or blurred our perception of what was happening.


This problematic trend began in Turkey. Shortly after the early morning raid on Gezi Park and the first wave of protests against police brutality, chaotic public anger focused exclusively on Prime Minister Erdoğan. Protesters and their supporters came to despise his unshakable stand and harsh words against them. Many said this led them to keep protesting. He represented all that they wanted to change in Turkey.

Meanwhile, not a small portion of the population in Turkey found comfort in his strong stand. For his constituency, Erdoğan's strong stand met them where their fears were. For them, the protesters represented the old system, and if Erdoğan was toppled, nothing would stop the old rulers of the land from once again discriminating against them and excluding them.

Amid chants asking for Erdoğan to resign and chants by pro-Erdoğan groups saying, “We will not let you lynch him,” the political figure of Erdoğan became the symbolic sacrifice that was both demanded and denied; both sides were doing it for the “sake of Turkey.”

Thus, we were back to the culture wars that previously made Mustafa Kemal Atatürk the symbolic battleground for the competition for control and monopoly of the public sphere in the 2002-2008 period. You either loved Atatürk until tears fell every time you saw a handsome picture, or you despised him to such a level that you saw him as the cause of everything that had gone wrong since 1923. Atatürk was simply a cover for deeper problems and tensions in the country.

What Erdoğan said, what Erdoğan didn't say, how he said it or how he did not say it became the main focus of reports, debates and hysteria on social media. However, what he said or didn't say was ultimately irrelevant. Erdoğan did not create the deep fault lines that were once again exposed. Neither a strong state nor a dominant cohort of the public that instinctively wants to control all aspects of life and wider society, nor police brutality and weak rule of law, nor the problematic state of the media, was new to Turkey.

Erdoğan, as a politician, dwells on the social and political horizon of the country, and within that sphere played a rather precarious and problematic political game, seeking to gather support by appealing to pre-existing fears, worries and sensitivities. Even if he were to resign tomorrow, the same issues and the same horizon remains fixed in Turkey and will continue to create same problems in the near future.

If domestic transference to Erdoğan was caused by domestic culture wars, it can be argued that we have witnessed another type of transference to Erdoğan internationally that echoed the silent codes of a “clash of civilizations” and “Islamists versus the free world” narratives. A mythical vision of Erdoğan, long held but now seemingly fulfilled emerged: Erdoğan, the omnipotent and omnipresent, in full control and single-handedly leading, ruling and shaping Turkey, taking it toward a much denied but now apparently clear and certain dark end.

In this picture, there was no place for Turks, or Turkey, for that matter. Turkey's complex history and multiple realities, along with its intricate state and social structures, all evaporated. All factors that shape, limit, enable and push Turkish domestic and foreign policies beyond the wishes of a single individual, let alone a government, were omitted in grand, sweeping conclusions.

You might not see it in what you read, but Erdoğan is a product of Turkey and performs and reacts to events within the limited space granted by that reality. Erdoğan is not a Jedi knight. He is a mortal. His persuasion, his powers, his acts are limited. He was elected by the people. He remains in power, not because of cunning manipulation of a zombie nation but because of his political skill and public support for him, just like any other elected leader in the world.

If he does not perform according to the voters' interests, then he will not remain there. His executive powers are not that of a dictator or a sultan. He should be criticized and held accountable, just like any other leader, within a clear framework of human rights law, but not in abstract mythical caricatures that reach cosmic levels.

Excessive focus on Erdoğan only blinds us to much deeper conversations we need to have about Turkey. Such a focus is only good for shallow conclusions about a complex country. It has no analytical value in making sense of where Turkey is, where Turkish politics stand, or where they will go next.


Turkey: The Great Media Puzzle

The chronic troubles of Turkish media became visible once more during the initial days of Gezi protests when mainstream television channels chose not to broadcast the developments.

This led to an avalanche of opinion editorials, full of metaphors and personal anecdotes, declaring that there is no freedom of expression and media in Turkey.

Such blanket conclusions seemed to be supported by recent global rankings produced by various groups on freedom of press, in most of which Turkey scored worse than Jordan, Russia, Afghanistan, Zimbabwe, Iraq, and Algeria. The catchy phrase “Turkey jails more journalists than Iran, China, Eritrea and Syria” became a common feature.

Combined with the never ending global panic attacks on 'Islamism' in Turkey, a picture of Turkey became dominant in the international media: under an Islamist government that is finally showing its true colors, Turkey has become worse than ever before.

It has been difficult to agree with such problematic and often political conclusions. While on the one hand the facts of what happened in Turkey last few weeks are clear to see, when put in their context it is also clear that both the Turkish democracy and freedom of media are in a much better place than where they were in 1980s, 1990s and even early 2000s.

Sadly, before we had 'Islamists' in power and Turkey was ruled by 'modern secular Turks', Turkey produced more than 900,000 internally displaced persons between 1980s and 1990s, according to a report by Hacettepe University released in 2007. These were mostly Kurds fleeing from brutal state campaigns to evacuate thousands of villages in Eastern Turkey. They have faced gross human rights abuses with no mention in the Turkish press.

Similarly, discrimination conservative Muslims suffered at the hands of aggressive state intervention in their lifestyles in 1990s and early 2000s never really hit the mainstream media. Thousands of young girls were denied education or forced to remove their headscarves.

In fact, as someone who grew up in Izmir, citadel of 'secular Turks', my entire life was sheltered from knowing what was happening in Eastern Turkey or to conservative Muslims, or why and how Armenians and Greeks disappeared from the city of my childhood.

Just 5 years ago, we could still not mention '1915' in our writings and conversations without a fear of state and widespread public reaction. Now, one can see the word 'genocide' used in articles and book titles.

Until very recently, Turkey saw extrajudicial murders of journalists. Military officials have regularly called journalists into 'briefings', passing out written statements and threatening and intimidating anyone who did not abide by army's redlines.

Between 2002-2008, Turkish media was the battleground for a well orchestrated 'psychological warfare' to topple the AKP government, with daily dose of false and sensational fear mongering. Not a small number of voices who are still in media today were willing and active voices for truly undemocratic calls and attempts then.

Today, even though it is clear that the Turkish government and state wish to influence and coerce press reports and some media outlets willingly or often unwillingly oblige, Turkish media is still full of extremely critical reports on the government.

Any group that is said to be too powerful to criticise, such as the Hizmet movement, are pretty much criticised everyday in all forms of media. In fact, even though television channels did not initially air Gezi protests live, print media was seeing harsh debates and a full range of views on what was happening.

Yet, stating the facts that Turkey has come a long way in the last decade, and that it actually is by and large free, does not mean that where the media is today is acceptable. Turkish media is suffering from a mixture of old and new problems that urgently need to be addressed.

First of these is the strong state tradition. Turkey is a modern nation state, with all the troubles that come with that, including an all powerful state that sees itself as the guardian of the nation, even if and when the nation does not want to be guarded.

Thanks to the privatization policies of Turgut Ozal, Turkey started seeing a break away from the ban on private broadcasting in 1990. Yet, the strong state tradition in Turkey showed itself again with the creation of the Radio and Television Supreme Council (RTUK) in 1994, which sought to ensure that the newly freed media was kept under control through regulations, fines and pressure.

In 2011, AKP government repealed the restrictive RTUK law and adopted a new broadcasting law in line with the EU accession criteria. However, from 2011 and onwards, Turkey also saw AKP government lapsing back to strong state policies.

With historic vote rates, dazzling economic and diplomatic expansion, weakening presence of the military and old elite in politics and state, the loss of EU’s carrot-stick role and utter failures of Turkish opposition parties, AKP found itself as the unchallenged power in the land. This meant that the Prime Minister and the party could pursue any policy and project they want.

Since then, media outlets have found themselves increasingly under pressure to abide within sensitivities of the government. RTUK, has a different political and social outlook and list of ‘red lines’ now compared to restrictive 'secular days', but it is still the good old state stick to keep rowdy media in line.

In issues of national security and potentially risky incidents, the state handling of the fallout continues to be restrictive. The courts have recently issued injunctions to stop broadcasters and media from reporting developments. The most recent two examples related to an incident in which Turkish jets bombed a group of young Kurdish smugglers near Uludere on Turkey-Iraq border and the car bomb attack in Reyhanli, that killed more than 50 people.

However, Turkish media is still loosely divided between fiercely anti or fiercely pro government views and is unhealthily polarised like the rest of Turkish society. This, and impossibility of any government fully controlling media in the age of internet, limit the historic tendencies of strong state policies to filter information, which AKP seems happy to utilise.

The second reason behind the troubles of media in Turkey today is the problematic laws relating to terrorism and procedural weaknesses of Turkish courts. While the exact current number of journalists in jail is not clear, a recent report by Turkish opposition party CHP, “Detained Journalists Report; Turkey, World's Largest Jail of Journalists,” claimed that there are currently 71 journalists in prison.

According to the report, two thirds are arrested under accusations of being members of outlawed Kurdish organizations, and the rest, being members of terror organizations, such as DHKP-C, or members of the organization 'Ergenekon', which allegedly was behind the coup attempts to topple the government.

The extraordinary numbers of arrests last 4 years signal to a larger problem, rather than a mere clampdown on media. Whether in the issue of Kurdish organizations, that saw arrests of more than 3,000 people and not just journalists working for certain Kurdish outlets, or the on-going court cases against coup plotters, we see major problems in terror laws that criminalize expression of non-violent opinions and the wholesale and prolonged detention of suspects throughout the legal procedures.

Turkish journalists also regularly face legal troubles in reporting on-going court cases. Loosely written laws to 'protect' the judiciary from 'influence' in reaching a decision results in accusations brought against journalists reporting courtroom dramas.

These reflect some harsh truths about the state of the rule of law in Turkey. While recent reform packages brought by the government addressed some of these issues and large numbers are now being released from prisons, Turkey desperately needs a thorough judicial reform and a complete revision of terror laws.

The third reason behind the state of media is the dark side of privatisation. While television channels can be a good revenue generating investment, print media is not. The main return of newspapers is the power, influence and chances it grants owners in their other business and personal interests.

A recent report on media freedom, “Caught in the Wheels of Power”, released by leading research organization TESEV in Istanbul in 2012, highlighted the gap in Turkey's economic competition regulations on media ownership.

One key recommendation on this is to address the issue of owners of media companies bidding for public tenders and receiving large contracts from the state, which automatically creates an unhealthy relationship with the state.

The immense economic interests of media bosses put their staff into a precarious position and fear of losing their jobs. Thus, regulations and bodies that can protect journalists from such pressure must be strengthened at once.

Fourthly, the media sector itself has issues to address. Turkish press products are dominated by unhealthy numbers of columns but not investigative journalism. Payments received by these columnists in leading papers can reach shocking levels, while reporters are paid very low wages.

It is not uncommon to see columnists and media members settling personal scores with personal accusations and sleazy attacks on opponents. Looked from international standards, at times, what passes as journalism, reporting and commentary in Turkey seems amateurish and feeble, with notable exceptions trying to do their best.

Current polarization of media as part of the overall conditions in the country means that both pro or anti government media amplify or minimize news and developments according to their own stands.

Lastly, a substantial reason behind the sad state of media in Turkey is the Turkish public herself. Our weak democratic culture and worryingly low expectations from media outlets fuel media malfunctioning.

For example, on any given day, one can see more than a dozen erotic and half naked pictures on the home page of the website of one of Turkey's leading newspapers Milliyet, which scatters news in between spaces left from those pictures.

Given that the level of public discussion, and the parameters of the respectful exchange of views and analytical thinking are rather low in Turkey, most circulated opinion editorials in social media and read online tend to be poor quality quick attacks and polemics against opponents.

These point to a difficult conclusion on the state of media in Turkey. As Turkey is changing and it is becoming difficult for the state to simply control media and flow of information, and as the Turkish public is becoming more aware and demanding of their rights, the Turkish media is still suffering from a wide range of external and internal failures.

Yet, Turkey is not an authoritarian state and does not have the authoritarian control over media that we see in a wide range of countries that score 'better' than Turkey on recent media freedom charts due to variables and data used.

The never before seen widespread condemnation of mainstream media outlets by the Turkish public points not so much to a deteriorating democracy in Turkey, but when put in its context quite the opposite: Turkey is advancing and she does not want to lapse back to where things once were.

What is clear is that Turkey desperately needs a robust and fully free media if it wants to continue its historic leaps forward. The responsibility for this lies with the government to undertake structural reforms and face some bitter truths about its attempts to coerce media.

But, the responsibility also lies with the media outlets themselves to be self critical, and ultimately with the Turkish public to demand more and not settle for mediocre columnists and sensationalism driven products in the market.