The Unknown

THE UNKNOWN

Doğu Ergil

Published by TIMAS PUBLISHING at Smashwords

Copyright © 2011 by TIMAS PUBLISHING

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CONTENTS

A Brief Bio of Prof.Dr.Dogu Ergil

FOREWORD

CAPTER 1 / ESSAYS ON SOCIAL ISSUES

Problems of nationalism

Irony of history

The tug of war between the elected and the appointed

Support your republic!

Misperceptions and the healing touch of democracy

The AK Party and the post-Islamic phase in Turkish politics

Tribal leaders

Turkey

The Kurdish problem and a proposal

Nation of the streets

Past as present

Looking ahead

Foggy weather

I am gloomy

Security,at what price?

Growing,really?

Turkish economy-global economy

Turkey,in search of its peace

CAPTER 2 / ESSAYS ON POLITICAL ANDCULTURAL ISSUES

Psychopathology or suge of nationalism

Zakat and democratic salvation

Problem : the soul of the system

Involuntary renaissance

Nationalism and the need for enemies

Utopia and Paranoia

Flags and beyond

Political styles

Turban,again

Between reality and conspiracy

A new assessment of the Kurdish issue

A new assessment of the Kurdish issue - 2

Cartoon politics

Secularism betrayed

Pope and reason revisited

Cease-fire

Crown and windom

Hrant Dink: Requiem to lesser Turkey

Soul searching after Hrant Dink

CHAPTER 3 ESSAYS ON INTERNATIONAL ISSUES

Presidential election

Electing,or selecting the next president

Political grooming or fear of democracy?

Unprincipled politics and unrepresentative democracy

Turkey`s PKK agony

Changing gravity in Central Asia

The Iraqi impasse

A cry of help by the Assyrians

After the Armenian conference

Fireball- Firewall

Why?

France: The abyss between creation and destruction

State of freedoms in the world and the Middle East

US-EU economic relations and the challenge of China

The PKK affair

Critical visions on the Middle East

Strategic visions on the Middle Est(II)

The other world (alias the Middle East)

International Terrorism and Turkey,Kurdish problem

Rising nationalism

In search of opposition

Quo vadis,AKP?

Cities and politic

Sailing through turbulence

A futile debate

Invitation to crisis

Best-known secrets

Crime and patriotism

The problem of opposition

The price of democracy

Confusion!

Mamma mia,the pope is coming!

Politics of power

An American problem: Waived morality

Shadow over US-Turkish relations

War on ignorance vs.war on terror

The European Union at 50

Europe and the EU

As Mr. Sarkozy enters

The Hudson affair

Iran and the US,the odd couple

Back to square one

The row over Iraq

Strange but true- then why?

With or without the IMF

A historical test

Engaged to be married

Foreign policy challenges(1)

Foreign policy challenges(2): Iraq

Turkmens` woes in Iraq

Terrorism

Why do they kill themselves?

A Brief Bio of Prof. Dr. Dogu Ergil

Dogu Ergil has received his BA degree in Psychology and Sociology at Ankara University to be followed by an MA degree at Oklahoma University in Sociology (Social Psychology minor) and a Ph D in Development Studies, an interdisciplinary program composed of Political Science, Political Economy and Sociology, at the State University of New York at Binghamton.

He returned to Turkey to teach first at the Middle East Technical University and later at the Ankara University. He became a full professor and the chair person of the Department of Political Behavior at the Faculty of Political Science of the latter University.

Dr. Ergil wrote twenty two books, many of which in Turkish. He has contributed many book chapters and articles in many countries and prestigious international journals.

He has been awarded with British Council Fellowship that enabled him to be a visiting Professor at the London School of Economics, the Fulbright Fellowship that gave him the chance of being a visiting scholar at the School of Advanced International Studies (Washington DC). Additionally he was awarded with research fellowships by the Winston Foundation for World Peace and later twice (1999-2000 and 2005-2006) by the National Endowment for Democracy (Reagan-Fascell Democracy Fellowship). The New School for Social Research University in New York has also honored him with the renowned University in Exile democracy and human rights award in 2000.

Prof. Ergil is invited to lecture all over the world. Major TV and news agencies appeal to him for comments and analysis on events concerning Turkey and the surrounding regions. He is internationally acknowledged as an expert on terrorism, the Kurdish question and Middle Eastern affairs. He has briefed many official bodies including the European Parliament on issues related to these areas. In fact he is one of the official advisors of one of the EU commissions on the Kurdish issue.

Dogu Ergil has been the founding director of the only NGO in Turkey that was founded and worked on conflict resolution: TOS AM or the Center for the Research of Societal Problems between 1997 and 2005. The Center worked particularly to conduct research and develop conciliatory ways to solve the Kurdish problem. TOSAM has also worked to promote active citizenship and capacity building of the civil society. Its weekly Democracy Dialogue radio programs became one of the exemplary public outreach instruments that became the subject matter of a chapter in a book entitled Community Media that has recently been published in the USA (ed. Linda Fuller).

Prof. Ergil wrote for El Nehar, a daily published in Beirut and to a weekly magazine called Briefing in Turkey for several years. After writing a column at the Turkish Daily News between 1997 to 2006, he has switched to the English daily Today’s Zaman where writes twice a week. His column is widely read as a resourceful point of reference on developments in Turkey and surrounding regions.

Dogu Ergil’s most recent civic activity has been acting as a member of the organizing committee intent in convening a ‘Peace Assembly’ that aims at reconciling differences between Turks and Kurds and integrating Kurds into the democratic process in Turkey.

FOREWORD

The Unknown is a book of collected weekly articles that have appeared in various English dailies over a period of two and half years. The reader can find the realities of Turkey in motion as they evolve over time. This gives both the events and their observers a chance to engage each other in multiple ways and at more than one time.

I have always believed that there is never a dull moment in Turkey, especially for diplomats, journalists and social scientists. Indeed, this country is in constant flux, moving to and fro under the cross pressures of modernization, urbanization and globalization. So it is not hard to see contrasting modes of behavior and values existing at the same time. The modern and the traditional, the rural and the urban, the secular and the non-secular coexist sometimes peacefully, sometimes in tension.

All these contrasts are interwoven as a canopy that makes up what is commonly called Turkey. Today, Turks are increasingly becoming aware that there are others living in their midst that are not ethnic Turks and that these others have different cultures, unlike what was taught to them in school. The need to reconcile ethnic, religious and cultural differences is ushering in a new understanding of citizenship and a legal system to manage this ‘newly recognized’ diversity. This is a colossal psychological and political task which Turkey is undergoing. On the other hand Turkey has to catch up with a world that has gone by while Turkey was somehow politically and economically isolated during the Cold War, due what was thought to be a good security policy by the Turkish elite at the time.

Another challenge is to assimilate and to incorporate millions of peasants that have first flooded and now conquered the cities. Turkish cities have become multi-million villages. However, this new urban population is not urbanized and modernized yet. There are different time zones in Turkey. Large social cohorts are living at the same time but not in the same time. They do not share much. Their references and sensitivities, just as their hopes and fears are different. The Turkish political elite have to reconcile these differences and try to forge a modern society based on different premises than the ones during the nation- building phase of the first twenty years of the republic (1920-1940). These premises are the primacy of the society over the state, the rule of law and the deliberative democracy facilitated by a vibrant civil society.

The reader will witness all of these processes in the making in different articles while observing how a country of 72 million is trying to adapt to modern times while bringing along values, practices and institutions that are much older than many of the nations of our planet. This is like watching Sisyphus at work.

Dogu Ergil

CAPTER 1 ESSAYS ON SOCIAL ISSUES

Problems of nationalism

Turkey is at a crossroads. It will dilute and contain an increasingly aggressive wave of nationalism, or this surge will wash out onto the streets and we will end up with a quasi-fascistic political atmosphere that will throw Turkey off balance. What are the origins of Turkish nationalism? For sure nationalism in the Turkish context is a creature of the state. When the multinational empire collapsed and its state elite founded the republic, they had all the instruments of statecraft in their toolbox. All they were missing was the nation. They set out to forge a nation out of the mixed horde of people that they inherited from a past that was no more.

The founders of the republic were Ottoman soldiers, bureaucrats and middle-class intelligentsia. They had played important roles in the last two decades of the empire that had collapsed over their heads. Yet they blamed the failure on two culprits: the imperialist Western countries that were then called Allies (as opposed to the Central powers, whom the last Ottoman government had dragged the country into an arrangement with); and the non-Turkish peoples of the empire that rebelled in order to have their own nation states.

When the republic was declared, the founders of the national state were keen on creating a homogeneous society to avoid treason and to never allow foreign intervention again. The national anthem adopted unanimously by the Parliament on 12th of March 1921 reflects these national concerns. In the first verse the lines read:

Fear not, the crimson flag, waving in these dawns will never fade before the last hearth that is burning in my nation vanishes. In the sixth verse, it reads:

Fear not, you are great! How could a dragon called ‘Civilization’ with one remaining tooth drown such faith?

The fear of extinction is obvious but what is interesting is the way the West is portrayed: not as a civilization but in fact an aggressive beast that relies on one thing, its military power (one tooth). It is devoid of the humanity and moral superiority that are the sources of the Turks’ greatness. The Turk’s faith in his greatness is his power.

Today, the fear and the myth are back. Many Turks believe that their country is under siege and the same imperialist powers are here to dismantle the country by instigating non-Turkish minorities like the Kurds and Christians. Now we have to draw on our greatness once again. How we came to this point is the subject matter of another article.

One thing must be emphasized, though. The depiction of the nation is in school books and the statements of the founders. Officially the nation reflects political, linguistic, racial and ethnic (they called this origin) unity and historical and moral similarity. Given this description, a nation designed as such could either be built by eliminating or suppressing differences. This meant the ousting of the idea of reconciling differences and rejecting the reality of ethnic, linguistic and cultural plurality. Hence democracy would not be among the instruments in forging a nation. That is why democracy does not exist in the six arrow emblem of the Republican People’s Party whose political philosophy dominated statecraft until 1950. The existing arrows or principles were statism, nationalism, reformism, laicism, populism and republicanism.

Of these, statism is of particular importance because the state preceded the nation and invested in itself the right and authority to shape the nation like a plastic entity without a sociological, historical and cultural character. This hierarchical relationship between state and society overpowered the former and disempowered the latter, rendering society totally dependent on the state, not only for its security but also for its livelihood.

Socio-economic development on the one hand and globalization (put EU membership in this category) on the other brought enormous pressure to bear on this format. The challenge for the ruling cadres of Turkey is obvious: it either goes along with the tide of the times or clings onto the existing institutional structure and legal system that upholds it and become a pariah of the modern world. Somewhere along the way, it is hoped that the people are heard too. Fortunately there are elections ahead and the people may have a chance to express themselves.

Irony of history

Can history take revenge? Or is it the nature of things to take their course after forced deviations prove to be ineffective? The point I am trying to make is what Kenan Evren has had to go through lately. Gen. Evren was chief of general staff from March 1978 until July 1983. In this capacity he was the team leader of the military junta that masterminded the 1980 coup d’état. This made him the de facto head of state from September 1980 to November 1982.

During this time Parliament was annulled along with all the existing political parties. The Consultative Assembly was called to duty as it devised a constitution according to the junta’s preference of a powerful state apparatus and a subservient body politic that went into effect in 1982. It is the same constitution that Turkey is trying to presently shrug off because the nation has been turned into an apolitical amorphous mass ruled by a bureaucracy with the help of political parties that were reduced to being extensions of the central authority.

The fact that one-third of the 1982 Constitution has been altered in the last few years to adapt the Turkish legal system to that of the EU has not really touched the authoritarian spirit of the military-inspired constitution.

Gen. Evren got himself elected the seventh president of Turkey as the sole candidate in the same referendum held for the adoption of the 1982 Constitution. He held the presidency of the republic from November 1982 until 1989.

In all of these capacities, he was the guardian of the staunch statist system that stifled all basic freedoms and centrally managed society. During his rule, the position of the military as the tutelary power that oversees politics, controls change and filters decisions from top to bottom was firmly established. An ethnic nationalism reinforced by religion that was thought to be subservient to the state was imposed on society, suffocating all political movements that could lead to the burgeoning of pluralist politics.

Hundreds of thousands of people were arrested and interrogated. Tens of thousands were prosecuted and systematically tortured. Thousands of democratic and progressive government employees and academics were dismissed. Hundreds of people were deprived of their citizenship. Thousands fled the country. Several dozen young people, especially leftists, were executed. During this havoc, Evren maintained his honesty. He believed he was doing what was right for the country, which is typical of tyrants who love their country while they exterminate its citizens. He is on record as having responded with What should we do, feed them instead of hang them? when asked why he endorsed the execution of political activists.

The Kurdish language was officially banned, the existence of Kurds denied and a ruthless campaign of the repression of everything that was Kurdish was set into motion. Many of the problems emanating from Turkey’s Southeast today are products of the junta’s heavy-handed politics of nationalism that coined the ingenious term mountain Turks.

In spite of the fact that putsch leaders in many countries are prosecuted, sentenced or at the very least isolated, Evren and his teammates have enjoyed their spoils and lived as prominent members of society since their coup. He was never tried for being a dictator or for his dictatorial deeds. But now, Turkey is getting ready to prosecute its old dictator for his democratic statements. How bizarre!

High positions, whether they are held as a result of an election process or appointment, are generally occupied by people who are inexperienced and quite unaware of global realities, let alone national issues. They may be likened to novice barbers who learn how to shave on the faces of others. By the time they are out of office or reach the age of retirement they are much wiser and experienced if not visionary. Evren is no exception.

While he was in office, President Evren declared more than once that he will not allow holes punched in (his) the constitution. meaning that no one should dare change it. He is also on record for ordering the removal of a nude painting from an international art exhibit on the grounds that the portrait was immoral.

But apparently, as the saying goes, that is water under the bridge. He has taken up the hobby of painting and now paints nude figures himself. But lately he realized that the Turkish political system was too centralized and dysfunctional. As always, he was honest, like all naive people. It seems he felt the urge to warn his countrymen concerning the entropy of the system, which no longer delivers what is expected of it. He even worries that the sustainability of the regime was becoming questionable. For the 90-year-old ex-dictator, the present structure of the state and the political system that it oversees is stifling local initiative, retarding development and limiting political participation to the degree of alienating the people from the government.

He proposed organizing Turkey into eight administrative zones and devolving the authority of the central government, just as France did a quarter century ago. After all France is the source of our administrative system; however, we have preserved it since the early 20th century while France decentralized it.

He gave simple but convincing examples as to why this was necessary and added that such a development will take place anyhow, whether I see it or not. All hell broke loose, blaming the old dictator for his democratic revelation. He has been insolently called a traitor, senile and subversive, etc., by the yes men of yesterday.

Two prosecutors initiated a legal interrogation process against their old master who abandoned them and converted to democracy. What can this be called other than the revenge of history?

What these knights of the ghost temple are not aware of is that Turkey signed the European Agreement on the Autonomy of Local Governments in 1988. Ten of its 11 articles were approved by Parliament (Act 113123) in 1991 and were endorsed by the Cabinet in 1992, becoming law on April 1, 1993. This is another ironic feet because all this ado is for a law that is already in effect, but those who oppose it are ignorant of the fact that it is. Is this what is called the ostrich syndrome?

The tug of war between the elected and the appointed

The dramatic public appeal of the Higher Education Board (YOK) on April 5 that the Parliament’s selection of the next president should be held with 367 members (two-thirds of the total number of deputies) was a wake-up call. The warning reveals that those who oppose Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s presidency will make every effort to deny him this opportunity. If the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) does not heed this warning, it means opposing forces/actors will take the issue to the Constitutional Court. Given the fact that YOK President Professor Erdogan Tezic is a prominent constitutional law scholar, the warning by YOK carries some weight.

Why is academia, the military, the judiciary and the secular sections of the bureaucracy opposing Mr. Erdogan’s presidency? After all he is the prime minister and in this post he is more powerful than the president. The answer is not as simple as the question.

The government and its share of power have always been looked upon as ephemeral and reserved for those transitory cadres that come and go with elections. Furthermore this (political) power is limited and strictly checked by institutions and laws made and supervised by the powerful bureaucracy, the judiciary included. In the Turkish context it is called state power. The state’s power is definitive and supersedes the political power that is utilized to run the day-to-day affairs of society.

Those that wield state power oversee how basic institutions function and make corrections when there are deviations from state policies that are shaped by written rules and unwritten directives. It is this tutelary function of the holders of state power that make them strong, unaccountable and privileged. The presidency is the epitome of everything associated with the state. A group that loses its grip on the presidency may lose its unchallenged position in the sociopolitical hierarchy, never to recover it. It is because of this concern that three actual and one threatened military coup have been put into effect since 1960.

Additionally there is a more-or-less clear definition of the qualities of the president of the republic: they have to be secular, statist, nationalist, modern and in harmony with the armed forces of the country. I would add immune from corruption or any other questionable economic dealings, but considering the rumors surrounding our recent string of presidents, this aspect has been subdued, although it has been revitalized with Mr. Erdogan’s candidacy. The sum total of these qualities dovetails into the wholehearted reference to the president, ‘‘Your Excellency".

Mr. Erdogan is not the type to be called Your Excellency or sayin, by the standards of the Turkish state elite. They will simply deny bowing before him: Furthermore given the vagaries of the Turkish electoral system, only one third of the electorate has endorsed an AK Party majority in the Parliament and this partial popular shall be instrumental in electing the next president. Although the procedure is legal, there is a serious problem of representation and an ensuing problem of legitimacy that would haunt a president elected by the AK Party alone.

The Turkish state elite has distinguished itself from the other ruling elites of the non-western countries as being secular and compatible with western values. This quality has been labeled Kemalism, identifying its doctrine as that of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. Mr. Erdogan does not come from the Kemalist tradition. Nor does he come from a tradition of either ideologically or socially defined secularism. Instead he has always identified himself with the Islamic tradition of Turkey, which has been at times antagonistic to both Kemalism and Western values. In this context his values are seen as shaped more by Middle Eastern Islamic groups than Europe. It is only after he ascended to power as prime minister that it seems he has come to grips with the realities of the world and the power structure in his country, and moderated his relatively sharp religious stance with a more democratic attitude. Yet this transformation has not convinced a large part of the electorate, and none of the state elite.

These circles believe that Mr. Erdogan will revert back to his ideological roots, if and when he becomes the next president. In this capacity he is expected to endorse obscurantist laws and appoint religiously motivated personalities to critical official posts. It is no surprise that the YOK declaration reads as follows: The presidency is a post with many powers, but no accountability. The president is empowered to veto laws and influence autonomous institutions and superior judicial organs of the state [by selecting and appointing a part of their members]. Either the powers of the president must be reduced to fit the character of a parliamentary system, or these powers must be increased, and a semi-presidential system must be adopted whereby the president is elected by popular vote through a two-tier election system.

That is the gist of the problem. No one must contend with the privileged position of the state elite, whose source of power is not popular choice, but nonetheless wields the power of the state machinery. It may be that this is an over-simplified statement, but I cannot come up with a better explanation.

With regard to my personal opinion, Mr. Erdogan has the legal right to be elected president, but he lacks the qualities of a sophisticated statesman and is ill-equipped to be a national leader of international stature. Yet given the foul play of those who are not accountable to the people, it could be that his election will do away with much of the undeserved privileges of the old guard that use state power without accountability. But then this may also be a naive expectation that will not come true for some time to come.

Support your republic!

The actual slogan for the participants and organizers of the massive demonstration in Ankara held on April 14 was Own (or protect) your republic. This is an indication of the feeling widespread among them that the republic is being snatched away and that immediate action is needed in order to salvage whatever is left as quickly as possible.

The meeting took place in Ankara’s Tandogan Square and at Ataturk’s mausoleum, Anitkabir. The assembled crowd cheered and marched with nationalist chants that included the anthem of the War Colleges. Not only did tens of thousands of people come to Ankara from all over Turkey, but 10 planeloads of people from different countries in Europe flew in from Germany and one planeload from the US flew to Ankara for the occasion.

The organizers of the meeting were the Kemalist Thought Association (ADD) and the Retired Army Officers Association. The head of the first organization is retired Gen. Şener Eruygur, former commander of the Gendarmerie forces whose name has recently surfaced among the top officers who contrived to stage a coup against the incumbent government in 2004.

The main reason for the demonstration was declared to be protesting against attrition of the basic values of the republic beyond acceptable boundaries. The timing is convenient because soon candidates for the presidential contest will be declared and the most likely candidate is present Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose credentials as a secular and modern personality are seen as wanting by the organizers of the meeting.

When asked by observing journalists, female participants aired their concern for a candidate, who they see as a religious fundamentalist and husband of a wife whose hair is covered in a way that symbolizes obscurantism. However the headscarf is more than that. For a section of political secularists it is the symbol of the hidden agenda of the present prime minister and his entourage, who are suspected of aiming to establish a Shariah state at their earliest convenience. Secularist women are more concerned than men because they see this symbolic tug of war going on for the control of their body (the degree of freedom to exercise their gender role and the modality of their public appearance-dress code).

Participants often expressed their worry over the character of the next president should Mr. Erdogan declare his candidacy because it will not merely be the loss of a castle they held until now but also a violation of the basic tenets of the republic — hence a matter of life and death for the secular regime.

Speakers, among them nationalist-statist academics, delivered speeches along lines of the alarming statement by President Ahmet Necdet Sezer publicized at the Military Academies in Istanbul earlier in the week, warning the people that the regime and the country were under severe danger of dissolution, unmatched in the history of the republic.

While those who were there and those who hung flags on their windows agreed, others thought differently. There were rebuttals that could be summed up as They are not protecting the republic but defending the status quo. Indeed many people in Turkey disassociate the election of the next president from the legitimacy of the regime. What they are more worried by is the obstruction of the election of a civilian president just because official circles and pseudo-democratic (statist) urban cohorts want to protect the regime that is the product of the last military coup (1980).

A liberal academic interprets the reaction of the forces behind the demonstration with the following words This is the death knell of a 1930s model ideology that has succeeded in transforming [traditional] Turkey but has failed to transform itself... Kemalism had injected self-confidence into a devastated Turkey, but now it inculcates fear and defeatism (Baskin Oran).

Indeed no one heard any reference to democracy, human rights, minority rights, expansion of basic freedoms or adoption of more universal values