The roots of a new anti-Semitism in Turkey

The latest row over the Israeli attacks on Gaza and the ensuing public reaction in Turkey has raised questions about the rise of anti-Semitism in Turkey. The recent rise of anti-Semitism is in fact related to the activities and ideology of neo-nationalist (Ulusalcı) groups.

Let me explain. A near witch-hunt of people with Jewish origin was started in early 2004 with the publication of a series of books on Sabbateanism. The authors of these books are Yalçın Küçük, an academic with a Marxist background, Soner Yalçın, a leftist journalist currently working at the Hürriyet daily, and Ergün Poyraz, a freelance journalist.

The books of these authors were sold in hundreds of thousands in recent years. The books were available not only in bookshops but in almost all newspaper kiosks throughout Turkey. Yalçın's book "Efendi," published by Doğan Yayıncılık, had been reprinted 82 times by April 2008. Poyraz's books sold over 150,000 copies just in 2007, a phenomenal success by any measure.

These publications have created a mental climate in which being a Jew or having a Jewish background is something to be ashamed of, and enough to be anti-Turkish, a mindset which prompts hatred. The picture that was emerged out of these publications was that Turkey was and has always been under the influence of Jews. These books popularized the view that almost all important public figures, past and present, were Sabbatean, of Jewish origin; that the Turkish republic was a "Jewish project"; and that the Turkish economy and political and cultural life were under the control of people of Jewish origin. These were not unknown ideas. But the important thing was that through these books, the anti-Semitic sentiment was introduced to new segments of society; people who were urban, educated, professional and secular. An idea that was hitherto popular among a very small number of radical Islamists has spread into new social and political environs.

The underlying theme was that Turkey has been controlled by a Jewish conspiracy, and, as such, a new struggle for national independence was required. Poyraz's books, entitled "The Children of Moses" and "The Rose of Moses," even went as far as to claim that President Abdullah Gül and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan are of Jewish origin. This kind of writing was part and parcel of creating a siege mentality, provoking anti-Semitism and justifying a neo-nationalist popular uprising.

Those books and the authors' TV appearances normalized anti-Semitism, camouflaged as Sabbatean "research" that turned into a campaign to discredit all influential public figures who are pro-reform and take a pro-EU stand.

This new anti-Semitism is part of an attempt to spread the neo-nationalist position into the grassroots, where the neo-nationalists have tried to forge alliances with conservatives. On Feb. 28, 2005, in an interview I gave to Neşe Düzel from the Radikal daily, I warned that anti-Semitism was being used to scare a diverse array of people, including leftists, rightists, Islamists, and socialists, and bring them together under a militarist ideology. The anti-Semitism provoked in 2004 and afterward has been part of an attempt to create the support base in society for a nationalist/militarist march to power, whether legally or illegally.

So the new anti-Semitism is the child of nationalist-militarist formations.

09 February 2009

From apology to reconciliation

Thanks to a recent petition prepared and signed by a group of intellectuals, we have found ourselves discussing the Armenian issue. It appears that not only the recognition of genocide claims but also the fact of the massacres against the Ottoman Armenians is a taboo. Those who signed the petition have been accused of treason.

Even Turkish President Abdullah Gül, who recognized the right of individuals to prepare any kind of petition, became a target of a racist assault by Republican People's Party (CHP) deputy Canan Arıtman, who argued that Gül's ancestors may be of Armenian origin. This scandalous statement was, in fact, a logical outcome of the xenophobia that has grown amongst Turkey's secularist circles.

But there also exists a historical aspect of this hatred toward "foreigners." We should not forget that not only Armenian identity, but modern Turkish identity, too, has been shaped by the events of 1915. As Minister of Defense Vecdi Gönül admitted a month ago, many in Turkey believe that the forced deportation of Armenians and Greeks made it possible to establish a "Turkish nation-state" in Anatolia.

This is the bottom line: Anything that is viewed as necessary to form a state, any kind of state, which is the guarantee of the survival of the "nation," is to be justified. For this reason, ultranationalists in recent years have been calling for the need to wage "another war of independence," aware that such a state of affairs would justify anything, including a military coup. Their motto made this very clear: "If the motherland is at stake, the rest is a matter of details." So those ultranationalists were trying to build a consensus on the "essentials" of the national existence: to protect the state (whose characteristics would not matter at all) vis-à-vis the assault of global forces and their domestic collaborators.

The secularists and the "conservative democrats," including Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, have united in defense of what the Committee of Union and Progress did in 1915.

We do not have to, and should not, accept that the 1915 events constituted genocide, but we must stop trying to find excuses for the massacres of Ottoman citizens of Armenian origin. Otherwise, we can find excuses for the suppression of the Kurds, of Islamic dervish orders, of the girls who wear the headscarf, etc. If we allow the raison d'état to reign, then everything will be explainable and justifiable.

The debate over the apology campaign has revealed that many in Turkey, including Islamists, conservatives, leftists and even liberals, continue to think within the paradigm of the nation-state and nationalism.

The fact is that at the turn of the 19th century, all the peoples of the Balkans and Anatolia suffered at the hands of nationalists, be they Bulgarian, Greek, Turkish or Armenian nationalists. There is, therefore, no point in maintaining and reproducing the same nationalist sentimentalities today. What is needed is a process of reconciliation that does not come through by standing behind the crimes of nationalists of all kinds committed a century ago.

22 December 2008

Understanding AK Party’s Kurdish strategy

Given the electoral support the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) received from Kurds in the July 2007 elections and the party's reformist credentials, it was optimistically expected that the long-awaited solution to the Kurdish question was about to come.

Instead of developing a comprehensive approach to address the roots of the question, the AK Party developed a strategy of solving the Kurdish question "without recognizing the Kurdish ethnicity."

This is, of course, an unrealistic strategy but understandable because the party does not really have a free hand in its approach to the question and thus must act within the limits drawn by the security establishment, which claims to have the final say on the issue.

The security establishment realizes that the AK Party's popularity among Kurds is an opportunity and is pushing the party to the forefront to implement policies to buy the Kurds' loyalty. The "state" therefore wants the AK Party to ease the Kurdish question without damaging the basic characteristics of the Turkish nation-state.

What is left for the AK Party is to develop a three-tier strategy.

First up is providing people in Kurdish areas with economic and social benefits. Pumping resources into the region to complete the Southeastern Anatolia Project (GAP) and implementing small-scale benefit projects are part and parcel of this strategy. Acting as a "social welfare state" in the region is expected to generate relative prosperity among the poverty-ridden Kurds and build a bridge to the "Turkish" state. Fighting against poverty is certainly an issue -- especially since large cities in the region are surrounded by hundreds of thousands of people who were forced to leave their villages. The shantytowns around Diyarbakır have made the Kurds' poverty more visible than ever. There is, therefore, a rationale behind providing these poor people with some economic benefits in return for their votes. However, this approach presumes that the Kurdish question is a matter of economic backwardness and that a more affluent Kurdish region will acquiesce to the Turkish state's denial of Kurdish identity. This is an approach that fails to understand the identity aspect of the Kurdish question and one that has been adopted many times by other political parties. Yet the AK Party is allowed to pursue such a policy precisely because it is a policy without an identity dimension.

The second element of the AK Party's Kurdish strategy is to appeal to "Kurdish conservatism," a strong social and political force in the region. Though the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) is a Marxist-nationalist organization, the outlawed Kurds at large are religious people who have very close connections with various religious orders and groups. The AK Party standing as a conservative party in line with the Kurdish social inclination gives the party a great advantage vis-à-vis the Marxist PKK. What is important for the Turkish security establishment is that a notion of "Muslim brotherhood" pursued by the AK Party may be effective in making Kurds loyal to the Turkish state without recognizing the Kurdish ethnicity. Thus a rhetoric employing Islam portrayed as anti-secular in the Western part of Turkey is not a problem in the Kurdish areas so long as it suppresses the Kurdish national identity.

The last element of the AK Party strategy is to develop a closer relationship with Iraqi Kurdish entities and leaders. It is important to note that this is not a unilateral AK Party policy. There is now a broad agreement among the Turkish policy actors -- including the security establishment -- on a policy of rapprochement with Iraqi Kurdish authorities. There has emerged such a consensus because cooperating with the Iraqi Kurdish entity against the PKK does not mean recognizing Iraqi Kurds' right to statehood or the ethnic identity demands of the Kurds in Turkey. Iraqi Kurds may be instrumental in containing and eliminating the PKK forces stationed in Iraqi territory.

On the part of the government, there is a political dimension as well. To recognize Iraqi Kurdish gains in post-occupation Iraq has been the desire of Turkey's Kurds. Visits by Iraqi President Jalal Talabani to Ankara and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to Baghdad have revealed that Turkey is prepared to develop a dialogue with Iraqi Kurds and that it is not unhappy with the newly acquired power of its Kurdish brothers in Iraq.

Given the popularity of Iraqi Kurdish movements in Turkey among the Kurds, the government's dialogue with the Kurdish leaders is certainly welcomed by Turkey's Kurds and will create a political advantage for the AK Party government. The AK Party's opening to northern Iraq can, therefore, also be seen as political maneuvering to reach out to Turkey's Kurdish population just before vital local elections, scheduled for March, without recognizing the Kurdish ethnicity.

15 December 2008

ASAM and ‘poverty of the strategists’

An Ankara-based think tank, the Eurasian Strategic Research Center (ASAM), is being shut down after its main sponsor, Ülker Holding, declared it would cut its roughly $2 million annual contribution.

Thus the apparent reason for the closure is ASAM's inability to diversify its resources as it has continued to rely on a single entity for its income.

But the problem is much deeper: ASAM could not survive because it modeled itself according to Cold War conditions and logic despite the fact that it was established well after the end of the Cold War in 1999. The founders did not have any formal education in international relations and were incapable of accurately comprehending the developments taking place in the world. Their notion of international politics was narrow-minded and outdated, sticking merely to the old notion of power politics, in which "hard power" is treated as the sole element of global politics.

Sponsored by a private company, but standing tightly by the state, particularly the General Staff, ASAM did not mind being seen as an extension of the state. On the contrary, its representatives were proud to claim they were speaking on behalf of the state even when this was not the case. It was an organization exaggerating its connection with the state, expecting to generate power and prestige out of this connection. It was not an independent and neutral institution and was never taken as such.

Led by ultranationalists, the institution was blinded to the realities of the globalized world. Serving as a gathering place for ultranationalist ex-officers and academics, ASAM never hid its advocacy for aggressive, and in the case of northern Iraq, expansionist foreign policy. It was also a "fan club for retired officers," as put forward by a senior diplomat.

ASAM was used as an institution for "psychological operations" in both domestic and foreign affairs. Its ultimate function was to securitize issues related to Turkish domestic and foreign policy areas. As such, it justified and reproduced militarism in Turkey with an authoritarian outlook in domestic politics and a militant foreign policy.

Its first chairman, Ümit Özdağ, turned out to be a contender for the leadership of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP). He repeatedly called on nationalist youth to take to the streets in a stand against Kurdish demands and the American policies in the region. He was the person whom the "deep state" wanted to see as the leader of the MHP since its current leader opposed the usage of nationalist youth in the street struggle as had occurred in the 1970s.

Another chairman of ASAM was the late Gündüz Aktan, who was the ideologue of a form of neo-nationalism known as Ulusalcılık. He even wrote that mass deportation of the Kurds, which is nearly ethnic cleansing, may be carried out if the need emerges. He was eventually elected to Parliament as an MHP deputy.

ASAM certainly set an example for the think tank community in Turkey, a bad example. It not only polluted strategic thinking in Turkey but also presented its poverty. Think tanks that try to imitate ASAM will share the same fate: being shut down.

Yes, it had resources, thanks to Ülker Holding, which provided them with millions of dollars that were used to hire researchers and monitor and report foreign developments. But all these resulted in an "information dustbin" instead of deep analytical knowledge. This was because the top executives were looking not for informed analysis but for ideologically inspired prescriptions laying the groundwork for aggressive foreign policies.

Just to display how the logic of ASAM worked over the years, it is sufficient to recall the latest prescription of its founding chairman, Özdağ, who said: "[Iraqi Kurdish leader] Massoud Barzani must be made a friend of Turkey even if it requires using force!" This is the logic, vision, wisdom and the analytical creativity on which ASAM's "reports" are mostly based.

ASAM not only polluted strategic thinking in Turkey but also presented its poverty.

They will be remembered for their so-called experts who, appearing on TV screens just before the occupation of Iraq by US forces, predicted that it would take a long time to defeat the Iraqi military and that Saddam's elite troops would put up long-term resistance. The strategists of ASAM were a joke!

08 December 2008

What ‘Mustafa’ tells us about Kemalism

A documentary on Mustafa Kemal Atatürk by Can Dündar shed light on the mindset of the Kemalists. It has become clear once more that they live in an imaginary world where historical facts and social and political realities of the country do not matter.
What is more worrisome is their ceaseless efforts to turn the country into what they have in their mind: a society homogenized and disciplined by the state apparatus controlled by a bunch of Kemalists. To enable this, they envisage a country isolated from the rest of the world -- and especially from the West.
Kemalism for them is nothing but a dogma with its myths that include a particular narrative about Atatürk. Portraying Atatürk as a normal human being, as Dündar did in his documentary, amounts to blasphemy for the "faithful." Atatürk is not a historical figure for them but a sacrosanct person, a cult figure. So a simple quest for historical facts is attacked by the Kemalists as an assault on Atatürk's personality.
What happened to the documentary "Mustafa" is a case of how ideological dogmatism blinds the Kemalists and closes any free debate about Turkey's recent history. What the Kemalists did to Dündar is an indicator that it is almost impossible to discuss Turkey's recent history. The Kemalists not only try to block Turkey's march toward democratization, Europeanization and a free market economy, but also block it from facing up to its history. They think of themselves as the ultimate veto power.
In so doing, they do not take the realities of the country into account. What a big irony, for the man they adore was a perfect example of pragmatism in politics. From the moment Mustafa Kemal arrived in Anatolia in 1919 to the end of his struggle, he pursued a policy enabling him to mobilize all segments of society and win over their support. He appealed to devout Muslims, to the Kurds, to the pro-Soviet socialists and even to the members of the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP).
It is a pity that contemporary Kemalists are far more backward than their leader who lived almost a century ago.
The contemporary Kemalists are not tolerant of different ideas and identities. Even moderate Kemalists, like Dündar, have become targets of their assault, no matter what they did previously. A "deviation" from the true path of Kemalism as perceived by the vanguards deserves an incommunicado. Those who deviate from the true path are accused of heresy, not treason, because what they have on their mind as Kemalism is more than an ideology, it is a faith.
The debate over "Mustafa" once more proves that Turkey's new reactionaries are the Kemalists -- the most dogmatic political formation, unwilling to allow free debate on any issue. Their primary concern is to keep the myths of Kemalist dogma untouched, unaware that in this age such a dogma is doomed to become passé.
01 December 2008, Monday

Does geopolitics bring about EU membership?

“Being strategically important will not make Turkey an EU member-country.” This was the warning from a friend of Turkey, Joost Lagendijk, the co-president of the EU-Turkey Joint Parliamentary Commission, published in a commentary by the Taraf daily last week.

This is a valuable comment to keep in mind. While there have always been strong advocates of the geopolitical argument on the Turkish side, it seems that there are some in Europe who are increasingly emphasizing Turkey’s strategic importance. What should be underlined is that those advocates of the geopolitical argument, both in Turkey and in Europe, are not really enthusiastic about Turkey’s accession to the EU. They are more than prepared to settle with a “special partnership” for Turkey.

The strategic thinking that works on the Turkish side maintains that if the EU really wants, it should take Turkey in without questioning the nature of its political regime. What those who ask for such an offer do not know is that the EU is not a strategic alliance but a union of values.

Even an alliance like NATO has in the post-Cold War era developed a set of political values as the basis of the alliance, thus going beyond strategic cooperation. If Turkey asked for NATO membership today, I doubt very much that it would be qualified to be a member.

The Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) is an important aspect of the EU’s institutional and political cooperation. Yet, since the Maastricht Treaty, signed in 1992 between members of the European Community, one of the objectives of the CFSP has been to promote and consolidate democracy, human rights and the rule of law worldwide.

For some in Turkey, EU membership is acceptable only if it does not require a restructuring of the state, improving democracy, enhancing human rights and the rule of law. That is to say, some want to get the benefits of the EU without paying the price in return for Turkey’s strategic contribution to the EU. The interesting thing is that the price that these circles, particularly the military, do not want to pay is democratization, human rights and the rule of law.

For sure, some regional and global developments have encouraged advocates of the strategic perspective. Turkey may serve as a transit route for the transportation of energy resources from the East to Europe. It may thus help Europe diversify its energy resources. The Iraq war and the instabilities in the Caucasus seem to have added to the strategic value of Turkey as well.
Do these developments, which underline Turkey’s geopolitical location, make Turkey an indispensable part of Europe or its strategic partner? My answer is that they only convince the Europeans that Turkey should be kept at the periphery with a strategic perspective.
Yet the “strategic thinking” seems to be reviving as Turkey loses momentum in doing what is necessary to do, and Europe still seems hesitant on the overall added value of a democratic and prosperous Turkey to Europe.

What has revived is the old trick; that is, to sell Turkey’s strategic value to the Western allies. It seems that some old guards in Turkey never abandoned this old-fashioned game of seduction. It is a great mistake to think that a strategic location is an asset on its own.

Moreover, putting emphasis on the “strategic perspective” in EU-Turkey relations is a trap for the genuine supporters of Turkey’s EU accession. As Lagendijk rightly warns, the “strategic perspective” is bound to end up with an offer from the EU for a “special partnership” instead of full-fledged membership.

10 November 2008

Obama or McCain for Turkey?

This week the American people are electing their next president. No doubt this election carries global implications. Is it time for a change, as advocated by Obama's supporters, or is it a time to be cautious and carry on with neocon American unilateralism? We will see.

Turkey has always been interested in US elections. Every election season, Turks tune in to hear what the candidates are saying about two particular issues: Cyprus and Armenian genocide claims. It is widely believed that Greeks and Armenians are powerful enough to impose their agendas on candidates during their election campaigns. A Republican president who prioritizes "interests" over "values" is expected to be more sympathetic to the Turkish cause. The logic is simple: A power-politics perspective that is informed by geopolitical necessities in the region understands and appreciates the importance of Turkey much better than an "idealist democrat" would.

This rather old-fashioned analysis was spectacularly invalidated during the presidency of George W. Bush when Turkish-American relations experienced one of their worst periods ever and the popularity of the US and its policies declined drastically.

The Bush presidency proved that instead of being interested only in what the American president thinks of Turkey, we must watch how he runs his own country to understand what he truly means to us. The foreign policies of a statesman are not independent of his general political outlook.
Sticking to an old habit from the Cold War and imprisoning Turkish-American relations to a mere strategic alliance, a policy promoted in some circles in both Ankara and Washington does nothing to improve the relationship between the two countries. What is needed is not merely a strategic alliance but a "democratic partnership."

Thus cooperation against a terror organization is a good starting point for the improvement of relations, but it is not the end of it. The US, as a "democratic partner," should do more than declare the [outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party] PKK a terror organization and share intelligence on the group with Turkey. This is an old paradigm based on the notion of fighting together against the common enemy. What about a positive vision shared between the two countries? How about a partnership to building peace and democracy in the region? It is time for a "positive alliance," one that is not based on "against" this or that, but rather "for" a shared vision.

This requires treating Turkey as a "democratic partner." An American administration that is not sensitive to Turkey's quest to perfect its democracy will lose the faith of the Turkish public by being seen as allied with anti-democratic forces. This is in fact what has happened during the last couple of years when the US administration failed to show solidarity with democratic forces in Turkey. As a result, anti-American nationalists, as well as pro-Western liberals, have grown critical of the American attitude. The result was a "double alienation" of the American administration in Turkey.
To avoid this, America should understand that its partner in Ankara is the elected government, not a "few good men in the Turkish military." Turkish-American relations have gone beyond cooperation for security and into diverse and sophisticated issues. Even in order to continue cooperating on security, America's counterpart in Ankara is the democratically elected government, not the chief of general staff. Treating Turkey as though Cold War conditions are still prevalent would be a grave mistake on the part of an administration headed by Obama or McCain since it would mean that they fail to understand the "democratic reformation" that has taken place in Turkey in recent years, a process Americans could have contributed as much to as the EU has.

I think it is time for a change in Turkish-American relations as well. An Obama presidency in the US is more likely to add a "democratic vision" to the "strategic perspective" that still prevails in Turkish-American relations.

03 November 2008