Stop dog fighting, start dancing zorba and zeybek

Last week Turkish and Greek leaders met once again to discuss ways to improve the relationship between the two countries. One issue on the agenda was to stop the “dog fights” of jets over the Aegean Sea.

In a world in which political borders are increasingly becoming blurred and insignificant this tension over the airspace in the Aegean Sea region has become absurd. Social and economic dynamics would not allow the continued militarization of relations between the two countries. Being locked into such a narrow issue prevents the ability to reach full cooperation. It will be the business sector and civil society that will lose if they sit back and idly watch cooperation opportunities become hijacked by security concerns and historical prejudices.

Turkey and Greece share much in common. One such commonality is the militarism that still haunts both countries. Greece has been luckier than Turkey as it moved faster on the EU track in consolidating its democracy. Another advantage was that Greece did not have an “official ideology” that served as an obstacle to democratization and created strong solidarity among the privileged state elite. Ironically, Turkey’s official ideology is named after Kemal Atatürk, who was born in Thessaloniki, a city within the borders of Greece today.

The Greeks have another source of militarism: the fear of Turkey. The fact that Greece was under Ottoman-Turkish rule for nearly 400 years has influenced the Greek identity. The Greek adventure in the Asia Minor that resulted in a heavy defeat and the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Greeks from Anatolia has left an indisputable impact on the Greek psyche. Being a Greek had meant being anti-Turkish for a long time. Greek national identity was largely built in the shadow of their historical encounters with the Turks. The Cyprus question, the Aegean sea dispute, and Western Trace added to this picture and justified their adversarial positioning vis-à-vis Turkey.

But for a decade or so things have started to change slowly yet significantly. Membership in the EU and the welfare it generated built Greek national confidence enabling it to rethink the “Turkey question.” I think current Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou was among the first who initiated the rethinking about Turkey by supporting the Turkish bid for full membership in the EU. Together with his “friend” and colleague, former Minister of Foreign Affairs Ismail Cem, he laid the groundwork for a new approach that regarded Turkey’s integration into the EU as a stabilizing development in the region. In this new thinking, integration not exclusion of Turkey is expected to strengthen regional peace, security, and stability. Moreover, the consolidation of democracy in Turkey is believed to ease Greece’s security concern, given that Turkey under an authoritarian rule would be a far greater problem for Greece as well as other regional countries. As a result, Greece by 1999 started to support Turkey’s EU accession process through which democratization would be consolidated.

Greece under the leadership of the senior Papandreou had failed in understanding the calls of Turkish Prime Minister Turgut Özal for new beginnings in bilateral relations. In the late 1980s Turgut Özal wanted the Greek government to focus on expanding economic relations while shelving off hot political issues. His approach reflected a liberal position: Once economic and social interdependencies were formed the contested political disputes could be solved more easily.

It has been more than 20 years since then and Turkey and Greece are now closer to settling hot political issues with the understanding that economic and social interactions should not be disturbed in the pursuit of political competition.

Greece and Turkey can be conceived as a single economic zone. They can work together in Europe, the Balkans, and the Middle East. I cannot think of better natural allies than Turks and Greeks. They should rediscover each other. Once they do so I am pretty sure that they will be inseparable. It is time to stop “dogfighting” and start dancing the “zorba” and “zeybek” together.

25 October 2010, Monday

Three reasons why the CHP cannot change

Having changed its leader, will the Republican People’s Party (CHP) be able to adopt a new political language and program? This has been optimistically expected of the “new” CHP. It seems that Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu and his new team are aware of the need to do something to reach out to new social sectors in order to make the party electable in the upcoming elections.

But they face resistance within the party, as reflected in the controversy over whether the CHP will join in the Republican Day reception at Çankaya, where the wife of the president will be present, wearing her headscarf. While Kılıçdaroğlu has hinted that he might go to Çankaya on Oct. 29, other party officials had already declared that they would boycott the reception.

These confusing messages show that changing the CHP is not an easy task. The key debate in this is “secularism.” Will the CHP remain a single-issue party focusing on the claim that secularism is in danger or will it adopt a moderate notion of secularism and move on to develop a social democratic agenda?

It will not easy for the CHP, which has based its policies for years on the claim that “secularism is under threat,” to suddenly say that “secularism is not under threat.” Obviously, it is hard to explain this radical shift to the grassroots and the party elites and justify such a shift in ideological terms.

Even if the party leadership wishes to transform the party into one which has a moderate republican stance with a social democrat agenda there are structural obstacles before the CHP undertaking such an endeavor. First of all, there is the resistance of the party elites and the old guards who rightly calculate that policy change will undermine their presence in the party. Although some of them supported Kılıçdaroğlu’s leadership, they now accurately conclude that if the party transforms itself into a social-democratic entity it will not need the old guards, who do not have any significant social representation. They supported the leadership change but will not tolerate the change of identity and polices from the old radical Kemalist-secularist notion of republicanism.

The second important obstacle before the transformation of the party is the grassroots. For some people, the CHP is a safe harbor in a rapidly changing environment -- the last bastion of secularism. It has been more than a political party; it is a safety net, a front. Under the pressure of such elements, the CHP turned into a reactionary party of those who feel insecure in the face of radical social, economic and political transformations. These people are now shocked by the Kılıçdaroğlu’s statements about the headscarf issue and secularism not being under threat.

The dilemma for the CHP is that it cannot change its discourse without risking losing at least some of its supporters. The CHP has been imprisoned by its own strategy of rallying people through fear, the fear that secularism and republican values are in danger. Now it is extremely difficult for the CHP to calm those people who have been alarmed by the CHP itself.

The third obstacle is ideological. Unless the CHP abandons Kemalism and denounces the Kemalist past, it cannot evolve into a social democrat party since Kemalism gives priority to the state and state authority over the people. Kemalism is the ideology of single-party rule in which the state apparatuses were extensively used to coerce the people. For any party competing in a democratic race, Kemalism is not an asset but a liability since it is incompatible with democracy and free choice. This is a hard fact that the new CHP leadership should understand if they really wish to “renew” the party.

In sum, the political elite, grassroots and Kemalism are three obstacles before the transformation of the CHP. To reach new social segments, the CHP must be ready to sacrifice at least some of its old grassroots. This is the dilemma. The fact that the next election is so close ties the hands of the new leadership. If they do not meet expectations and perform better than the former leader, Deniz Baykal, it will be hard to keep their posts at the top of the party. The referendum might have been a source of strength for changing the party if the “no” votes had gotten the majority. With the heavy defeat in the referendum, the CHP leadership cannot risk splitting the party in the name of change. But, unless they change the party and adopt a new political language and strategy, it is unlikely that they can appeal to new social segments in order to win the majority in the next general elections.

18 October 2010, Monday