Will European liberal values survive: the Austrian case

Did you hear about the statements made by Turkey’s ambassador to Vienna, Kadri Ecvet Tezcan, on mistakes being made in the process of integration of Turks into Austrian society? And do you know about the reaction by the Austrian government to the ambassador’s criticisms?

It is time to remind you all: Everyone is watching everyone else. There is no way to hide behind national boundaries when it comes to human rights, basic freedoms and the threat of racism. It seems that a number of European countries need a good lecturing on human rights.

For decades now Turkish intellectuals, NGO activists and journalists have joined Europeans in criticizing Turkey’s human rights record and pressed for improvements in this field. We know that at the beginning the Turkish side was rather reluctant, frequently accusing foreigners of meddling in Turkey’s domestic affairs.

In this latest incident, I cannot see that level of understanding from the Austrian government. While Turkey has been improving itself, getting to know the trends in international law, global politics, and international social movements on human rights, it is a pity that a country in the center of Europe fails to understand any of these.

You have criticized Turkey for decades but feel offended when concerns about right-wing movements are expressed by the Turkish ambassador. You freely and rightly point to the question of the integration of Alevis and Kurds in Turkey, but you think you are exempt from criticism about the way in which immigrants are treated in Austria, or for that matter, in any other European country. You tell us every day what to do in our domestic matters but get upset when we tell you how to handle the problem of racism and integration.

Please, no one should embrace this old notion of “non-interference in domestic affairs.” This is the habit of authoritarian governments, you may remember, all over the world. It is an embarrassment for Europe to have governments that try to defend their wrongdoings in domestic affairs by hiding behind the non-interference principle.

Sorry guys, as you watch us we watch you too. We all have to be sincere and open to criticism.

Just look at the way the Austrian government has responded to the Turkish ambassador’s remarks: Tezcan was summoned to Austria’s foreign ministry and the Austrian foreign minister telephoned his Turkish counterpart to complain. A spokesman from the Austrian foreign ministry claimed that Tezcan “crossed many red lines.”

Well, I really loved this typical reactionary response by the Austrian side! Do they really think that they live in an age of absolute sovereignty in which they can do whatever they wish to people living in their national boundaries, and still expect the world to remain silent? This is totally anachronistic. When it comes to human rights and fundamental freedoms this Westphalian principle has long since been abandoned in international law. Just remember the human rights conventions that the Austrian government is also a signatory to.

The spokesman argued that the Turkish ambassador does not represent all Turks in Austria because half of them are Austrian citizens. Well, it is even more embarrassing, isn’t it?

Instead of blatantly rejecting the criticism, the Austrian government should take the problem of immigrants, whether they are their own citizens or not, very seriously. We all know that this is a serious problem. Do not get me wrong: It is serious not only for those migrants trying to make ends meet in Europe but also for what Europe stands for. The way foreigners are treated in Europe may slowly ruin the values of Europe such as equality, freedom and human rights -- including the right to be different.

Increasingly some EU member countries need “progress reports” on the way in which they treat their own citizens with migrant backgrounds as well as new migrants. It is not ethical at all to talk about human rights abroad while not facing your problems at home.

I think Europe should take warning signs and criticisms very seriously, if not for the sake of immigrants then for the survival of European liberal values.

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

The shame

Hrant Dink was murdered on Jan. 19, 2007. Three days after his death I wrote a piece titled “Hrant Dink: the victim of the nation-state.” There I explained how the murder of Dink was linked to the idea of a homogenized nation-state erected by expelling or silencing ethnic, religious and ideological “others.”

The same understanding of the nation-state that is incapable of apologizing for the wrongs it has committed, as put by Orhan Kemal Cengiz last week, continues to hurt Hrant Dink’s memory. In a defense submitted to the European Court of Human Rights, Dink was compared to a Nazi leader and it was argued that restrictions on his writings could not be regarded as a breach of freedom of expression since they contain “hate speech.” As if this embarrassing comparison was not enough, the defense of the Turkish government also implied that Dink’s murderers were justified: It was Dink who was to blame for his own murder because he was found guilty of insulting Turkishness by the Turkish judiciary.

This shameful “defense” was prepared and sent to the European court by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs without the knowledge of the foreign minister himself. Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu expressed his shock and sadness about the language used in the defense prepared in his own ministry, noting that he was not aware of such content. President Abdullah Gül received Dink’s family and tried to heal their renewed sorrow, while the Minister of Justice expressed his disapproval of the defense submitted to the European court.

All of this tells us something: Those who write the opinions of the government in ministry offices do not care what the government feels, thinks or does on this issue. The reason for such an attitude is simple: They regard themselves as above the government, representing something “deeper.”

Thus the explanation from the Foreign Ministry that came after all these statements was no different. It stood behind its shame, describing the defense as consisting of “merely legal and technical elements.”

This incident reveals that the Foreign Ministry bureaucracy is a state within a state independent of the people and their representative government. They feel accountable not to the people and government but to something “deeper.” What they are not aware of is that the circles they owe their allegiance to have lost their power vis-à-vis the people through the process of democratization. Once the “modernizers” of Turkey, diplomats have for some time been unable to read the transformation of modern Turkey and the spirit of the time that reigns in Turkey.

I think the time has come to look into the structure of the Foreign Ministry and the mindset of its diplomats. It is an institution that has remained untouched by the process of democratization.

One should tell them that they are not above the people and their representative government. The defense sent to the European court reflects the logic of the “old state elite” whose time has passed. We are sick and tired of this understanding of the state, interest of the state and defense of the state.

Defending the so-called interests of the state, whatever they are and whoever defines them, at the expense of citizens’ rights is no longer acceptable. This has to be conveyed to the bureaucrats in the Foreign Ministry who seem to have missed the changes taking place in Turkey recently.

Yes, the government has done a great job in many foreign policy issues, and Foreign Minister Davutoğlu is among the most successful members of the cabinet. Yet the need to face the old habits and mindset in the Foreign Ministry is obvious. Diplomats are not untouchables. The government should not work with those who embarrass the nation.

The Turkish Foreign Ministry should withdraw this shameful “defense.” It is not a “defense” of Turkey but a text that leaves Turkey “defenseless” before the eyes of the world.

23 August 2010, Monday

The CHP and the Kurdish question

Given the ethnic and sectarian roots of Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, some expect that the Republican People’s Party (CHP) under his leadership may take bold, new initiatives to resolve the Kurdish question.

Unfortunately, this has not been forthcoming. Since his election to the highest post in the CHP Kılıçdaroğlu has made no significant policy call to address the Kurdish question. He even tried to hide his Kurdish and Alevi origins. This has been the typical attitude of a “devşirme” ever since the time of the Ottoman Empire -- a person who climbed up through the state apparatus turned out to be the most ardent supporter of state policies to show his gratefulness to the system that brought him up to such a high position.

It appears Kılıçdaroğlu personally owes a lot to the Kemalist regime in which he succeeded to attain a high post in the state, becoming the leader of the CHP. Grateful to the regime, he appears ready to forget his ethnic and sectarian background, both of which are defined by the state as “problematic.”

Furthermore, there are more structural problems for the CHP to change its stance on the Kurdish question. The party represents something more than its current leader; its history, set of ideals and agitated grassroots all stand against a democratic solution to the Kurdish question. Even if Kılıçdaroğlu wants to, he could not transform the CHP.

It is the CHP that holds the copyright to the policies that historically denied the existence of the Kurds, who at first were supposedly nonexistent but were later claimed to be “mountain Turks.” During the single-party rule of the CHP, the main policy towards the Kurds was to suppress and assimilate them. After a trip in the East in 1935, İsmet İnönü, the then prime minister, prepared a report on the “Eastern Question” in which he bravely outlined the need to accelerate policies of suppression to be accompanied by assimilation. In response to such policies, after 1925, dozens of Kurdish revolts took place in the region. During the Dersim revolt in the area where Kılıçdaroğlu’s grandfathers lived, thousands were killed in their villages and mountains by poison gas and air raids.

Following each rebellion by the Kurds, thousands were exiled to western Turkey, where they were excluded and marginalized.

All this was conducted simply because the presence of the Kurds went against the Kemalist idea of a homogenized nation-state for which the Kurds either had to perish or be assimilated. Thus the Kemalist regime was in fact not racist: It accepted the possibility of conversion!

We should, of course, be aware of a broader anomaly in the formative years of the Kemalist regime. The state had problems not only with the Kurds but with almost any “distinct” ethnic, religious, political and ideological grouping. Anyone who did not accept Kemalism as the ultimate source of authority, knowledge, and wisdom was considered disloyal and subsequently suppressed.

This continued uninterrupted until 1950, when the Democrat Party (DP) won the first free and fair elections in Turkey, putting an end to the CHP’s single-party government. The 1950s ruled by the DP were the calmest period in the region, seeing no revolt. Development and democracy were the two key factors to explain this. For the first time in the republican era, the Kurds started to get economic benefits instead of oppression from the center and were able to be represented in the center through Parliament. Thousands who were sent into “internal exile” were able to return home under the DP. The distribution of wealth and participation in the political process eased the Kurdish perception of the central government, though there was still no policy change in the recognition of the Kurdish identity.

But there was a change in attitude. The DP under Adnan Menderes tried to integrate the Kurds into the new state. The CHP at the beginning of this period, however, warned the DP against doing this. İnönü, the president and chairman of the CHP, in late 1945 asked that the founders of the DP not do only one thing: “Do not open party branches in the East.”

But the DP approached the situation differently. Numan Esin, a member of the military junta that overthrew the DP government in 1960, shares information in his memoirs of their visit to Menderes, the prime minister who the junta hanged in 1961. Esin asks Menderes how they planned to resolve the “Eastern Question.” Menderes replied: “Our solution was democracy. By giving the liberties people deserve, we thought to solve the problem.”

Not much has changed in the 50 years since. While there was a proposal to solve the Kurdish question via a “democratic opening,” the CHP refrained from supporting it, even describing it as an act of treason. But it seems the CHP does give full support to military measures the government is working on. I think this tells us a lot. The CHP is still not far from its past policies concerning the Kurdish question. The only way they think of addressing the question is by using military means. We should not be unfair; they also suggest that some economic measures be taken, missing the whole point about the nature of the problem.

19 July 2010, Monday

Is democracy possible with Kemalism and the military?

Last week the Friends of Turkey in the European Parliament organized a panel discussion in Brussels on “democratic changes in Turkey.” The panelists, including myself, touched upon various aspects of the process of democratization.

I particularly emphasized the role of Kemalism and the Kemalist military in the underdevelopment of Turkish democracy. Based on the questions I received in the end, it appeared that some Turkish participants with nationalist leaning were not happy with my selection of topics as they believe such “domestic issues” should not be discussed before Europeans. Sorry guys, but you better get used to all these disclosures about Kemalism and the military in any circles that discuss democracy in Turkey.

Is it possible to talk about democracy in Turkey and not mention the role of the Turkish military and the legacy of Kemalism as obstacles to democratization?

Of course not. It was the military that overthrew elected governments three times since 1950, finishing off whatever we had of democracy. Since 1961 Turkey has been ruled by constitutions made by coup makers who designed the order of things in this country according to their views and interests. While the military maintained a position of autonomy vis-a-vis elected governments, it reinforced itself as a “supervising” force over the social and political elements in Turkey. A regime of tutelage owned by the military in alliance with the high judiciary was established by the constitutions introduced by the military following military coups.

Democratization can be defined in Turkey as any step taken to get out of this tutelage regime installed by the military. It is therefore not surprising to see the privileged institutions of the state, including the military and the judiciary, resist change to the “system.”

Furthermore, it is nonsense to justify the military’s interventions by references to its so-called “role to safeguard secularism.” In three cases since 1960 in which the military deposed elected governments, those who sat in power were not “Islamists” but “center-right political parties” whose leaders had rather liberal political viewpoints and lifestyles.

Similarly, it is impossible to refrain from talking about Kemalism if the debate is about democracy in Turkey. There can be no official ideology in any democracy protected by the constitution and professed by state institutions as is the case in Turkey. In its preamble, the Turkish Constitution promises no protection for any views and activities that contravene Kemalism. Could there be freedom of thought and expression in such a system?

Unless Kemalism is abandoned as an ideology protected by the Constitution and the law, there can be no full-fledged liberal democracy in Turkey. Kemalism envisages a homogenized nation, a disciplined society, and authoritarian politics. To achieve this it uses coercive means and state apparatuses. As such Kemalism is incompatible with democracy.

Furthermore, a system of coercion justified by an ideology (Kemalism) is not capable of evolving into democracy. Thus, in order to build genuine democracy, Kemalism should be dropped as the state ideology.

In the panel discussion, I mentioned above, a British member of the EP, Michael Cashman, claimed that Kemalism has always been for Westernization and Europeanization. Well, this is simply wishful thinking. Yes, they used to be the Westernizers of Turkey when they thought it was all about “imitating some cultural aspects of the West.” But realizing in the late 1990s that Westernization via EU membership requires a transformation of the Kemalist state, its hegemonic control over the economy, society and politics, they turned away from the idea and ideal of Westernization.

For contemporary Kemalists, the West is now an imperialist bloc determined to destroy Turkey as it tried through the Treaty of Sèvres in 1920 and to change the secular regime. For that, the Kemalists believe the West is working with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and Islamic groups, including the ruling party.

The Kemalists’ understanding of the West is limited to the Western lifestyle, listening to Western music and dressing like Westerners. But when it comes to Western political values like democracy, human rights and the rule of law, they immediately shy away from the West. And rightly so, because through such Western political values, the Kemalists would lose their hegemonic position in Turkey. They do not want this because they think that they were “born to rule.” Being a loyal Kemalist is enough to be entitled to rule the people, who do not know what is good for them and who thus need the tutelage of the Kemalist vanguard elite. They have no respect for “democratic legitimacy.”

We cannot debate democracy in Turkey without discussing Kemalism and the military, and we cannot consolidate democracy without questioning the very role Kemalism and the military have played in the construction and maintenance of authoritarian politics.

05 July 2010, Monday

1915 beyond ‘genocide’

Anyone who wants to close the debate on what happened to Armenians in 1915 should start by describing the events as genocide. They are, of course, free to speak as they wish. But if Turks are expected to be part of this debate, then a more constructive approach is needed. This requires avoiding language that closes the debate when in fact a lively discussion has already been going on.

Last week, for instance, a group of intellectuals issued a statement commemorating the “great catastrophe” that was inflicted upon the Armenians of Turkey in 1915. The same group had signed, two years ago, a petition apologizing for what happened to Armenians in 1915. On Saturday, hundreds of people in İstanbul remembered the massacres of Armenians, saying, “This is our pain, too.”

For the last couple of years, a debate has been opened in Turkey. Conferences have been held, public gatherings have been organized and articles and commentaries have been published discussing different aspects of the Armenian massacre. Even the Turkish prime minister declared last May that “through fascistic approaches, we forced many to leave this country,” and he asked, “Did we do any good?”

As Turkey proceeds along the path of democratization, it has become common to debate Turkey’s past, including the Armenian question. An authoritarian regime with a monopoly on the interpretation of history and with its control of civil society does not allow free research and free debate. The past is presented in a way to legitimize the position of the established regime. This is fortunately changing. The democratization of Turkish politics and the liberation and diversification of civil society is allowing the emergence of plural ideas on the past including the Armenian massacre.

This process will certainly continue. But the critical point is that if debating 1915 is reduced to naming the events genocide, it may block the whole process. Such a strategy provokes Turkish nationalism, preventing the Turkish masses from being attentive to the thesis that contravenes the dominant view in the country. Thus to unlock the hearts and minds of the Turks at large necessitates abandoning the attitude of categorical accusation against the Turks over the 1915 events.

Of course, the belief of Armenians should be respected, but they should also understand that the genocide claims make the reconciliation efforts between the Turks and Armenians almost impossible to attain. We can get out of the imprisonment of the past atrocities, not by labeling but disclosing it. Calling it genocide is the shortest way to close the debate. I think both societies should learn more about the time when disasters hit both the Armenians in Anatolia and the Turks in Anatolia and the Balkans. Thus the first thing to do is to let the sides share their stories without a language of accusation, to create empathy, understanding. This is possible.

As the time of nation-states is passing, it is a pity for the Turks and Armenians that we are still locked into the animosities created a century ago to create nation-states. If we want reconciliation and dialogue among those who survived 1915, the Turks and Armenians, the way forward is to go beyond the “genocide” quarrel.

In this, the approach of American President Obama is rather constructive: call the events of 1915 a “great catastrophe” (meds yeghern), but also “salute the Turks who saved Armenians in 1915” and encourage the process of normalization between Turkey and Armenia.

If the matter for Armenians is not to take revenge for 1915, it is time to work together toward learning, sharing and reconciling past agonies without categorical accusations of genocide. But if what they are interested in is taking revenge, then, I am sorry to say that they will never be able to enjoy this.

26 April 2010, Monday