We all watch the same television series; we drink coffee in the branches of the same café chains and we buy the same electronic devices. On the surface, at least, the world has never been more homogeneous. But underneath this unified veneer countercurrents of localism nationalism and radicalism are boiling, fuelled by rapid social change and fears about the future. This growing malaise takes different forms. Europe finding it increasingly hard to accommodate millions of migrants from different parts of the world is becoming more inward-looking. Multiculturalism in under attack. In the US foreign policy is guided by a sense of global threat. “Why do they hate us?”
Another manifestation of ethno-centrism and localism is the growing nationalism in Turkey. Partly founded on century-old events such as the Treaty of Sevres of 1920, it sees Turkey as the target of a wide range of new threats that include globalization, IMF demands, EU criteria and US policy in the region. The current debate on national identity and the definition of “Turkishness” strikes me as particularly odd in a country that is heir to a multicultural empire, but it is the result of the narrow world view that emerges from this besieged mentality. Most of my Turkish friends have a rich and fascinating family background, with grandparents and ancestors coming from the four corners of the Ottoman Empire. Who can therefore claim to be 100 percent Turkish?
How does one prevent localism everywhere from giving rise to outright racism? It requires an ability to examine and analyze global events from a broader point of view, but the world suffers from a confusing information overload. It is one of the paradoxes of the (dis)information age that we are under a constant bombardment of trivia and opinions, but there seems to be a scarcity of solid fact-based analyses that would help us better understand what is happening around us. A wide variety of views are, of course, available on the Internet, but we tend to make a beeline for the sites that reflect world views that are closest to ours.
There was a time when foreign media correspondents were expected to explain the world to their readers: Their analysis of foreign events would provide a different perspective seeped in knowledge of the country where they served. But foreign correspondents are an endangered species these days.
Jill Carroll, the Christian Science Monitor correspondent who was held hostage for 80 days in Iraq last year, recently produced an interesting report for the Shorenstein Center at Harvard University. She found that between 2000 and 2006 the number of foreign correspondents working for US newspapers had dropped from 282 to 249. Given how important foreign policy is for the current US administration, this is not just surprising; it is alarming. It means opportunities for an informed debate are getting more limited. To expand their profit margins newspapers close their foreign bureaus and opt to focus on local issues.
The shift toward a more ethno-centric and local approach is not restricted to the US. Cost-cutting is affecting the quality of reporting everywhere. Instead of providing a window on the world, the media sometimes contribute to a sense of growing insularity. In Turkey, too, global affairs are too often interpreted through a local lens that distorts them and fuels unwarranted fears. In our information age it seems to be increasingly difficult to get the bigger picture.
