However, what they do in practice is nothing less than preventing this grand project. Their body is in Europe, but their soul still lies in the old closed-society regime, where state patronage and state-sponsored businessmen experiences dominated. Turkey is now at a knife-edge situation in transition from a closed and a “semi-feudal modern society,” heavily dominated by a gerontocracy, towards a more “free, fair and open” society. Both genuine supporters as well as chronic opposition powers are in business now. For supporters to succeed, they need a strong anchor such as continuous and sincere support from the EU and serious civil society support from within Turkey.
In the coming days, we will have plenty of chances to test how serious the EU is in the so-called project of civilizational harmony and coexistence. Today I want to direct your attention to the quality of civil society in promoting and supporting Turkey’s search for wealth and democracy through reforming its malfunctioning and outdated political-economic system.
Frankly speaking, recently in almost any kind of activity or organization against normal democratic processes, as defined by the rule of law, the influence of the military was apparent, directly or otherwise. In a “normalized” country where the rule of law dominates, this extent of military involvement is not only unacceptable but it is also a crime to be judged. It seems that this expectation is a quite luxury in present-day Turkey.
The striking observation is to see that the Turkish bourgeoisie is not capable of defining its position against the anti-reform and anti-change camp. It seems that it tries to abuse this environment: On the one hand, they try to bargain with the government in response to their support for further democracy and free market economy implementation. On the other hand, however, they consciously avoid using an anti-military perspective. Therefore, at least they vote for both parties so that they would be the final victor either in the case of democracy or in the case of autocracy.
The history of relationships between the bourgeoisie and the military is quite complicated almost everywhere in the world. As in the case of France during the Renaissance, the rise of the bourgeoisie was against the state, the status quo and in favor of freedom and the market, so to speak. In Japan, however, during the 1930s, the military and the famous Japanese big business (zaibatsu) were hand-in-hand in Japanese military aggressiveness and imperialist expansion in Asia. As a result of this process far from rationality and realities, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, an act that brought a dramatic end to all these uncalculated romances.
When I look at the simple tactics of the Turkish bourgeoisie, I remember the historical evidence. There are two major drives behind the activities or strategies of big business promoting such a pragmatist attitude. Historically speaking, the rise of the Turkish bourgeoisie does not go back to the 18th or 19th century. Moreover, the mechanism of its rise is radically different from that in France. In the case of Turkey, it is a state-sponsored and state-created class. Therefore they owe their existence to the state, the status quo. By creating and patronizing such an artificial class, the state also benefited by controlling economic activities. During the Ottoman reign, the rise of the bourgeoisie was strictly restricted and consciously repressed so as to prevent the rise of alternative power poles. As we compare these experiences, we can easily say that there is a strong continuity in the sense that material power is controlled and used in favor of the status quo.
Alternatively, businessmen also benefited from this patriarchal control mechanism established during the republican era in the sense that especially during the import substitution industrialization period of the 1960-1980s, the state provided protection and allocated import licenses and quotas and the like. However, this symbiosis has not been pro-competitive in the longer term as this process created an environment where competitive propensities were excluded from the genesis of the system; innovation motivation, which is normally pushed by the market discipline, was repressed, and therefore long term-oriented entrepreneurial propensities died.
Not surprisingly, with the fear of global competition, TÜSİAD strongly resisted Turkey’s customs union agreement with the EU.
A second major factor directing the activities of the bourgeoisie is their cultural alienation from the genuine and indigenous cultural values of the citizens. They are part of the compromise at the top of the political economy system, imposed upon the people in the form of unconditional obedience to the “white Turks.”
To sum up, with the fear of competition in a merit-based open society, and because of their enmity towards the majority of society, the bourgeoisie is in a deep anachronism between becoming part of the free world and a closed society, where a Syrian type of “modernity” prevails among a minority group at the expense of others at the bottom.
