While both domestic and international developments favor and even force such a major shift in the balance of power in Turkey, there is also considerable resistance to it. A recent example of this resistance is a Financial Times report that İstanbul’s business circles like the Justice and Development Party (AK Party)’s economic policies, but they would never vote for it. They say they would vote for the Republican People’s Party (CHP), whose economic policies and foreign policy they don’t like but to which they feel a strong allegiance. Turkish society is in the middle of this struggle and everything, from new business circles to the media and popular culture, is set to shape it in myriad ways and certainly beyond the control of traditional Turkish elite.
To say that this is a major transformation is an understatement. Traditional actors of the periphery are being empowered by new domestic debates about democracy and accountability on the one hand, and by the new opportunities created by globalization on the other. It is no longer easy to define clearly where the horizontal and vertical lines of Turkish society’s hierarchy can be drawn. Go to any major central Anatolian city such as Konya or Kayseri and you see the denizens defying the received definitions of being “rural” or “village” communities. Despite the deliberate negligence by such power centers as İstanbul and Ankara, they have made a claim of their own with their new syntheses of cultural conservatism and economic liberalism.
Go to Diyarbakır and you can see a similar picture. There is constant talk of democracy, identity claims, the European Union, civil society institutions, virtues of local governance and a host of other issues. All of these have traditionally been the privileged domains of the power centers of Turkey and discussed in big newspapers, universities (at least where it is allowed), Parliament and so on. In addition the participants in this debate are not always necessarily the educated class. They certainly play a role, but the debate is spreading to big cities and small towns, schools and hospitals, to government offices and local radio and TV stations.
It would be too simplistic to think that this is all about the Kurdish issue. It certainly is a factor, but the way Turkey’s large periphery is putting pressure on the center is an even more important factor. We no longer debate the Kurdish issue in Turkey without paying attention to what’s happening on the ground. And the “ground” here is the heart of the periphery.
Because of this diversity and the multitude of issues we face, we cannot comfortably say that there is one center of debate in Turkey decided by Ankara or İstanbul. There are multiple players and interlocutors. But more importantly there are more debates taking place with their own center of gravity. This is not just a matter of locals talking to one another. What is happening in Kayseri, Trabzon or Yozgat is having an impact on the power centers in Turkey, which has been opening up to the world and attracting more attention.
This is by no means a smooth process. Just as there is demand for change and new role playing, there is resistance to power sharing. The struggle is not necessarily the elite versus the masses, the upper class versus the lower class or the rich versus the poor. Such hierarchical divisions get mixed up and crossed over in numerous ways. It may seem paradoxical, but this is best shown by two opposing forces in Turkey. Both the AK Party constituency and the supporters of the republican rallies reveal something deeper than classical class analyses. In both groups you find rich and poor, educated and non-educated, young and old, men and women.
The point is that the demand for power sharing is spreading across Turkish society. The question is: Who is ready to accept it? Naturally the demand comes from those who feel that they are not treated as equal partners. This group includes large segments of Turkish society, from religious conservatives to Kurds and Alevis. But it also includes ordinary citizens from rural areas as well as the shanty towns of big cities. The July 22 elections will be a battleground for these new forces.
