One recent example is the survey titled “Elites and Social Distance,” conducted by Professor Füsun Üstel and Assistant Professor Dr. Birol Caymaz. This work is about “white Turks,” i.e., people who have studied in Turkey's old and esteemed schools, who have good careers and incomes and who are considered the upper class of Turkey's present system. These people, who once represented Turkey's most Western face and vector of modernity, are now seen as an introverted group that defines itself as secular, Kemalist or Atatürkist, and that has serious doubts about the Western world's intentions concerning Turkey.The study's first diagnosis is that this group cannot be taken as a homogeneous class. It notes that it is futile to use qualifications such as “them” and “us.” But the research also shows that interviewees have some common perceptions and behaviors. As an example, according to the survey, these people have no communication problem with Turkey's non-Muslims, who are designated in the Treaty of Lausanne as “minorities.” This alone allows us to make some deductions. These elites claim they have people from minority groups among their best and closest friends, but they also seem to ignore the non-Muslims' problems. They feel they belong to the same world with minorities, but they also prefer that these same minorities become invisible when it comes to discussing their problems. This attitude reminds us of the stance of people who say they want to join the EU but at the same time think that the Copenhagen criteria are an imposition.
Kurds constitute the main group the elites qualify as the “others,” and they prefer that they stay away. Any kind of demand from Kurds is seen as political secessionism, and they are perceived as troublemakers who have migrated from eastern Turkey to corrupt modern and elegant neighborhoods and streets. This is similar to the perception about Turks in Germany or the Maghrebins in France. These elites stress that important economic investments should be realized in the Kurdish regions “so that Kurds will maybe then stop coming to ‘our' cities.”
The elites' uneasiness about minorities becomes a real fear when it comes to the majority. They claim that they fear the “Islamization” that appeared following the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) government's assumption of office, but this is a disguised way of saying that they don't like the idea of rich Anatolian people and a rising provincial bourgeoisie one day replacing them as “elites.” They point out that being close to the governing party is enough to get prestigious posts and contracts, even if these people, they say, “don't have enough experience or education.” But they never ask themselves how the country was governed until now by those who were supposedly “educated.” They dislike the direction in which society is changing, they resist the idea that they should also change when everyone else is changing and they refuse to see that no group is homogeneous.
Despite this, these elites' fears and concerns should be scrutinized as they also affirm that they feel that their personal liberties are continuously being restricted. It's always a good idea to lend an ear to those who complain, rather than making them shut up. One person who was interviewed summed the elites' fears best, saying, “We saw that we were in fact very few in number.”
