Its network is vast. Its members include pretty much the whole nation. It is a conspiracy based on that most insidious of commodities: that of silence.It's not Ergenekon that causes people to keep their mouths shut. There is a culture of complicity in which citizens turn a blind eye to other's wrongdoing because they hope to get away with their own petty crimes. A mountain of regulations exists to protect the environment and natural and historical values, but a bird's-eye view of any Turkish city suggests these rules are often there to line the pockets of those charged with their enforcement. Every now and then a natural disaster comes along to remind people why regulations exist in the first place. In 1999 it was an earthquake. Ten years later it was a lot of rain. İstanbul is reeling under the impact of storms which have left many deaths.
With so much connivance at so much infringement, it is interesting to note the instances when the authorities decide to turn the other cheek and when they decide to get tough.
Let me cite an example. I had a phone call the other day from a friend who was justifiably frantic because his child's elementary school had been torn down by the Eyüp Municipality in İstanbul. The school was owned by the Zeynep Mutlu Foundation, an institution named to commemorate the teenage daughter of the editor of Vatan newspaper who had died some years ago in a tragic water-ski accident. A well-run, happy school on an attractive campus was, according to my now frantic parent, in despair and having to seek an alternative premises. “Every time we speak to one of the teachers, they break down and cry,” my friend said. I spoke to one of the school's governors to learn why anyone would want to destroy a school.
It turned out that the building was not in any way structurally unsound, but had been constructed on land the school did not actually own. Instead, it belonged to the municipality. Even so, the school has been there for the last 10 years and had a piece of paper which gave it the legal right to remain on the land it occupied. This sounds strange, but any number of schools in Turkey are built in defiance of planning permission. The same thing is true for mosques -- which explains why there are so many of them. Once a neighborhood has a mosque and a school in it, it's impossible for local authorities to ignore its existence or deny it services.
In this case, however, the local municipality decided they had nothing to lose by going up against a foundation so obviously associated with the Doğan newspaper group (which now owns Vatan). It applied to have this certificate of “physical possession” revoked. The grounds were that the school had been built on what should have been a water catchment for nearby reservoirs. The school appealed that decision, but the bulldozers moved in before the appeal could be heard. “It is political vindictiveness,” my parent friend concluded, equating an attempt to enforce the strict letter of the law with the zealous enthusiasm of the tax authorities who slapped the companies owned by Aydın Doğan with billions of dollars worth of fines. It seems there are two other schools adjacent to the Zeynep Mutlu school which have not been touched.
Of course the situation is more complicated than that. Too often the press itself has coordinated the complicity I describe. Though it sometimes uses its muscle to get governments to act, it also uses its influence to get government to look the other way. So those who live by the sword of public opinion cannot be totally surprised when the authorities call their bluff. At the same time, the rains have taught us that there are whole neighborhoods of Istanbul which should not have been built at all, or at least not without installing storm drains first.
