This in part derives from the giddy realization that the outside world no longer has a long to-do list of expectations. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is no longer on standby. The EU is going through the motions of getting Turkey to sign on to the acquis. A country long used to exogenously induced reform is now puffing along under its own steam.This has provoked a sense of excitement that a new Turkey is stirring within the carcass of the old. Exactly what that new Turkey is has been the matter of some discussion -- or at least I have been trying to define its attributes in gentle debate with another columnist for this paper, İbrahim Kalın. Mr. Kalın, as advisor to the prime minister, is an emissary of that change but even he admits that the party he serves is merely what in Ottoman times would be called a kavass, someone clears a path for someone greater than themselves. The new Turkey, I take him to mean, is more committed to the prosperity of its people, more confident about its faith and cultural values, and far more determined to taking Turkey’s place in the world. “My main point was and is that the current political leadership in Turkey is giving voice to the deeper changes taking place in Turkish society rather than forcing it,” he writes. It is an attractive picture of a government giving license to the energies of its people. And if things don’t always go smoothly, well then we have to remember that the new Turkey, like Rome, cannot be built in a day.
My own concern is that the new Turkey risks developing an addiction to its own sense of importance. This in itself would be tolerable except that it risks becoming an excuse not for change but for resisting reform. Indeed, the greater danger is that the demand for outside recognition of Turkey’s new muscle is becoming a complicating factor. In as much as it exposes the inevitable contradictions of public morality, self-interest and populist prejudices it may bring the very opposite of prestige. The story gets told so often, one sometimes gets the impression that Turkish officials are more upset that the Israeli invasion of Gaza occurred after Ehud Olmert visited Ankara and thus as a sleight to Turkish mediation efforts than the enormity of the invasion itself. “Important” is something other people should be calling you, not an adjective you should be constantly ascribing to yourself.
Is it the old Turkey or the new which manages to avoid putting public contracts out to competitive tender? Turkey has just bought its first nuclear power station from Russia but we don’t even know the name of the firm that will do the job! The new Turkey, proud of its past, would draw up a plan to preserve its most important cultural asset -- the historic peninsula. It is the old Turkey which has resorted to arm-twisting to keep İstanbul’s historic neighborhoods off the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO) list of endangered World Heritage sites. The old Turkey restricted civil liberties to defend the interests of the state. The new Turkey should be scratching its head at a government which encourages the arbitrary restriction of access to the Internet.
Change is something that happens from below, but it comes as no revelation to say that governments are supposed to give direction to that change. This government’s great accomplishment is that it helped usher the nation through a serious economic crisis in 2001. It did so by defining the problem and the solution. Indeed, one could argue it was the old Turkey which collapsed in 2001 and the 2002 election brought to power a new political generation. However, the process of renewal is unending. The challenges of Turkey emerging from the current global crisis are different but no less difficult than they were a decade ago.
