A photomontage that took up nearly half the top page put the Radikal newspaper among the frontrunners while its liberal rival Taraf overlooked the anniversary altogether. Yeni Şafak saw to it that honor was at least requited with a two-column-long square above its nameplate while the dogmatically conservative Vakit had a keyhole-sized picture well down fold. The semiotic rule of thumb was that the more critical the newspaper has been of the military, the more restrained the spread. In the anti-government press, a stern Atatürk was more often than not staring down the page at the story of the visit to İstanbul by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, wondering at the fate of his legacy.By coincidence, there was another anniversary at the beginning of the week, which did not over-preoccupy Turkish news editors no matter their political complexion. It was 20 years ago that the Berlin Wall came down, and by contrast, the European press peered into every nook and cranny of the past to recall an event that redefined the world. It is not all that difficult to speculate on why Turkey appeared so unmoved. The unification of Europe promised even then to lead to the further marginalization of Turkey. A nation that had once been the West’s lonely sentinel found itself suddenly in the middle of an unfamiliar world. To speak of Turkish resentment may be an overstatement, but there is certainly a sense of alienation. Turkey looked around and saw that the nations against which it once defended now had a more favored status in European eyes than it did itself. Bulgaria, a model of Soviet rectitude, which in 1989 tried to expel its Turkish population, is now a member of the European Union while Turkey still dangles on a string.
Turkey’s strategic importance did not diminish as quickly or as dramatically as some commentators speculated at the time. The end of the Cold War did not mean an end to conflict in the Balkans or the Middle East. However, the nature of Turkey’s influence did indeed change. Its value was no longer simply as a military outpost with proximity to many of the region’s hot spots; instead it became a source of soft power in direct proportion to undertaken reform. The more democratic, the more stable, the more prosperous Turkey became, the greater its influence.
One of the great obstacles to Turkey assuming this more important role has been its own domestic turmoil and Kurdish unrest. I have argued before that this was a horrendous distraction back in 1989 when the Berlin Wall came down. Eastern and Central Europe embraced democracy at a time when Turkey was becoming more authoritarian. Many of the paramilitary and underground networks that Turkey labors to dismantle today were a product of dirty ops that had a free hand in the early 1990s. So it is incomprehensible that the government’s much delayed and even timorous efforts to normalize “Kurdishness” have been treated by the opposition as a betrayal. The sight of Kurdish rebels throwing down their arms to come home -- and being joyously received -- is, when you come to think of it, a mini-Berlin Wall moment, an instance of people tearing down barriers. Yet this too has shocked those who prefer conflict to compromise.
It comes as a slight surprise to learn that there are pockets of nostalgia in Eastern and Central Europe for the state socialist system, that members of a new generation do not necessarily associate the old regime with restrictions on personal freedoms. Yet at the same time, there were Europe-wide celebrations of a spontaneous moment, 20 years ago, when people defied their rulers and tore down a wall that was built to pen them in. It seems a pity somehow that a Turkey that still aspires to be a part of Europe did not feel more moved by the occasion.
