[CONFESSIONS OF A NOT SO YOUNG TURK]
A Turkish elitist’s dilemma in dealing with the AK Party government
by
DOĞAN ŞENOCAK*

 They were the products of a similarly young republic built on the ruins of a once powerful empire, fresh out of school, energetic and hopeful of creating a new nation which would prosper in the very near future. Blending the scientific values of the West and the moral values of the East, we were supposed to become a rich nation, one that will stand strong on her feet, as our leader Atatürk has directed us, our enemies would not dare harm us, and our friends would be proud to be on our side. We were no longer united by the authority of the sultan, or by Islam or by our common Ottoman heritage, but through the pride of surviving a great war, a heroic fight for independence against the great powers of Europe, a will to act together and form a new nation of Turks, the joy of opening a new page in history. Each and every morning tens of thousands of primary school kids all over the country would recite the same oath on honesty, hard work, respect and love. This land of ours, and the Turkish nation, we loved above everything. Atatürk was watching my each and every step I felt, and I was proud to be a Turk.

 It was the 1960s, the Cold War was at its coldest and we were surrounded by numerous enemies, both inside the country and elsewhere. During the glamorous years of the Ottoman Empire our ancestors seemed to have struck a special chord wherever they reached. The Christian world never seemed to get over the fact that we ruled most of the Balkans all the way out to the Adriatic Sea, seized Vienna twice and conquered Constantinople, one of the greatest cities in the world, renamed it İstanbul and kept it for centuries. The Mediterranean was once our own backyard pool. Finally, following the first Great War in 1918, they were happy to see us out of most of the European territories after six centuries of intimidation, but they obviously wanted some, if not most, of Asia Minor back as well. Issues with the Greeks were far beyond easy and simple to solve, but others in the Balkans did not seem to be very fond of us, either. Eastern borders harbored even more problematic neighbors. The communist USSR and her neighboring state of Armenia were threats not only to the western block and NATO, of which we considered ourselves the brave gatekeepers, but there were also deep and bitter issues following the events of 1915. Whatever happened back then was the fault of Armenian traitors who sided with the Russians, we were told by our parents and teachers; both Turks and Armenians suffered because of that. Syria, Iraq and the other Arab nations on the southeast were created artificially by the imperialistic Western powers as a means of weakening the new republic. They not only rejected and resented their Ottoman past but also happily sat on the rich oil fields which we felt were stolen from us. As another nation gloomily reminiscing her glorious past, Iran seemed to be a neutral neighbor, though a hidden animosity dating back to the days of Tamerlane could be felt. We were, after all both strong allies of the US back then. Israel, the only other country in the neighborhood willing to be a part of the Western world and its values, seemed dependable. The Jews have always been our friends, we knew, ever since Spanish Jews were given a safe home by the sultan early in the 16th century.

The ‘mountain Turks’

 The home front faced serious and profound problems as well. The “mountain Turks” were made to believe that they belonged to a separate ethnic identity, and kept rebelling high in the mountains. “Kurds” they called themselves, but nobody seemed to believe that they were a separate ethnic group, or even dared to pronounce the word “Kurd.” “They are Turks, or rather Turkic tribes,” my father said many times. “They have a different dialect and live high up in the mountains; there is no unity between them. How can you be a nation with no alphabet and with so many different tribes and dialects?” Members of various religious groups resented the fact that the secularist reforms of Atatürk diminished the influence of Islam in everyday life, creating an immoral new generation and removing the power from the hands of the clerics. The Alevis, a different sect within Islam compromising about15-20 percent of the population, were unhappy because they were not recognized as a different religious group. The poor, and it was as poor a nation as any in those days, were easily influenced by the infiltrating communists from the north, demanding social reforms. The rich, not trusting the economics of the country, or threats from left and right, kept all their cash in Swiss banks, not willing to invest much at home. The void following the departure of the non-Muslim minority who did most of the business during Ottoman times and the early years of the republic was yet to be filled. The ultranationalists, on the other hand, had no patience for anyone questioning the ultimate supremacy of the Turk. There were numerous conspiracy theories, each more elaborate than the other, and obviously the Turkish nation and state was under attack. We were told of the “cultural mosaic,” and they were determined to keep the mosaic in one piece, with blood if necessary. The pieces of the mosaic were actually living in peace and harmony when not agitated. Where I spent my childhood in İstanbul, an upper-middle class downtown district, people would be speaking Turkish, Ladino, Greek, Armenian, Syriac, Arabic, French, German and even Italian. The Kurds, however, chose to whisper when talking among themselves. The Ramadan festivities, Easter eggs, Hanukkah and Orthodox Christmas were all celebrated by all kids of all peoples all the time. My best friend in school was Jewish and I was in love with a girl whose father was an Italian and mother was a gypsy.

 Things were fairly volatile, or rather explosive, all over the world as well. The Balkans was boiling with ethnic tension. “When Tito dies” we were told by our Bosnian brothers, “Yugoslavia will be a pool of blood.” Tension was building up on both sides of the Berlin Wall and the Iron Curtain. The spirit of ‘68 was spreading all over the world. Skirts were shorter, bangs longer, music faster, drugs more colorful and youth in general angrier and louder. There were tunnels under Berlin; you could not tell who was a tinker, tailor, soldier or a spy. Various shades of red terrorist groups were kidnapping and killing people all over the world. Stronger hints of what was to become the holiest of all wars were emerging on Palestinian soil. China, on the other hand, was “awakening” from a deep opium-induced sleep, and Maoism was getting popular among the Turkish left. One could tell, even as a young teenager, those times were hard and were a-changing. Yet we believed that if we kept to the teachings of Atatürk as his youth, Turkey would prosper. We all belonged to one nation, rich and poor, Muslim, Christian, Arab, Syriac and Armenian and Jewish. There were villages out there that the poem said, “Even if we never saw them, even if we never went there, were ours.” We felt proud to own those villages and thought they were as proud too, poor, unvisited, but perhaps hopeful. We all had hopes and we also had the army. The Turkish army was our most trustworthy institution, would always make sure that we would be safe from enemies within and without. The army, at any cost, would maintain the existence of our republic as a free, secular, unified nation forever.

 The army has carried out its constitutional right to directly or indirectly intervene in the affairs of the state five times since 1960. Most of these interventions, if not all, were openly supported, not only by ordinary people, but also by intellectuals, academics and politicians who happened to be opposing the government at the time of the intervention. Also, a large group of us who were united under the umbrella of secularism supported the army at any cost; it was, after all, the most reliable institution of the state. We may not have been the most populous of all the political groups, but we were definitely given permission to be the loudest, and were more endowed than the others. The country hosted many different groups of opposing entities, the left and the right, the religious fundamentalists and the secularists, the Kurds and the non-Kurds, the separatist Kurds and the non-separatists, Alevis and non-Alevis, and so forth. Each and every group had divisions within itself of opposing other subgroups, yet secularism could bring together masses belonging to different groups at the blink of an eye once we felt the separation of mosque and state was jeopardized. And we had no qualms about calling on the army to carry out its mission if necessary; democracy was not an overnight process, the people had to evolve to the notion, slowly. Each and every military intervention had a fairly clear motive, to restore order in everyday life and to deal with an imminent danger threatening the Turkish state. This threat could be communism, Islamic fundamentalism, separatism, ultranationalism and potential outside interventions. We believed that the army would step in, fine tune and leave as soon as possible; this was the way our system worked. Torture, unnecessarily severe punishments, censorship and other South American-style misconduct were rumored, but most of us felt that only the “bad people” got what they deserved. Even though a few politicians back in the 1970s mentioned a state within the state, a “deep state,” rather like Gladio, which ran the government as it wished and was responsible for the series of events which led to a military takeover every time, the majority would not hear of it.

A murky image

As the years passed and the minds became wiser, the shape of things started looking murkier. Something was obviously not going right. “Peace at home and peace abroad” was Atatürk’s motto for the nation, yet everybody seemed to hate or resent each other, and we seemed to have no friends around us. While the efforts to keep the country unified and secular seemed successful on the surface, various governments and military touchups did not seem to improve the quality of life for the masses. Illiteracy was still high, and very high among women, health care was primitive, basic human rights were neglected, government services were very poorly organized and bribery seemed to be the best way to get things done. Industry was almost nonexistent, technology was borrowed and inflation was at three digits. Many crucial details of the political events of the 19th and 20th centuries were left out or deliberately misinterpreted in formal education, and some of us interested in knowing were confronted with obstacles before facing the realities. It seemed as though election after election and coup after coup, it was still the same mind running the country, and rather inefficiently. A whole lot of young men kept dying to keep the country unified at one end, and another whole lot were dying in an effort to dismantle it. Secularist efforts have created its own battleground where “compromise” could not and would not be pronounced. As for peace abroad, we seemed to have no friends around us. Most still believed that it was all part of a major conspiracy plan to crumble whatever was left of the Ottoman Empire into little bits. Above all this, nobody in his right mind who was wise, honest and hard-working enough wanted to be involved in politics.

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s first important post was as mayor of İstanbul in 1989. After a disastrous term run by a social democrat mayor, Erdoğan got elected following a rather surprising victory over some very prominent candidates. His background was not promising. He graduated from a mediocre high school, an imam-hatip school which principally prepared its pupils as preachers of Islam. He then attended a not so competitive local university. He had no experience in governing, was openly very religious and had a covered wife. He was said to be a follower of a prominent Islamic figure, Fethullah Gülen. We, the centrist, secularist, elitist intellectuals with a touch of Western lifestyle, almost could not wait to see how he would destroy what was left of this beautiful city. The system waited to see how he could be disposed of.

Within two years of a surprisingly “not so lame service at all,” he was sentenced to a year in prison for quoting from a poem by a well-known poet. “Provocation” was his crime, “to stir hatred into the minds of people.” He not only emerged stronger and more popular but also more confident as a politician to tread his own path. Breaking apart from his mother-ship party, Refah, “the” party with a religious agenda, he and his buddies formed the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) which proved to be a huge success in the next elections. While Refah had a steady 12-15 percent vote, the AK Party, which was perceived as a thinned-down version of Islam, not so threatening to the persistence of the secular state and a rather reformist entity not entirely different from the “Christian Democrats” of Western democracies, managed to get 34 percent, enough for a majority in Parliament.

Whether to support the AK Party or not has been a major dilemma among the educated, secularist middle class of Turkey since then. Fearing an eventual Islamic republic, some will agree to any measure to oust the AK Party, while some are watchful, eagerly waiting to call the military over for help but also appreciating some of the hard work and achievements of the government. Midway through its second term, the AK Party has “unfortunately” succeeded in carrying out some tasks which none of the previous governments have been able to manage. “Unfortunate” because it is hard not to approve of the improvements in human rights -- though still sluggish -- efforts to normalize relationships with neighboring countries and to join the EU, announcing an attempt to deal with the Kurdish and Armenian issues, bringing inflation down to single digits, digging into the depths of the “deep state,” improving services and keeping the cities clean and so on. It is true that some of us will always be suspicious of the veil being forced on our daughters one day. It is also true that corruption is still around, this time creating a rich Islamic upper middle class, that the efforts to dig into the “deep state” have turned into a personal revenge against “bona fide” secularists, that Erdogan has the potential to become a dictator figure, unable to cope with the slightest criticism. It is also true that most institutions are now controlled by the AK Party, and those that are not, like the press, are under tremendous pressure. “Postmodern” attempts to control the AK Party through midnight military Web site declarations and indirect press releases have proved to be counter-effective, presenting Erdoğan with a stronger grip each time.

In the meantime, Erdoğan has transformed himself from a soft-spoken, inexperienced politician to an aggressive but eloquent leader with ambitions of becoming a key figure in world politics, a Hugo Chavez of the Middle East. His sudden and unexpected departure from a debate hall during the Davos meetings in 2009 after arguing with the Israeli president and the moderator made him an overnight hero of the oppressed people of the world. Thousands of T-shirts with the phrase “One minute,” which he was saying fairly loudly as he tried to respond to the moderator before he left the hall, were sold in the following days all over Turkey. People from the left and right were all proud to finally find a politician with an attitude, a strong enough foot to slam down and show the rest of the world what a “Turk” is capable of doing. Such a populist attitude will not go too far, we know, but he also knows that what is gained is gained; another leverage point in politics is always useful. What we, the skeptic suspicious minds, can do in the meantime, beyond doing what we do well and criticize all else, is limited, as we are unable to and uninterested in presenting an alternative. All we can hope for is that the incredibly disabled social democrat leadership finally crumbles and creates a hero from its ashes, at least for a sensible and powerful opposition. And we can also live well, as it is the best revenge, and Erdoğan seems to have an eye for all things being well, and you never know how much room there is for reform in his mind and heart.