Sociologist Aktar: Polarization is among elite, not men in street

“If you spend some time among the so-called ‘white Turks' you would think there is an undeclared civil war going on in Turkey. They perceive themselves to be a kind of social caste, and they have an innate fear of the man in the street,” he told Today's Zaman for Monday Talk.

“But the changes that have taken place since 1983 have created a new type of aspiring elite, the elite promoted by the late President Turgut Özal. In my opinion, the ruling AK Party [Justice and Development Party] is the political representative of a new aspiring social and political elite,” he added.

Aktar, who expects the divide among the elite to go on for some time, answered our questions and elaborated on the state of Turkish society.

There are many observers who ask how Turkish society can survive this much tension. What is your answer to that question as a sociologist?

First of all, Turkey is experiencing a great social and political transformation. In some countries you follow the changes with statistics, but the social change is actually visible with the naked eye. In relation to social and political change, there are two sets of attitudes: The first one is the attitude of the republican elite. Let me illustrate the genealogy of their political behavior. The founders of the republic never visualized a multi-party democracy in the 1920s. They formed a political regime based upon single-party rule and an over-protected “etatist economy.” Multiparty democracy was the unintended consequence of World War II. In the post-war period, the republican elite took the side of the liberal democracies. But when they made this move, they did not do it because of their conviction regarding liberal values, they were simply afraid of the Soviets. However, the transition from single-party dictatorship to multiparty democracy did not take place as it did in the ex-Soviet countries in the early 1990s. Over there they were critical of the old regime and especially the old guard. New regimes were changing nearly everything that they had inherited from the old regime. I mean constitutions, laws and regulations. Actually, they were rebuilding their democracy.

What has been happening here?

‘Early election will be disastrous for opposition' ‘It's probable that the package will pass by 60 to 70 percent if there is a referendum. If the opposition goes to the Constitutional Court, and the court cancels the package, you can be sure that there will be an early election, and it will be a disaster for the opposition parties. This is because Mr. Erdoğan and his friends will tell the electorate that they did everything possible but that those in Ankara obstructed their efforts. In an early election held under these psychological conditions, it is possible that the AK Party could pass the 50 percent threshold of votes in the elections. … The saddest thing is this: There has never been a traditional power elite in the history of the world that has been so impotent, in such conflict with one another and so helpless to comprehend what is going on in their society. It is really pathetic. Maybe they could be compared to the Soviet elite of the late 1980s. Opposition leaders try to say a few things, and from their faces you realize that they themselves do not believe in. Every day they are losing ground to a new aspiring elite of which the AK Party is the political representative. Will all these changes lead to an Islamic regime like in Iran, or will Turkey have a Latin American-type of presidential regime in the future? I do not think so. I trust the common sense of the Turkish people.

Turkey changed into a multiparty system in 1945, but at the same time, all the institutional framework of the single-party regime remained intact. Actually, a paternalistic system had been created. Can you imagine, the ex-dictator İsmet İnönü becomes the leader of the opposition after the 1950 elections? That oppressive state apparatus has survived for more than 30 years, and it has been intensified by the consecutive coups of 1960, 1971 and 1980. Now the good old system can no longer survive. When you talk about polarization and division in Turkish politics, it is mostly within the elite. If you spend some time among the so-called “white Turks” you would think there is an undeclared civil war going on in Turkey. They perceive themselves to be a kind of social caste, and they have an innate fear of the man in the street. But the changes that have taken place since 1983 have created a new type of aspiring elite, the elite promoted by the late President Turgut Özal. In my opinion, the ruling AK Party is the political representative of a new aspiring social and political elite. The new elite has a certain economic base and they have also developed economic networks. Thank God, we still do not have that kind of polarization among the ordinary people. The Turkish butcher does yet not hate the Kurdish greengrocer. But this divide among the elite will go on for some time.

Would you elaborate on this idea about how to handle it?

I observe the trends as a sociologist. But I am also a responsible citizen. I support the change. Recently, a friend of mine asked me about the constitutional amendment package. I said that yes, there are risks. It's theoretically possible that after the referendum, the AK Party might appoint certain jurists to the Constitutional Court or the Supreme Board of Judges and Prosecutors [HSYK]. These newly appointed jurists might also behave like soldiers of the AK Party government. If all these negative developments take place, then our job will be to fight against them. In my lifetime I have experienced three coups. In May 1960, I was a school kid. In 1971, I was a high school student, and our house was searched by a group of soldiers. In 1980, I was a university assistant. Some of my professors were expelled from the university and many friends were arrested and tortured. Having lived through all these periods, I have lost all my trust in the Kemalist old guard, and today I am optimistic about the changes.

What makes you so optimistic about them?

There is a nice Bektaşi story. You know, they were heterodox Muslims, but they represented a popular wisdom. One day, a Bektaşi man was having an afternoon nap in the shade of a mosque. The tavern owner comes with two big jars full of wine in his hands. He says: “Good father, please take a sip of each of the wines, and tell me which one you like, and I will make my purchase accordingly. You know, I sell wine but I don't drink it.” The Bektaşi man takes a sip from first bottle and tells him, “My son, buy the second one.” The tavern owner says, “But you haven't tasted the second one.” The Bektaşi man says, “This bottle tastes so bad, the second one cannot be worst than this one.” This short story summarizes my feelings towards the existing regime. It is so bad that I am ready to take the risk.

‘Ordinary citizens develop a high degree of awareness of the “other”'

We just passed another April 24. What was different this time considering that we saw some firsts such as gatherings and commemorations? What does it tell us?

It tells us two things. First, the man in the street is realizing that this country has an imperial past. Once upon a time in Turkey there were others, I mean Armenians, Greeks and Jews. The founding fathers of the republic dreamed of a society made of Turks only. Practically, we can argue that they successfully carried out this project, except for the Kurds. You know, they exchanged 1.2 million Anatolian Greeks with 400,000 Rumelian Muslims between 1922 and 1924, and nearly 1million Armenians were first deported to the Syrian deserts and massacred in 1915. If you take the figures of the last Ottoman population census of 1906, the proportion of non-Muslims among the population was about 20 percent. And if you compare that with the first population census of the republic in 1927, this ratio was reduced to 2.5 percent. This is a traumatic change. This is a something comprehended by ordinary citizens only quite recently.

You organized an Armenian conference in 2005.

You remember, on behalf of the CHP [Republican People's Party], Ambassador [Şükrü] Elekdağ said that organizing that conference was an “act of treason.” And a minister in the AK Party government said -- using the terminology borrowed from Adolf Hitler -- “This is stabbing the nation in the back.” However, with the protection provided by the AK Party government we were able to hold this conference. Since then a new type of consciousness has flourished. For example, take a look at Fethiye Çetin's book, “My Grandmother.” It was an important contribution to the debate. There were a lot of stories to tell. Ordinary citizens no longer take anything for granted.

Recently, there has been a big debate on the Dersim issue.

There was a massacre there in 1938. That massacre was forgotten. The Alevi Kurds preferred to forget it, too, because they have had a political alliance with the CHP. But those facts cannot be hidden anymore. Hundreds of prominent Kurdish families were forced to go into exile in western Anatolia. When you put all these books, TV debate programs, etc., together, you notice there is a high degree of awareness developing, and that is good.

Ayhan Aktar A professor of sociology at İstanbul Bilgi University, he has published books and articles on state and non-Muslim minority relations in contemporary Turkey. He was one of the organizers of the conference titled “The Ottoman Armenians during the Decline of the Empire: Issues of Democracy and Scientific Responsibility” which was held in İstanbul in September 2005. His research areas include nationalism, the diplomacy of population exchange between Greece and Turkey, ethnic cleansing and homogenization in Turkey and Middle Eastern countries.

So you are saying that society is rediscovering its past.

You know in this country, there is “official history” and there is popular knowledge. If you ask a straightforward question to a Turkish citizen, first you get the official response, because they simply memorize what the state teaches them and they repeat it. But if you are engaged in a deeper conversation with the same person, then the popular feelings, knowledge and information come to the surface. Nowadays, popular knowledge is coming out more and more in Turkey. You cannot keep the popular knowledge suppressed or silenced in a society where there are dozens of TV and radio channels and many local newspapers. The “Pandora's Box” has been opened, and the skeletons are coming out of the closet.

Can you call Turkey a pluralistic society?

It is becoming a more and more pluralistic democracy. In terms of economic development, if you are the 17th largest economy in the world, you don't seem to have any other option. In spite of all the military interventions and the paternalistic state tradition, civil society has developed considerably in Turkey. But there are still forces in society trying to go back to the “good old days.” Interestingly enough, they write quasi-Islamic texts glorifying the days of Atatürk in the same way the Islamic fundamentalists praise the times of the Holy Prophet. It is ironic to notice that the Kemalist narrative is not very different from the Islamist one in its essence and inner structure.