Turkey’s Violent New Nationalism
Turkey’s pro-European elite is the target of a growing wave of violent
ultra-nationalism.
By Owen Matthews
Newsweek International
March 5, 2007 issue – The threats have been arriving daily, often via
e-mail. "You traitors to Turkey have had your day," reads one. "Stop
prostituting yourself and your country to foreigners or you will face
the consequences."
Not long ago, E, a prominent Turkish writer, would have shrugged off
such missives-as did his friend Hrank Dink, the editor of Agos,
Turkey’s main Armenian-language newspaper, who for years had been a
target of nationalist hate-mail. But after Dink was shot dead last
month by a 17-year-old ultranationalist assassin, the threats suddenly
became deadly serious. "Things are changing in Turkey, very much for
the worse," says E, asking that his name not be used for fear of
reprisals. "Before Dink’s murder, I always spoke out against
nationalism and narrow-mindedness. Now I fear for my life."
A wave of violence is sweeping Turkey, targeting its modern,
pro-European elite. Prominent liberals like Can Dundar, a columnist at
the newspaper Milliyet who supported a 100,000-strong march in
Istanbul protesting Dink’s killing, have received warnings to "be
smart" and tone down their coverage. Nobel Prize-winning writer Orhan
Pamuk, vilified by nationalists for comments hemade last year
condemning the massacres of Ottoman Armenians in 1915, canceled a
reading tour in Germany and has left Turkey for self-imposed exile in
the United States. Many other academics and journalists have been
given police protection.
It’s not only intellectuals who feel beseiged. Turkey’s ruling AK
Party faces the same peril-a nationalist backlash that is undermining
four years of sweeping progress. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip
Erdogan, once feared by Turkey’s pro-Western elite for his Islamist
background, finds himself fighting to protect liberal values on
everything from human rights and free expression to membership in the
European Union. Erdogan condemned Dink’s murder as "a bullet fired at
the heart of Turkish democracy." The killers, he said, were "not
nationalists but racists," bent on isolating Turkey from the modern
world. But the evidence is mounting that the tide is turning against
him and his European agenda.
The nationalists have a growing list of grievances. Chief among them:
that Erdogan, prodded by Brussels, granted more cultural rights to the
country’s 13 million Kurds. But instead of peace, the last year has
seen an upsurge in Kurdish guerrilla attacks on Turkish
soldiers. That’s given rise, in turn,to a number of anti-Kurdish
nationalist groups. The leader of one such group, the Patriotic Forces
in Mersin, an ethnically mixed town in the largely Kurdish southeast,
recently called on "Turkish patriots" to take to the streets to
prevent Kurds from "taking over." Worse, Erdogan’s entire EU project
was called into question last December when Brussels partially
suspended talks in a dispute over Cyprus. After so many sacrifices for
Brussels’ sake, many Turks considered it "a slap in the face," says
Naci Tunc, an activist for the Nationalist Action Party, or MHP.
With national elections this fall, Erdogan himself is under intense
political pressure to take a more nationalist line. Recent polls in
Milliyet show that support for the MHP has risen to 14.1 percent, up
from 8.4 percent inthe 2003 vote, while support for the AK Party has
slipped from 33 percent to 26. A bellwether of just how far Erodogan
is willing to go in accommodating the nationalists involves the
notorious Article 301, a provision of the national legal code that
criminalizes "denigrating Turkishness" and has been used to prosecute
dozens of journalists and writers, including Pamuk. Brussels insists
that it must go; all of Turkey’s opposition parties, chasing
nationalist votes, insist it must stay. "We want to change the
article," says a seniormember of Erdogan’s cabinet. "But we are
alone."
Another test comes in April, when Erdogan must decide whether or not
to run for president-a largely symbolic post, but one which carries
veto power over all legislation. The president is elected by
Parliament, where Erdogan enjoys a comfortable majority. But as a
former Islamist, imprisoned as recently 1999 for sedition, he faces
strong opposition from conservatives in Turkey’s politically powerful
and staunchly secular military, judiciary and bureaucracy-
collectively known as the "deep state." They insist on a more
moderate, secular president as a counterbalance to Erdogan, or
whomever the AK Partymight choose to succeed him.
Perhaps not even Erdogan himself, as yet, knows whether he will indeed
make a play for the presidency. But if he does, Islamist-hating
nationalist radicals are sure to be inflamed. Dangerously, there’s
evidence linking many of Turkey’s ultranationalists to the Army and
security forces. A video leakedto the media earlier this month showed
Dink’s 17-year-old killer, Ogün Samast, posing with smiling police
officers and holding a Turkish flag after his arrest.
An internal investigation has also shown that warnings of plans to
kill Dink were ignored by Istanbul police-though it’s not clear
whether due to negligence or malice.
Erdogan is too canny a politician to antagonize the country’s Army to
the point that an old-style coup becomes likely. But at the same time,
he must tread carefully. Last week the chief of the military General
Staff, Yasar Buyukanit, spoke out against those who sought to "split
the state." It wasa clear warning to pro-Armenian liberals and
separatist Kurds, but most of all to Erdogan as he considers the
thorny problems of reforming Article 301 and whether to run for
president.
It’s a delicate balancing act. He must at once crack down on
ultranationalist thuggery, without alienating an increasingly
nationalist electorate. And he needs to continue with his government’s
program of reform, lest Turkey’s EU bid fail irrecoverably. As
resistance to his policies continues to grow more violent, that job
will become vastly more difficult-if not impossible.
With Sami Kohen in Istanbul
© 2007 Newsweek, Inc.
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