BELEAGUERED AND BESIEGED; TURKEY’S PRO-EUROPEAN ELITE IS THE TARGET OF A GROWING WAVE OF VIOLENT ULTRA-NATIONALISM
By Owen Matthews; With Sami Kohen in Istanbul
Newsweek International
March 5, 2007
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 he made 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 in the 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
senior member 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 whom-ever the AK Party might 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 leaked to
the media earlier this month showed Dink’s 17-year-old killer, Ogun
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 was a 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.