SURMOUNTING NATIONALISM IS TURKEY’S SOLE PATH TOWARD MODERNIZATION
Hovsep Khurshudyan
Foreign Policy Journal
April 30 2010
The question is not how Turkey can be integrated into Europe, but
rather how the Turks can become Europeans
New Turks are needed to achieve a new Turkey
The formation of the Turkish nation–that is, of the Turkish
identity–is a process that has not yet ended, and the West should
not lose the chance to get actively involved to help the Turkish
nation become more modern.
Today, there really are three geographical and three political
Turkeys. The "European" Turkey has the greatest potential to integrate
with Europe. If Turkey was comprised solely of Istanbul, Eastern
Thrace, and Izmir, and a population of 25-30 million, it would have
fewer problems in terms of its integration with Europe. However,
Turkey’s central and eastern parts are burdensome in this regard to
its western parts.
The "political" Turkey, too, is divided into three parts. The
Islamists, who dominate the modern-day Turkish society, have taken
advantage of the opportunity endowed by democracy and are gradually
"conquering" the secular nationalists, who were in power until 2002.
The latter are the second major power in the political domain. The
followers of Kemal Ataturk still have an overwhelming influence on the
army and within the "deep state".[1] And third, the weakest political
division is comprised of the liberals and the Kurds who, even though
they have different objectives, are nonetheless united against the
clerical-nationalist political elite that rules the country, and
against this elite’s characteristic mentality. And those who think
that the creation of an independent Kurdistan in southeast Turkey
can resolve this country’s main political and ethnic problems need to
consider the fact that if this happens, Turkey’s progressive society
could lose an ally in the form of the Kurds.
So, which of these Turkeys will the West support? What kind of a
Turkey do the United States and the European Union want to encourage?
That of Orhan Pamuk and Hrant Dink, Ibrahim Baylan and Yilmaz Kerimo,
or that of Talat and Erdogan?[2] After eight years of governance by the
Islamists, it has become clear that their mindset does not differ all
that much from that of the nationalists. Perhaps the most significant
difference, however, is the fact that the modern-day Turkish republic
has renewed its nationalist foundation with a clerical influence, which
existed under Ottoman rule but has now become even stronger. Turkey,
to that end, is not even hesitating to take steps that run counter to
the interests of the democratic world. The Turkish diplomats continue
to "urinate"–in both the literal and figurative sense–on the walls
of Western embassies.[3]
Former Sovietologists must deal with Turkey
In actual fact, the former powerful empire, today’s Turkey still
remains–albeit smaller–an empire; and its working mechanisms are
virtually similar to those of the former USSR. Turkey has to go
through the path of social democratization, ridding of ideological
rhetoric, and the decolonization of its nations and nationalities,
which the USSR went through by way of honoring and defending the
rights of national, religious, and other minorities. Therefore the
former Western Sovietologists and those new Turkologues who have
received political and academic schooling from these Sovietologists
can more efficiently deal with Turkey’s problems.
Despite the fact that in 2009 the Armenian-Turkish Protocols were
signed with the goal of improving relations, the correlations between
the two countries and peoples were much better in the past than today.
This demonstrates how important it is, and specifically for its
neighbors, that Turkey faces its history and that its citizens
fundamentally change their way of thinking.
Some Western political scientists are hopeful that democracy will
sooner or later come to Turkey, that its two extreme poles will
ultimately discredit one another, and that, until then, the moderates
will remain Turkey’s partners with the West.[4] But the true picture
in Turkey shows something different: its society is becoming more
fundamental, both in terms of Islam and nationalism.
The West failed in Turkey’s social and human modernization
In fact, in the past 65 years, the West has not been able to
comprehensively assist in instilling civilizational and human values
in Turkey. Hence, out of Turkey’s current population of 70 million,
its liberal and civil societies are comprised of a mere 4-5 million,
at best. And if we factor in the verity that this number is greatly
constituted of the different national, religious and other minorities,
just like at the turn of the past century, the fiasco for the West
becomes especially apparent. Thus, when the Turkish Prime Minister
Erdogan declares that he might deport all Armenian citizens living
in Turkey, the protests against such statements coming from within
Turkey are hardly audible.
The fact is that, even after Turkey’s 65-year permanent presence in the
Euro-Atlantic mainstream, open-minded writers, journalists, and social
and political figures are still being persecuted in that country, such
as the prominent liberal-thinking Armenian journalist Hrant Dink,
who was murdered. Before arresting his murderer, police officers
first took their photographs with that killer, seen as a national
hero. After all this, several tens of thousands of freethinking Turks
took to the Istanbul streets to protest, shouting "We are Hrant Dink,"
and "We are Armenian." But the fact that such relatively few numbers
of people spoke out leaves a lot to think about.
Moreover, the tremendous amounts that Western democratic funds have
spent in order to "Europeanize" this Asian nation have in effect
brought discomforting results, and this is a basis for concern. The
strong "machine" of the "United" Europe, which is able to assimilate
Iranian, Afghan, Indian and Lebanese immigrants even to this day, has,
over the course of numerous years, demonstrated its incapability to
assimilate the Turkish immigrant minority. It is not surprising that
the Europeans are not in a hurry to grant Turkey access into the EU;
otherwise what will the concept of a "European" transform into?
It is apparent that immediate and fundamental measures are needed
to resolve this problematic issue. A new and effective plan is
indispensable, or else the problem will become more complicated. And
Turkey is already doing this. Based on the death of several scores
of people during the street clashes in China’s Xinjiang province,
it is accusing China of carrying out genocide against the Uighurs
and Israel of organizing genocide in Gaza, but at the same time it
is considering as absurd the fact of genocide in Darfur, where the
Sudanese government–which is cordial to the Turkish government–and
its lackeys have exterminated hundreds of thousands. And after all
this, how can we hope that modern-day Turkey will acknowledge the
sin of the Ottoman leaders, in 1915, of not only organizing and
executing the genocide of the Armenians, but also of leaving the
genocide survivors without ninety percent of their homeland, where
the Armenian people had continuously lived for over three millennia?
So, let us call it like it is. The majority of Turkey’s ruling
elites need to overcome nationalism. Will "political correctness"
force the social and political figures of the West to persistently
remain silent? Wouldn’t this tolerance cause the further deepening
of nationalism, which we have already seen in Europe many years
ago? In the event its demands are not implemented, Turkey is already
threatening the world with destabilization in the Caucasus; that is
to say, with instigating its "younger brother" Azerbaijan to start a
war against Armenia. Azerbaijan is already spending more for just its
military needs than all of Armenia’s state budget, and Turkish military
instructors are teaching their Azerbaijani kinsmen everything they
have learned from their Western partners. Do we have to wait until a
segment of today’s Turkish elite turns into new Taliban, and talk and
take action only after that?[5] The Turkish prime minister’s statement
that if the Armenian communities of the Western countries continue
their campaign toward the recognition of the 1915 Armenian genocide,
all Armenian nationals living in Turkey can be deported–(incidentally,
the genocide of 1915 likewise had begun with the deportation of the
Armenians)–is, unfortunately, wholly pragmatic in light of domestic
politics and the upcoming elections in Turkey. Erdogan knows all too
well what must be said so as to be liked by the majority of Turks,
and he knows which dispositions must be complied with in order not
to lose the electorate and to remain at the helm of power. He is
simply satisfying the domestic social demand for the chauvinistic
and xenophobic political product.
This is a demand that is growing by the year under the international
community’s silent encouragement and the continued attempt, in the
framework of the false "political correctness," to not notice it. The
facts are telling. Covering a sociological survey, the Hurriyet
Daily News notes that 50-70 percent of Turks do not want to have an
American, Jewish or a Christian neighbor, while 54 percent either
tolerate torture or finds that it should be legalized.[6] This
survey, which was conducted under the leadership of two professors
from Turkey’s Sabanci University, clearly demonstrates that a mere
12 percent of Turks have a positive view of Christians; 10 percent,
concerning the Jews; and 7 percent, with respect to the atheists. The
absolute majority of Turks do not share Western values. According
to the opinion poll conducted in 2009 by the PEW Research Center,
69 percent of Turks stated that he or she "does not like" the United
States, and only 14 percent had warm disposition toward that country.
In addition, 37.5 percent of Turks consider the United Sates to be
Turkey’s main foreign political adversary. Fifty-nine percent of
Turks confess that they do not like the European Union, and this is
significant since 55 percent of Turks want to see their country in
the EU.
In line with the 2009 Report of the European Court of Human Rights,
Turkey was in first place–with 2395 petitions–in the number of
petitions the Court had received concerning the violation of human
rights. On top of that, the 2009 indicator had increased by 27 percent
in comparison with the 2008 indicator.
Turkey’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism has launched an extensive
plan aiming at restoring and renovating the monuments belonging to
the Ottoman Empire’s cultural heritage in the Balkans. This is so
even while thousands of monuments belonging to the Armenian cultural
heritage are either being or have already been destroyed. In all
probability as an act of "compensation," just one Armenian cultural
treasure, the church on Akhtamar Island in Lake Van, was renovated–but
it was prohibited to place a cross on it.
Today numerous Western funds are spending tens of millions of dollars
and euros to convince Turkey’s neighbors, and in particular the
Armenians, that this country is no longer what it was back in 1915,
that it has now become humanistic and fairly democratic. Perhaps it
would be more effective if those amounts were spent on really changing
the Turks.
Thanks to the ushering in of a new purpose that had started from
Gandhism, the British colonialism of the 20th Century changed into
global political responsibility toward the end of the last century and,
attributable to the Denazification of 1945, the German colonialism
turned into global repentance and atonement. The Ottoman colonialism,
on the other hand, because of the superpowers’ centuries-long and still
continuing coaxing and encouragement, became a global neo-Ottoman,
multi-vector, and pretentious arrogance and hatred.
The matter concerning the surmounting of nationalism in Turkey has
remained contemporary since 1915, and the aforesaid denazification
methodology is probably applicable and effective.
Is a liberal Turkey possible?
Throughout the eight centuries of its existence, by having
assimilated the millions of Greeks, Armenians, Jews, Laz, Kurds,
northern Caucasians, Albanians, and Arabs who lived in it, the Turkish
nation truly possesses a sufficient potential to become more modern,
democratic, secure and predictable. However, this can take place not
thanks to, but in spite of the nationalists and the radical Islamists.
Turkey’s newly-forming, yet still small liberal-democratic civil
society, which is primarily concentrated in Istanbul, can reveal the
hidden civilizational potential of this young ethnos. It is not a
happenstance that, over the course of its several-century existence,
Turkey for the first time gave to this world a fairly estimable
cultural figure, in the person of Orhan Pamuk.
If today the West does not become successful in substantially
supporting and defending the movement by the progressive segment of
the Turkish society, it is clear that this possibility will not exist
tomorrow, when official Ankara finishes its geopolitical positioning
change in the Greater Near East in the opposite direction of the
universal human values.
On the verge of the anniversary of the 1915 genocide of the Armenians
in Ottoman Turkey, we are compelled to accept the fact that the
Armenian people, who have become the victims of that terrible tragedy
and have been left without their homeland, still do have all the
grounds to be concerned. And it is not only the Armenians who should
be concerned.
__________
[1] The typical expression of this phenomenon is the "Ergenekon"
organization.
[2] Orhan Pamuk is a progressive Turkish writer and a Nobelist; Hrant
Dink was the editor-in-chief of the Agos independent Armenian weekly
newspaper, and he was killed by a Turkish nationalist in 2007; Ibrahim
Baylan and Yilmaz Kerimo are the Swedish parliament’s Turkish-origin
MPs who voted in favor of that country’s recognition of the 1915
Armenian; Talat Pasha was the minister of the interior of the Young
Turk government during World War I and one of the organizers for the
Armenian genocide; Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been the head of Turkey’s
Islamist government since 2002.
[3] An incident took place on April 7, 2010 in which the Turkish
ambassador to Afghanistan urinated on the wall of the U.S. embassy
in that country.
[4] Nick Danforth, "How the West Lost
Turkey", Foreign Policy, November 25, 2009
/25/how_the_west_lost_turkey?page=0,1
[5] Let us remember that the Taliban, too, had gained strength due
to efforts by the West.
[6] turchi-2009-11-19
Hovsep Khurshudyan is the senior analyst of the Armenian Center for
National and International Studies (ACNIS).