TURKEY’S POISONOUS CONSPIRACY CULTURE
By Michael Moran
Slate Magazine
Jan 20 2012
Spare a moment today to remember Hrant Dink, the Turkish-Armenian
journalist gunned down exactly five years ago by a nationalist angry
that he had uncovered evidence of Armenian blood running through
the veins of modern Turkey’s founder, Ataturk. On Friday, tens of
thousands of angry Turks, most of the secular opponents of the current
government, went into the street to protest what they see as the light
sentence handed to his murderer – 23 years – as well as the state
prosecutor’s inability to prove a larger, army-inspired conspiracy.
Turkey’s rise as the most important influence in the greater Middle
East and a major emerging economy is a win-win, as I’ve often argued.
Only someone with the narrowest of pro-Israeli agendas (or, like the
current governor of Texas, very little gray matter), can reasonable
label Turkey as a nation led by Islamic extremists. (If there is
an extremist between Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan,
it’s clearly the guy who insists that Texas has the right to secede
from the US anytime it likes. The thought that came to the minds of
many Democrats after that gem from Perry was, ‘Where do we sign?)
But the persistence of various conspiracy theories in Turkish society
creates a source for genuine concern. On the secular side, far too
many see the government of Erdogan’s mildly Islamist Justice and
Development Party as part of a conspiracy to impose a new Islamic
caliphate – first on Turkey, then on the wider Middle East.
Among Erdogan’s supporters, this exacerbates fears that nationalist
army officers and the secular parties are conspiring to overthrow
the government on constitutional grounds – citing, as they have in
past coups, a risk to Ataturk’s legacy of secularism.
Add into this the on-and-off Kurdish separatist violence in the east,
plus the long-running controversy over the deaths of hundreds of
thousands of Armenians in 1915-16, a travesty, which Turkey adamantly
denies amounts to genocide, and you’ve got a fertile atmosphere for
outrageous claims and conspiracy theories.
The Dink murder five years ago – ostensibly the work of a small
coterie of angry nationalists – hardly appears to be the work of the
government. But the government has found itself accused of, at best,
negligence in not pursuing an alleged conspiracy to the place many
liberal Turks believe such cases always lead: the Army’s general staff.
Erdogan, meanwhile, has pursued phantoms of his own, in the process
sullying an otherwise fantastic narrative of Turkey’s rise by jailing
dozens of journalists and army officers, most prominently imprisoning
the former Army chief, Gen. Ilker Basbug, on January 6, for allegedly
leading a plot to overthrow his government.
It is easy from outside to dismiss all this as paranoia: both the
secularists who fear a repeat of Iran’s 1979 Islamic takeover and
Erdogan supporters who can point to a half dozen actual army coups
over the past several decades have history on their side. But surely,
in a country now displacing the United States in many ways as the most
influential power in the Middle East and the region’s most powerful
economy, each side has reason to seek an accommodation.
The US could help by being less tepid about Turkey’s rise. The
US should be pressing to mend the Turkish-Israeli spat over Gaza
and Israel’s botched commando raid on a civilian aid convoy that
originated Turkey in 2009 – killing nine Turks on board. Paranoia of
a different kind on both sides have kept that unfortunately split from
healing. Similarly, the US should bless Erdogan’s new standing in the
region by bringing him in as a peer partner in Middle East diplomacy,
both on the Arab-Israeli front, but particularly on Iran, where the
Mullahs are showing through their desperate threats to close the
Straits of Hormuz they are just about on the ropes.
A U.S.-Turkish partnership would enable a more realistic approach to
Iran’s nuclear program. The current U.N. sanctions and other unilateral
moves aimed at pressuring Tehran have been more effective recently,
but given the high oil prices buoying Iran’s economy, sanctions will
not be quite enough to force hard bargaining. Turkey already tried,
in partnership with Brazil in 2009, to broker an agreement with Iran
on uranium enrichment. It failed largely because of a defensive US
reaction. Forging a truly joint Turkish-American approach (and hell,
bring the Brazilians in, too) could break the deadlock.
None of this would be simple. Turkey’s anger at Israel and its
independence on foreign policy issues has earned it enemies in
Washington – some of them a lot less clueless than Rick Perry. Yet
down the road, drawing Turkey deeper into the politics of its former
empire will be key to creating a lasting security structure – a kind
of Middle Eastern NATO – to keep the peace as American power wanes and
other interested players, from China to India to the oil-thirsty EU,
move to secure the region’s vital resources. With Washington’s help,
and the addition of Egypt and possibly the Saudis, the Turks could help
create the first truly regional security collective in the Middle East.
None of this is possible, however, if Turkey remains consumed by
the kind of cloak and dagger prejudices of its two major political
factions. Erdogan, caught flat-footed by the risings in Libya and
then Syria, showed himself quite willing to do an about face when
face with changing realities. He should consider something similar
at home; both in his treatment of so-called “seditious journalists,”
and with the old soldiers he fears will not just fade away.
From: A. Papazian
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_reckoning/2012/01/20/turkey_s_poisonous_conspiracy_culture.html