INTERPRETATIONS OF GEZI PARK FROM THE SOUTH CAUCASUS AND RUSSIA
Today’s Zaman, Turkey
June 9 2013
ZAUR SHIRIYEV
[email protected]
The demonstrations that have gripped Turkey over the past week have
been widely covered in the international media, and among Turkey’s
immediate neighbors, the meaning and cause of these uprisings has
been intensely debated.
Due the failure of the Turkish mainstream media to cover the events
around Gezi Park, social media along with the international media
were the main sources of information. This gap in coverage has in
some respects given rise to misunderstandings of the core elements of
what has happened and is happening in Turkey; it remains challenging
to get a handle on the true ramifications of these events.
Looking to Turkey’s post-Soviet neighborhood, there are a few general
trends in the media coverage of the protests:
The protests have been widely covered by Azerbaijan’s Internet media;
while television news was sparse during the first days of the clashes,
social media sites were very active. Indeed, on May 31 a small group
of people gathered in central Baku to demonstrate their solidarity
with the Taksim Square protestors. Among those active on social
media sites, there are significant ideological divisions between
pro-government and opposition youth in their understandings of the
protests. Across these divisions, there are roughly speaking three
prevalent viewpoints. The first group sees the events in Turkey as a
positive step towards public democratization, and their concerns are
about how the Turkish government will react. The second, smaller group
is comparing current events with those of the 1960s when protests led
to the collapse of the Adnan Menderes government through a military
coup. This group believes that at least some of the current protesters
seek to bring down the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government.
The third group, more knowledgeable about Turkish politics, is focusing
on the political and economic consequences for Azerbaijan.
Interestingly, government officials have remained silent, aside
from a public note issued by Azerbaijan’s embassy in Turkey,
warning Azerbaijanis studying in Turkey not to participate in the
demonstrations.
In Armenia, the mainstream online media has covered the protests.
Armenian analysts, however, interpret the events as a clash between
“Islamists and seculars.” As in Baku, there are concerns about the
wider political ramifications. The AKP government has won favor
among Armenians because it was under the AKP government that the
Armenian issue stopped being a taboo subject. The other interesting
strand of Armenian media’s debate is the attempt to draw a comparison
with Azerbaijan. Misinterpreting the Gezi Park protests as a wholly
anti-government move, they have wondered whether this discontent
might spread to Baku. But in Armenia, the main topic for debate is
the gas crisis with Russia, and Turkish protests are really only a
tool in that particular “information war.”
By comparison, Georgia has shown relatively little interest in the
protests, probably because Georgians are preoccupied with domestic
politics on the eve of presidential elections.
In Russia, however, the protests have sparked much debate in the
mainstream media. The general observation is the Turkish protests
are the antithesis of the Arab Spring, where despite the triumph of
democracy in sweeping away the corrupt and authoritarian, ultimately
Islamist parties arrived to fill the power vacuum. Putin has stated
that the “Arab Spring” and Taksim Square protests are quite different
things. Later on, the president’s press secretary said that the
situation — as an exclusively internal affair of the Republic of
Turkey — does not require any negotiations [with Russia] and cannot
ask [for them]. Despite references by some Western media outlets to the
“Turkish Spring” being echoed in the Russian media, Russian political
experts have a totally different perspective.
The interesting and notable thing is that in the Russian media, there
are discussions about the relative importance of economic development
and democratic development. In Turkey, government officials continue
to push the line that Turkey’s economic development is a source of
envy for those who don’t like to see Turkey’s development. It should
also be noted that the environmental and urban planning origins of the
Gezi Park protests in Turkey can be compared to the street protesters
that took place in Moscow in the summer of 2010, when the government
decided to build a highway through Khimki Forest. These initially
environmental protests later became much bigger anti-government
protests. In Russian media, commentators have suggested that although
the respective democratic credentials of Turkey and Russia are not
really comparable, what both countries do share is a leadership that
has been in charge for more than a decade; in both Moscow and Ankara,
the leaders claim credit for providing stability for their people
(compared with the political and economic chaos that reigned during
the 1990s). Furthermore, the opposition in both countries is weak,
and both executives have very few advisers who can tell them “no.”
Returning to my original premise that the silence of the Turkish
mainstream media has given rise to misunderstandings concerning
the protests, these various regional perspectives demonstrate the
competing interpretations of the protests’ meaning across Turkey’s
post-Soviet neighborhood. If Turkey wants the world to see it as the
regional, democratic power it can be, it must remember that neighboring
countries closely monitor the language and rhetoric of government
officials towards their population. Calling the demonstrators “spies
for international powers,” for instance, is not the kind of strategy
a country like Turkey should be using. Turkey is an important role
model for the countries in its near neighborhood, and all eyes are
on the government’s reaction to the current events.