Today’s Zaman, Turkey
Nov 17 2012
Mastering Time and Price of Delay
by Markar Esayan
Turkey is a country that swings between the old and the new. Actually,
this character has been a recurring theme for the last 250 years,
since the start of Ottoman modernization.
In this regard, it is a compelling task to understand and define
Turkey. Many goods and evils live side-by-side, and in alternating
periods we see goods and then evils at the helm of the country.
Consequently, we either experience progress or regress. But it never
becomes possible to attribute a single defining adjective to Turkey.
Yet, if you look at the country’s past for a comprehensive analysis,
you must acknowledge that there is a struggle going on in this country
and in that struggle, developments are mostly favourable.
This is because Turkey is a country with an imperial heritage. As a
matter of fact, it is still affected by the tremors of the collapse of
that great empire at the end of World War I. The reason why we still
feel these tremors is that the Kemalist republic believed it could
stop time and create the ideal society and country of their dreams.
Our transition from empire to republic was rife with trauma. During
this process, the masterminds of the process tried to destroy
everything that was perceived as evil or harmful. The public was
regarded as an enemy. The inherited multicultural texture of the
empire was the archenemy for the Kemalist founding fathers of the
republic. And the eradication of Islam was a top priority for them.
The opportunities afforded to them in connection with the emergence of
fascism in Europe in particular, and the Cold War to a lesser extent,
resulted in a great waste of time.
Kemalists’ social engineering
But, in the meantime, something serious also occurred. Thanks to the
luxurious history afforded to the Kemalists, their social engineering
projects became successful to a great extent. Thus, our country turned
into a community of people whose genes and body chemistry were
tinkered with. Kemalism enjoyed sizable inroads into even the most
self-isolated groups. As a matter of fact, we neither became the
society imagined by Mustafa Kemal and his successors nor were we able
to remain ourselves. A hybrid structure emerged. The society was tamed
by simultaneously employing violence on them and making them
accomplices of state-committed crimes. During the last 10 years,
though we have criticized Kemalism considerably, we are yet to delve
into a self-critique of society. Imagine a country where the state
imposes widespread discrimination on all of the diverse social groups
in the country, but treats certain groups with favouritism. For
instance, when non-Muslims were banished from this country and their
properties plundered, the state took the biggest share of this plunder
and gave it away to the privileged groups, though a significant
portion of the public received their share of it as well. There are
many examples like this.
Of course, this can be seen as the success of the Kemalists. But
today’s dissident movements that aim to change the existing system
tend to be unable to change the state structure because they fail to
dispense with their mental union with Kemalism, isn’t that so? Take
the late Prime Minister Adnan Menderes, who was executed by the
generals of the 1960 coup, and his Democrat Party (DP) as an example.
Isn’t it true that it was the ruling DP which passed the bills to
protect Ataturk and which established the inquiry commission in
Parliament to send dissidents to jail, and which undertook many
anti-democratic practices that were similar in essence to the
practices of the single-party era? One of the most disgraceful
incidents of our past, the incidents of Sept. 6-7, 1955 – when the
houses, shops, places of worship and cemeteries of non-Muslims were
plundered – occurred during the time of Menderes. Some authors claim
that these incidents were actually an act of sabotage by the deep
state against Menderes, but the truth is yet to be discovered. In
Turkey, praising Mustafa Kemal is a hot commodity among every social
group. No one has the co urage to look at the bigger picture and
engage in self-critique. The final judgment that such a tyrannical
state must radically change cannot be given since we feel that part of
ourselves belongs to that state and experience a sense of mental
partnership with it. Perhaps our interests, too, are forcing us to
avoid severing our ties with our state.
Looking at the last decade
We have spent the last 10 years in a very curious time. I feel obliged
to make the foregoing introduction in order to make sense of these 10
years and what happened in Turkey last week. Indeed, this curious time
span was characterized by a serious struggle against Turkey’s coup
mentality as well as the most effective reforms implemented to
transform the Kemalist state into a democratic one during this
challenging struggle. In other words, at a time when the tutelage and
coup aspirants were the strongest, the Justice and Development Party
(AK Party) emerged as the main driving force of this struggle for
reform, backed by the country’s European Union membership bid. In the
meantime, the deep structure, which some call the Ergenekon terrorist
organization and which I prefer to describe as the very embodiment of
the old state, murdered Hrant Dink, tragically, and undertook similar
assassinations and murders in order to inhibit this process. At that
time, the AK Party had begun to touch upon the old state’s
untouchable, entrenched problems, namely the Kurdish, Armenian, Cyprus
and Alevi issues. Those were the hard days when we all were lending
full and true support to the process.
Then came the period when trials were launched against coup
perpetrators and the tutelary groups nested within the judiciary were
purged, and the government, i.e., civilian politics, became stronger.
Naturally, we all expected reforms to be implemented quickly and
without hindrance and Turkey to make its state apparatus more
democratic, irrespective of whether or not it becomes a member of the
EU. Indeed, there was nothing, no obstacle or risk, that would prevent
reforms from happening. We had a powerful government which had boosted
its votes to 50 per cent of the national vote, tamed the military and
gave the impression that it was exerting total control over the state
apparatus. The public exhibited the democratic appetite to throw their
weight behind every reform initiative of the government. Can you
imagine any greater opportunity than this? Can history offer any
greater chance to a country than this?
A serious slowdown
However, at the apogee of its political power – after securing 50 per
cent of the electoral support in the parliamentary elections of June
2011 – the government became marred by a serious slowdown. Being left
alone with its Kurdish initiative and the relative weathering it
suffered during its strife-ridden 10 years can both be cited as
possible explanations for this. But these explanations are not strong
enough to be considered justification for a party that steers the
state. Indeed, Turkey is obliged to become a powerful country in the
region and solve its problems as soon as possible. We have already
wasted 90 years, and even if we are capable of tolerating these
issues, the world will not and they will impose non-indigenous
solutions on us, which would spell further crises.
Last week, hunger strikes were the top agenda item. As many as 700
people are quickly heading for a point of no return towards death –
this is not something that can be treated with arrogance and populism.
But the most incomprehensible bit is that despite all the harsh
discourse we are hearing from the prime minister, the government has
drafted and sent to Parliament a 13-item democratization package,
including the legal arrangement regarding the right to defend oneself
in court using one’s mother tongue, which was one of the main demands
voiced by the hunger strikers. In other words, while the prime
minister mulls the reintroduction of the death penalty and suggests
that the hunger strikes are just a bluff, his government has
introduced a substantial democratization package to Parliament. This
package includes very progressive measures that will considerably
improve the status of prison inmates.
On the other hand, amid this seemingly gloomy picture, Parliament has
passed a bill to promote 29 provinces to the status of metropolitan
cities. This is a substantial reform that affects 75 per cent of
Turkey’s population – about 56 million people. Thanks to this bill,
local administrations will enjoy greater power and authority, enabling
and empowering them to extend their services even to the furthest
villages in their jurisdiction. In this regard, it is a sign that the
state’s centralist organization is on the way to complete overhaul.
The strengthening of local administrations will have a favourable
effect on the settlement of the Kurdish issue as well.
I have kept the article’s introduction a bit lengthy for a reason. On
the one hand, hopes are dimming with regard to the Kurdish issue, and
the prime minister’s harsh, negative rhetoric is straining the
political scene; on the other, the government is taking truly positive
steps in practice. Thus, it becomes difficult for us to make a clear
analysis of the government. Well, what is the source of the problem?
It is: The prime minister, deriving his power from his achievements
during the last 10 years, believes he can control the agenda, issues
and, more importantly, time. Therefore, he merges his and his party’s
fate with that of the country to set his own agenda. Let reforms
continue, but let their timing be determined by him so that every step
taken does not create any political risk for the government, but
instead proves beneficial for it.
But this is an illusion. The hunger strikes are the best proof. There
was nothing that prevented the government from introducing these
reforms beforehand. But the government’s attitude caused a delay and
the prime minister feels the need to use much harsher language and
make the government prolong the process in a futile attempt to prevent
the public from perceiving these reforms as the success of hunger
strikers. Yet, these are rights which the government should have
already granted. No matter what happens, they will be perceived as the
success of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
In sum, no one can control time, and there is a price to be paid by
everyone for delays.