Electoral satire, Turkey-style
By Jonathan Gorvett, in Istanbul, Turkey
Aljazeera.net, Qatar
July 21 2007
Al Jazeera continues its series of reports on Turkey ahead of
Sunday’s general elections as Jonathan Gorvett takes a look at the
role political satire has played in the election campaign.
For some Turks, Aliye Ozturk, is, as candidates for their country’s
presdiency go, their worst nightmare.
She has Kurdish origins and wears a headscarf. She has Armenian roots,
arousing deep historical suspicions, while her background as a member
of Turkey’s minority religious group, the Alevis, is likely to be
the final straw for many of the country’s more conservative Sunnis.
She has promised a programme of sweeping reforms, has pledged not
to appear on TV and has vowed to take issue with Angela Merkel,
the German chancellor, over the German leader’s dress sense.
If elected, Ozturk will serve Turkish pizza at the presidential
palace and provide visiting European ambassadors with CDs of Ottoman
military marches.
She is, of course, entirely fictitious.
Boring old politics
Ozturk is the brainchild of the Young Civilians, a group of Turkish
youth opposed to the military~Rs role in politics.
Yidiray Ogur, spokesman for the group, says their candidate "is kind
of the photographic negative of Turkish state secularism".
"We have put her poster up around Istanbul and Ankara and many people
have called asking to interview her," he says.
The spoof campaign has shown Turkish political satire is very much
alive and well, as Turks head to the polls on Sunday. Indeed, it may
be stronger than ever.
Ferhat Tumer, the creative director of the Cocuklar advertising
agency which produced a television advertisement endorsing Ozturk,
says "basically, people in this country are really bored with the
same old arguments".
"For the last 50 years, for example, people have been arguing
about whether someone wearing a headscarf is a threat," Tumur says.
"Whether wearing one or not wearing one should be a reason for being
admitted to university or not."
"Isn’t that just comic? I mean, come on – when we need better
education, health services and a stronger economy, this is what we
get. It’s comic!"
Tumer’s agency produced the advertisement "Original Democracy", which
recently aired on Turkish television, and it has also been successful
on YouTube.
The advertisement’s narrator speaks rapidly, in the style of a
salesman, exhorting listeners to "throw away unreliable systems that
crash easily" and choose "original democracy".
He promises the system allows listeners to "style your hair and trim
your beard any way you want to ~V plus it is easy to use and comes
with a full constitutional guarantee".
But the humour is based on serious concerns.
Military intervention
On April 27, Turkey’s politically powerful military issued a warning
on its website over attempts by the ruling AK party to have Abdullah
Gul, the foreign minister, elected as president.
The military’s warning sent a shockwave through the Turkish political
system, forcing a government climbdown and the calling of early
parliamentary elections.
The warning also brought back memories of several earlier coup d’etats
launched by the generals. Since a multi-party system was first
introduced in Turkey in the 1950s, there have been coups in 1960,
1971, 1980 and 1997.
Ogur said: "There was a headline in the newspaper Cumhuriyet back in
April saying that ‘Young Officers’ were concerned about developments.
We took our name, ‘Young Civilians’ from that."
"We held a demonstration against the ‘e-coup’ or internet coup,
as it’s been called, and since then the group has sort of taken off."
Humour and protest
Turkey had seen several large demonstrations previous to this,
launched by supporters of the military and by secularist Turks who
claimed the government was plotting an Islamist take-over.
"The editor of the newspaper Radikal called us in," recalls Tumer.
"At that time there was very high tension in society caused by these
‘republican’ demonstrations. The editor wanted us to help him do
something about this. The meetings and the tension were polarising
people, forcing them to choose – are you on the side of secularism
and the republic’s founder, Ataturk, or are you an Islamist?
"But people can be both democratic and secular, have religious faith
and support Ataturk. We didn’t like this situation of forcing people
to take fake sides."
Humour and satire have long been the tools with which Turks have
dealt with their political situations.
In Ottoman times, the shadow puppets Karagoz and Hacivad were often
used to lampoon rulers.
Later, satirical magazines flourished, the most recent of which,
Leman, was notorious for showing Recip Tayyip Erdogan, the current
prime minister, as a variety of different animals.
But protest, humourous or not, prompts retaliation. Erdogan eventually
sued the magazine last year.
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