Getting Off A Streetcar Named De(mocracy)* at Gezi Station

Getting Off A Streetcar Named De(mocracy)* at Gezi Station

 Many analytical views have already been expressed while the recent demonstrations in Istanbul, Turkey were unfolding. This is now a better time, after the dust settled, to try to understand the public discontent in Turkey. Public protests in Istanbul against government’s intention to rebuild a historically infamous Ottoman army barracks, which was demolished in the early Republican years to make room for a public park, appeared as an environmental issue. Deep down in this young, educated middle-class group’s mind turned out to be the government’s increasing authoritarian management serving the PM’s lifelong dream of an Ottomanist Turkey. The use of excessive police force to disperse the protesters quickly spread the demonstrations to many cities across the country. The PM’s usual arrogant and scornful rhetoric helped sustain the protests, which now entered their second month.

The background

            The mentioning of a few of the PM’s outrageous actions and statements could help us  understand where he has been taking the country in the last ten years, and why the modern educated class is finally revolting against him. Courses on Islam were made an important part of the educational system (some reports show the number of Koran courses as 60.000). Courses on early republican reforms were gradually replaced by courses on Islam. The PM publicly declared that the objective is “to raise a religious youth” (in Afyon, the Regional Director of Education instructed the local Imams, who give the Islamic courses in schools, that they are expected to give guidance to school principles). On the other hand, public funds appropriated for education is still the lowest among 34 OECD countries, according to OECD records, 2.9% of 2010 GDP in UNESCO Statistics; of about five million middle school age children (age 14-17) only about three million (60%) attend school, according to 2008-09 statistics of the Turkish Ministry of National Education; many elementary and middle schools are converted to Imam schools (of 1450 schools in Istanbul 450 were converted for the school year 2012-13); university presidents are replaced by academics with stronger Islamic adherence; the Turkish Science and Technology Administration fired the editor of its periodical for having dedicated its March 2009 issue to Drawin’s birthday, at the same time removing from its library publications by Dawkins, Moorehead, Gould and others; only 5% of the workforce is university graduates; World Economic Forum indices of 2008 show Turkey 72^nd in higher education and 66^th in innovation in world ranking. The budget of the Religious Affairs Administration amounts to $100 million (2007), while all 81 universities’ budgets combined can barely match it. There are 85.000 mosques and 35.000 mosque building private organizations, and 90.000 imams, while there are only 14.632 public and private secondary education schools, 6.204 vocational schools (of which 11.4% are Imam schools anyway), and 235.814 secondary education teachers (Turkish Ministry of National Education statistics for 2011-12). The UNDP Human Development Index of 2009 rates Turkey 79^th among 182 countries; not because of her economic but educational level.

            2010 Global Gender Gap Index places Turkey 126^th among 134 countries. Some dailies on July 21, 2010 reported a Cabinet Minister saying the illiteracy rate among adult women was 13.8% in 2009. A Bogazici University survey in 2010 on inequalities in Turkey revealed that 70% of the female population under the age of 18 neither attend school nor work. The same survey indicates that the women’s employment rate has been falling faster than it has in Iran or Saudi Arabia, from 34% in 1989 to little over 25% in 2010. A 2010 AandG, a Turkish polling company, survey shows that 47% of married or divorced women were subject to spousal violence, only 56.2% felt free. Homicide against women increased by 1400% between 2002 and 2009, according to a report by Stop Women Homicide Platform, a Turkish women’s organization. Requests from courts for permission to marry underage children had a dramatic increase, including one by the PM to marry his son in 2003. The PM in his almost daily public statements frequently lectures the people on his version of social life style. He advocates no drinking alcohol (often referring to them as drunkards); criticizes artists, removes statues, attacks TV series; even interferes in what goes on in the bedrooms by requesting at least three children families, no abortions or c-section births (progressive women deputies in Parliament called him “vagina guardian”). During a visit by some women’s organizations, the PM stated that men and women are not equal, women are complementary to men.

            He privatized many nationalized businesses by questionable bidding operations favoring his followers, privatized national lands and sold them to his supporters or to some Arab sheiks in exchange for undocumented cash flow into the country (his defense of Yasin al-Qadi when the latter was accused by the UN and the US for financing al-Qaida may be recalled). Many mega projects to gain the followers’ admiration and to carry the PM’s legacy to an eternity are presumably bankrolled by this income.

            He replaced almost the entire judiciary and public prosecutors with those who are poorly educated and of his own persuasion (EU Human Rights Court statistics for 2011 show that most of the cases it reviews are from Turkey, 9.000 in 2011 and 15.940 pending, along with countries like Russia, Ukraine, Poland and Romania, and Turkey leads the list of penalties charged by the EUHRC); the PM’s reaction to an EUHRC decision upholding the headscarf ban in public schools was that the matter was for the Islamic clerics to decide, meaning that the Sharia law should rule, not the Civil law. He changed the entire police force by dramatically increasing its numbers and materiel to match the military, and banished the military he feared from politics in compliance with EU requirements (which effectively replaced one armed force with another to ensure loyalty); hence he was able to pursue an unrelenting witch hunt against the military top brass, academia, judges, prosecutors, and journalists of the reformist/progressive old guard. He intimidated any opposition by personally filing innumerable suits against them, or by investigations and surveillance based on fabricated claims. Even school age children who take part in protests against the PM are detained and prosecuted. Dissent is not tolerated. Freedom House Reports until 2005 listed Turkey among the free countries, since then it is listed among the Partly Free.

            The national holidays celebrating the 1920s liberation war, and the reforms of the Republic are all but abolished as if an undeclared war of vengeance against the reforms that ended the Sultanate and the Khalifate.           

 The apolitical modern youth and middle-class people could no longer expect any meaningful help from the opposition parties, from the press or the military, for reclaiming the modernization reforms of the Republic. This group, increasingly falling in a minority status and being marginalized and frustrated, had no way of expressing its dissent other than by taking it to the streets.           

 The authorities’ handling of dissent was consistent with their past actions and style, the use of the newly empowered and strengthened police force. The PM unleashed that force with the pretense that the demonstrations were nothing but “vandalism”, “terrorism”, and “foreign conspiracy”, all taking advantage of a small legal environmentalist activism. Even foreign media (especially CNN for its live reporting on the day the police retook the Gezi Park by brute force -an Islamist daily filed complaint against the CNN and C. Amanpour), electronic medium (Twitter and Facebook), international organizations (prominently EU), “interest lobby” (presumably meaning the international financiers, namely George Soros), and some tourists in the crowd were all accused of supporting the demonstrations, and subverting peace and progress in Turkey. These accusations and of course the identification of the events as terrorism give the PM the pretext for sweeping arrests. Arrests should be expected to continue for a long time to come if the witch hunt of the past five years after his re-election were to constitute an example.         

 The PM famously said in an address, “democracy is like a streetcar, you disembark once you reach your destination”. The PM seems to have reached his “desired” destination at Gezi Park.

 What can we expect for Turkey’s future, and what are the undeniable facts? First, the facts:

1.                          No matter how much the PM denies it, not only his statements but also his deeds prove that he definitely sees the law and the social system subjected to supreme religious (Islamic) order. He attributes the failure of the preceding 65 years to secularist modernization policies. He is vengeful of the republic’s original reforms. This appears to be his personal conviction and agenda. He is a vindictive, an angry man.

2.                          The PM is changing Turkey’s social system to conform to the Islamic tradition, with the belief that this is the mandate given to him by the majority of the country. This rationalization is also upheld by the Western powers who champion freedom of religion. He has democracy, freedom, and human rights behind him to put religion in politics.

3.                          The PM has been elected by a little over 50% of the electorate, who believe that they are Muslims first and citizens second. (A recent survey by AandG, a Turkish polling company, shows that over 90% of the population has strong religiosity, and their understanding of freedom is economic freedom, rather than freedom of speech). This is the population that was not educated about the republican reforms, and that was not able to take meaningful part in politics for 65 years after the reformer Ataturk’s death. Past inapt governments did not make an effort to educate and engage the public in politics; politics was for the modern minority. Opposition parties exploited the religiosity of the majority to get them involved in politics.

4.                          The modern minority wants modernizing principles enshrined in the Republican constitution to be preserved and pursued. Yet, a reversal of majority to modernism does not seem possible for a foreseeable future, not even an increase in the numbers of modernists to form a coalition (which means instability and disfunction in governance any way). A come back of the republican party is also impossible because of public awareness of its 65 years of inapt governance that was never able to establish political and social stability, and to develop country’s economic potential.

5.                          Neither group should be expected to change course, for good reason. Religionists cannot change because of the dogmatic, communal and traditional nature of the religion; moderation will be sacrilege. Modernists would not change because reason shows that the future lies in individual freedom and advancement. Turkey is not the only country that has at least two incongruent societies. There are historical reasons for this social divide, which I will not dwell on here. It will suffice to compare some of the political and social principles of both sides: Modernists want pluralist democracy, traditionalists want majoritarian democracy; Modernists want liberal individualist society, traditionalists want to reinstate Ottoman social “ummet” system; Modernists want freedom from dominance by any one group, person or ideology, traditionalists want freedom from any dominance except from religion; Modernists want freedom from capitalist greed, exploitation and commercialization, traditionalists want capitalism and commercialization.

6.                          The problem is the way democracy is practiced by the government: majoritarian democracy. However, Turkish democracy is not the only one that interprets democracy as the ballot box.

              What is next?

              Against this backdrop of the political and social scene, we can attempt to forecast the near future of Turkey. In view of a polarized society and a polarizing government, which insists on the rule of the dominant cultural group, the political turmoil of the last 65 years may continue. Even if the PM were to give some small concessions from his authoritarian and Ottomanist policy in order not to miss his dream of inaugurating his mega projects for the 100^th anniversary of the Republic (he has been working towards leaving a legacy greater than Ataturk’s. He wants to prove that he is greater than Ataturk), his electorate’s social pressure on the minority will not subside. Chris Caldwell rightly wrote in NYT Magazine issue of Sept. 25, 2005, under the title “The East in the West”, “In a Turkish context, more democracy generally means more Islam”. In fact, this is true not only for Turkey but for any Muslim society. When constitutions were democratically re-written in Algeria, Nigeria, Iraq, Tunis, Egypt, Libya, Afghanistan, Islam formally became part of the political process. This is the natural and rightful conclusion of democracy. In a democratic system the politics and the type of democracy are -and can only be- the reflection of its people; people get what they want, what they deserve. The protagonists of democracy, the West, have no grounds for complaining about the outcome, the Islamic rule.

  In a polarized, divided Muslim society (like in Turkey, Egypt, and potentially in Tunis, Libya, and Algeria), modernists cannot achieve much more than stopping or modifying a building project. They cannot change the trend in education, gender gap, judiciary and law enforcement, so long as the financial power, fire power, judiciary power and legislative power are all on the side of the Islamists. Religion is more powerful than any other social asset. Therefore, Turkey’s Ottomanist domestic policy may succeed.

  Will Turkish government’s Ottomanist foreign policy have repercussions on the international scene? The government obviously pursues a foreign policy of reviving Ottoman glory by establishing a sphere of influence in the neighboring, Middle Eastern, and African states. (Foreign Minister reportedly stated at his Party’s 14^th Consultation and Evaluation Meeting “We have Ottoman heritage. Yes, we are Neo-Ottomanist. We have to be interested in neighboring and North African states”, although he later denied that statement. Also 2010 German Marshall Fund Transatlantic Trends reports that 20% of Turks are favorable to co-operation with the ME countries, 13% with the EU, 6% with the US, 5% with Russia, and 34% with no co-operation at all). The objective of this policy is to gain a prominent position for Turkey in the international stage, particularly in the Islamic countries and in the EU. To seek leadership among the Islamic countries by Israel bashing and by business relations based on Muslim brotherhood will not carry Turkey to ME leadership for at least two reasons. Arab spring and the current developments in Egypt demonstrate that there is an awakening also in Arab countries. Their societies will be as divided as Turkey’s at best. Second, Ottoman experience abundantly proved that Arabs are not reliable partners, religious ties are not sufficient to bring together culturally different societies. Therefore, while Turkey may aspire to such leadership, even if it resurrected the Khalifate, Arab world would not recognize it. Turkey cannot be a big or equal brother to Iran either, not only because history shows us so, but also because they are relatively equal powers aspiring to the leadership in the same region. Therefore, Turkey’s Ottomanist foreign policy will not succeed.

  Some analysts are of the opinion that the EU must expedite Turkey’s admission into the Union in order to avoid Turkey’ further slippage towards the Islamic world. It must be borne in mind that Turkey wants to join the EU with her own social values. The EU is against it, aware that this will expedite Europe’s Islamization, which has already begun with the increasing migrant population from its Mediterranean littoral neighbors. The sheer size of Turkey’s under-educated and non-modern population, and her promising economy will give her in the EU governing bodies an equal standing with Germany and France. Had Turkey been admitted to the Union as early as possible and before the end of the Cold War at the latest, and had religion was not allowed to be a tool of politicking, she would not have become Islamist. It is now too late to reverse the Islamization process. Turkey’s EU membership will become a mute issue.

   There are also some analysts who are of the opinion that Turkey proves that an Islamic country can be democratic, modern, moderate, and secular; as such, it should be promoted among fundamentalist Muslim countries. These analysts must be denying the facts that in Turkey democracy means only voting rights and religious freedom, not free speech rights; modernity means to be up-to-date with material things (brought about by economic success); moderation and secularism are absurd in Islamic beliefs, unless secularism is the type of secularism applied in the US. These arguments are no more than a wishful thinking.

    The question is not whether Turkey will eventually become like Iran’s Khomeinyites, Egypt’s Brotherhood, or Afganistan’s Taliban, but whether it will be an Arab style country which is not modern, moderate, or secular, but a non-fundamentalist Islamist country that does not constitute a threat to the West.

*A metaphor of a 1947 play titled “A Streetcar Named Desire”, written by Tennessee Williams and immortalized by a movie starring Marlon Brando.

July 5, 2013