Galata Bridge,
5/1/13
Istanbul is a
modern megacity* of 13.5MM people. The city plans to develop a new shopping
center near popular Taksim Square, demolishing one of the few parks. The
resulting May Day demonstration resulted in at least a dozen people injured,
although the roads were blocked.
One month later,
more than 100,000 demonstrators battled police resulting in around 1,000
injured. Protests have expanded to include issues of general discontent such as
Taksim Square, the government's support for the Syrian rebels, a restriction on
alcohol sales and Prime Minister Erdogan's "authoritarian rule." A
6/2/13 NYT article writes, "...a long struggle over urban spaces is
erupting as a broader fight over Turkish identity, where difficult issues of
religion, social class and politics intersect...a historian...has criticized
the government for undertaking large-scale development projects without seeking
recommendations from the public."
Istiklal Street,
5/31/13, Corbis Photo
This photo taken on
Istanbul's main shopping thoroughfare illustrates the obvious. Political
discord is bad for business. Less obviously, economic development can
lead to increased democratization as people expect to be heard. This Time magazine article
well describes what is happening and the demands of modernity upon politics.
The article ends on a wry note, "CNN Turk, a leading news network, aired a
cooking show, plus documentaries about...dolphin training and penguins."
(Politics
is complicated.) There are different ways to deal with this conflict: The
least helpful is to cast it in ideological terms, to say that Turkey is an
Islamist/Secularist collision. The obvious consequence of this description is,
"Then what?"A more constructive course would be to contain the conflict
by addressing specifics, have government review its zoning procedures and to be
mindful of Ottoman absolutism.
This CNN (Int'l) article
suggests the conflict is already ideological. Taksim (formerly Republic) square
is the symbol of Turkish national secularism, "...a modern urban
space." But Erdogan also plans to build a large mosque on that very
location. The cause of the unrest by the other 50% of Turkish society, that did
not vote for the A.K.P., is the increasing challenge to secular life and
pluralism. In the long-run, some kind of agreement demarcating the boundary
between religion and secular society will be necessary.
* Rapid economic
development has changed the Istanbul
Skyline in the last ten years. But economic development is easier than
political development. In these NYT articles, MIT economist Daron
Acemoglu sees political change born out of discontent; and Soner
Cagaptay sees liberal democracy born from the demands of the middle class.
Is history predetermined? There are historical forces, but they are not blind.
This is a perfect example. What happens will likely be determined by how Prime
Minister Erdogan and his AK party react. What is Mr. Erdogan going to do at
8:00, Monday morning?
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In subsequent days,
the Prime Minister erratically threatened to clear the square of
"vagabonds" and "thugs" within 24 hours, agreed to meet
with the demonstrators (the right thing to do) and called the founders of the
secular Turkish republic "drunkards," but put up large posters of
Ataturk's image. That issue aside, this political crisis clearly illustrates
that in democracies an unwillingness to compromise will lead to chaos.
To infer by
relentless logic:
Democracy implies
compromise. Therefore, no compromise implies no democracy.
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According to Boston
University anthropologist, Jenny White (2013), Ataturk's secular nationalism
(the 19th century European sort) has been replaced as the ruling ideology of
the state by a Muslim nationalism that mixes economic achievement from
businesses in the Anatolian heartland, religious piety and Ottoman
internationalism.
Both visions of
society are collective rather than pluralistic, and clash with the increasing
modern desire for personal freedom. In White's words,
"(contradictions) express the dual nature of political and social
life...open to innovation while being communally limited....The effect is
heightened by a majoritarian understanding of democracy in which the electoral
winners, having obtained a majority, get to determine what is allowed and what
is banned in social life according to the norms of their communities, with no
room for tolerance of nonconforming practices..."
The secular revolt
that began in Taksim Square is the product of middle-class economic development,
where people seek (to use Aristotle's definition of a freedom from across the
Aegean), "the opportunity to live as one likes." Society can remain
open only by the guarantee of "rights."*
* As opposed to
communal sectarianism, "rights" is an universal concept, at minimum
for a society. It might be noted that the original Constitution of the United
States had ten amendments that constitute the Bill of Rights. There are now
twenty-seven amendments, the last of which was ratified in 1992. Mabie (1987)
writes that amendment Article V of the Constitution, "...has allowed
Americans to be true to the Constitution, and the Constitution true to
Americans." Rule-based systems can grow within national societies.
Add: This book is also fascinating study
in modernization using anthropological field research. The author notes,
"...modern traits are not developed necessarily in contradistinction to or
even at the expense of tradition, but rather through the transformation and the
pragmatic adjustment of tradition." Obviously writing before Taksim,
"The Turkish case constitutes an ongoing experiment in...adjustments to tradition that lead
to change. However, contrary to Casanova's expectation that such accomodations
in Muslim societies would cause democratic discourse to be framed in an Islamic
idiom, it seems, rather, that non traditional influences - ranging from
literature to the market- elicit values not directly linked to religion - like
social justice - that may lead individuals to personal piety and to democratic
participation outside an Islamic (state) idiom (our note)....Turks can
be released from mutual suspicion and obsessive boundary maintenance only if
the institutions of the state provide an objective framework that can be relied
upon to be fair and impartial and to protect the individual citizen's interest
regardless of his or her identity (In other words, by the establishment of
civil rights) .
It is also a study of
religion. Turkish Islam is very different from Arab Islam, that is univeralist
(and whose politics spans nations). Turkish Islam is national Islam, around 99%
of all Turks are Islam. The Turkish variants contain combinations of Islam,
blood and history. The A.K.P. encourages engagement with other nations,
particularly those formerly within the Ottoman empire.
__
Why is there
continued turmoil in the Mideast and now Turkey? The governments are asked to
meet the aspirations of all their people, not only those of the group that won
the most recent election. Since all politics is local, it would be better for
national governments to cultivate their own gardens. Taksim and Gezi Park could
have been resolved locally if Prime Minister Erdogan, a former mayor of Istanbul,
had listened to the demonstrators. It is said that he has the opportunity to
either be a Charles de Gaulle or a Vladimir Putin.
__
12/13 -
Prime Minister
Erogan has apparently chosen to be a Vladimir Putin, accusing opponents to his
administration of being in league with foreign "plotters." After
Taksim Square, the latest scandal to hit is major corruption.
We have been
writing about liberalism and its secular appeal to reason. But the major
struggle in the Mideast is over religion, as it was in Europe during the 17th
century. In Turkey. the major struggle within the AK party is between an
Islamist Turkish Nationalism, represented by Mr. Erdogan and a more mystical
Sufism, represented by Fethullah
Gullen who now resides in the United States. The Gullenists run a large
number of schools, think tanks and media outlets throughout the Muslim world.
The Gullen movement emphasizes a more tolerant Islam, emphasizing
"altruism, hard work and education." There are estimated in Turkey to
be millions of Gullenists, also within the Turkish government.
We had visited Turkey, curious to see if it was some kind of
synthesis between East and West, spanning the Bosphorus. What we found instead,
and this is not Egypt, was a society on guard with political demonstrations and
bomb barriers (against Arab Muslim extremists) in front of major Istanbul
hotels. The major divisions in the Mideast are now religious, between the
Sunnis who ruled the Ottoman Empire and the Shia who are now rule Iran, Iraq
and Syria.
The West has
largely, but not totally, separated the secular political order and economy
from the rest of society. In the Mideast, they remain very intertwined and
complicated.
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2/14 -
Furthermore, the
requirements of inclusive modernity contradict the command and control habits
of traditional societies. This 2/5/14 NYT Magazine article clearly describes
this contestation in Turkey:
“But Erdogan no longer
has use for his country’s nascent inclusiveness. With his electoral mandate, he
seems to believe he embodies Turkey himself. It is very likely that his core
constituents, those who still love the man they call the Conqueror, will cast
their votes for the A.K.P. in this spring’s municipal elections. Erdogan’s
public vengefulness, however, may well wreck the economy, wounding the
vulnerable people he once claimed to speak for. When he lashes out during
public appearances — most recently describing his critics as members of a
“losers’ lobby” — many Turks feel as if they are seeing the fractured future of
their country.
In a way, Erdogan’s
bad year is a result of a liberalizing society clashing with an inherently
illiberal Turkish system. The Turkish Model — the idea that the A.K.P.’s softer
vision of Islam was compatible with democracy — suggested a way forward for
Middle Eastern countries. But Turkey’s biggest problem, its authoritarian
structure, has (n.b.) little to do with Islam. The
state remains a tool for accumulating disproportionate power, and when
threatened, it sacrifices its citizens to save itself. If a
prime minister can co-opt the laws and the media, and if a self-interested
group can prosecute trials of dubious legality, and if the citizens have
nowhere to express themselves but in the streets, then the state institutions
are broken. Someday Erdogan will be gone, but Turkey’s system will still
be a work in progress. Democratization takes a long time, and as Gezi Park and
other global movements have proved, part of the process is figuring out what
kind of country its citizens want.”
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6/15 –
Perhaps there is hope
for democracy in Turkey. In June, Erdogan’s AKP lost
its legislative majority to a coalition of Kurds and secularists from the
modernizing society in an election that rejected his increasingly authoritarian
tendencies.