"....This is my first trip overseas as president of the United States. I've been to the G-20 summit in London, and the NATO summit in Strasbourg, and the European Union summit in Prague. Some people have asked me if I chose to continue my travels to Ankara and Istanbul to send a message to the world. And my answer is simple: Evet — yes.
...
This morning I had the great privilege of visiting the tomb of your extraordinary founder of your republic. And I was deeply impressed by this beautiful memorial to a man who did so much to shape the course of history. But it is also clear that the greatest monument to Ataturk's life is not something that can be cast in stone and marble. His greatest legacy is Turkey's strong, vibrant, secular democracy, and that is the work that this assembly carries on today..."
Obama in the Turkish parliament. The inscription behind says: " Sovereignty Is Nation's Alone Without Any Reservations". Subtext: "Sovereignty is not God's when it comes to state issues"
What a relief after 8 years rule of Bush (and all the bunch of his dickhead bureaucrats) who kept referring to Turkey as a country of moderate Islam.
It was the biggest mistake you could have done when approaching a country with a proud history where more than 85% of the public is allergic to the political implications of the Islam word, where its constitution, education system, governmental institutions are built around strict secularism; a country which is changing at a great pace doubling its income, industrial production, size of its urban middle classes every few years; growing its democracy more and more colorful and maturer every decade.
Of course, they harvested what they seeded; in 2003 the very same Parliament in the picture above - backed up by huge public support (including mine) - voted against any support of US ambitions in Iraq. No single US soldier was allowed to put foot on Turkey's soil. The public support for US policies dropped to below 10%.
Obama seems to have been taught well about Turkey's unique realities. Of course; these are all part of a game. But it's good to know that opponents at the table of diplomacy are well informed.
4 comments:
Hm. Every reality is, in one sense or another, unique. It strikes me as continuous how much in particular Russia and Turkey push on the "we are unique, and thus must be treated in a special way".
While I agree to the fact of their uniqueness (just as about anyone else's), I do not agree with the conclusion that this automatically leads to "deserving a special treatment".
At least none that's any different than the 'special attention' any country gets in international diplomacy:
Special attention because of a strategically relevant position and situation: fine.
Understanding of the situation a country is in: fine.
Acting accordingly, at least in public: fine.
But I can't help the impression that more often than not, particularly in the cases of Russia and Turkey, the "special attention or treatment" that's continuously being asked for is a sort of "don't talk into our business, accept everything we do, don't you dare talking into our business, nobody can understand us anyway and nobody should try, but at the same time you'll have to accept the fact that we do talk into other people's business, because that's our historic right". Sometimes ending up in the terrible and disturbing territory of "asking for blind understanding, while not ready to give the same in return".
You know my points of view and my sympathies well. But this sometimes extreme self-focus is highly disturbing. However, I suppose not only to me, but to you just as well...
Well yeah: this comment is indeed not very directly related to your post, but comes at this time because of all the news around, and is linked to some of your previous posts regarding the good old "who are we anyway!" question... so it's kind of here by 'temporal coincidence'.
The "who are we anyway!" is of course directly linked with the "where are we heading?", and these times of confusion are certainly one key reason for the self-focus. In case of both Turkey AND Russia, as two strikingly similar examples when we talk about identity crisis and a feeling of "we deserve to be treated in a special way!". In any case, one of them is more into bullying its neighbors and has a nuclear arsenal, while the other is more into football... so in Turkey's case, such attitudes at least at the moment seem at least less dangerous (that is, unless you're a Galatasaray fan lost in the Fenerbahce fan sector)
I know what you mean.
One of the problem of the ever crawling new Turkish identity is its reactionary self focus indeed.
This self focus is mainly stemming from the national complex associated with the loss of an empire and the whole identity associated with it. A vicious cycle is established in-between the self focus and a sense of self protection which can easily lead to isolation from the rest of the world. The loss of historical power was explained by the "fact" that every other country in the world had nothing better to do that weakening our beloved country. Such a nice way of externalization!
Of course, I was raised in an environment where this sentiment was very evident and it is difficult to think out of when child implemented paradigms at times.
What I particularly find troublesome is the way "we are special, thus we should be treated in a special way" approach is used when it comes to human rights issues. “Our case is special so no rights for Kurds” is such an argument for example.
But come to think of it, all of these just don't justify US' former policy of seeing all of the Islam world as a monolithic sociological, demographical structure. It is by any standard an over-simplification and a mindless "othering" and just like any "othering", it caused extremity to gain power anywhere in the world.
It is not a smaller mistake than wanting to handle Argentina, Ghana, Switzerland and Finland as part of the same bunch because of their "Christian heritage".
In Turkey's case; as there is a strong emphasis on secularism, we particularly disliked this generalization.
You wouldn't even necessarily have to use one African and one Latin-American example in the analogy together with the two Europeans, Finland and Switzerland; even within Europe, political situations and mindsets and opinions are very different (another thing that is often ignored from the outside).
However, I don't share the impression that the US foreign policy (under the previous administration) indeed treated the whole Islamic world as one monolithic block. There have always been allies and (at least potential) enemies, and I fail to see the evidence for this particular argument, even though I've heard the argument many times in many places. From my perspective here at least, there was no such drastic generalization happening; the political difference between Turkey and most of the rest of the Islamic part of the world (odd to even say that, as it includes a lot of very different cultures, despite of that unifying element they share), this difference has been well understood even by the US.
And despite the juridical emphasis on secularity in Turkey, you can hardly deny the fact that much of the everyday life is strongly shaped by Islam, and through this indeed connected to other Islamic countries. For the individual person in an Anatolian village, it is probably rarely of relevance whether the legal system knows a strict split between worldly and religious powers.
So taking Turkey's "special role" into consideration would inevitably mean to take its special POLITICAL or JURIDICAL role into consideration, which as said above I think has been done, even if perhaps not to the extent expected inside Turkey. But political and juridical aspects aside, it would be difficult to treat Turkey as anything else but an Islamic country given much of the everyday life aspects, wouldn't it. Not even me, considering myself in some form a "friend of Turkey" for sure, would be able to think Turkey without this.
And as with every religion, it brings good and bad. Among the bad appears to be what at least from the outside looks like a surprising level of intolerance versus other religions (consequence of the own identity crisis?), which is often compared to "intolerance in Western/Christian countries towards Muslims", but I find it hardly comparable, one being voiced in an unfortunately wide-spread mistrust, the other in apparently existing legal hurdles versus opening churches/temples/whatever, and at times acts of violence.
However, alright, the random acts of violence by radical groups you'll have in every society, and that they're more "racially" and less religiously motivated in most of the West is a consequence of the secular history there.
You know the real situation better, but acknowledging all the steps into "the right direction" (from whose perspective ever) is one thing, but doesn't make all else bright and shiny.
Altogether, just for information, I do have a habit of "defending US policy". Which is not because I enjoyed the US policy of the past few years - in the contrary. My habit comes from the fact that (Western-)Europe has an unfortunate anti-American reflex that is more often than not ridiculous, and often does exactly what it critisizes. I'm always surprised by the wide-spread and ungrounded strict/blind anti-Americanism particularly among the youth in e.g. Germany, Switzerland, France, and probably other countries.
So I'll always defend a little more than necessary.
The background of the identity crisis (and the evil outside world that has "weakened our beloved country") is indeed another parallel to contemporary Russia.
By the way, the Swiss tried to defend their banking secret by saying that "the specifics of the national legislation regarding taxes, namely the self-declaration, which is rooted in the individualistic and federalist character of Switzerland as a state, are the reason why we must distinct between 'tax fraud' and 'tax evasion' as two different crimes". A little off the topic, but I find the basis of the argument ("sorry folks, we are different than any of you, so we unfortunately can't join any global rules on this topic") quite similar. Even though, of course, it's been used more strategically and less emotionally, I'd assume.
sorry for being so late in replying to your much valued thoughts.
the anti-american feeling. I have also a quite rational view on the subject (even though I already have pointed out to the dangers in trusting pure rationalism in some more recent post or comment); America is an empire; as every empire it has imperialistic desires. and just like every empire in history, it takes precautions to maximize its time at power. Europe on the other hand sees what's happening but is politically handicapped to cope with this with its current structure. So the anti american feeling reminds of the turkish proverb; "barking dogs don't bite". The day will come of course where no barking will be necessary.
I think your assumptions about the sentiments of the average turkish man are wrong.
First of all, you fall into the trap to think that the man living in an anatolian village is representing the average of the turkish point of view. He of course holds a point of view to some extreme but it is not the average. Nor can you ignore tens of millions living in cities that created an industrious economy about to reach the trillion dollar barrier in gdp.
Secondly, you are assuming that the turkish experience is artificial and underlining the fact that it's not coming from the same secular roots as europe, you think secularism has no foundations. That is wrong. True; it is not as strong and as well established as in Europe. But the fact that it doesn't come from the same root doesn't mean that it's an artificial one neither the fact that it is a very rare event in history if not unique makes it unreal. the kemalist revolution was a successful one. and it was successful because of the characteristics of the peoples living in this country.
1- modernization process didn't start in turkey in 1920's. It started back in the beginning of 19th. century and has been ongoing ever since without major interruptions. Still much later than in Europe though.
2- Roughly 30% of the turkish population today are originated from balkans who were leading a quite secular life before the revolution anyway.
3- Roughly 10% of the population are alevis who are -again- secular by nature.
4- The anatolian style of islam is a quite mild version especially when compared to its southern versions.
You fail to see that parties that identify themselves as islamic have a static public support base of less than 10% in Turkey. Lower than or equal to votes fachist parties can get in some european countries. I'm not sure that these countries can be classified as "fachist countries".
No polls showed higher support than 7% in support of an islamic state. In Egypt - considered to be a moderately islamic - this percentage is around 50%.
Erdogan considers his party as islamic democrat identifying itself with christian democrats in europe (wanted to join the european congress of theirs a while ago) and whenever the more conservative fractions tried to raise their voice, the party lost public support.
You are correct to think that the man living in an anatolian village identifies himself as a muslim but you are wrong assuming that the guy feels connected to the rest of the islamic world through these ties. The man will primarily identify itself as a turk which includes the secret muslim word. but turkishness is a very important part of it and that does put a wide distance between the arabs for example. The distance stems from the imperial past and the disinformative official history teaching apparatus. (I will start a discussion around how wrongly history is taught and analyzed). Indeed, the biggest insult you can do to an average turk is to call him an arab.
Continuing the same example, the connection an average arab feels to islam is much repeat MUCH different than the connection an average turk feels to it. Pretty much like that the connection between a muslim malay and islam would be very different than the rest of the islamic world. Religions don't come and vipe the culture that had been already there for thousands of years. Religions adapt into that culture. This is what makes it possible for some of them to spread to the world. They are pragmatic and imperialistic.
In a discussion on your blog I had mentioned that the islamic awareness in turkish does only arise when the "imperial powers" endanger its being. the turk of today can at best be described as an individual who was raised to fear vanishing from the world. he feels in between; he DOESN'T feel like belonging to the east as he DOESN'T feel like belonging to the west either. He is in between doomed to fear. so only if his fear is provoked, depending on where the threat is targeting, he might seem to become more islamic but in reality it is because his national existence is compromised. The priest that was murdered in Trabzon a few years ago, was NOT killed because he was a christian priest, he was killed because he was seen as a threat to the national existence. Hrant Dink was another victim of the same sentiment.
and the fear is resolving every day as the self confidence is growing back.
i'll give you some numbers out of the latest public poll which is based on 6482 interviews coming from 41 cities, 328 towns and 1116 (anatolian) villages. i leave you alone with numerous contradictions in the views - but i think it provides a good outlook to the turkish population, its identity and fears.
Foreigners should be able to buy land in our country:
%37 absolutely wrong
%36 wrong
%14 correct
rest- no opinion
The country should be ruled by democracy under any conditions:
%36 absolutely correct
%53 correct
The military should take control in administration when needed.
%13 absolutely correct
%35 correct
%20 wrong
%16 very wrong
rest - no opinions.
segments in turkish population:
out of roughly 50 million adults
"worried moderns" %11: this is the segment where people you know from turkey generally belong to.
"shy moderns" %8: strong belief in secularism - mostly from rural areas. mostly alevis.
"conservative moderns" %9: secular life style with religious beliefs.
"in the middle" %12: mostly rural; they don't care about things.
"youngsters of neigborhood" %11: young, modern in their life style, nationalistic views.
"religious conservatives" %13: conservatives upholding religion in the life style.
"distant ones" %10: mostly kurds in south east who don't have a political view of islam
"poor ones" %12: so poor who is not able to hold a political view. they just hang on to life.
"rural conservatives" %16: this is the man in anatolian village. my grandparents from father side belong to this category. during your second visit in may, we pay them a visit if you want.
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