To simply say “protestors good, government bad” in Turkey is a symptom of the Blair delusion, that in civil conflicts there are guys with white hats and guys with black hats, and that the West’s role is to ride into town and kill the guys in the black hats. That is what “liberal intervention” means. The main aim of my second autobiographical book, “The Catholic Orangemen of Togo”, was to explain through the truth of the Sierra Leone experience how very, very wrong this is.
In fact civil conflicts are usually horribly complex, anent a variety of very bad people all trying to gain or retain power, none of them from an altruistic desire to make the world a better place. There may be ordinary people on the streets with that altruistic desire, being used and manipulated by these men; but it is not the ordinary altruistic people on the streets who ever come to power. Ever.
In Turkey the heavy crushing of a rainbow of protests in Istanbul has been going on for at least a month now. A week ago I was discussing it with my publisher, whose son lives in the city. A fortnight ago I was in Istanbul myself.
The Turkish people I was with were natural Erdogan supporters, and what struck me very forcibly was the fact that he has sickened many of his own natural allies by the rampant corruption in Turkey at present. Almost everyone I met spoke to me about corruption, and Turkey being Turkey, everyone seemed to know a very great deal of detail about how corruption was organised in various building and development projects and who was getting what. It therefore is hardly surprising that the spark which caused this conflict to flare to a new level was ignited by a corrupt deal to build a shopping centre on a park. The desecration of something lovely for money could be a metaphor for late Erdogan government.
The park is very small beer compared to the massive corruption involved in the appalling and megalomaniac Bosphorus canal project. Everyone talked to me about that one. The mainstream media, who never seem to know what is happening anywhere, seem to have missed that a major cause of the underlying unrest in Istanbul was the government’s announcement eight weeks ago that the Bosphorus canal is going ahead.
People are also incensed by the new proposal that would ban the sale of alcohol within 100 metres of any mosque or holy site, ie anywhere within central Istanbul. That would throw thousands of people out of work, damage the crucial tourist trade and is rightly seen as a symptom of reprehensible mounting religious intolerance that endangers Turkish society.
So there are plenty of legitimate reasons to protest, and the appalling crushing of protest is the best of them
But – and this is what it is never in the interest of Western politicians to understand – Government bad does not equal protestors good. A very high proportion – more than the British public realise by a very long way – of those protesting in the streets are off the scale far right nationalists of a kind that make the BNP look cuddly and Nigel Farage look like Tony Benn. Kemalism – the worship of Ataturk and a very unpleasant form of military dominated nationalism – remains very strong indeed in Istanbul. Ataturk has a very strong claim, ahead of Mussolini, to be viewed as the inventor of modern fascism
For every secular liberal in Istanbul there are two secular ultra-nationalist militarists. To westerners they stress the secular bit and try to hide the rest, and this works on the uncurious (being uncurious is a required attribute to get employed by the mainstream media). Of course there are decent, liberal, environmentalist protestors and the media will have no difficulty, now they have finally noticed something is happening, in filling our screens with beautiful young women who fit that description, to interview. But that is not all of what is going on here.
There certainly was no more freedom in Turkey before the AKP came to power. Government for decades had been either by the Kemalist military in dictatorship or occasionally by civilian governments they tolerated and controlled. People suddenly have short memories if they think protest was generally tolerated pre-Erdogan, and policy towards the Kurds was massively more vicious.
The military elite dominated society and through corruption they dominated commerce and the economy. The interests of a protected and generally fascist urban upper middle class were the only interests that counted at all. The slightest threat to those interests brought a military coup – again, and again, and again. Religion was barely tolerated, and they allied closely with Israel and the United States.
When Erdogan first came to power it was the best thing that had happened to Turkey for decades. The forgotten people of the Anatolian villages, and the lower middle class of the cities, had a voice and a position in the state for the first time. In individual towns and villages, the military and their clients who had exercised absolute authority had their power suddenly diminished. I witnessed this and it was a new dawn, and it felt joyous.
Then of course Erdogan gradually got sucked in to power, to money, to NATO, to the corruption of his Black Sea mafia and to arrogance. It all went very wrong, as it always seems to. That is where we are now.
Yes of course I want those pretty, genuinely liberal environmentalist girls in the park to take power. But they won’t. Look at the hard-eyed fascists behind them. Look at the western politicians licking their lips thinking about the chance to get a nice very right wing, anti-Muslim and pro-Israel government into power.
We should all be concerned at what is happening in Turkey. We should all call for an end to violent repression. But to wish the overthrow of a democratically elected government, and its replacement – by what exactly? – is a very, very foolish reaction.
@Ben – if that’s what your rants are like, don’t give us a paean! 🙂
Good to see you back N__
Thanks very much for this article. I wanted to dig deeper into your comments about Kemalism and Ataturk. So far, I have to admit, this has only amounted to a fairly superficial skimming of the Wikipedia pages for those topics. I’m aware that is not a very deep view, but with that caveat, so far I haven’t really been able to understand your points about Ataturk being the proto-fascist and Kemalism being very unpleasant (clearly it’s a form of nationalism with some unpleasant overtones, but your comments paint it as worse than that, I think).
If you happen to get the chance to elaborate on these points in a followup post or comment, it would be very helpful to those of us who are coming to rely on your blog for a fresh perspective!
Up pops Ruhi Yaman to validate the truism of “the worship of Ataturk”, and there’s no denying the truth of there being “a very unpleasant form of military dominated nationalism”.
Only a few weeks ago, it was the Remembrance Day for some of the many victims of Kemalism;
http://www.scribd.com/doc/142973061/19-May-The-Pontian-Greek-Genocide-Remembrance-Day-and-Mustafa-Kemal
And the Armenians also know all about the fascism of Kemalism;
http://www.armenian-genocide.org/kemal.html
Personal accounts from the protests:
http://artshift.ukycc.org/?p=3913
(from above)
the people who lived in the area began to leave out baskets of lemons to help soothe teargas. Old ladies lowered baskets of food from their windows by rope to support the people below – doing what they could to support those doing what they could not. Restaurants left bags of food outside their windows. The state’s violence was countered by the people’s kindness. Lovers led their gas-blinded lover through the smoke-filled streets to safety; strangers did the same.
Turkish flags with their floating moon and star sprang up everywhere, and the bridge that you cannot walk across, was filled with 40.000 people walking in the space between two continents. What was 50 people in tents became 5,000, became the more than a hundred thousand that surrounded the park yesterday until they so outnumbered the police that they were let back into park, and the shade of the trees that were still standing.
Today. In this small park, a great many conflicts are colliding. There is the tree that started this, and the fight for the rights of nature against the cold machinery of progress. There is the fight to protect the commons: to save one of the few public spaces that still exist from its transformation into a private space dedicated to the production of personal capital. There is the issue of democracy: that the people have the right to speak out, and the necessity to be heard by those they have empowered. This is history, after all, and people know that if they cannot speak their mind then it is not their story.
Technicolour 5 27pm
“…the fight for the rights of nature against the cold machinery of progress. There is the fight to protect the commons: to save one of the few public spaces that still exist from its transformation into a private space dedicated to the production of personal capital…”
Where on earth is’nt that a large element of the human stories being played out at this time?
Thanks.
The obtuse weltanschauung of Turkish nationalists, are the stuff of the legends. The almost Disney fashion historical revisionism so prevalent with any nationalist movement goes into hyper drive with the Turkish nationalists.
However Gene Sharpe and his pernicious doctrine are a continuously running thread holding the current unrest in Turkey together, and serves Erdogan right. He forgot the cardinal rule; when drinking soup with the devil use a very long spoon. Turkey is on the same list as the rest of the victim countries marked up for changes; in the reconstitution of the “new middle east”. Despite the copious material supporting this fact, Erdogan still went ahead and carried on supporting the all out assault on Syria.
[ “…the fight for the rights of nature against the cold machinery of progress. There is the fight to protect the commons: to save one of the few public spaces that still exist from its transformation into a private space dedicated to the production of personal capital…”
Where on earth is’nt that a large element of the human stories being played out at this time? ]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump#Scottish_golf_course_controversy
If we include the selling of school playing fields to developers the answer is very close to home. Maybe we should’ve taken a inspiration from the Turks and protested a bit louder.
Good to hear Boris Johnson is living up to his surname again.
Agree that a coup is not desirable but I’m not convinced the protestors are predominantly fascist. Large numbers are anarchists, socialists, communists and unionists. I’ve seen many ‘A’ (anarchist) signs. Where did Craig find evidence to support his claim that the protestors are mainly fascists? You should have evidence if you’re going to make this kind of claim.
That’s a super post, Craig. It’s very complicated. FedUp’s correct, I think (6:10pm, today). The recent ‘discovery’ by ‘Turkish security forces’ of Sarin in the possession of Jihadist paramilitaries based in Turkey and involved in the Syrian conflict (which accords with the UN’s own findings as enunciated by Carla Del Ponte) when these Turksih security forces are likely to have known exactly where these substances were being held, may well be a sign that wrt the AKP’s attmept to turn Turkey into an Islamist state (attacking the judiciary, jouranlsits and all manner of civil societal institutions) and thereby erode the power of the military, the Army is drawing a line in the sand. Another military coup is not the answer, I agree, Craig. I do fear that now, having facilitated (as FedUp says) “The Devil”, and with a government whose own Islamist authoritarian agenda now is becoming clearer by the day, Turkey itself may be the next target for the overt (as opposed to gradualist until recently favoured by bodies like the AKP, Muslim Brotherhood, etc.) Islamist/Jihadist juggernaut. And so, the Hard Right Islamists will be pitted against the Hard Right Nationalists, the people, squeezed and bled to death in between. Civil war in Turkey? I hope not.
Julian seems to have made up with (someone at) the NYT
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/02/opinion/sunday/the-banality-of-googles-dont-be-evil.html?&pagewanted=all
I wish you mentioned Reyhanli Bombs, censored media and government’s totalitarian and arrogant attributes, too. I appreciate your concern but unfortunately this article is missing very important points on Turkey’s current case. Sorry, but I couldn’t say this is a proper, unbiased examining.
A guy on twitter and Youtube claims there is a video sex tape in existence of Boris and Samantha Cameron. Please nobody provide a link if true. Watching it might make me quite unwell!
“Good to hear Boris Johnson is living up to his surname again.”
Well, actually,
“Boris’s great-great-grandmother, Margaret Johnson, changed the family surname forever. Had she not, the current Mayor of London would be Boris Kemal!”
The irony being that his Great-grandfather, Ali Kemal was also a victim of ““the worship of Ataturk”;
http://www.bbc.co.uk/whodoyouthinkyouare/new-stories/boris-johnson/how-we-did-it_1.shtml
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2334731/Speculation-rife-internet-involved-No-10-secret-love-affair-PM-holds-crisis-talks-tryst.html
“They are middle-aged figures…” Anon, 7:17pm, today.
Does this mean that they are pear-shaped, or apple-shaped? Ths distinction can be important in terms of long-term, population-wide cardiovacular risk. In brief, it is better to be a ‘pear’ than an ‘apple’. In briefs, though, who knows…
I, of course, am with the half-cut oranges (though I would hesitate to say that at a Celtic match).
There are people putting up webpages that seem to be hinting at something… Can’t quite tell what, though…
http://aangirfan.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/secret-love-affair.html
M.
Don’t worry, “You have been framed” does not show sex movies.
=================
In the other news:
Man admits threatening to kill Prince Harry
A homeless, hungry man solves his destitution problems; a roof over his head, and three square meals a day. However DM reprots it as:
==========
Back on topic;
War-torn Syria says Turkey unsafe for travel
In the wake of the recent episode where a former govt minister was wrongly identified/named by people on social media sites, leading to widespread litigation, I humbly would suggest people should be very careful indeed before they start speculating about/hinting at named individuals. The legal precedent has been set.
If there is civil war in Turkey, it will destabilise the rest of Europe (both western and eastern Europe), big-time. It would be an utter disaster. There have been serious political crises and coups in Turkey before, of course. But the potential for wider destabilisation as a consequence of political/military turoil there is far greater now than it was during the Cold War. Furthermore, in the Jihadists, one has a large and disparate, highly mobile, pro-active and driven (yes, they’d do well in any corporate appraisal!) flexible and efficient military entity which has absolutely no compunctions of any sort and which aims primarily, instrumentally to create maximum chaos and destruction in target states/societies.
“I’m not convinced the protestors are predominantly fascist. Large numbers are anarchists, socialists, communists and unionists. I’ve seen many ‘A’ (anarchist) signs. Where did Craig find evidence to support his claim that the protestors are mainly fascists?”
It’s not the message I’m getting either, and although everyone thinks everyone is being manipulated by someone else, and they possibly are, Kempe and Kibo are right, and there’s a long long history of fighting for exactly this from the grass-roots communities themselves. Because, you know, it’s a clear issue.
I have absolutely no interest in bonking stories and please stop posting about them. This is not a tabloid newspaper.
Technicolour, I fear you are suffering from the comforting self-delusion of the left. You may note we have had a few Turkish nationalists turn up on this thread. Not a lot of Turkish socialists here, though. Or anywhere, for that matter.
There are Turkish socialists, liberals, etc., Craig. there have been lots of demos all round the UK over the weekend. Of course, they will be taken advantage of. Nonetheless, theirs is a valid protest and it needs to happen. The AKP needs reigned-in by the people. Of course, as you suggest, the people may well not gain from it and the military may. But what would you have them do instead? Just accept the totalitarian bunkum sharia that the Muslim Brotherhood franchise known as ‘AKP’ is imposing? Accept the erosion of an independent judiciary? And yes, accept the demolition of the secular state?
I’m not on ‘the left’, I’m on the ‘facts’ (which may well amount to the same thing) and I’m passing on reporting from the people on the ground. I thought your overall analysis was fascinating, and at the same time have enough experience of local protests to know that the genesis and support can be genuine – from Climate Camp to Occupy – and not necessarily serving anyone, although this is not to say that factions won’t try and take advantage of it. I don;t know if you read this extract from the first piece I linked to?
“While many protesters are without a doubt staunch secularists who are motivated by opposition to the AKP’s increasing social conservatism, there is no indication that this is what ultimately brought thousands of people out into the streets. In fact, when CHP leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, came to Gezi Park to speak, protesters sang over him, preventing him from being heard. It is clear that the movement thus far is about a conflict in visions for urban space between ruling elites and the people who actually live, work, and play in the city”
So there’s a balance here.
The last 60 years have been so peaceful. NOT. I watched some of the footage from 1953 this afternoon. There were tens of thousands of men and women in the military march preceding the royal coach returning from Westminster Abbey. The commentator, when describing which contingent was which, said quite often ‘they have recently returned from the Middle East’ presumably meaning a presence in the aftermath of the strangely worded ‘British–Zionist conflict of Palestine (1945–1948)’
20th century
[..]
Cold War (1946–1990)
Malayan Emergency (1948–1960)
Korean War (1950–1953)
Mau Mau Uprising (1952–1960)
Cyprus Emergency (1955–1959)
Suez Crisis (1956)
Brunei Revolt (1962)
Dhofar Rebellion (1962–1975)
Indonesia-Malaysia confrontation (1962–1966)
Aden Emergency (1963–1967)
Northern Ireland Troubles (1969-mid 1990s)
Cod War Confrontation (1975–1976)
Iranian Embassy Siege (1980)
Falklands War (1982)
Gulf War (1990–1991)
Bosnian War (1992–1996)
Operation Desert Fox (1998)
Kosovo War (1999)
21st century
Sierra Leone Civil War (2000)
War on Terror (2001–Present)
War in Afghanistan (2001–Present)
Iraq War and Iraqi insurgency (2003–2009)
Libyan Civil War (2011)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_history_of_the_United_Kingdom#20th_century
O lord God arise,
Scatter our enemies,
And make them fall!
Confound their knavish tricks,
Confuse their politics,
On you our hopes we fix,
God save the Queen!
Quite so.
Suhayl; My best friends elder sibling is gay and settled in Turkey a few years ago, buying a condo. Is there a significant gay presence in the country? I’ve wondered about the wisdom of his choice.
what on earth has that got to do with Turkey? will you please stop derailing threads.
(above at ‘June’, but not sure what the ‘gay presence’ has to do with anything either)