Turkish Armed Forces and Postmodern War-Management

Published in Turkish Daily News, 17 January 2008

The Turkish and international media gave wide coverage to recent Turkish excursions into and bombings of outlawed PKK targets in northern Iraq.

Most of the commentaries focused on the pros and cons of military campaigns on the fragile state of Iraq, the never-ending ‘final moves' to end PKK terror in Turkey and the rekindling of Turkish-American relations. These are in fact legitimate questions, but there is more that needs to be analyzed.

A key area that has escaped from the critical (and often clichéd) eyes of mainstream commentators in Turkey is why these campaigns have been communicated to Turkish society in the way that they have been. In this article, I want to draw attention not to the military attacks and their results or implications, but to how the Turkish Armed forces have employed and orchestrated cutting-edge public relations tactics.

Old school war-management:

In the good old days, managing societies that were engaged in wars was a lot easier. Since the primary information source was the armed forces themselves, the governments easily constructed stories of heroism, success and sacrifices performed for ‘higher ideals.' The pointless destruction, war crimes and failures could easily be left out in the dark. Society was just a spectator enjoying the unified narrative presented in movie-like news from the front lines. What mattered was that ‘we' were winning and ‘we' were ‘heroes' fighting for a ‘just' cause.

The only alternative source of information was the veterans, who had to choose to play either the ‘hero' with the hope that their sacrifices were in fact worth something, or the reclusive survivor who never spoke about war. And when those returnees refused to choose between these two sanctioned roles and dared to speak against their government's policies and the horrors of war, they were declared mentally or morally impaired and pushed out to the margins.

Thus, it was quite easy to manage one's society in the old days. All you needed to do was report as many successes and heroic stories as possible. However, with the development of independent media and easy access to the production and dissemination of photographs and videos from the front lines, the job of the governments and top generals became more difficult.

The Vietnam War was not more destructive or ‘evil' than any other war. In fact, the 20th century had seen bigger and more fatal wars. Yet, for the first time we were able to see the reality of war right in our living rooms, often contradicting the official euphemisms and stories presented to us. This meant that it was becoming a lot more difficult to lead us into collective hypnosis.

A single image of a young girl, Kim Phuc, screaming with pain from her burns and running away naked from a napalm bombing with a bunch of kids, became a turning point for war opposition. It muted all stories of military success and the idea that the war was being fought for noble causes. Though this signaled the end of traditional war-management, it only resulted in more sophisticated strategies. The new strategy, which was first applied during the Desert Storm campaign, uses the same tool that ended the old strategies.

New generation war-management:

If independent media taught us to mistrust the official narratives and cheap heroisms, it also led us to a fixation on the image and visual stimulation. If the previous problem was lack of information and its boring officialdom, our new problem is information overload and its erotic powers.

In order to compete with other producers for our decreasing attention spans, TV reporting has reduced the content of the information to minimal while maximizing its visual and musical effects. As the minimum amount of information is added on to amazing views of fighter jets, attractive uniforms and ‘cool' war toys, the war becomes a ‘thrill.' The shock-and-awe tactics create a sense of ‘awe' of human technology and its precision. The individual becomes fixed on sexy images at the expense of reality.

The news of bombing is presented with black and white videos supplied by the Air Force, which shows war more like an unreal video game. The more the dose of visual stimulation is increased, the more societies fall into rapture and intellectual numbness. Since we are more focused on the airplane, we have no perception of where the bombs fall, or moreover, of the deaths of the human beings underneath them. The U.S. has employed this style of perception management in its controversial campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan with great success.

It appears that the Turkish Armed Forces have learned more from the U.S. than intelligence and F-16 production. All throughout the north Iraq campaigns, top generals and government officials spoke endlessly about our newly acquired spy, night flight and bombing technologies. Newspapers presented the most attractive military pictures along with details of each bomb dropped and how our pilots are trained. TV channels showed videos of the bombings and real-life satellite images of the camps.

It has indeed been a successful example of war-management. Turkish society has faced minimum ethical dilemmas and found much pride and stimulation in our brand new military toys.

The AK Party, the failure of Islamism and traditional Turkish politics

Published on Nthposition, 8 January 2008

The Armed forces and the hopeful parties who sought to capitalize on their chance for power portrayed the last elections in Turkey as a choice between a secular state and a theocracy. The Western media picked up this rhetoric, and the elections were turned into an archetypal struggle between Islamism and democracy as the Turkish nation was said to be deciding on her 'soul'.

There were signals all along that the things were not what they seem to be. A significant portion of liberals, non-Muslims and ethnic minorities in Turkey voted for the AK Party, which was presented as a taqiya movement with mischievous plans to implement an Islamic state. These groups would face the harshest treatment if Turkey turned out to be ruled under Shari'a law; yet, they chose to take the 'risk' because the AK Party has been one of the governments most committed to addressing issues of human rights and religious freedom in the country.

Many observers abroad feared that with the reselection of the AK Party, Turkey would severe her ties with the West and turn Eastward, which would have significant implications on international security and economic relations. Yet foreign investors and most of the Europeans who hope for Turkish integration into the EU openly supported the AK Party because it has been the most proactive and serious government Turkey has ever had on EU negotiations as well as legislative changes, which led to an increase in foreign investment.

Learned commentators who sought to trace an agenda from the AK Party's long-abandoned roots in the Islamist Refah Party (Welfare Party) read the AK Party's increasing appeal in Turkey as a return or strengthening of the Islamist goals, which were brought to a halt by a soft intervention of the Armed forces on 28 February 1997. Yet Refah Party's successor, the Saadet Party (Felicity Party), and the nationalist-cum-Islamist BB Party (Great Union Party) openly condemned the AK Party as an un-Islamic party which had sold out to the West. Meanwhile, books claiming that Abdullah Gul and Tayyip Erdogan were Jews and Zionists topped the bestseller list.

Similarly, as doomsday scenarios of incompatibility of Islam and Secular Democracy found flesh in mass demonstrations, most of the interested onlookers missed the covered women amidst the 'secular' crowds. A couple of Turkish journalists picked on a middle-aged woman in a headscarf, who had 'naively' responded to the question of whether Turkey would become an Islamic state by saying: "Turkey will remain secular, Inshallah."

Ironically, it was the naivety of the journalists who did not realize that a clash between Islam and a secular state existed only as a prescriptive discourse, rather than as a descriptive reality. Turkish Islam has evolved to such a level that a Muslim could seek the help of Allah to sustain a secular state.

Now, the elections are over: we have a reaffirmed government and a promising new president. Turkey is on the same path as she was a year ago. However, the question of what was really happening in Turkey still needs to be asked. Once again, the developments in Turkey signal new formations of Islam and its relationship to politics.

The AK Party is a newcomer to the Turkish political arena. It won a majority vote in its first ever election on November 2002. Its conservative stand, which reflected traditional Turkey, and its commitment to pursuing full EU membership and economic reform struck a chord with a significant portion of the country. The brand-new face of its leaders presented a way out of the never-ending cycles of Turkish political tail chasings between the 'left' and the 'right'. Its young leadership presented a worldview driven by realpolitik in line with the demands of a global world and the need for modernization, unlike the traditional Islamist appeals for a return to a Golden Age and the establishment of the global rule of Islam in solidarity with the Muslim world.

Many people gave the AK Party the benefit of the doubt for want of any other viable option and as a reaction to the then ruling elite. The exception to the disappearances of the older folk is Deniz Baykal, who remains the ineffective and not-so-loved leader of the opposition party that no longer has a clear political stand. After five years in office, however, the AK Party's performance has matched initial expectations, and it achieved one of the highest elections results ever in the Turkish history.

There are no legitimate signs that Turkey has turned out to be more Islamic under this administration. The legendary misuse of Article 301 - with its courtroom dramas and its fatal attacks on liberal intellectuals and non-Muslims - has been undertaken by the followers of an increasingly dangerous Turkish rightwing nationalism... which is also anti-AK Party.

This may come as a surprise to those who have been shown a Turkey - either by certain groups in Turkey or by clumsy Western journalists - that is deciding between the East and West; Islam and democracy; international openness and national isolation. None of these frameworks are helpful in trying to understand contemporary Turkey. The AK Party represents a new paradigm both in Turkey and for the rest of the world. It can be understood only on its own terms as a unique product of the failure of Islamism, which chased after the utopias of caliphate and umma, and the traditional political structures of Turkey that existed in a bittersweet love triangle of left, right and the Armed Forces.

How I became a 'so-called' Turk?

Published in Turkish Daily News, 3 January 2008
Re-Published in French by Yevrobatsi as Comment je suis devenu un «soi-disant» Turc

Re-Published in Greek by Phileleftheros as Πως μετεξελίχθηκα σε "λεγόμενο" Τούρκο


In his challenging book “Identity and Violence” Nobel laureate Amartya Sen argues that our identities are constructed not only through our own efforts but also by the enforcement of our setting. For example, an Irish man may consider himself ‘white' and can have strong feelings against people with darker skin colors. However, it is only recently that the English have considered the Irish ‘white.' The Irish have been seen in lesser terms than the ‘actual whites.'

The exclusion of the Irish from the noble ‘white' community obviously has nothing to do with color, as one doesn't really get whiter than an Irishman. Whiteness is a social construct and the ‘real whites' are considered so because of their privileged place within the community of ‘whites'.

Recently, I have learned the hard way that ‘Turkishness' too has its own share of social enforcement and exclusion. I have always seen myself as a Turk. Turkish is my mother tongue. I was born and have spent most of my life in Turkey. I am a Turkish citizen. I genuinely love my country and I am committed to its future. All the members of my family are ethnic Turks, with the exception of one grandma who is Kurdish and my great grandmother who was a Greek convert to Islam. All these years I assumed that these were what made one ‘Turkish.'

Yet, my ‘Turkishness' has been challenged. This first happened when I turned 18 and, out of my disillusionment with Islam, I decided to follow the Christian faith. Though none of my family members are devout Muslims, I spent the following 11 years trying to explain that I love my country, do not work for the CIA and have no part in plans to reinstate the Byzantine Empire. My apologetics have not been too successful as since then I regularly hear the rhetorical question; “What kind of a Turk are you?”

As my ‘Turkishness' began to be questioned by my community, I too started losing my attachment to it. I studied in East Asia for three years and then continued my studies in the UK for three more years. Having studied five different languages (and messing them all up) and traveled to more than 20 countries for research or school reasons, I must admit that I love Japanese food and Shusaku Endo more than I love lahmacun (Turkish pizza) and Murathan Mungan.

When fate and academic interest in collective memory, ethnic conflict and transitional justice put me right in the middle of Turkish-Armenian relations, my Turkishness entered a new stage.

A clumsy newspaper called Avrupa Gazetesi – Turkish but printed and distributed in Europe – published a puzzling piece about a conference in which Dr Fatma Gocek and yours truly were going to speak to lobby for the Armenian cause. I only smiled, since I not only did not know Dr Gocek, nor have ever been invited to such an event, I was not even in the UK during that time.

The correction, which Avrupa Gazetesi published, was too late to stop the ripples. Soon, a host of nationalistic websites and e-groups elaborated further with titles such as “A new addition to the list of Traitors” and I was declared to be a ‘missionary', ‘Armenian lobbyist', but most significantly a “so-called Turk”. Thanks to these nationalist groups, I learned that there are two kinds of Turks: Turks-in-essence (özde Türkler) and so-called-Turks (sözde Türkler).

Some advice!

There is a moral to my identity career. First one is practical: if you don't want to lose your ‘Turkishness' please don't follow my footsteps, it would only lead you to anomie and significant loss of social capital.

The second one is theoretical. It appears that ‘Turkishness' is defined by religious affiliation plus historical and political opinion. Though most of these nationalist groups will give wild reactions when being a Turk is reduced to being a Muslim and Islam is seen as what makes us Turks, nevertheless adherence to the official and dominant views seem to be the criteria for judging to what degree someone is a Turk.

Apparently, citizenship, place of birth, mother tongue and personal feelings of the individual towards his or her country means nothing. One's ‘Turkishness' is validated and enforced by a quasi-official criterion and its willing executors, who have the market monopoly.

If this is so, then ‘Turkishness' is an ideology which one assumes through alignment of personal opinion. As ideologies inescapably shift and modify themselves, those who are privileged to be Turks-in-essence have to continually keep up with subtle changes so as not to be kicked off the list. Thus, it is quite tiring to remain a Turk and to maintain the boundaries of ‘Turkishness'. You never know when the next de-selection will be and who will be joined to the ranks of the outcasts.