The Limits of Erdoğanology

7 July 2013, Today's Zaman


Until the Gezi Park protests broke out, I didn't know there were this many Turkey experts in the world. Thousands of articles were published.

The vast majority of them were pretty much the same, used the same vocabulary, reached almost identical conclusions and had similar punch lines using different anecdotes.

Most articles had two major focal points: Gezi Park and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. As the protests spread across the country and showed tremendously complex and varied patterns even in different parts of İstanbul, all of the protests were reduced to clear and tidy narratives and observations inferred from the limited scope of Gezi Park, if not personal experience with tear gas.  

Much has been said about the protests and their different interpretations, although we still do not have a nationwide study and analysis of all the different types and phases of the protests. Yet very little reflection has been done on how quickly the most talked about issue was Erdoğan, both at home and abroad, and whether this helped or blurred our perception of what was happening.


This problematic trend began in Turkey. Shortly after the early morning raid on Gezi Park and the first wave of protests against police brutality, chaotic public anger focused exclusively on Prime Minister Erdoğan. Protesters and their supporters came to despise his unshakable stand and harsh words against them. Many said this led them to keep protesting. He represented all that they wanted to change in Turkey.

Meanwhile, not a small portion of the population in Turkey found comfort in his strong stand. For his constituency, Erdoğan's strong stand met them where their fears were. For them, the protesters represented the old system, and if Erdoğan was toppled, nothing would stop the old rulers of the land from once again discriminating against them and excluding them.

Amid chants asking for Erdoğan to resign and chants by pro-Erdoğan groups saying, “We will not let you lynch him,” the political figure of Erdoğan became the symbolic sacrifice that was both demanded and denied; both sides were doing it for the “sake of Turkey.”

Thus, we were back to the culture wars that previously made Mustafa Kemal Atatürk the symbolic battleground for the competition for control and monopoly of the public sphere in the 2002-2008 period. You either loved Atatürk until tears fell every time you saw a handsome picture, or you despised him to such a level that you saw him as the cause of everything that had gone wrong since 1923. Atatürk was simply a cover for deeper problems and tensions in the country.

What Erdoğan said, what Erdoğan didn't say, how he said it or how he did not say it became the main focus of reports, debates and hysteria on social media. However, what he said or didn't say was ultimately irrelevant. Erdoğan did not create the deep fault lines that were once again exposed. Neither a strong state nor a dominant cohort of the public that instinctively wants to control all aspects of life and wider society, nor police brutality and weak rule of law, nor the problematic state of the media, was new to Turkey.

Erdoğan, as a politician, dwells on the social and political horizon of the country, and within that sphere played a rather precarious and problematic political game, seeking to gather support by appealing to pre-existing fears, worries and sensitivities. Even if he were to resign tomorrow, the same issues and the same horizon remains fixed in Turkey and will continue to create same problems in the near future.

If domestic transference to Erdoğan was caused by domestic culture wars, it can be argued that we have witnessed another type of transference to Erdoğan internationally that echoed the silent codes of a “clash of civilizations” and “Islamists versus the free world” narratives. A mythical vision of Erdoğan, long held but now seemingly fulfilled emerged: Erdoğan, the omnipotent and omnipresent, in full control and single-handedly leading, ruling and shaping Turkey, taking it toward a much denied but now apparently clear and certain dark end.

In this picture, there was no place for Turks, or Turkey, for that matter. Turkey's complex history and multiple realities, along with its intricate state and social structures, all evaporated. All factors that shape, limit, enable and push Turkish domestic and foreign policies beyond the wishes of a single individual, let alone a government, were omitted in grand, sweeping conclusions.

You might not see it in what you read, but Erdoğan is a product of Turkey and performs and reacts to events within the limited space granted by that reality. Erdoğan is not a Jedi knight. He is a mortal. His persuasion, his powers, his acts are limited. He was elected by the people. He remains in power, not because of cunning manipulation of a zombie nation but because of his political skill and public support for him, just like any other elected leader in the world.

If he does not perform according to the voters' interests, then he will not remain there. His executive powers are not that of a dictator or a sultan. He should be criticized and held accountable, just like any other leader, within a clear framework of human rights law, but not in abstract mythical caricatures that reach cosmic levels.

Excessive focus on Erdoğan only blinds us to much deeper conversations we need to have about Turkey. Such a focus is only good for shallow conclusions about a complex country. It has no analytical value in making sense of where Turkey is, where Turkish politics stand, or where they will go next.


Turkey: The Great Media Puzzle

The chronic troubles of Turkish media became visible once more during the initial days of Gezi protests when mainstream television channels chose not to broadcast the developments.

This led to an avalanche of opinion editorials, full of metaphors and personal anecdotes, declaring that there is no freedom of expression and media in Turkey.

Such blanket conclusions seemed to be supported by recent global rankings produced by various groups on freedom of press, in most of which Turkey scored worse than Jordan, Russia, Afghanistan, Zimbabwe, Iraq, and Algeria. The catchy phrase “Turkey jails more journalists than Iran, China, Eritrea and Syria” became a common feature.

Combined with the never ending global panic attacks on 'Islamism' in Turkey, a picture of Turkey became dominant in the international media: under an Islamist government that is finally showing its true colors, Turkey has become worse than ever before.

It has been difficult to agree with such problematic and often political conclusions. While on the one hand the facts of what happened in Turkey last few weeks are clear to see, when put in their context it is also clear that both the Turkish democracy and freedom of media are in a much better place than where they were in 1980s, 1990s and even early 2000s.

Sadly, before we had 'Islamists' in power and Turkey was ruled by 'modern secular Turks', Turkey produced more than 900,000 internally displaced persons between 1980s and 1990s, according to a report by Hacettepe University released in 2007. These were mostly Kurds fleeing from brutal state campaigns to evacuate thousands of villages in Eastern Turkey. They have faced gross human rights abuses with no mention in the Turkish press.

Similarly, discrimination conservative Muslims suffered at the hands of aggressive state intervention in their lifestyles in 1990s and early 2000s never really hit the mainstream media. Thousands of young girls were denied education or forced to remove their headscarves.

In fact, as someone who grew up in Izmir, citadel of 'secular Turks', my entire life was sheltered from knowing what was happening in Eastern Turkey or to conservative Muslims, or why and how Armenians and Greeks disappeared from the city of my childhood.

Just 5 years ago, we could still not mention '1915' in our writings and conversations without a fear of state and widespread public reaction. Now, one can see the word 'genocide' used in articles and book titles.

Until very recently, Turkey saw extrajudicial murders of journalists. Military officials have regularly called journalists into 'briefings', passing out written statements and threatening and intimidating anyone who did not abide by army's redlines.

Between 2002-2008, Turkish media was the battleground for a well orchestrated 'psychological warfare' to topple the AKP government, with daily dose of false and sensational fear mongering. Not a small number of voices who are still in media today were willing and active voices for truly undemocratic calls and attempts then.

Today, even though it is clear that the Turkish government and state wish to influence and coerce press reports and some media outlets willingly or often unwillingly oblige, Turkish media is still full of extremely critical reports on the government.

Any group that is said to be too powerful to criticise, such as the Hizmet movement, are pretty much criticised everyday in all forms of media. In fact, even though television channels did not initially air Gezi protests live, print media was seeing harsh debates and a full range of views on what was happening.

Yet, stating the facts that Turkey has come a long way in the last decade, and that it actually is by and large free, does not mean that where the media is today is acceptable. Turkish media is suffering from a mixture of old and new problems that urgently need to be addressed.

First of these is the strong state tradition. Turkey is a modern nation state, with all the troubles that come with that, including an all powerful state that sees itself as the guardian of the nation, even if and when the nation does not want to be guarded.

Thanks to the privatization policies of Turgut Ozal, Turkey started seeing a break away from the ban on private broadcasting in 1990. Yet, the strong state tradition in Turkey showed itself again with the creation of the Radio and Television Supreme Council (RTUK) in 1994, which sought to ensure that the newly freed media was kept under control through regulations, fines and pressure.

In 2011, AKP government repealed the restrictive RTUK law and adopted a new broadcasting law in line with the EU accession criteria. However, from 2011 and onwards, Turkey also saw AKP government lapsing back to strong state policies.

With historic vote rates, dazzling economic and diplomatic expansion, weakening presence of the military and old elite in politics and state, the loss of EU’s carrot-stick role and utter failures of Turkish opposition parties, AKP found itself as the unchallenged power in the land. This meant that the Prime Minister and the party could pursue any policy and project they want.

Since then, media outlets have found themselves increasingly under pressure to abide within sensitivities of the government. RTUK, has a different political and social outlook and list of ‘red lines’ now compared to restrictive 'secular days', but it is still the good old state stick to keep rowdy media in line.

In issues of national security and potentially risky incidents, the state handling of the fallout continues to be restrictive. The courts have recently issued injunctions to stop broadcasters and media from reporting developments. The most recent two examples related to an incident in which Turkish jets bombed a group of young Kurdish smugglers near Uludere on Turkey-Iraq border and the car bomb attack in Reyhanli, that killed more than 50 people.

However, Turkish media is still loosely divided between fiercely anti or fiercely pro government views and is unhealthily polarised like the rest of Turkish society. This, and impossibility of any government fully controlling media in the age of internet, limit the historic tendencies of strong state policies to filter information, which AKP seems happy to utilise.

The second reason behind the troubles of media in Turkey today is the problematic laws relating to terrorism and procedural weaknesses of Turkish courts. While the exact current number of journalists in jail is not clear, a recent report by Turkish opposition party CHP, “Detained Journalists Report; Turkey, World's Largest Jail of Journalists,” claimed that there are currently 71 journalists in prison.

According to the report, two thirds are arrested under accusations of being members of outlawed Kurdish organizations, and the rest, being members of terror organizations, such as DHKP-C, or members of the organization 'Ergenekon', which allegedly was behind the coup attempts to topple the government.

The extraordinary numbers of arrests last 4 years signal to a larger problem, rather than a mere clampdown on media. Whether in the issue of Kurdish organizations, that saw arrests of more than 3,000 people and not just journalists working for certain Kurdish outlets, or the on-going court cases against coup plotters, we see major problems in terror laws that criminalize expression of non-violent opinions and the wholesale and prolonged detention of suspects throughout the legal procedures.

Turkish journalists also regularly face legal troubles in reporting on-going court cases. Loosely written laws to 'protect' the judiciary from 'influence' in reaching a decision results in accusations brought against journalists reporting courtroom dramas.

These reflect some harsh truths about the state of the rule of law in Turkey. While recent reform packages brought by the government addressed some of these issues and large numbers are now being released from prisons, Turkey desperately needs a thorough judicial reform and a complete revision of terror laws.

The third reason behind the state of media is the dark side of privatisation. While television channels can be a good revenue generating investment, print media is not. The main return of newspapers is the power, influence and chances it grants owners in their other business and personal interests.

A recent report on media freedom, “Caught in the Wheels of Power”, released by leading research organization TESEV in Istanbul in 2012, highlighted the gap in Turkey's economic competition regulations on media ownership.

One key recommendation on this is to address the issue of owners of media companies bidding for public tenders and receiving large contracts from the state, which automatically creates an unhealthy relationship with the state.

The immense economic interests of media bosses put their staff into a precarious position and fear of losing their jobs. Thus, regulations and bodies that can protect journalists from such pressure must be strengthened at once.

Fourthly, the media sector itself has issues to address. Turkish press products are dominated by unhealthy numbers of columns but not investigative journalism. Payments received by these columnists in leading papers can reach shocking levels, while reporters are paid very low wages.

It is not uncommon to see columnists and media members settling personal scores with personal accusations and sleazy attacks on opponents. Looked from international standards, at times, what passes as journalism, reporting and commentary in Turkey seems amateurish and feeble, with notable exceptions trying to do their best.

Current polarization of media as part of the overall conditions in the country means that both pro or anti government media amplify or minimize news and developments according to their own stands.

Lastly, a substantial reason behind the sad state of media in Turkey is the Turkish public herself. Our weak democratic culture and worryingly low expectations from media outlets fuel media malfunctioning.

For example, on any given day, one can see more than a dozen erotic and half naked pictures on the home page of the website of one of Turkey's leading newspapers Milliyet, which scatters news in between spaces left from those pictures.

Given that the level of public discussion, and the parameters of the respectful exchange of views and analytical thinking are rather low in Turkey, most circulated opinion editorials in social media and read online tend to be poor quality quick attacks and polemics against opponents.

These point to a difficult conclusion on the state of media in Turkey. As Turkey is changing and it is becoming difficult for the state to simply control media and flow of information, and as the Turkish public is becoming more aware and demanding of their rights, the Turkish media is still suffering from a wide range of external and internal failures.

Yet, Turkey is not an authoritarian state and does not have the authoritarian control over media that we see in a wide range of countries that score 'better' than Turkey on recent media freedom charts due to variables and data used.

The never before seen widespread condemnation of mainstream media outlets by the Turkish public points not so much to a deteriorating democracy in Turkey, but when put in its context quite the opposite: Turkey is advancing and she does not want to lapse back to where things once were.

What is clear is that Turkey desperately needs a robust and fully free media if it wants to continue its historic leaps forward. The responsibility for this lies with the government to undertake structural reforms and face some bitter truths about its attempts to coerce media.

But, the responsibility also lies with the media outlets themselves to be self critical, and ultimately with the Turkish public to demand more and not settle for mediocre columnists and sensationalism driven products in the market.

Time to worry: Turkey is becoming USA!

Published on Huffington Post, 6 June




















                                                                                                                                                           
Over the last ten years, we have seen countless articles and discussions, ranging from academic all the way to ridiculous, comparing Turkey to a wide range of countries.

On the top of the list comes Iran. Turkey has been continually likened to Iran, in the sense that soon the conservative Muslim party would take over and declare a theocracy. Some saw, more of a slow approach and a sinister Islamization project.

Then came the post-religious perspectives and argued that Turkey is now becoming a Russia with her own Putin, business and media relations and harsh clamp down on free speech. We are still waiting for hunting and bear-fighting pictures of PM Erdogan.

There is one country Turkey has never been likened to, and yet, the more closely I follow the developments in Turkey, the more I see how valid it is to point out: Turkey is becoming like the USA after 10 years of AK Party rule.

What makes me to come up with such a ridiculous observation?

In Turkey, just like in the US, we now have two opposing cultural and political poles. A person is either forever a Republican or a Democrat. You have no option but to remain so even tough secretly you might agree with some policies of the other.
In Turkey, just like in the US, these two political allegiances are not simply matters of policy but reflect a complex web of cultural preferences, views, beliefs and geographical location. Categorical loathing between the two are a given.

In Turkey, just like in the US, cultural and religious sensitivities of the two poles show themselves in symbolic causes that reflect their preferences. What is gun control debate in US, is what alcohol debate in Turkey is.

In both countries, religion is dominant, but not desires for a theocracy, but public morality and certain 'red-lines' that needs to be there. Yet what exactly they are is a contention between the two poles. In both countries, underlying socio-psychological patterns make even the most mundane discussions on healthcare, city planning and fiscal policy a cosmic battle for the soul of the nation, when it really is not.

In both countries, wearing a flag-pin, or adoring your house or Facebook with the flags is the measurement of how much you love your country and lack of it is a clear sign of lack of patriotism. In both countries, only one of the two worlds see themselves as reflecting the true American spirit or Turkishness. In actual terms, for the outsiders they both look American and Turkish enough.

Both countries believe that every nation on earth looks up to them with envy and love and yet at the same time everybody is working to undermine it. Both countries suffer from a cognitive dissonance between their national 'myths' of founding fathers and values and facts of their history and current status.

Most importantly, in both countries their governments evoke strong feelings. While Obama is the best thing since sliced bread for some, finally bringing true American values, for others he is a closet Muslim and socialist destroying American spirit. That is identical to how Turks are divided over Prime Minister Erdogan.

If you have been troubled by my straw man representation of both countries and shallow comparisons, you are right. USA is not Turkey, Turkey is not USA. But you should have felt the same way for thousands of articles that told you Turkey is an Iran, Russia, Egypt if not Gaza. The bottom line is this; let Turkey be Turkey and start using its actual name, Turkiye.

Protests in Turkey are tremendous democratic advance

Published by Public Service Europe, 5 June 






















Often, it is fair to say that most of what we read on Turkey in the international media tells us more about those who write it than guide us towards a healthy analysis of developments in the country. The same goes for vast majority of the commentary on the protests we saw in Istanbul and across the country over the last week.

While protests in each of the cities have a different context and local factors, without a doubt initial protests on and around Gezi Park have triggered a larger social eruption. Therefore, understanding the Gezi Park protests would be important as a reflection on trends that unite these protests.

So far, the most credible data that emerged on protestors in Istanbul's Taksim Square has been a poll among 3,000 protestors in the Taksim area by Bilgi University. The findings signal important insights.

Bilgi's survey has found that 39 per cent of protestors are 19 to 25 years old and 24 per cent are 26 to 30 years old. Some 53 per cent have never joined a protest before, while 70 per cent do not feel close to any opposition party. Only 7 per cent say they joined the protests due to mobilisation by a political group. As to the reasons for the protest - some 92 per cent blame the prime minister's attitude, 91 per cent say police brutality, 84 per cent the media's silence on the events, and 56 per cent say the cutting of the trees.
 In addition, 81 per cent identify themselves as a 'freedom promoter', 64 per cent as 'secular' and 54 per cent as 'apolitical'. We can see that 92 per cent of protestors do not identify themselves as AKP voters and 75 per cent said they do not identify themselves as conservative. As for their future demands, 96 per cent want an end to police brutality while 96 per cent call for respect for freedoms. Meanwhile, 37 per cent want a new party to represent them. Interestingly, only 6 per cent want military intervention - and 79 per cent are against any military involvement.

An initial analysis of the statistics provides the following insights. The way the government handled an initial protest on city planning has triggered a larger burst of feelings of anger and frustration. The complete failure of Turkish opposition parties to be a voice for a sizeable portion of the population led them to protest – as it was the only way to assert their voice in politics. Amid all of the seeming faulty reporting on the 'Turkish Spring', the utter absence of the military from protests against the government party and lack of desire from the public to see them involved signals a tremendous democratic advancement in Turkey.

Similarly, the fact that neither European Union nor United States or International Monetary Fund pressure but public demand only led the government to back down from plans over the area - and apologise for police brutality - reflects a key point. Now the main pressure before any government is an empowered, focused and rights-demanding public - as it should be in any healthy democracy.