A Year in the Near East

Not yet, but the last several days in Turkey have been interesting. The governing AK Party have nominated Foreign Afairs Minister Abdullah Gül to be Turkey’s next president, and the first round of elections occurred yesterday. The other major parties – CHP, ANAVATAN, DYP – all boycotted the election, so there was not the two-thirds majority necessary for Gül to win on the first round. He needs only a simple majority – 276 votes – in the third round to be elected, which is possible because AKP has enough seats.

CHP has insisted, even before Gül was nominated, it will create a constitutional crisis over the matter by questioning the number of MPs necessary for a vote to occur. If the Constitutional Court upholds their claim, it will force an early parliamentary election.

The military, last night, issued a stern warning, stating that:

The Turkish armed forces are against those debates [questioning secularism]… and will display its position and attitudes when it becomes necessary. No one should doubt that.

The military’s warning might aimed at pressuring the Constitutional Court to annul the election results. The EU, today, warned the Turkish armed forces to stay out of democratic politics. The EU Enlargement Commissioner, Olli Rehn, stated that:

It is important that the military leaves the remit of democracy to the democratically elected government and this is a test case if the Turkish armed forces respect democratic secularism and the democratic arrangement of civil-military relations.

To be honest, one gets the impression that it is a test the armed forces are perfectly comfortable failing. Amidst a growing wave of ultranationalism are many military leaders who care more for upholding their precious secularism than the implications of their actions.

Personally, I cannot believe Turkey’s EU accession negotiations are still on track. Ironically, after this debacle, it may be only Gül’s foreign policy skills and contacts that can repair Turkey’s ailing international image.

It is unfortunate that I can’t report more happy events about puppies and kittens and rainbows in Turkey, but such heartwarming stories are in short supply it seems.

The story of the religiously-motivated murder of three Christians in a publishing house in Malatya last Wednesday – I’m not even going to touch that. That story can be found here.

The center of this story is Nokta, the magazine that last month published a story revealing a confidential military plan for blacklisting journalists, followed by a story with excerpts of the diary of a former admiral detailing two separate coup plans to overthrow the governing Justice and Development Party (AKP) in 2004.

After uncovering the alleged coup plans, police raided Nokta’s Istanbul office in a three-day operation last week, and it has been reported that the magazine may be closing under political pressure. As Today’s Zaman reports:

Instead of looking into the alleged coup’s plotters, all retired generals, a prosecutor had chosen to investigate the newsweekly on charges of provoking the people against “military conscription service.”

Currently, the only investigation into the case is based on a complaint launched by the very admiral in question, Adm. Örnek, on charges of “inciting the community to make light of military recruitment”. (Sidenote: I do not mean to offend sensitivities of any Turkish readers, but are you kidding me? That’s a law?)

Commenting on this, Turkish Daily News notes that something is “certainly twisted about the judicial process regarding the Nokta story”. There is also something disconcerting with the silence from the military on this issue. To the best of my knowledge, no one has yet denied the authenticity of the diaries, or the existence of the coup plans.

Granted, while my meager command of the Turkish language limits me more or less to the English newspapers, those papers are liberal-leaning and often critical of the military. And yet, very few columnists are asking these questions (İhsan Dağı may be one).

Attention is being directed away from the more pressing questions of the military’s intentions, especially in light of the upcoming elections. But few people seem to notice. Am I taking crazy pills?

There was a massive pro-secular rally in Ankara yesterday, protesting the potential candidacy of current Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in next month’s presidential elections. Some three hundred thousand people, many trucked in from outside the city, gathered in Anıt Kabır (Atatürk’s Mausoleum) for the protest.

Turkey’s secularists, including the military, fear that if Erdoğan – or someone close to him – wins the presidency they will be able to implement an Islamic agenda unopposed. While more than 98 per cent of Turks are Muslim, there is a great deal of aversion towards the infusion of religion into the political sphere.

Turkey’s top military man has been seen to openly warn Erdoğan against running. Chief of Staff General Yasar Büyükanıt stated publicly that, “as a citizen and as a member of the armed forces, we hope that someone who is loyal to the principles of the republic [secularism, Kemalism] – not just in words but in essence – is elected president.” This comment was made during the same press conference in which he addressed the alleged plan to launch a coup against Erdoğan in 2004.

The election process is set to begin tomorrow. I honestly do not know what will happen if AKP (Erdoğan’s party) nominates Erdoğan to run. It might get ugly, it might not. Being a foreigner, I am not as sensitive to these sorts of things as the locals.

There are so many things I could write about here – the perverse Turkish concept of “secularism-cum-nationalism”, the aversion of the secular elite – so-called Kemalists – to change, the evolution of Islamic politics in Turkey… I don’t have the energy at the moment.