Cyprus May 31, 2007
Posted by cpapuschak in Travel.add a comment
I returned to Ankara from a weekend trip to Cyprus yesterday afternoon. I did not want to return, but I have exams to write. However with such good food, nice people and beautiful weather there is no doubt that I will return. I don’t have any pictures, unfortunately, because a certain friend of mine ruined my memory card trying to shove it into his computer. All the pictures were lost.
It was good to at last see one of the conflicts that I have been studying for the last couple months. It wasn’t difficult to pass from the Turkish to Greek side thanks to a Canadian passport, but it is still a hassle to get across the Green Line that separates the two sides.
I met some very insightful and intelligent people while there who made me question the skepticism I had about the problem. Personally, I do not believe that the Cyprus problem can be solved with the creation of a single state. However, there are many people there who, understandably, want an inclusive peace and a single state solution. There are many who genuinely believe a unitary state that respects minority rights will one day emerge in Cyprus.
I don’t know if that will happen, or if the conditions even exist for that eventuality. One thing about studying conflict resolution and the ideological foundations behind it is that you become critical to the point of cynicism.
However, I don’t believe one can give up hope for a genuinely peaceful resolution. It may seem naive, but I’m not old enough to lose faith in humanity yet.
Bombing in Ankara May 22, 2007
Posted by cpapuschak in News.add a comment
A bomb went off in Ankara (Ulus to be exact) this evening. Ulus is a pretty shady neighborhood even during the day, so I was well away from the excitement. NTVMSNBC reports that the type of bomb used was that most commonly used by the PKK. As of this moment, five have died and more than 60 are wounded, though that number is likely to rise as information is released. To the best of my knowledge, no one I know was hurt, thank goodness.
Prayers to the families of the dead. I don’t care what your political position is, but I have nothing but contempt for those who believe they are fit to decide an innocent person’s life is forfeit in pursuit of some cause. There is a level of civility and empathy towards your fellow man that must transcend political cause. I know the Turkish government and military has treated the Kurds rottenly in the past, but is the killing of innocents, on both sides, justified? Apparently there are different interpretations.
Democratic Reforms May 12, 2007
Posted by cpapuschak in Politics.add a comment
A few days ago the Turkish parliament passed a constitutional amendment package that would see the president to be directly elected by the people, allow the president to serve two five-year terms rather than one seven-year term, limit MP terms in office from five years to four, and lower the MP age of eligibility to 25 years. After passing through parliament with a two-thirds majority, the question now is whether staunchly secularist President Ahmet Necdet Sezer will veto the amendments.
The package was first proposed by AKP after the Constitutional Court annulled the presidential elections as a way of bypassing opposition. In my opinion, it is a smart move as it undermines the CHP and the secularist elite by going straight to the people for a decision. I stated earlier the mistrust the CHP, bureaucracy, judiciary, and military have for democracy, and their response is rather predictable.
CHP Leader Deniz Baykal said yesterday:
There is no side to this [proposal] that can be taken seriously. This is irresponsibility at its peak. Turkey has 84 years of a republican pillar: Sovereignty belongs to the nation. And that sovereignty is represented in Parliament. Now we will have the nation vote in deputies and the president. This way, two bodies would be representing sovereignty, and the sovereignty of the nation would start to collapse. This will have significant consequences that will have to be accepted. This would create major problems for Turkey.
So…democracy is irresponsible. Very well. I don’t think Baykal had Huntington’s Political Order in Changing Societies in mind when he made that comment. He is probably more concerned that direct democratic elections can’t be manipulated by the favored “dynamic forces” (i.e., the military, judiciary, universitites).
In any event, Sezer has fifteen days to examine the package. We will see what happens in the meantime.
Misconceptions in Turkish Politics May 7, 2007
Posted by cpapuschak in Politics.1 comment so far
I just got back from a weekend trip to Selçuk yesterday. I was able to see my aunt one last time before she made her way to Greece, so that was nice.
A lot has happened since my last post – the Constitutional Court annulled the first presidential election, forcing an early general election, and a second attempt at getting Gül failed, leading to the withdrawal of his presidential candidacy. The AKP also suggested constitutional amendments that would see the president popularly elected and eligible for two five-year terms, rather than one seven-year term. Most of the mainstream media – BBC and Al-Jazeera for example – portrays this row as one between secularists and Islamists for the direction of the Turkish state.
This is a common misconception, even within Turkey. This secularist-Islamist discourse has manipulated the field of debate to the extent that the secularist-Islamist tension serves to cover the deeper tension between two power centers in the country. The Kemalist/secularist elite – the Republican People’s Party (CHP), the military and judiciary – has for years used the discourse as a way of excluding a conservative periphery from political and economic power. The EU accession process and democratization has made it increasingly difficult for the bureaucratic elite at the center to hold onto their power by liberating and emancipating the conservative periphery. While this periphery supports democracy as a means of escaping the hegemony of the authoritarian state, the center worries that democratization would put an end to its power within the system.
Instead of placing faith in democratic institutions, the centrist elite has instead invited “dynamic forces” (the military, judiciary, and universities) to maintain its status within the state apparatus. The common characteristics among these forces are their anti-Western, anti-EU and anti-democracy beliefs. As İhsan Dağı explains,
“They fear the West, Westernization and globalization. They also fear those people in Turkey who do not fear the West, Westernization and globalization.”
It is not simply the “Islamists” who view Westernization with suspicion. Because the Islamists are among the periphery seeking greater democratization, they provide a readily identifiable enemy against which the secularist discourse can be utilized to maintain the power of the central bureaucratic elite. This is done without actually bringing into public debate the real questions and real tensions, and it largely misleads external observers. An article on Today’s Zaman’s website opened by stating that,
“The US failure to criticize the Turkish military’s strongly worded April 27 statement [threatening military intervention]… is widely linked to an accumulated image of Muslim Turkey since the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks…which Islamic fundamentalist terrorists assumed responsibility for.”
