Protests in Turkey

[danthepoetman]

I haven’t seen anything about this so far on HA. There’s been a movement of protestation for more than a week in Turkey which is getting broader and broader. It revolves essentially around the secularism of the State as the islamist government is pressing its increasingly narrower agenda. Turkey has been seeking its entry in the European Union for a long time but the fear of Islamism has constantly been invoked as a reason not to admit it. We now see that there are considerable progressist forces in the country, and particularly among young people, who count for half the population. The protests are largely followed in the cities thus far, but not in the country. It has extended to something like 30 or 40 cities. We constantly hear that there’s never any challenge of the religious ideology in Muslim countries; well, now, there definitely is. This might be a really significant historical moment in the making.

Turkish prime minister denounces protesters
The Associated Press Posted: Jun 9, 2013 4:48 PM ET Last Updated: Jun 9, 2013 9:14 PM ET

In a series of increasingly belligerent speeches to cheering supporters Sunday, Turkey's prime minister demanded an end to the 10-day anti-government protests that have spread across the country, saying those who do not respect the government will pay.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan said his patience was running out with the protesters, who have occupied Istanbul's main Taksim Square for more than a week and have held hundreds of demonstrations in dozens of cities across the country.

'We showed patience but our patience has its limits,'
—Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan

Erdogan's increasingly fiery tone could inflame tensions, with tens of thousands of anti-government protesters in the country's largest city, Istanbul, and thousands in the capital, Ankara, remaining on the streets. On two occasions, including one in the southern city of Adana on Saturday night, clashes have been reported between Erdogan supporters and protesters. He said he plans to bring out his supporters for rallies in Ankara and Istanbul next weekend.

Protests have been held in 78 cities across the country since May 31, sparked by a violent police crackdown on a peaceful protest objecting to the redevelopment of Taksim Square and its Gezi Park.

They have since morphed into a general denunciation of what many see as Erdogan's increasingly authoritarian ways after a decade in power, and as an attempt to impose his conservative, religious mores in a country governed by secular laws.

The protests have attracted a diverse crowd from all social backgrounds and age groups. Three people have died, including a police officer in Adana who fell into an underpass under construction while chasing demonstrators. More than 4,300 protesters have sought medical treatment, human rights groups have said.

"We showed patience but our patience has its limits," Erdogan told a crowd of thousands of party supporters who turned out to cheer his arrival at Ankara airport on Sunday, in the third of about seven speeches given through the afternoon and evening.

Protesters clash with riot police
Looking much like a candidate on a campaign trail, Erdogan delivered speeches at two airports, a sports hall, two Ankara districts and atop a bridge before heading to his party headquarters. At each, thousands of supporters turned out to cheer him.
"Stand firm, don't yield, Turkey is with you," they chanted.

Erdogan called repeatedly for the protests to end.

"I call on my brothers who are duped: please put an end to your actions. Look, we have come to these days with patience. As a prime minister I say: enough!"

In a separate speech, he added: "Otherwise I will have to speak the language you understand. Patience has an end. You cannot show Turkey as a country where there is an environment of terror."

As he spoke, tens of thousands of protesters turned out in Istanbul's Taksim Square, while thousands more turned out on the seafront in the western coastal city of Izmir, television footage showed. In the capital, police used water cannon to break up a gathering by thousands of demonstrators in Ankara's Kizilay Square.

Clashes also broke out between about 2,000 protesters and riot police in Sultangazi, a troubled neighbourhood on the outskirts of Istanbul populated mainly by Kurds and Alevis.

Erdogan once again belittled the protesters, calling them "capulcu," the Turkish word for vandals.

"If you look in the dictionary, you will see how right a description this is," he said. "Those who burn and destroy are called capulcu. Those who back them are of the same family."

The protesters have turned Erdogan's label of them as "capulcu" into a humorous retort, printing stickers with the word, scrawling it on their tents and uploading music videos onto social network sites.

Supporters allegedly bussed in
Deniz Zeyrek, a journalist and political commentator for Radikal newspaper, said Erdogan was seeking to show that he has more supporters than those protesting against him.

"He believes that it will make his support base more dynamic and gain from the crisis, not lose," Zeyrek said on NTV television. "He is engaged in a race to show which side can garner more supporters."

Zeyrek said Erdogan's party had been bussing supporters to airports to greet the prime minister, "whereas the supporters at Kugulu Park [in Ankara] are there on their own initiatives. They went there despite the police batons and the tear gas."

"He is engaged in a show of force at every stop he makes. This is causing more reaction and making the protesters more determined," he said.

But Erdogan denied he was trying to raise tension or be divisive, and insisted the protests were a way of undermining a government that was elected with 50 percent of the vote just two years ago.

"Those unable to topple [the governing Justice and Development party] at the ballot box tried to cause turmoil in the country by reverting to this. But this ploy won't work. We know their game. We have the stubbornness to overturn the game," he said.

The protesters have been camping out in Istanbul's Gezi Park for the past 10 days. The park's redevelopment would replace the park with a replica Ottoman-era barracks, and tear down an old cultural center. Initial plans included a shopping mall, but they have now been ditched in favor a theater, opera house or museum, possibly with cafes.

[Stavros]

I haven’t seen anything about this so far on HA. There’s been a movement of protestation for more than a week in Turkey which is getting broader and broader. It revolves essentially around the secularism of the State as the islamist government is pressing its increasingly narrower agenda. Turkey has been seeking its entry in the European Union for a long time but the fear of Islamism has constantly been invoked as a reason not to admit it. We now see that there are considerable progressist forces in the country, and particularly among young people, who count for half the population. The protests are largely followed in the cities thus far, but not in the country. It has extended to something like 30 or 40 cities. We constantly hear that there’s never any challenge of the religious ideology in Muslim countries; well, now, there definitely is. This might be a really significant historical moment in the making.

I would put it the other way round: what Erdogan and the Justice and Development Party represent is a challenge to secularism, and in this respect Turkey is a late entrant to the counter-secularist trend that has been an element in the politics of Lebanon, Egypt, Iraq and Syria since the 1970s. In Lebanon, the 'National Pact' of 1943 divided political offices on confessional lines, but gave the overall character of Lebanese politics a secularist tinge as no single group was able to dominate the political machine -the civil war that broke out in the 1970s was due in part to the corruption of Lebanese politics by Palestinian rights in the south that were seen to privilege them over the mostly Shi'a communities who lived there, plus the numerically growing Shi'a who wanted a larger slice of the pie: complicated by Islamic-Christian and intra-Christian disputes that turned murderous: so Lebanon remains locked into its secularist style of politics but this is challenged by Hezbollah, although its support for Asad is a gamble that could cost it.

As in Egypt, where Mubarak attempted to co-opt the Islamic opposition by bringing it into government, boosting rather than undermining the public perception of the Muslim Brotherhood as a responsible partner in politics (the aim was to marginalise the extremists); so in Syria what was a secular regime has been forced to emphasise its Islamic credentials in order to get the support of Iran and Hezbollah -this not-so-subtle shift towards an Islamic tone has no resonance with most of the opposition who are either secularists who want democratisation, or the Sunna who think the Shi'a, and Alawites in particular are actual or borderline heretics. After the Gulf War, Saddam began to emphasise his Islamic credentials, none of which worked since his reputation in Iraq had been blown to shreds anyway.

The point is that in the Arab lands, secular governments are associated with dictatorship and economic failure: the secular opposition want to retain the secular character of the state but democratise it; the Islamists want an Islamic state but nobody really knows what that means in practice and it remains a fear of the unknown, though it is assumed that it will mean women being forced to wear Hijab, a ban on alcohol, and so forth. Since Syria's principal problems are political and economic, one notes that for decades the Islamists have had no coherent economic or political agenda.

Turkey is an oddity because it is perceived to be successful -it went through a painful sequence of riots and demonstrations in the 1970s and 1980s which culminated in the military coup that was designed to, and largely succeeded in rounding up the left, putting them in prison, and so on. Economic and social change was not expressed in support for a broken left, but for Erdogan's Islamic party which has shown itself capable in the day to day running of the state, has attempted to reach an agreement with the Kurdish movement, and is assumed to have the moral high ground in its relations with Syria. But, as with Syria, Turkey by its origins is a multi-national, multi-religious state and the dominance of an Islamic Party does not meet everyone's approval.

As for the EU, France is a key blockage to Turkey's entry because it believes that Turkey must acknowledge the genocide of the Armenians -which Turkey refuses to do- while Greece and Cyprus are opposed to Turkish membership because of Turkey's illegal occupation of Northern Cyprus. Turkey, along with Israel and some of the ex-Soviet Republics, participates in European organisations such as the European Broadcasting Union, which is why they have entries in the Eurovision Song Contest and why Israel plays it's World Cup football matches in the European zone rather than the Asian zone along with the Arab states. Turkey is also a member of NATO, an organisation created to defend Western Europe and the Atlantic from Soviet aggression and invasion...

[Stavros]

This is a useful article on secular and religious politics in Turkey and India, relevant as the BJP's Narendra Modi could become the next Prime Minister.

http://digitalcommons.providence.edu...y%20donovan%22

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/wo...r-8651092.html

[danthepoetman]

Nice, Stavros! Thanks!
You are absolutely right, of course. I'm struck by how this popular rebellion happens between progressist forces within the population against an islamic governement, as indeed, as you pointed out, it has been the opposite everywhere else in the Mid East. A clash seems more and more probable now as Erdogan is maintaining his hard stance and people do not seem to move on theirs either. You're also right about the military in Turkey, taking an almost paternalistic position towards the political power, and interveining a few times to keep the left from becoming a dominant force; but now, will the army and the police side up with the governement or the people. You already sense that, despite confrontations, there is a level of uncertainty in the police forces. No?

[Stavros]

The Constitutional Court has banned parties, it was one of the means whereby they broke the left in the 1980s, and before this current 'Justice and Development' party, there was the Welfare Party which was banned for being too extreme and presumably violating some aspect of the Constitution. Erdogan has thus been a subtle leader who knows how far he can go -abortion is legal in Turkey but he thinks it is murder and wants to ban it. He is a game payer, but the problem is that in what appears to be a parliamentary democracy, if one party always wins, it becomes what politics calls 'Majority authoritarianism' -rather like the ANC in South Africa. One of the reasons why the secular communities in the Middle East have been losing round is that a) they are associated with dictatorship; b) they are associated with Capitalism or Socialism, both of which are said to have failed (outside the Gulf and Oman anyway); and c) the party organisation has either been weak (Turkey) or non-existent; and lastly d) it has been the politics of Christians, non-Muslims, atheists and so on.

Turkey is in an intriguing position because its attempts to develop relationships with the Middle East from a position of strength smacks of Ottoman revanchism; it is attempting to negotiate a local settlement with the Kurds but the upheavals in Iraq and Syria could make it wary of pan-Kurdish nationalism, not so fanciful if Iraqi Kurdistan feels it has no choice but to break away; and the Military in Turkey is secular and there may always be the fear that if any political party goes too far, the army will step in: which is why Erdogan has trimmed the armed forces and weakened them relative to their position before.

Syria may yet prove a more destabilising influence on the region than Iraq, right now it's a case of 'wait and see'.