26 June 2007

1. "Getting it Right in Kurdistan", if and when the United States withdraws its troops from Iraq, it will have to consider the future of Kurdistan.

2. "The existential crisis of the Turkish Military", the Turkish Republic was founded by soldiers. Mustafa Kemal was a first class soldier before anything else. The Turkish military has always seen itself as the revolutionary, modernizing and progressive power of this country. To some extent this has been true. Today, however, the Turkish military is going through an existential crisis.

3. "A silent revolution in Turkey", here's the latest news from Turkey: there will be no coup. Nor will sharia law be imposed. Instead, the economy will continue to grow, the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) will most likely consolidate its parliamentary majority in the July 22 elections, and Turkey's regional clout will continue to increase.

4. "France snubs Turkey on EU talks", the European Union is to start membership talks with Turkey this week in only two new areas instead of three, because of France's opposition.

5. "Amnesty International: Turkey freezes accounts for alleged illegal fundraising", human rights group Amnesty International said Monday that Turkish authorities had frozen the bank accounts of its branch in the country in a move it said amounts to a violation of rights to free expression and association.

6. "Minority test for parties", in democratic competitions, where every voter and every vote is very precious, political parties usually develop mottos that will be liked by the majority and pay great attention to the majority’s sensitivities. Democracies with this dimension generate the danger of laying down the groundwork for a majority dictatorship.

1. - National Interest Online - "Getting it Right in Kurdistan":

25 June 2007 / by Camille Pecastaing*

If and when the United States withdraws its troops from Iraq, it will have to consider the future of Kurdistan. While a partition is officially anathema, everyone knows the link between the Kurdish enclave in the north and the rest of Iraq is tenuous. Baghdad’s only hope of preventing hard partition is to provide the Kurds with a path toward the global economy. Kurds might be willing to live with the Iraqi project if the strong federalism protecting their autonomy is constitutionally upheld, and if—IF—the insurgency finally subsides, giving Kurdish businesses access to Basra—Iraq’s only port. Other than that, Iraq has nothing to offer the Kurds, who are naturally more likely to gravitate toward Turkey or Iran. If everyone would smarten up, Kurdistan and Turkey could be the best things to happen to each other.

Kurdistan came into its own in 1991, when the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 688 to stop Baghdad’s reprisals against Kurdish insurgents. Enforced by the United States Air Force, UNSC 688 gave Iraqi Kurds 12 years of de facto autonomy under an informal American protectorate. Then, the 2003 regime change in Iraq forced Kurdistan into the federal, democratic Iraq Washington was trying to build in Mesopotamia. Kurds paid lip service to the American agenda, and a long-time Kurdish leader assumed the Iraqi presidency. But all the while, they have been developing regional institutions and infrastructures at a frantic pace, a process that culminated in a 2006 transfer of power to a unified Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) in Erbil. The Kurdistan they envision is economically market-based, bolstered by a democratic polity, and closely allied to the United States. It is also an independent state.

Those intentions should be clear to anyone looking at Kurdish nation-building efforts. The realm of the Kurds (spread across Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran) is partitioned by mountain ranges, and each valley has nurtured almost its own people, speakers of dialects that blend a folkish Kurdish language with the lingua franca of the closest empire. The genetics mirror the linguistics. In the West, Kurds could pass for Turks but are not really that and, in the East they could pass for Persians but are not really that either. Kurds are not Arab, and the Kurds of Iraq are probably the least integrated in their host country. The chasm between Kurds and Arabs is widening, as fewer and fewer Kurds are proficient in the language of Baghdad. Kurdish academia is devising an all-English curriculum from primary to tertiary education (to prevent Kurdish children from learning Arabic), and the Kurdish script is in the process of shifting to the Roman alphabet. Moreover, part and parcel of Kurdish identity is the Kurdish martyrdom of the Anfal campaign: the genocide endured in the 1980s at the hands of Arabs. Asking Kurdistan to be part of Iraq is like asking Israel to be a Polish province. For now, the Kurds will stick with Iraq as long as this is what the United States wants and as long as America provides security. In the long-term, all bets are off.

While no one is more vocally against Kurdish independence than Ankara, Turkey is potentially the most promising partner for an independent Kurdistan. Unlike Iran, Turkey is not a pariah state, but rather a NATO member and an economic partner of the European Union. Turkey also qualifies as an emerging economy, and while it does not have oil, Kurdistan does and may have even more of it when a promised referendum over the annexation of oil-rich Kirkuk to the Kurdish Region is held. And, Turkish businessmen are already dominant among the handful of foreign investors doing business in Kurdistan.

Ankara reads the shifting winds of Kurdish nationalism with apprehension. Its concern may be justified, but its response, inspired by a prickly and reactionary nationalism, is inappropriate. The current troop buildup at the border of Iraqi Kurdistan is not the way of the 21st century, and crushing the nationalist aspirations of Iraqi Kurds will only exacerbate ethnic tensions within Turkey itself. What Ankara may never understand is that an independent Kurdistan would relieve, rather than increase, Kurdish nationalist pressure in Turkey. Kurds seeking a deep cultural experience would only have to cross the border and withdraw to Erbil or Sulaimani. Inversely, claustrophobic Kurds longing for a cosmopolitan metropolis (and there are plenty) could join the cohort of their co-nationals already in Istanbul, Zurich or Munich, confident that their identity was sovereign and represented in a corner of the world’s map. As for the area of Turkish Kurdistan, it would be a halfway house, a mixed human buffer between Turks and free Kurds.

The necessity of a human buffer is a lost lesson of the nationalist age. Patriotism inspires seizing the biggest possible piece of the pie, one that encompasses the entire nation and leaves no one out. But a smaller state surrounded by large populations of co-nationals is better shielded from immigration and more ethnically stable. By definition, a larger state would be more mixed and porous. In its current incarnation, Iraqi Kurdistan already has to accommodate small historical minorities of Turkmens and Assyrians. Reversing Saddam’s Arabization program and expatriating Sunni Arabs from Kirkuk—in anticipation of the referendum scheduled for December 2007—has been a tall order for the KRG. Annexing the mixed areas of Mosul, a large Ottoman city and historical home of an urban Kurdish community, would mean absorbing many Arabs and would be as detrimental to the cause of Kurdish nationalism as the Six-Day War was to Zionism. An expansion of Kurdistan beyond the borders of Iraq into Turkey or Syria is an imaginary threat.

Iraqi Kurds have all the reasons in the world to be impatient with Turkey, and one understands why the KRG would look the other way when Congra-Gel fighters—ex–Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) partisans—regroup in the Qandil mountain area in northwest Iraq to mount operations against Turkey. The Kurdish issue resonates across the region in a new way, as Kurdish militias, who often fought one another in the past, are becoming less parochial. The two main Kurdish factions in Iraq, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), have made a historic rapprochement (although much remains to be done). And the new incarnation of the PKK, which traditionally recruited Turkish Kurds, also attracts young fighters from Syria where the Asad regime is now facing a Kurdish political awakening.

Ultimately, the realization of Kurdistan’s economic potential depends on foreign investment. The region has untapped oil and gas reserves, effective security, modern infrastructures, an investment-friendly legal environment—allowing foreign ownership of corporations and real property—and a secular outlook hospitable to foreigners. But all that potential is compromised as long as Kurdish trade remains hostage to the whims of Iranian and Turkish authorities. The local needs for electricity cannot be met by a few hydroelectric dams, and Turkey and Iran refuse to trade electricity. The few border crossings of Kurdistan are made up of an endless line of trucks, which limits the amount of gasoline imported and creates acute shortages. The wait for subsidized gasoline at gas stations takes hours, even days, and Kurds have to turn to the ubiquitous black market that sells poor quality gasoline smuggled over the mountains in cheap plastic containers. In the meantime, Baghdad (and Ankara, and Tehran) are making sure that Kurdistan doesn’t develop the capacity to refine the oil it produces, maintaining the regional dependency.

The emergence of a viable, independent and successful Kurdistan would benefit Turkey. But Ankara may not understand that. Few countries have Turkey’s ability to consistently shoot themselves in the foot. The anachronistic denial of the Armenian genocide, the constitutional harassment of Justice and Development Party (AKP) and Prime Minister Recep Erdogan (the only Turkish politician of any value since Turgut Ozal), the lingering Cyprus fiasco, the botched accession negotiations process with the EU; all testify to Turkey’s lack of political vision and maturity, both of which Kurdistan will have to overcome.

* Camille Pecastaing is an assistant professor in Middle East Studies at the Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in Washington, DC.

2. - Turkish Daily News - "The existential crisis of the Turkish Military":

25 June 2007 / by Orhan Kemal Cengiz

The Turkish Republic was founded by soldiers. Mustafa Kemal was a first class soldier before anything else. The Turkish military has always seen itself as the revolutionary, modernizing and progressive power of this country.

To some extent this has been true. Today, however, the Turkish military is going through an existential crisis. Atatürk had always pointed to the West and western values as the main direction to which Turkey should head. However, today’s West, namely the European Union, means an end to the enormous powers and privileges that the Turkish military has long enjoyed in this country.

We have now quite different circumstances surrounding Turkey than just ten years ago. The Cold War is now long past and the United States has given up supporting dictatorial regimes in the Middle East, believing that these feed terrorism. Turkey is still a valuable partner for the West, no longer as the last bastion to the Soviet threat, but as a democratic secular model that can be an important player in the region.

A Kurdish state in Northern Iraq is at present a subject of tension between the U.S. and Turkey; and it seems this will continue to be so.

The Turkish military has a very solid and rigid understanding of a potential Kurdish state: “A Kurdish state, wherever and whenever it appears, is a threat to the fundamental interests of Turkey and it should be prevented”.

This is, of course, not the only threat perceived by the military. Most of the threats are coming from within, namely the Islamists and the Kurds who have been refusing to be assimilated !

The vision of the founding elite of the Turkish Republic was a classless, homogenous society that is Muslim but not too religious. There is a portrait of the ideal citizen in the minds of the Turkish elite and I would like to draw it for you : a white Sunni Muslim Turk who prays only on Fridays and drinks raki when he is not fasting. (Of course, he should not be drinking too much !)

Whatever goes beyond this white Sunni Muslim portrait has always been regarded as a threat to the homogenous society that the Turkish Republic has been trying to achieve. Thus the Kurds (if they assert their Kurdish identity), Muslims (those more religious than the elites wish them to be), Alevis and non-Muslims of this country are not the ideal citizens as they do not fit this portrait.

The problem is that this project, which overlooks the different identities of Turkish citizens and tries to create a homogenous society, has failed, and Turkish elites (both military and civil bureaucrats) have shown no willingness to change their understanding and conceptualization of Turkish society according to these new conditions. The founding elites of the Turkish Republic needed to forge a national identity in order to create a nation state and so the current elites continue to believe even today that the “nation”, should act and react in accordance with their understanding and expectations of society, politics and religion, but not vice versa !

A project that is not uniting society

We have a fundamental problem here. This project is not uniting Turkish society anymore. Instead it is deepening the divisions, and constantly increasing the tension—between secularists and Muslims on the one hand, and between Kurds and Turks on the other.

The two most recent electronic statements of the Turkish military, posted on 27 April and 8 June, both of which were clear and unacceptable interferences with the democratic process in Turkey, have the potential to fuel tension and conflict between different sections of Turkish society. The first memo declared that “everybody who does not express how happy he is being a Turk is an enemy”!

In the second memo people who criticize the nation state and who “use humanity’s esteemed values of peace, freedom, and democracy as a cover for terrorist organizations” were targeted. In addition, the “Turkish nation” was called to show “their reflex action”. These are extremely dangerous statements. They have no potential to unite the nation, but on the contrary, are provocative !

Turkey and her military are at the crossroads. This country will either aim at being a first class democracy, which I believe can lead to being a strong world power, or it will continue to act like an authoritarian regime. Of course, there will always be excuses for our defective democracy : “enemies”; “extraordinary and sui generis conditions”; “terror” (although its only solution is democracy); “the danger of Sharia”; and others.

Giving up power is very difficult. Doing it willingly is much more so! However, the Turkish military has two options. Either they will be the ruling elite of a third world country or they will be serving a nation who has a leading role in world politics. Now it is up to the military to choose between these two options for this country’s future. There is no third alternative !

3. - Asia Times - "A silent revolution in Turkey":

26 June 2007 / by A B McConnel*

Here's the latest news from Turkey: there will be no coup. Nor will sharia law be imposed. Instead, the economy will continue to grow, the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) will most likely consolidate its parliamentary majority in the July 22 elections, and Turkey's regional clout will continue to increase.

Sound counterintuitive? Only if one pays excessive attention to reports about Turkey in the international press or the more sensationalist or alarmist Turkish publications, and not enough to actual developments in Turkish society. Turkey is undergoing a silent revolution, but one that has nothing to do with soldiers or fundamentalists.

According to data included in a recent report by progressive Istanbul non-governmental organization TESEV (the Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation), support among the Turkish population for a government based on sharia (Islamic) law has fallen under 10%, 77% believe that democracy is better than any other form of government, and more than 50% believe that democracy can be preserved without any "support" from the military.

Where has this support for democracy and rule of law come from? The most likely source is the emergence of a "true" Turkish-Muslim bourgeoisie into Turkey's corridors of power. In fact, it may not be much of a stretch to say that Turkey is undergoing its own form of French Revolution, the Turkish-Muslim bourgeoisie rising to put an end to aristocratic domination.

Can Paker, the president of TESEV, explained in a recent interview that Turkey is experiencing the emergence of a "new" middle class composed largely of recent migrants to Turkey's main urban centers. This new middle class, despite identifying itself as "Muslim", is worried much more about its standard of living, the economy and whether or not its children will be educated well than about imposing sharia law.

As Turkish citizens are aware, the new Turkish-Muslim bourgeois may not look as one expects: he wears a comfortable Polo, appropriate (but not cheap) belt on slacks, sensible shoes, fashionable wire-rim glasses, and a mustache; she may or may not wear a headscarf, but if she does, the mark is most likely expensive, like Vakko. Their daughter may (or may not) wear a headscarf, and may be smoking a cigarette as she walks down Istiklal Street, the cultural heart of Istanbul and Turkey, with her punk-rock friends. Their son dresses nicely, but not loudly; it's just as likely that he listens to Placebo or Eminem as to Ibrahim Tatlises, the king of Turkish "Arabesque" music. If he's not using his iPod, then he's chatting with his girlfriend on one of the most recently released mobile telephones.

Most probably their roots are in an Anatolian village or burgeoning Anatolian urban center such as Adana, Denizli, Gaziantep or Kayseri. But they are thriving in increasingly cosmopolitan Istanbul, Izmir and Ankara. Urban Kemalist-elite Turks constantly complain that they are seeing more and more scarved women on the streets. But TESEV's numbers show that the percentage of Turkish women wearing scarves has actually dropped. And only 4% of polled respondents thought that the headscarf issue was one of the two most important issues facing Turkey. Apparently, the new bourgeoisie have hit the streets in Turkey's big cities.

To the new Turkish-Muslim bourgeoisie, questions about whether Islam is compatible with capitalism, or whether Islam is compatible with democracy, are silly: of course capitalism and democracy are compatible with Islam, and always have been. In reality, these questions will soon be recognized for the risible red herrings that they are, put forth by those who fear the writing on the wall: Turkey is coming, and coming fast, leading the Islamic world as an example of independently achieved development as well as economic and political stability.

The changes and statistics described above are the real reasons for the current tensions in Turkish society, the 100,000-strong marches, the midnight press releases from the Turkish military, the acts of violence in urban areas committed by individuals loosely associated with Turkey's "deep state". The centers of power in Turkey are surreptitiously changing hands. Little by little, the traditional Turkish pseudo-bourgeoisie of Kemalist soldiers, bureaucrats and old-guard intellectuals is relinquishing the real political decision-making to an actual Turkish-Muslim bourgeoisie composed of esnaf, ie, small-to-middle-sized-business people, and industry, represented by TUSIAD, the Turkish business association dominated by massive Turkish holding companies such as Koc, Sabanci and Eczacibasi.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the premier and head of the AKP, is a prominent example of the Turkish-Muslim esnaf. His childhood and formative years were spent in Kasimpasa, a working-class area of Istanbul, after his family migrated to that city from the eastern Black Sea city of Rize. Erdogan now has assets worth millions of US dollars. His son, Bilal, graduated from Harvard and had an internship at the World Bank, and Erdogan's wife and daughters wear headscarves. The AKP's parliamentary candidate list, released for the July 22 elections, was described by some commentators as a putsch against its last Islamically inspired members.

This means that the party's pragmatists, those who have no interest in pursuing radical political programs, have achieved the upper hand.

But after all, a main goal of the Kemalist elite has always been to create exactly this Turkish-Muslim bourgeoisie. That was the point of such projects as the infamous 1942 Wealth Tax, which was, in essence, a forced capital transfer from the Turkish minority bourgeoisie composed of Armenians, Greeks and Jews to Muslim Turkish business people. But for various political, economic and social reasons, the true Turkish-Muslim bourgeoisie has only recently developed to the point where it can flex its political muscles. As a result, Turkey has been making fast headway on the road to economic development.

A last note for those interested in sports. The Turkish-Muslim bourgeoisie's favorite soccer club tends to be the same as that of their most famous representative, Erdogan: Fenerbahce, Brazilian Roberto Carlos's new team.

* A B McConnel is finishing a history master of arts program at Sabanci University in Istanbul, with a focus on Republican Turkish history and Turkish-US relations. He has lived in Istanbul since 1999.

4. - BBC - "France snubs Turkey on EU talks":

PARIS / 25 June 2007

The European Union is to start membership talks with Turkey this week in only two new areas instead of three, because of France's opposition.

Diplomats say France made clear its reservations, so the question was not discussed at a meeting of ambassadors in Brussels.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy says Turkey has no place in the EU.

Germany, the current EU president, had intended to open talks with Turkey in three new areas before 30 June.

Privileged partnership

Talks have already begun in two areas - science and research, and enterprise and industry policy, and will begin in another two areas - statistics and financial control - on Tuesday.

Applicants for EU membership have to complete membership negotiations in a total of 35 areas, known as chapters - a process that is expected to take at least 10 years in Turkey's case.

Mr Sarkozy is leading efforts to set limits to future EU enlargement at a summit in December.

He argues that Turkey should be offered a "privileged partnership", rather than full membership.

Ankara unhappy

A Turkish official quoted by the Reuters news agency said Ankara was "unhappy" with the delay in opening the economic and monetary policy chapter of negotiations.

The BBC's Dominic Hughes in Brussels says there are fears the move will further weaken Turkish enthusiasm for joining the EU, which has already dramatically collapsed.

However, Turkey's chief EU negotiator, Economy Minister Ali Babacan, said earlier on Monday that Turkey would integrate its legislation with the EU's as soon as possible, "regardless of what chapters are opened".

The EU suspended negotiations on eight chapters last year, after Turkey failed to open its ports and airports to traffic from EU-member Cyprus.

5. - AP - "Amnesty International: Turkey freezes accounts for alleged illegal fundraising":

ANKARA / 25 June 2007

Human rights group Amnesty International said Monday that Turkish authorities had frozen the bank accounts of its branch in the country in a move it said amounts to a violation of rights to free expression and association.

The group's accounts have been frozen since January for alleged illegal fundraising stemming from the fact that Amnesty advertises bank accounts on its Web site and the way activists register new members through face-to-face meetings in the streets, said Levent Korkut, who heads the groups' operations in Turkey.

Amnesty said it fears the move may be a tactic to "harass" the group and impede its fundraising activities and called for an immediate end to the legal proceedings.

"The organization is concerned that the incident has occurred in the context of increased tensions in the country in which human rights defenders are particularly vulnerable, and amounts to a violation of the rights to free expression and association," the group said in a statement.

Korkut said Amnesty had appealed to an administrative court to have its accounts unblocked.

"Turkey is the only country where Amnesty International methods are considered to be illegal," Korkut said.

There was no immediate comment from Turkish authorities.

6. - Zaman - "Minority test for parties":

25 June 2007 / by Bulent Kenes

In democratic competitions, where every voter and every vote is very precious, political parties usually develop mottos that will be liked by the majority and pay great attention to the majority’s sensitivities. Democracies with this dimension generate the danger of laying down the groundwork for a majority dictatorship. Therefore real democracies are those that secure the rights for minorities against overwhelming majorities.

As in all democratic countries, political parties are opting for the shortest path that will carry them to a political victory at the ballot box: They employ rhetorical statements liked by the majority and make promises that will appeal to the majority’s sentiments.

As they are focused on a tangible interest, the statements and actions aimed at appealing to the majority don’t give much idea of where a political party stands on the continuum of democracy. What matters ultimately in terms of being a real democrat is how these parties are assessed by the minorities, even though the minorities don’t offer a large potential vote. Briefly, the best litmus paper to evaluate the level of democracy in political parties competing in an election process is how minorities view those parties.

With this reality in mind, Today’s Zaman presented two case studies on the issue on its front page (”Minorities to shun nationalist parties in elections,” prepared by our friend Evin Baris Altintas was published on June 14, “Minorities to choose pro-EU candidates,” prepared by our friend Jasper Mortimer, was published on June 23) and in the meantime made use of another news story published by Reuters, also on the front page.

What is interesting is, all of these news stories pointed out one and the same reality. This reality was that the AK Party, branded by some as Islamo-fascist and accused of being anti-secular and of following a secret Islamic agenda to establish a regime like that in Iran, was the first preference of all the minorities.

As Mortimer remarked, the minority communities are tiny in Turkey -- 60,000 Armenians, 25,000 Jews and 3,000 Greeks in a population of 72 million. But at a time when the world is watching Turkey closely, their influence outweighs their size. The way that the minorities vote is a weathervane of democracy and human rights in Turkey.

As we found out from these case studies, the first choice of our Armenian, Jewish, Greek and Syrian citizens are independent candidates like Baskin Oran and Ufuk Uras. When it comes to parties, they don’t view any party other than the AK Party positively.

For instance Etyen Mahçupyan, a political columnist for Today’s Zaman and the managing editor of Armenian weekly paper Agos, said, “July 22 may be the first time in Turkish electoral history that the Islamic party gets at least a third of the votes of the Armenians.” He estimated that in the 2002 elections only 5 percent of Armenians voted for the AK Party. Of course, the role of the reforms on human rights realized by the AK Party as a requirement of the EU membership process cannot be denied.

Meanwhile, as Mihail Vasiliadis, publishing director of Apoyevmatini, an 80-year-old newspaper for the Greek community in Turkey, said, the AK Party’s deposing of the Minority Commission, a secretive advisory body that was believed to exercise wide powers over minorities, was one of the chief reasons for his sympathetic reception. In addition, the law on foundations passed by the AK Party in 2005 seems to have been a source of relief for minorities and directed them toward this party.

As Mortimer stated in his article, everyone agrees that in constituencies where there is no credible independent, minority voters will most likely back the AK Party. Here are a few sentences from the prominent figures of these minority groups:

Vasiliadis: “The AK Party has to come to power so that I can feel myself as a citizen after 60 years.”

Armenian Patriarch Mesrob II: “The AK Party is more moderate and less nationalistic in its dealings with minorities. The Erdogan government listens to us -- we will vote for the AK Party in the next elections.”

Mahçupyan: “Some minority citizens would vote [for the] CHP but generally, they don’t like the CHP and they fear the MHP. The CHP represents the state and all the laws against the minorities. Minorities see the MHP as ‘an extremely nationalistic party whose policies could provoke street violence’.”

Turkey’s last surviving ethnic Armenian village Vakifli’s headman Berc Kartun: “The AK Party has tried to help the minorities, while other parties just talk.”

Zeki Basatemir, chairperson of the Syriac Catholic Church Foundation: “I can’t say we are unhappy with this current government. We think they are good at solving our problems.”

Being a real democrat and real secularism lie in the democratic attitude adopted toward religious minorities, regardless of their voting potential -- an attitude that views them as essential elements and first-class citizens of this country. It seems that the AK Party is streets ahead of its rivals.