Intimidation Of A Profession In Turkey

Turkey is a very dangerous and depressing place to practice journalism these days. Not that there is any lack of fascinating things to write about. Far from it. There is more than enough to fill several newspapers and hours of television time. It’s just that if you do write about any of the really interesting and controversial developments you have a very good chance of winding up out of a job or, worse, in jail. Besides leading the world in the number of journalists behind bars the country also suffers from stifling self-censorship where intimidated media owners are quick to fire anyone who dares to criticize the government too effectively.

None of this should be surprising in a country where the prime minister recently admitted “We have a problem with the media. It is their mission to announce the good things to my people.” So much for the principle of independent media acting as a check on government abuses. But, then again, this disregard of checks and balances should be no surprise either because the same prime minister has also railed against the separation of powers – a concept fundamental to any half-way functioning democracy.

The most recent sacrifices to government’s narrow, restrictive view of the press include a columnist for the daily Milliyet and a team of editors from the once-irreverent daily Taraf. Metin Munir, formerly a columnist for Milliyet, is one of  Turkey’s rare independent-thinking journalists. He is one of the very few who actually reads turgid documents and then points out the glaring absurdities and contradictions in those documents. Very few in the government wanted to talk with him because he could, and did, make them look extremely foolish. One day this independent streak became too much for the paper and he was fired with no comment. Now we are back to the writers whose real pleasure is being photographed with the prime minister during one of his travels.

Protest Against Imprisonment of Turkish Journalists

AndrewFinkel wrote a telling piece about the emasculation of Taraf in his blog Latitudes for The New York Times.

“I had watched with pride Taraf’s battle against the odds. Now, my optimism is gone. . .Taraf changed the face of Turkey for the better on a shoe-string budget simply by trying to do the right thing. What would Turkey be like today if Taraf’s better-heeled cousins in the media had done the same?”

Finkel himself was the victim of the media’s self-censorship when he was summarily fired from the pro-government paper Today’s Zaman after a mildly sceptical piece he wrote.

There are a few brave people still writing sharply critical pieces, but it remains to be seen how long they can survive. Also, some of their pieces appear only in the English language paper which the government doesn’t really care about because very few of its supporters can read that paper.

So far the rest of the world has given Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan pretty much a free pass on the restrictive media policies in Turkey. Geo-politics trumps media freedom every day. And right now with Syria, Iraq and Iran on its borders no one wants to highlight increasing autocracy in Turkey. For the moment the prime minister is free to follow other countries like Russia, China, North Korea, or Saudi Arabia in directly or indirectly restricting what the population gets to see or read.

Groups like the US-based Committee to Protect Journalists write scathing reports on the state of Turkish journalism and even send delegations to meet with Turkish government officials. Stephen Franklin, a veteran reporter who knows Turkeyvery well, wrote a long piece in the recent Columbia Journalism Review highlighting the obstacles and risks that Turkish journalists face every day. But beyond these critiques from professional organizations very few people are willing to rock the Turkish boat very hard right now.

Prime Minister Erdoğan’s dislike for the media goes far beyond what the local media report on what passes for their news pages. He is also now the Supreme Drama Critic. In November last year He lashed out the immensely popular TV soap-opera The Magnificent Century which is a loose, very loose,serial about the greatest of the Ottoman sultans, Suleyman the Magnificent. While the show is more Dallas On The Bosphorus than any attempt at history it was good entertainment with lots of titillating scenes about what Suleyman got up to with his favourite wife and others in the harem. This infuriated the Supreme Critic.

The Prime Minister Disapproves

“That is not the Suleyman we know . . . He spent 30 years horseback.” Yes, well. In a chilling addition, he added “We have alerted the judicial authorities on this and we are waiting their decision … Those who toy with these values should be taught a lesson.”

This was enough to make the blood of the producers run cold. If the show is even aired this year Suleyman will most likely resemble a cross between Rambo and the Terminator.

Many of Turkey’s liberals who originally supported the government’s attempts to break the former military-judicial-bureaucratic elite’s stranglehold on Turkey are now having second thoughts. They are beginning to wonder if they simply haven’t replaced one autocracy with another.

What Is The End Game?

What does Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu want to do with the West Bank that Israel has occupied since 1967? He pays disingenuous lip service to the internationally-approved goal of a Palestinian state. But all his actions on the ground indicate that he has no intention whatsoever of moving ahead with the so-called two-state solution to cure the open sore of Palestinian/Israeli relations.

For those who don’t recall the pre-1967 situation, the west bank and about half of Jerusalem was controlled by the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan until the six-day war in June 1967 when Israel wound up occupying the West Bank and all of Jerusalem. The West Bank, with its 2.6 million Palestinian Arabs, remains under firm Israel control. There is a nominal Palestinian Authority government, but it can take few actions without Israeli permission.

The Palestinian Authority cannot even defend its land from the pervasive encroachment by Israeli settlements. There are now more than 300,000 Israeli ‘settlers’ in the West Bank fanatic in their belief that what they call Judea and Samara are an integral part of Israeli heritage. Just read the polemic that Dani Dayan, a leader of the extremist settlement movement wrote in the New York Times last summer. He insists that the settlers are fully justified in pushing the Palestinians into an ever smaller enclave because Israel won the land in battle. He ignores completely the disastrous economic, political and social implications for Israel of such a move.

Sadly, Netanyahu is also a believer in the settlements. With an election due early next year he feels he cannot afford to appear soft on the settlement issue. He justified the latest move to completely encircle Jerusalem with Jewish settlements as a pay-back to the Palestinians for having the nerve to assert themselves in the United Nations. He is also threatening to cut off any financing for the Palestinian Authority.

It is fair to ask at this point just what his ultimate goal for the West Bank really is. The options are not infinite. He either thinks like Dani Dayan and wants the West Bank incorporated into Israel proper or he agrees to the much debated two-state solution. The only other possible alternative is to muddle along constantly creating new facts on the ground with additional settlements until there is nothing left of Palestine as such. The only problem with that are the 2.6 million Arabs currently living in the West Bank. What precisely does he envisage for them? Absorbing them into Greater Israel could, in the not-too-distant future, spell the end of a democratic Jewish state. Together with 1.6 million Arabs already living in Israel the total Arab population of Greater Israel would be 4.2 million – not far behind the 5.9 million Jewish population.

The West Bank

Given the higher birth rate among the West Bank Arabs they could easily outnumber the Jewish population in a few years, especially if you include the Palestinians in Gaza. Will Israel curtail the democratic rights of its non-Jewish citizens? Will it treat them as second-class citizens condemned to live in what amounts to Arab ghettos with limited voice in government? Will the extreme settlers get their wish and have the Arabs expelled from the West Bank? To where, exactly? Given their own horrible experiences of discrimination in Europe before and during the Holocaust one would think the Jewish population of Israel would be particularly sensitive to these issues.

Netanyahu often relies on the old excuse of protecting Israel’s security. This wears thin on a number of points. One, the West Bank Palestinians have not threatened Israel’s existence. Yes, the intifada was a strong protest. But in itself it was no real military challenge to Israel. Two, the West Bank is not Gaza. The relatively mild Palestinian Authority should never be confused with hard-line Hamas that controls Gaza. The quickest way to spread the influence of Hamas into the West Bank is for Israel to continue with its current policies. Three, Israel faces no, repeat, no serious military threat from any of its immediate neighbours. Israel is by far the strongest military presence in the region. It faces the threat of rocket attacks from Hizbollah in Lebanon or Hamas in Gaza, but these are no real challenge to the weight of Israel’s military machine.

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu

Netanyahu refuses to accept that his reluctance to deal constructively, or even honestly, with the Palestinians is a major roadblock to regional peace. But does he really believe any Arab government can afford to engage closely with Israel while the Palestinian issue festers? He can’t be that tone deaf. The only possible external influence on Netanyahu is the United States. Relations between him and President Obama are frosty at best after his ill-disguised desire to defeat the president in the recent election. President Obama owes Netanyahu no favors, and it would be encouraging to see a timely, sharpish, reminder that a long-overdue equitable solution to the Palestinian issue is in everyone’s interest – even Israel’s.

Has Ataturk Been Relegated?

Is Atatürk, the once revered founder and very soul of the modern Turkish Republic, being relegated to the status of Uncle Buck, the slightly disreputable distant relative who tends to show up inconveniently at holidays? This may be a bit of an overstatement, but Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development party (AKP) is slowly but steadily eroding the iconic reputation of the man who lifted Turkey out of the chaos of a crumbling, discredited empire, and dragged it into the modern world.

Ataturk: The Father of Modern Turkey

 His name used to be considered synonymous with that of the Turkish Republic. Indeed, the very name Atatürk was bestowed on him by a grateful parliament, thus changing him from simply Mustafa Kemal to the everlasting Father Turk. Every school child had to memorize his famous speeches – especially the one directed to the youth of Turkey. Huge posters of Atatürk adorned many buildings and his picture was in almost every office. Several of his memorable sayings would be emblazoned in neon lights across streets and central squares in every Anatolian town. Every town had its Atatürk Boulevard and/or Atatürk Square. Anyone who dared take his name in vain was quickly and viciously sued by zealous state prosecutors. At the beginning of a new parliament each member had to come forward and swear an oath to continue the principles of Atatürk and his revolution.

Now, under AKP’s steady air-brushing of history, he is in danger of becoming ‘Atatürk who?’. The policy came to a head last month at what was supposed to be a celebration of the founding of the Republic on Oct. 29. AKP officials decreed that supporters of Atatürk could not have a demonstration in front of the old parliament building in Ankara. Thousands defied that ban and were soaked with water cannons from the police for their efforts. Police removed the barricades only after the president of Turkey, Abdullah Gül, intervened.

Police confront pro-Ataturk supporters at Republic Day celebration

 November 10, the day that Atatürk, died in 1938 is another day heavy with symbolism. Traditionally all traffic stops and sirens start to wail at around 10 am when he died in Dolmabahçe Palace in Istanbul. This year the prime minister, Tayyip Erdoğan, conveniently arranged to be out of the country on a ‘crucial’ visit to the Sultanate of Brunei on November 10. Critics were wondering if Erdoğan was perhaps getting tips on recreating a ‘sultanate’ in Turkey – under his leadership, of course.

Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan

May 19, the day that Atatürk landed in the Black Sea port of Samsun in 1919 to start the campaign against the Greek invasion, used to be a major celebration where stadiums were filled with marching school children. No more. Various excuses were offered last May as to why this once mandatory celebration has been all but forgotten.

Recently AKP officials have also suggested that the standard parliamentary oath to remain faithful to Atatürk’s revolution should be dropped. No one knows what, if anything, would replace the oath.

And now a ceremonial procession in the southeastern city of Diyarbakir marking the 75^th anniversary of Atatürk’s arrival there has been cancelled for ‘security’ reasons. One person commented that if the Turkish army couldn’t defend itself who could?

The trend is obvious, and supporters of Atatürk’s reforms are now derided merely as Kemalists. Those not familiar with Turkey today wonder just why the ruling party is going to such lengths to downgrade a man largely perceived as the saviour of Turkey. The basic reason seems simple enough. It’s payback time. Erdoğan and his more zealous sycophants have never hidden their anger at some of Atatürk’s more memorable reforms, many of which were designed to limit the role of religion and make sure Turkey became and remained a western-oriented secular republic. The AKP deeply resents not only that orientation but also the military, economic and bureaucratic elite that grew up around it. This elite rigidly enforced its interpretation of Atatürk’s reforms and created the hagiography that surrounds the man.

AKP spokesmen would have us believe all this reduction of Atatürk’s place in Turkish society is being done in the name of increasing ‘democracy’, giving voice to a large segment of the population that felt denigrated for decades. It would be nice if Erdoğan had used this opportunity to bring real democracy to Turkey. But unfortunately, the AKP version of democracy seems merely to replace one rigid dogma with another, to assume that winning an election gives the right to ignore any other opinion. Once it was the word according to Atatürk. Now it is the word, the new reality, according to Tayyip Erdoğan. No criticism shall be tolerated. Democracy that anyone outside of Erdoğan’s narrow circle of advisers would recognize as such must wait for another day.

Thank God That's Over

Well, all that sound and fury and money for more than a year and we wind up more or less where we were before the election. Barack Obama is still president. The Democrats tightened their grip on the Senate. And the Republicans retain control of the House. What, if anything, did we learn?

Democrats celebrate victory

First, as I wrote a couple of months ago, the country has changed. The election was about much more than just the economy. And, as many commentators mentioned the morning after the election, if the Republicans don’t grasp this simple point they will continue to be a minority party. It is no longer enough to appeal to angry middle-aged white men. That is a declining demographic that is going to get even smaller if, as expected, the economy picks up in the next couple of years.

Republicans should accept that Mitt Romney only began to tighten the race when he realized this trend and moved decisively to the center away from the rejectionist positions of hard right wing Republicans from the Tea Party. The Republicans need to wake up and realize that the Tea Party has cost them dearly at the polls. The GOP had a good shot at two Senate seats in Missouri and Indiana and lost both of them because of its candidates represented the fantasy world of the Tea Party.

Tea Party theater

As long as the Republican party is controlled by people who believe in the mythical world of ‘small’ government  – except when it comes to their subsidies – and Leave It To Beaver social mores it can continue to be obstructionist in Congress, but its days as an important national political movement are over. Romney is a good man and was not a bad candidate, but he was saddled with a narrow, rigid agenda that ultimately cost him the race. Perhaps even someone like Steve Forbes, publisher of Forbes magazine, who predicted a ‘decisive’ Romney victory the day before the election will have to do a little re-calculation if he wants to be taken seriously.

Second, elections are becoming ridiculously expensive. The presidential and congressional elections this year cost about $6 billion, or $18 for every person in the United States. Compare that to Britain where the 2010 election cost the equivalent of $0.80 per head. Huge Republican Obama-hating donors like Sheldon Adelson ($53 million), Harold Simmons ($24 million) or Bob Perry ($22 million) must wonder how they could waste so much money. You have to wonder how theoretically shrewd investors like that could be happy with a total wipe out. We have not heard how other major ultra-conservative donors like the Koch brothers, who, among other things, sent a letter to their 45,000 employees urging them to vote for Romney, reacted to their defeat.

Sheldon 'How-Did-I-Blow-$53 million' Adelson

When put in perspective of other American spending patterns perhaps the election spending isn’t all that unreasonable. Gillian Tett, in The Financial Times, notes that Americans will spend $7 billion on potato chips this year and dropped $8 billion on Halloween festivities. The United States also spends $6 billion/month in Afghanistan.

Third, the prime minister of Israel, Binyamin Netanyahu, has to do some fast back-peddling. Relations between Obama and Netanyahu were frosty to start with, and only got worse as the Israeli prime minister interfered in American elections and worked so hard to defeat Obama. His efforts failed on two counts. Obama won, and he got almost 70% of the Jewish vote. Now that he has nothing to lose Obama could come down on Netanyahu like a ton of bricks and demand real action on the illegal West Bank settlements and a serious push for Palestinian statehood. Look for him to show the new U.S. attitude by at least abstaining the next time a controversial United Nations vote on Israel comes up.

Fourth, will the Republicans realize that things like Obama’s health care plan are here to stay and that taxes on the super rich are going up? Will they work to make the government work better or will they follow the idiotic Grover Norquist (head of the ill-named lobbying group Americans for Tax Reform) position of rejecting any and all tax increases? The jury is out while they lick their wounds and try to figure out how they could have lost a ‘sure’ thing.

Fifth, we can safely ignore and tune out the outrageous and completely irrelevant talk show people like Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Mark Levin and all others like the foolish Donald Trump who now proclaim the end of civilization as we know it. The next time people like Ed Whelan whine about 'a growing mass of citizens seemingly wedded to big government spending' we should ask him about huge defence contractors, farm subsidies or all those companies that pay no U.S. federal income tax. These people are certainly loud, but we should know by now that they have absolute no, repeat no, influence on national elections. So we can simply ignore them and let them play in their ever decreasing play pen with the other children.

Sixth, who will emerge from the Republican wreckage? Will they turn to Republican Hispanic poster-boy Marco Rubio, a GOP senator from Florida? Doubtful. The mayor of a large southern city told me last spring that Republicans are cool on Rubio because he could not even deliver Florida for Romney. He was right. Jeb Bush (who would have to overcome the ‘not-another-Bush’ attitude')? Paul Ryan? Or will a new face emerge with a message that resonates with a wider base? My guess is that the hard-right part of the Republican party will resist any compromise with a “Better Dead Than Red” attitude and would even consider splitting from a mainstream party.

Can Paul Ryan pump some reality into the GOP?

Such Republican hari-kari coupled with an improving economy will only strengthen the Democrats’ hand. The challenge will then be to see if the Democrats will act seriously to repair the country’s finances.

To Intervene Or Not To Intervene in Syria

A recent lecture in London highlighted the perils of any sort of foreign intervention, military or even humanitarian, in the meat-grinder of current day Syria. With the violence and bloodshed mounting and spilling over into Lebanon, with the flood of refugees pouring into Turkey and Jordan the pressure is increasing to ‘do something.’ But what, exactly? What assistance? To whom should it go? How should it be delivered? And, most important of all, what would be the consequences of any external assistance?

One of the biggest issues dividing the Syrian opposition is this question of external assistance. Is it good, bad, or even necessary? To briefly summarize the current line-up: Russia and Iran are actively supporting the regime of Bashar al-Assad. The opposition, meanwhile, receives overt support from Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Other countries like Turkey are supporting the opposition, but so far have stopped short of providing heavy weapons or soldiers.

The United States, for its part, still bears the scars from its lethal aid to the mujahideen fighting the Russians in Afghanistan in the 1980s. The U.S. is also concerned about the alleged stockpiles of chemical weapons held by the Syrian regime falling into the hands of jihadist elements that have infiltrated the Syrian opposition forces.

Your new best friends in Syria?

 And then there are people like Dr. Haitham Manna, the Paris-based spokesman for an opposition group called the National Committee for Democratic Change who pleaded with an audience at the London School of Economics to work for a non-violent solution that avoided taking any external assistance. According to Dr. Manna any external assistance would merely distort what started as a non-violent anti-regime protest against the arrest of 15 school children in Dar’a in March 2011. He maintains that such external assistance would merely make the country hostage to people supplying the assistance. He said the original goal of protestors was to create a non-sectarian, democratic Syria, and that it is naïve to think that this could be accomplished merely by changing its political alliances or resorting to violence.

Dr. Haitham Manna

 In an earlier interview with Jadaliyya he said Syria “will become prisoners to international aid and those non-democratic forces in the Gulf States who wish that there will be a fiscal crisis.” He was referring to the support that Qatar and Saudi Arabia have given to the opposition forces in Syria. He also questioned how much would be gained in the long term by swapping Russian support for American support.

This position puts him at squarely odds with other opposition groups, namely the Syrian National Council, that want ‘friendly’ countries to mount a Libyan-style attack and force a military solution to the civil war. The situation is further complicated by sectarian divisions among the regime’s opponents. Some want a bloody Sunni-Alawite confrontation, some want a jihadist Islamic state, others simply want a democratic state controlled by and for Syrians.

Dr. Manna kept stressing the point that Syria is not Libya, and that it has several different ethnic and religious groups. “Any solution that does not include all the different groups in Syria is bound to fail,” he told the largely sceptical audience.

“If we take Arab nationalism too far we marginalize the non-Arabs such as the Kurds and others. If we take Islamic ideology too far then we do away with approximately 40% of the people. We have no right to do any of this,” he said in the Jadaliyya interview.

The tone of the questions from the audience in London indicated that Dr. Manna’s plea for non-violence was falling on rocky ground; that it was too late to wind the clock back to the days of peaceful demonstrations of unarmed civilians.

“What do you expect me to do when someone comes to my home with a gun and threatens me and my family? Meekly give in?” one person asked bitterly. Others pointed out that Dr. Manna is based in Paris and questioned his right to give advice to people fighting for their lives every day.

He bravely responded by noting that his own brother was killed by the regime and poignantly asked the questioners “How has the situation improved since we began fighting?” He has a point, but at this stage not too many people are listening.

So what is the end-game to the bloody stalemate in Syria? The opposition forces do not seem to have the heavy weapons required to defeat the well-armed forces of the regime, and the regime seems incapable of finishing off the rebels. Some say there is no solution as long as Bashar al-Assad and his ruling clique remain in power or even in the country. Others, like Dr.Manna, insist that any solution ignoring the legitimate fears of the minority Alawite regime and its supporters would be short-lived.

‘Compromise’ is not a frequently used word in the Middle East. But just possibly in this situation a compromise worked out by the Syrian people themselves and supported by the contending external forces may be the only way to keep the country from splitting into bitterly opposed mini-states established on ethnic and religious grounds. Wildly optimistic? Perhaps, but it is difficult to see any other result that doesn’t increase the instability of an already unstable region.