Turkish Forum

Category: Authors

  • Not taking the Oath is already taking an Oath

    Not taking the Oath is already taking an Oath

    The Turkish Grand National Assembly (the TBMM) with its new members opened with novel crisis in the Turkish political history. Unfortunately the crisis, in brief, reflects the weakness of Turkish democracy due to which unelected deputies can proudly take the oath as “legal representatives (?)”, whereas popularly elected real deputies are even not allowed to have the freedom to come to the TBMM. So consequently, we see two major opposition parties declining to take the oath as a reaction to these anti-democratic occurrences.

    Of course the situations of both opposition parties are different from one another in terms of both the problem they have been confronted by and the way to react against it. However, it’s undoubted that they are right in their attitudes towards the anti-democratic attacks against their members. What seems to be much more anti-democratic is that instead of resolving ones, provoking and heating steps have been made by the majority-party or the AKP. The deputies-chairman of the AKP have brought up every probable precaution that would prevent these opposition parties from continuing their democratic struggles.

    One should never forget the fact that in this sense the attitudes of these opposition parties not to take the oath are already taking an oath, which is made for the sake of real democracy and “national-popular will” as opposed to the general belief associating the loyalty to the will of nation with a formal “oath”.

    I never want that my support for the attitudes of opposition parties is taken to contain partisan biases or anarchic feelings by my readers especially my dear colleagues believing that this attitude could reduce the power of the opposition parties in the parliament. That’s why I preferred to explain my support. First of all one should accept that democratic societies are to recognize the “supremacy of law” which highlights that no public or private activity can be against legal provisions. So I, since I identify myself as a “real democrat”, am also not against any judicial investigation, as far as it’s in line with the universal human rights. However, here we see all the accused are the AKP-opponents who have been imprisoned by highly politicized judicial activities such as the insist on imprisoning despite the inexistence of evidences, inhuman duration of detention, usage of unreal and irrationally “made” evidences, etc.   So these lawless implementations are leading us to have no doubt that this is a politically prejudicial operation conducted by the AKP rather than a rightful judicial investigation conducted by independent judiciary. Simply in order to react this, some of the accused people were proposed as candidates and they were elected. So nobody can take their inalienable right of being popularly elected.
    Another group of commentators and even some of the CHP-electorate claimed that the best way of struggling against this would be the parliamentary struggle. I think this is a simple parliamentary-conservative point of view. Why then? Because everyone knows that the parliamentary struggle provides a single way which I believe is definitely a vicious circle: initiating bills which have always been tried by the opposition parties and rejected by the ruling parties.

    So I believe Turkey, if it demands more democracy, should react anti-democratic activities in non-conservative and a bit more radical ways, because democracy is the only thing ensuring people’s freedom. So in order to manage this reaction process, one should first gain consciousness enabling to see the realities. I think, the Republican People’s Party (the CHP) acted in line with this, which I hope will contribute future change in peoples mind [towards consciousness]. For this, the CHP ought to express its view to the people in the right way. In this process, the consistency is also of a great significance. If you took the oath of democracy, you should be consistent in your belief in democracy, even if no one tends to support you. “Do what you think is right, do it not for the sake of someone but for the sake of the right”


    Edgar ŞAR

    [email protected]

  • Hanging Armenia’s Dirty Laundry in Public

    Hanging Armenia’s Dirty Laundry in Public

     

     

    By Harut Sassounian

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    President Serzh Sargsyan made an important appearance at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) in Strasbourg last week. In a whirlwind 30-minute speech, he covered Armenia’s internal and foreign affairs, presenting his country in the best possible light before a distinguished foreign audience.

     

    On the domestic front, Pres. Sargsyan spoke about fighting corruption, holding “fair and transparent elections,” and overcoming “the consequences of the tragic events of March 2008.”

     

    The President then reminded the European Parliamentarians about Armenia’s “shared historical and cultural legacy” with Europe and discussed the ongoing negotiations to resolve the Artsakh (Karabagh) conflict. He condemned “the extreme level of Armenophobia and racism” in Azerbaijan, and spoke of the difficulty of making “a concession to the side that is looking for a convenient excuse to shoot at us.”

     

    Pres. Sargsyan went on to accuse the Turkish government of undermining the “normalizaton” of Armenia-Turkey relations “by setting preconditions and failing to honor its commitments, which rendered the ratification of the signed Protocols impossible.” He called on Turkey and Azerbaijan to end the “unlawful blockade imposed on Armenia” and accused Turkey of “not only failing to recognize, but also engaging in a policy of blunt denial of the Genocide of Armenians committed in the Ottoman Empire in 1915.” He pledged that Armenians and all those concerned with crimes against humanity “will henceforth remain focused on the international recognition of the Armenian Genocide.”

     

    After his speech, Pres. Sargsyan spent another 30 minutes answering questions from PACE delegates representing Lithuania, France, Switzerland, Russia, Moldova, Holland, Armenia, and Ireland. Five Azerbaijanis had placed their names on the list of Parliamentarians to ask questions, but none of them did so. The delegates from Turkey had also made a unanimous decision not to question the Armenian President, as reported by Hurriyet Turkish newspaper.

     

    The question that attracted most attention was the one asked by Parliamentarian Zaruhi Postanjyan from Armenia, a member of the opposition Heritage Party. She told Pres. Sargsyan: “Since an authoritarian regime has been established in Armenia and all elections from 1995 on have been rigged,” wouldn’t it be preferable if he organized special and fair elections and then “resigned”?

     

    As the Turkish President of PACE, Mevlut Cavusoglu snickered at the question, Pres. Sargsyan calmly responded that he was well aware of Ms. Postanjyan’s views which she had freely expressed in the Armenian Parliament, on the street and in the media. He added that he was not prepared to hold special elections because it is neither necessary nor constitutionally feasible to organize such elections. He urged Ms. Postanjyan to participate in the next regularly-scheduled parliamentary elections.

     

    Not surprisingly, Pres. Sargsyan’s PACE speech was welcomed by his supporters and criticized by his opponents at home. The most important issue for all concerned should have been whether the President’s impressive words would translate into action in the near future. However, the immediate controversy revolved around the appropriateness of Ms. Postanjyan’s criticism of the President, while on foreign soil.

     

    Some Armenian politicians were of the opinion that it was improper for Ms. Postanjyan “to attack” Pres. Sargsyan in the chambers of the European Council. Others felt that her “harsh words” inadvertently made the President look good, because in a truly “authoritarian regime,” she would have been excluded from Armenia’s delegation, stripped of her parliamentary immunity and prosecuted. In fact, some European Parliamentarians wondered whether Turkish or Azeri delegates would dare to criticize their President at PACE?

     

    American politicians use the expression “politics stops at the water’s edge” to indicate their willingness to set aside internal disputes for the sake of presenting a united front to outsiders. Applying that adage to Armenia, one could question the wisdom of making such disparaging comments before the Council of Europe, regardless of whether one agrees with the President or his policies. Since Armenia is routinely attacked by Turkish and Azerbaijani delegates in international forums, it is unwise to add one’s voice to those tarnishing Armenia’s reputation.

     

    This issue also comes up when some Armenians try to pressure their authorities by taking their internal disputes to foreign governments and international courts. While their frustration is understandable, dragging a foreign entity into an internal dispute detracts from Armenia’s image overseas. In such cases, however, the blame must be shared by the Armenian government for failing to ensure the integrity of domestic courts, thereby forcing citizens to turn elsewhere for justice.

     

    Before making critical comments about Armenia’s leadership outside the country, especially by Parliament members who have ample opportunity to express their views at home, one must weigh the benefits of pressuring the authorities to respect the people’s rights with the damage caused to the country’s international reputation.

     

  • The Sound of Turkey Clapping

    The Sound of Turkey Clapping

    Claire Berlinski

    The Sound of Turkey Clapping

    Thoughts on the recent elections, mostly ignored around the world

    22 June 2011

    Having long before accepted a lecturing assignment on Hillsdale College’s Baltic Cruise, I wasn’t in Istanbul for the June 12 general election. So despite months of following the campaign in minute detail, when it actually happened, I was physically and metaphorically isolated from the mood in Turkey. There was some value to that: contemplating the pale, glassy, silent Baltic Sea puts Turkish hysteria in perspective.

    And hysterical—and ugly—the election campaign was, marked by terrorist attacks, including one on the prime minister’s convoy; the release of sex tapes starring opposition leaders; blackmail; vulgar anti-Semitic rhetoric; insane conspiracy theory upon insane conspiracy theory; a scandal revealing the rigging of college entrance exams; the arrests of more military officers on charges of coup plotting (these arrests have been going on for years); threats by leading Kurdish politicians to set the country ablaze; serious efforts by Kurdish terrorists to do precisely that; growing Internet and press censorship; the last-minute discovery of 10 million new voters on the electoral rolls, only half of whom could even remotely be explained by Turkey’s changing demography; and noise, constant noise. It had become difficult even to imagine five minutes without the sound of loudspeakers blaring from campaign buses, or the prime minister’s bellowing voice, mute only for a few notable minutes when at one rally his teleprompter failed, leaving him staring speechless into the void.

    Yet in the end, the Turkish people spoke. The only deaths related to the election, on the very day, appear to have been of natural causes. Given that this region is not known for its gift for democracy, the world applauded a bit too loudly that an election was held at all. Turkey won the Democracy Special Olympics! It occurred to few foreign observers that going into rapture over the mere fact of an election in the Islamic world was deeply patronizing, the clear unspoken message being, “You’re a credit to your kind.”

    The Justice and Development Party, or AKP, was expected to win, and it did. The AKP increased its take of the vote to 50 percent, a strong showing over the last election in 2007, but did not achieve a super-majority, which would have permitted the prime minister’s party to draft a new constitution on its own. Nor did the party achieve a majority sufficient to take a draft constitution to a referendum with its own votes in parliament. The opposition Republican People’s Party, or CHP, did better, electorally, than it has since 1977. Overall, owing to the peculiarities of the Turkish electoral system, the AKP actually lost seats in the 550-seat Grand National Assembly, with its numbers declining from 341 to 326. For those hoping to see some limits imposed upon the prime minister’s power, the results were decent, but not great.

    In a gesture either lacking sensitivity to historic resonance or perfectly attuned to it, Prime Minister Erdoğan delivered a victory speech from the balcony of his headquarters in Ankara. His tone was magnanimous. “No one should doubt,” he said, “that we will protect the dignity, faith, and lifestyles of those who did not vote for us.” Shortly afterward, he offered to drop most of his libel suits against private individuals, politicians, and journalists who had insulted him (except the suits against those who were really beyond the pale). The world cheered. Few noted the grotesquerie of the implicit suggestion that Turkish citizens’ right to say what they please is granted at their ruler’s pleasure. Numerous journalists who before the election had been tentatively critical of the ruling party fell quickly into line. No hope of getting rid of them, I imagine they thought, it’s time to fawn. Journalist Mehmet Ali Birand, whose enthusiasms are an excellent guide to Turkey’s power dynamics—whoever has it, he’s for them—summed it up: “Bravo, well done. There is no word to be uttered now.”

    Geographically, the AKP’s electoral hold reached the Aegean. The party gained considerable ground even in the West, the country’s contested territory. Conventional wisdom holds that the economy was, again, the major factor in the AKP’s success. This is likely true, at least up to a point, but one shouldn’t discount the competence of the AKP’s electoral machine in winning votes. The AKP has indeed presided over a long period of economic growth, but Turkey hasn’t become as wealthy as outside media tends to assume. It is still a poor country. Most people here have difficult lives. AKP politicians are good at talking to poor people and making them feel as if they care. The opposition hasn’t mastered this yet.

    Probably, the AKP is now Turkey’s permanent ruling party. Students of politics call it a “dominant party system,” one in which one party consistently obtains twice as much of the electoral pie as the runner-up. That seems to describe Turkey.

    From my distant perspective in the Baltics, I was struck by the rest of the world’s indifference. Few knew these elections were taking place; few cared. It’s widely believed in Turkey that foreign powers are eternally meddling in Turkish politics. Meddling? They’re oblivious. Turkey is a minor curiosity to the world beyond its own borders, at best. Westerners on the cruise asked me, “Are they our friends?” When I tried to explain the complicated answer, eyes glazed over. It might have dismayed me, but after a few weeks of travel, I began to wonder if the indifference didn’t contain its own wisdom. What is Turkey, compared with ruined Russia, with its aging nuclear arsenal, under the control of corrupt, ruthless drunks? Compared with Europe, rapidly confronting the failure of its grand integration project? Compared with America, now fighting three wars and its own economic meltdown? Compared with Iran, surveying its imploding neighborhood covetously, preparing for its new role as regional hegemon? Compared with China, soon to be the major center of Pacific power, if American fears prove correct? Turkey is, in fact, by comparison, just not that important. It is only Turkey that cares about Turkey.

    Yet this message posted by a friend on Facebook still made me feel a flicker of pity:

    To me, yesterday’s elections was not a matter of numbers in the parliament. To me, it showed that as a nation, we don’t have the capacity to choose right from wrong. Yesterday Turkey voted for the guy who cheated in the major exams which would also determine the voters’ kids’ future. They were cheated and they still said “yes.” Turkey voted for a man who believes he has the right to tell you what to read, see or know (internet censorship). Turkey voted for a man whose minister talks of the “female” citizens as “a girl or a woman, whatever” meaning if she is a virgin or not (girl-woman difference, especially in Turkish), meaning if she is a prostitute. She is a “bitch” in the eyes of Erdoğan’s ministers because she speaks, she uses her right to express herself. People complain about using the most expensive fuel but still voted for this guy. People voted for a man who supports three kids in a family when he knows (and will do his best to keep it that way) that these three kids will not have education to question his authority or what he does. To him, all these three ignorant kids will grow up to be his “voters.”

    This picture is to me darker than the number of seats. Because I believe numbers can change but only slightly unless the mentality changes which is impossible when the nation is so blind to see what is going on. And I who says this am nothing more than a 30-year-old translator with a knowledge of literature and history but not particularly of political science, no one smarter than the majority. As a young woman in Turkey, I feel dead when I look at the big picture.

    As of today, Turkey is more f*cked than ever. People who support freedom and rights or issues like education, we will be buried alive here. But who cares, we are dead already.

    No, I wrote back, you’re not dead yet. And since you’re alive, you’ll have to keep fighting. That’s the way it goes in a democracy, and at least Turkey is that, however compromised. It’s the worst form of government except for all the others that have been tried. That’s all the West ever promised you about it.

    Claire Berlinski, a City Journal contributing editor, is an American journalist who lives in Istanbul.

  • From Genocide Recognition To Reclaiming Church Properties

    From Genocide Recognition To Reclaiming Church Properties

     

     

    sassounian34

    The Armenian-American community took a major step last week to reverse the consequences of the Armenian Genocide and end the Turkish government’s long-standing policy of erasing all traces of Armenian civilization from present-day Turkey.

     

    Going beyond mere acknowledgment of the Armenian Genocide, some members of Congress have introduced a new resolution that urges “the Republic of Turkey to safeguard its Christian heritage and to return confiscated church properties.”

     

    The sweeping House Resolution 306 calls on the Government of Turkey to:

    “1) end all forms of religious discrimination;

    2) allow the rightful church and lay owners of Christian church properties, without hindrance or restriction, to organize and administer prayer services, religious education, clerical training, appointments, and succession, religious community gatherings, social services, including ministry to the needs of the poor and infirm, and other religious activities;

    3) return to their rightful owners all Christian churches and other places of worship, monasteries, schools, hospitals, monuments, relics, holy sites, and other religious properties, including movable properties, such as artwork, manuscripts, vestments, vessels, and other artifacts; and

    4) allow the rightful Christian church and lay owners of Christian church properties, without hindrance or restriction, to preserve, reconstruct, and repair, as they see fit, all Christian churches and other places of worship, monasteries, schools, hospitals, monuments, relics, holy sites, and other religious properties within Turkey.”

     

    This bipartisan resolution, sponsored by Cong. Ed Royce (R-CA) and Cong. Howard Berman (D-CA), was immediately endorsed by 30 of their House colleagues, 10 of them Republicans. This is a good start, as Republicans constitute the majority in the House and their support is crucial for the successful passage of the resolution. Significantly, Cong. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), Chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and a long-time opponent of the Armenian Genocide resolution, was one of the first supporters of the resolution regarding the return of church properties.

     

    It is not surprising that this resolution has such broad support, as it is hard to imagine that any member of Congress, the State Department or the Obama administration would oppose returning a religious building back to its proper owners. By contemporary societal standards, no one would accept the conversion of a church into a mosque or vice versa. Turkey’s devout leaders, as good Muslims, would be the first to acknowledge and uphold the sanctity of houses of worship.

     

    Beyond building a strong bipartisan coalition in Congress, practically all religious denominations in America, be they Evangelical, Catholic, Orthodox, Jewish or Muslim, would support such a resolution. All ethnic groups, such as Latinos, Greek-Americans, Irish-Americans, Jewish-American, Arab-Americans, Afro-Americans, Asian-Americans, and Assyrian-Americans would also lend their support to this resolution.

     

    The Armenian National Committee of America noted that the resolution intends “to highlight, confront, and eventually reverse decades of official Turkish policy of destroying Christian church properties, desecrating holy sites, discriminating against Christian communities, and denying of the right of Armenians, Greeks, Assyrians, Chaldeans, Pontians, Arameans (Syriacs), and others to practice their faith in freedom.”

     

    The right to religious freedom is not simply an internal Turkish issue. This right is protected by many international agreements, including the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the European Convention on Human Rights, and the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne to which Turkey is a signatory. Turkey continues to violate Articles 41 and 42 of the Lausanne Treaty which obligate it to provide funding and facilities to non-Muslim minorities for educational, religious, and charitable purposes, and to protect their religious establishments. Regrettably, the House resolution makes no mention of these violations and Turkey’s obligations under the Lausanne Treaty.

     

    The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, which issues an annual report documenting violations of religious rights around the world, has placed Turkey on its “Watch List,” for the third year in a row. The Commission has found that “the Turkish government continues to impose serious limitations on freedom of religion or belief, thereby threatening the continued vitality and survival of minority religious communities in Turkey.” The Turkish government also “continues to intervene in the internal governance and education of religious communities and to confiscate places of worship.”

     

    In recent years, the House and Senate passed several resolutions calling on Turkish-occupied Northern Cyprus, Lithuania, Romania, and Vietnam to protect houses of worship and return wrongfully confiscated properties belonging to religious minorities. In line with these resolutions, the House of Representatives should adopt Resolution 306, calling on the Turkish government to respect the right of worship for all Christian minorities and return to them their expropriated churches and other religious properties.

  • Sassounian’s column of June 16, 2011

    Sassounian’s column of June 16, 2011

     

     

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    Why Pass an Armenian Genocide 

    Resolution for the Third Time?

     

    By Harut Sassounian

    Publisher, The California Courier

     

    A new Armenian Genocide resolution is being introduced in the House of Representatives this week.

     

    The first question is why Congress is being asked to pass a genocide resolution for the third time? As is well known, the House of Representatives twice adopted resolutions acknowledging the Armenian Genocide, in 1975 and 1984. What would Armenians gain by adopting the resolution for the third time? And if it passes this year, would another attempt be made to pass it again for the fourth time next year?

     

    Some may be under the mistaken impression that such resolutions would help Armenians obtain restitution from Turkey for their confiscated lands and stolen possessions. This is simply not true. Commemorative resolutions express “the sense” of Congress and do not have the force of law. Furthermore, if these resolutions had any real benefits, Armenians would have taken advantage of them during the decades since their adoption!

     

    On the positive side, the passage of these resolutions have ethical, psychological, and political dimensions. Morality dictates that the mass murder of an entire nation not be forgotten or ignored. Yet, it is the Turkish government’s continued denial of the Armenian Genocide that compels Armenians to present such resolutions to Congress year after year. Regrettably, successive U.S. administrations also share the blame in this sordid affair by aiding and abetting the Turkish denialists, and playing unethical word games with the extermination of 1.5 million innocent men, women and children.

     

    The psychological advantage of passing such a resolution is the satisfaction received by descendants of genocide victims when their loss and pain are acknowledged by the legislature of the world’s greatest democracy.

     

    The political raucous, whenever an Armenian Genocide resolution is introduced in Congress, is due to the Turkish government’s scandalous behavior. Dozens of commemorative resolutions on a variety of issues are adopted by the U.S. Congress each year, yet not a single one makes the news. Because Turkish leaders create such mayhem by making threats against the United States, dispatching high-level delegations to Washington, hiring powerful lobbying firms, and spending valuable political capital, they end up making millions of people aware of the facts of the Armenian Genocide. While the Turkish intent is to cover up the mass murder of Armenians almost a century ago, their berserk reaction inadvertently succeeds in publicizing to the whole world the dastardly crimes committed by their forefathers.

     

    Hopefully, the Turkish government would once again resort to its normal bullying tactics, thereby attracting the attention of the international community to the Armenian Genocide issue. The newly introduced resolution can only benefit from such Turkish-generated publicity, since the Republican-dominated House is not likely to act on it anytime soon, not that the more sympathetic Democrats had a greater degree of enthusiasm to bring it to a vote late last year, when they were in power!

     

    Certainly, Turkish officials could be even more helpful should they create unexpected crises with the United States, thus forcing the hand of both the Democratic administration and Republican House leadership to support the genocide resolution. Meanwhile, the Armenian-American community would keep the issue alive and ready to be triggered at the opportune moment, causing the Turkish side to spend millions of dollars in on-going lobbying efforts!

     

    Such an opportunity may come later this month with a possible bloody confrontation between the second Turkish “humanitarian” flotilla and Israel’s Navy, which could trigger the ire of U.S. and Israeli leaders, compelling them to put the pending Genocide resolutions to a vote in their respective legislatures. While Armenians would resent seeing the genocide issue used as a political football, they may not have much of a choice, since they have been just as offended when the resolution was not being adopted for all the wrong reasons!

     

    Going beyond the genocide issue, Armenian-Americans may introduce several other resolutions in Congress this year involving Armenian-Turkish relations:

    — Urging Turkey to return the expropriated Armenian churches to the Armenian Patriarchate of Istanbul, allowing them to function as churches, not museums, mosques, or touristic sites;

    — Honoring the distinguished jurist Raphael Lemkin who coined the term genocide, influenced by the mass murder of Armenians in 1915;

    — Advocating the lifting of the blockade of Armenia imposed by Turkey and Azerbaijan; and

    — Supporting the protection of human rights of all minorities in Turkey (Alevis, Armenians, Assyrians, Greeks, Jews, and Kurds).

     

    With the upcoming congressional and presidential elections, and unexpected developments in the Eastern Mediterranean, we may be facing a hectic and chaotic political season. It is critical for Armenian-Americans and their supporters to remain well informed, active, and committed to the pursuit of Armenian interests.

     

  • Can’t Go Back to Constantinople

    Can’t Go Back to Constantinople

    Claire Berlinski

    Can’t Go Back to Constantinople

    Istanbul’s history deserves preservation, but at what cost to development?

    CJ 21 2

    Anyone who has ever sat in one of Istanbul’s endless traffic jams, listening to a taxi driver blast his horn and curse the son-of-a-donkey unloading a moving van in front of him, will agree that the city’s transportation system leaves much to be desired. City planners meant to solve this problem when they began construction of a $4 billion subway tunnel beneath the Bosporus. Then, to the planners’ horror, the project’s engineers discovered the lost Byzantine port of Theodosius. Known to archaeologists only from ancient texts, the port had been sleeping peacefully since the fourth century ad—directly underneath the site of the proposed main transit station in Yenikapı.

    The tunnel-digging halted, entailing untold millions in economic losses, and the artifact-digging began. An army of archaeologists descended upon the pit, working around the clock to preserve the ancient jetties and docks, while Istanbul’s traffic grew yet more snarled. Newspapers reported that Metin Gokcay, the dig’s chief archaeologist, was “rejecting all talk of deadlines.” It’s not difficult to imagine the hand-wringing that those words must have prompted among budget planners.

    The planners no doubt considered throwing themselves into the Bosporus when the excavation then unearthed something even better—or worse, depending on your perspective—underneath those remains: 8,000-year-old human clothes, urns, ashes, and utensils. These artifacts stunned historians and forced them to revisit their understanding of the city’s age and origins. The discovery posed a fresh moral problem, too: excavating the top layer might damage the one above it—or vice versa. So the decision was no longer, “Should we conserve these remains?” It was, “Which remains should we conserve?”

    The subway project, originally scheduled to be finished in May 2010, is now at least six years behind schedule. The route has been changed 11 times in response to new findings, driving everyone concerned to the brink of madness. The government is desperate to finish the project but well aware that the world is watching. No one wants to be known to future generations as the destroyer of 8,000 years’ worth of civilization.

    Decisions like this are made on a smaller scale every day in every neighborhood of Istanbul. Istanbul’s population—by some estimates, as high as 20 million—has more than tripled since 1980, enlarged by decades of migration from Turkey’s poor rural regions. The city desperately needs better roads, subways, and housing. Its infrastructure is archaic, a problem illustrated in 2009 when flash floods gushed across the city’s arterial roads, killing scores. The catastrophe was widely ascribed to inadequate infrastructure, shoddy construction, and poor urban planning.

    But building the city’s future will assuredly destroy its past. Thriving human settlements existed here thousands of years before the Roman, Byzantine, and Ottoman Empires. If you look under the ground around Istanbul’s Golden Horn, it’s almost impossible not to find something archaeologically significant. Developers covet these sites today for precisely the geographic features—for example, natural ports—that made them equally desirable long ago. The more economically attractive the location, the more likely it is to have significant remains, and the more likely it is that someone will have an economic motivation to make those remains disappear.

    Government-backed developers, for example, were determined to expand the Four Seasons Hotel in Sultanhamet, even though it sat atop relics from the Palatium Magnum built by Emperor Constantine I in the fourth century ad. Dogged local investigative journalism and the threat of international opprobrium put a halt to those plans. On the other side of the Golden Horn, when it became obvious that the construction of the Swiss and the Conrad Hotels in Beşiktaş would destroy significant archaeological artifacts, the local government objected, pointing to Turkey’s laws on historic preservation. The developers went over their heads to Ankara and appealed to the laws on promoting tourism. Parliament decided that Turkey needed foreign direct investment, and the tourism laws prevailed. There was an irony in the decision, of course: Istanbul’s heritage is precisely what attracts tourists. Then again, if there are no hotels, there’s nowhere for tourists to stay.

    There is no way to resolve the tension between letting this megacity develop economically and protecting its priceless archaeological treasures. Obviously, you can’t turn an entire city into a museum where no new construction is allowed. According to some archaeologists, that’s exactly what you’d have to do to protect Turkish historic artifacts—leave them all in the ground, untouched, since even careful excavation might destroy them. But Turkey is not a wealthy country. It’s hard to feel morally confident in saying that Turkish citizens need Neolithic hairbrushes more than they need houses, factories, ports, dams, mines, and roads—especially when they’re dying in flash floods.

    So something has to be destroyed. But who decides which part of the city’s past is most important? Legally, Turkey’s monument board has the authority to decide what to save: in principle, if more than 60 percent of a neighborhood is more than 100 years old, it cannot be touched without the board’s permission. The board deals daily with a massive number of requests and decisions, but it has neither the time nor the resources to ensure that its decisions are upheld. For example, it reviews all plans for development in sensitive areas. The plans then get sent to municipal government offices for approval—but often, the plans submitted to the board are different from the ones that go to the local government, and the board is none the wiser.

    Further, the process of evaluating a preservation claim is often slow and bureaucratic. Sara Nur Yildiz, a historian at Istanbul’s Bilgi University, recalls noticing a distinctive earthen mound at the edge of a construction site in her upscale neighborhood in Cihangir. She suspected immediately that it was an archaeologically significant well. “I told them to stop digging,” she says, “but they ignored me.” She filed a petition with the monument board. Ultimately, the board agreed with her and halted the construction. But by the time the board finished studying the case and relaying its verdict to the workers, half of the structure had been demolished.

    In general, Ottoman Empire relics fare better than Byzantine ruins. In the minds of certain officials, the latter sound a bit too much like Greek ruins, which aren’t, after all, part of their history. Archaeologists associated with TAY—the Archaeological Settlements of Turkey Project—have compiled inventories of priceless endangered sites. They report a “persistent and intense threat” to Byzantine remains throughout the city from the construction of roads and modern housing. The Edirnekapı and Topkapı sections of the historic city walls, they lament, vanished during the construction of Adnan Menderes Boulevard and Millet Street. Another problem: there is “almost no coordination,” say archaeologists with TAY, between the government departments charged with preserving cultural heritage and those responsible for public works.

    Many academics have worked to draw up conservation plans for the city. So has UNESCO. But they don’t have the power to enforce them. UNESCO, claiming that the Turkish government has disregarded its reports, has threatened to embarrass Istanbul by putting its cultural treasures on its endangered list. But on the historic peninsula, rates of return on investment in development are among the highest in the world—exceeded only by those in Moscow. For developers, the amount of money at stake is phantasmagoric. They’re willing to spend a lot to make legal and political obstacles go away. Archaeologists can’t compete.

    So come visit now, while it’s all still here.

    Claire Berlinski, a City Journal contributing editor, is an American journalist who lives in Istanbul.