Tag: Democracy

When will democracy be the only game in town in Turkey?

By Begüm Burak

Democracy is the most ideal form of government in the contemporary world. In the post-Cold War era, with the triumph of liberal democracy against Soviet Communism, the importance of democratic norms and principles were emphasized. In fact, the emphasis put upon the virtues of democracy was a product of the Second World War, with the United States’ victory as proof for the necessity of democracy in the new world order.

“…[the] Turkish Army is determined to defend the unitary secular state founded by Ataturk… [and the] Protection of fundamental characteristics of the republic cannot be considered as an intervention in domestic politics.” Isık Kosaner, ex-Chief of the General Staff[1]

Turkey first experienced democracy in the 1800s. Despite the fact that the official history in Turkey states that the parliament was founded in 1920 in Ankara, the truth is a bit different. As a columnist writes:

“Turkey’s [Ottoman Empire’s] first parliament, that is the Meclis-i Mebusan, was founded on March 31, 1877, and it had 115 members. And the parliament founded in 1920 in Ankara was not a new parliament, but a successor to the former one. Almost half of the members of the Meclis-i Mebusan were in the parliament founded in 1920, for example.” [2]

In the world we live in, with the impact of globalisation and the increasing awareness among the people about the developments taking place all over the world, democracy today is not an alien concept. Almost every single person knows that democracy in its simplest terms consists of ‘free and fair elections’. However, this is just a minimal definition of democracy.

Robert Dahl (1982) has offered the most generally accepted listing of what he terms the “procedural minimal” conditions that must be present for modern political democracy (or as he puts it, “polyarchy”) to exist:

1) Control over government decisions about policy is constitutionally vested in elected officials.

2) Elected officials are chosen in frequent and fairly conducted elections in which coercion is comparatively uncommon.

3) Practically all adults have the fight to vote in the election of officials.

4) Practically all adults have the fight to run for elective offices in the government . . . .

5) Citizens have a fight to express themselves without the danger of severe punishment on political matters broadly defined . . . .

6) Citizens have a fight to seek out alternative sources of information. Moreover, alternative sources of information exist and are protected by law.

7) . . . Citizens also have the fight to form relatively independent associations or organizations, including independent political parties and interest groups.

On the other hand, democracy in the Turkish case has generally been a contested concept over which the military elites, bureaucratic class and the politicians generally disagree. The foremost characteristic of Turkish Republic since 1923 has been her secular identity and not a democratic political system. In this context, according to the founders of Turkey among whom Mustafa Kemal Ataturk has had an undisputedly decisive and dominant role, the most important priority was to make Turkey a modern state with a precisely secular(ist) character.

It is obvious that the secularist drive was the most characteristic element of the Kemalist reform movement. Ironically, the way these reforms were implemented has impeded another important aim of the Kemalist modernisation process, that is, realising democracy in the practical sense. Becoming a modern state for the Kemalist elites meant having a Western type of political, social and cultural life (for instance listening to Western music, wearing “modern” Western type of clothes).

But how does democracy become “the only game in town”? The functioning of the economic system, state-religion relations, civil-military relations, the minority rights etc., all have a considerable degree of significance in the establishment of democratic consolidation. Some people argue that Turkey has got an illiberal democracy. An illiberal democracy, as described by Fareed Zakaria, is a political system in which free and fair elections exist, but civil liberties are not fully protected and state power is not limited by liberal principles.[3] Illiberal practices are seen most virulently in the religious sphere and persecution of minority rights. However, it must be noted that these illiberal practices are being challenged today thanks to the EU harmonisation laws and the strengthening of civil society in Turkey.

The Turkish Republic inherited from the Ottoman Empire a strong, centralised, and highly bureaucratic state. Indeed, the “output” structures of the state (the civil service, armed forces, police, and courts) have been so highly institutionalised that this overdevelopment of the state machinery, coupled with the predominance of a “strong-state tradition” in Turkish political culture,[4] impede the emergence of a consolidated democracy.[5]

Despite the EU reform process and other legal and institutional regulations, Turkey still has a long way to go for further democracy. Despite the trial of the coup makers, broadcasting in Kurdish language, the strengthening of a free-market economy and the relative softening of the secularist policies, some pathological state codes constitute a major threat for democratic consolidation.

As Şahin Alpay proposes:

“Reasonable people in Turkey (or abroad) have to face the simple and naked truth: Kemalism, that is, Turkish secular nationalism, is not compatible with liberal and pluralistic democracy. All of Turkey’s major political problems today are the consequence of the forced imposition in accordance with the ‘founding philosophy’ of the republic, that is Kemalism, of a uniform identity onto a religiously and ethnically heterogeneous society”[6]

Last but not the least, I think the most influential factor that is used to block Turkish political progress and harm democracy is the nature of the relationship between the state and religion. As İhsan Yılmaz states:In contemporary Turkey, besides the ruling elites (namely the Justice and Development Party- the AKP[7]), the civil society actors and the bureaucracy occupy undisputedly important roles for making democracy stronger. Because a new, civilian constitution can only be drafted in a pluralistic process through which all the different segments of the society, different ideologies and worldviews reach a common reasoning.

“Laicism was the primary and sacred norm of the country, and for its sake everything else, including democracy, could be sacrificed. Hopefully, this perverted conception of modernity and progress is fading away in Turkey. As we are now talking about crimes against democracy, it is only normal that we start with the main perpetrators of these crimes: coup-loving soldiers.” [8]

[1] The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/aug/29/turkey.islam (August 26, 2011)

[2] http://www.todayszaman.com/columnist-278356-historical-awareness.html (May 10, 2012)

[3] (May 10, 2012)

[4] For further information about political culture in Turkey, please visit (May 10, 2012)

[5] Begüm Burak, “Turkish Political Culture and Democracy: A Forced Marriage or Not?” in Civilacademy, , p. 15 (May 10, 2012)

[6] (May 10, 2012)

[7] A piece regarding AKP, (May 10, 2012)

[8] http://www.todayszaman.com/columnist-278132-democratic-sins-of-the-politicians-in-the-february-28-coup.html (May 10, 2012)

May 16, 2012
Armenian ‘G’ claims: A matter of balance and due process

Hurriyet Daily News, April 28, 2012

FERRUH DEMİRMEN

We have just passed April 24, when Armenians of various walks of life commemorate the anniversary of the arrest of the Armenian intellectuals in Istanbul 97 years ago, alleged to have been the beginning of “Armenian genocide.” So the pundits chastise, woefully, Turkey for “denying” genocide, and demand that Turkey extend an apology and offer restitution (meaning money and land) to the Armenians.

This is no place to dwell on history to explain why such demands lack rational basis, e.g., if the Ottoman Turks had intent to exterminate the Armenian minority, why they gave Armenian citizens high positions in the government, why they waited for more than 6 centuries – when they were in much better position – to deliberately target Armenians.

Nor is this the proper place to elaborate why some critical pieces of “evidence” e.g., the Andonian files, that the proponents of genocide cite to support their thesis, were forgeries, or that the orders issued by the Ottoman central government to relocate Armenians proscribed that all measures were to be taken to ensure the safety of the deportees and meet their needs during and after relocation.

But there are two aspects the proponents of genocide conveniently ignore, that call for special attention: balance and due process.

Regarding balance, no one denies that Armenians suffered during relocation, and some lost their lives, in a time of war when chaos, lawlessness and depravation prevailed. Surely we must mourn the sufferings and loss of life. But do we ever hear about the sufferings and loss of lives of non-Armenians? During that tragic period more than half a million Muslims – and some Jews – perished at the hands of armed, marauding Armenian gangs that terrorized the countryside and helped invading enemy armies.

Do the lost lives of Muslims not matter?

If we are to recall history, do Armenians carry any sense of guilt and culpability for aiding the enemy and terrorizing the local civil population?

And why do we not hear, one must ask, any remorse on the part of Armenians for the killings by the ASALA organization of more than 40 Turkish diplomats in the 1970’s and ‘80’s?

As for due process, it must be emphasized that “genocide” is a special crime, and the term should not be used lightly. To quote the 1948 UN Resolution on the Prevention of Genocide, determination on genocide can only be made “by a competent tribunal of the State in the territory of which the act was committed, or by such international penal tribunal as may have jurisdiction.” In the case of the alleged Armenian genocide, there has been no such determination. No court verdict; none, period. The U.N. resolution also makes no attribution to “Armenian genocide.”

A parliamentary body, often beholden to special interests, and acting as both the prosecutor and judge, is no substitute for a duly authorized court of law.

So, one must ask, without a court verdict, how can the Turks be accused of the “g” crime? Where is the respect for due process?

In fact, the only judicial proceeding that comes close to being an international tribunal on the Armenian case is the Malta Tribunal, held by the victorious British after WWI. The proceedings, investigating charges against 144 high-ranking Ottoman officials accused of harming Armenians, failed to bring about a single conviction. Even searching through the U.S. State Department files in Washington D.C. failed to produce any incriminating evidence. Off went the dispatch from the British Embassy to Foreign Secretary Lord Curzon in London: “I regret to inform Your Lordship that there was nothing therein which could be used as evidence against the Turks who are being detained for trial at Malta.” All the detainees were set free and returned to Turkish soil.

Armenian genocide allegations, apart from being legally unsustainable, create discord and animosity in society. Nearly a century has passed, and it is time to move on toward greater inter-communal harmony.

Will the Armenian Diaspora take note?

ferruh@demirmen.com

April 29, 2012
Turkey’s Jailed Journalists

March 9, 2012

Posted by Dexter Filkins

Quick: What country jails the most journalists?

If you guessed China, you were close, but no cigar. Twenty-seven reporters are in prison there, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists in New York. If you guessed Iran, you’re getting warmer—forty-two in prison there—but you’re still off.

How many of you guessed Turkey?

Measuring strictly in terms of imprisonments, Turkey—a longtime American ally, member of NATO, and showcase Muslim democracy—appears to be the most repressive country in the world.

According to the Journalists Union of Turkey, ninety-four reporters are currently imprisoned for doing their jobs. More than half are members of the Kurdish minority, which has been seeking greater freedoms since the Turkish republic was founded, in 1923. Many counts of arrested journalists go higher; the Friends of Ahmet Sik and Nedim Sener, a group of reporters named for two imprisoned colleagues, has compiled a detailed list of a hundred and four journalists currently in prison there.

The arrests have created an extraordinary climate of fear among journalists in Turkey, or, for that matter, for anyone contemplating criticizing Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government. During my recent visit there, many Turkish reporters told me that their editors have told them not to criticize Erdogan. As I detail in my piece in the magazine this week, the arrests of journalists are part of a larger campaign by Erdogan to crush domestic opposition to his rule. Since 2007, more than seven hundred people have been arrested, including members of parliament, army officers, university rectors, the heads of aid organizations, and the owners of television networks.

Mind you, Turkey is a democracy, or at least, it’s supposed to be. Erdogan’s triumph, and that of his party, in 2002, represented an epochal shift in Turkey’s political history. The election threw out an entrenched secular minority that had governed the country since its founding, often suppressing the majority of moderately religious Turks. In his nine years in power, Erdogan has transformed Turkish society in many positive ways. But, more and more, Erdogan’s Turkey is coming to resembled Putin’s Russia—a kind of one-party democracy.

If you bring this up with Turkish authorities, you won’t get very far. When I raised the issue of domestic repression with Ahmet Davutoglu, the Turkish foreign minister, last month, he told me in an irritated voice that his government wasn’t responsible. Ibrahim Kalin, an Erdogan adviser, told me that most of the arrested journalists were not journalists at all, but terrorists or criminals. “Just because you have a press card doesn’t mean you’re a journalist,” Kalin said.

In December, Joel Simon, executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, wrote to Erdogan to ask to him to stop citing C.P.J.’s annual report as evidence of press freedom in Turkey, which Simon called “perverse.” The report, compiled last year, confirmed that eight journalists were in jail in Turkey because of their work. (No number to be proud of, to be sure; as Simon pointed out to Erdogan, it put Turkey “just behind Burma.”) But Simon has since said that the report was incomplete, and hampered by, among other things, the extreme difficulty of verifying arrests in Turkey, and that eight was a starting point, a “minimum.” In recent weeks, Simon has sent a team to Turkey to review more than a hundred cases to determine the real number of journalists in prison. He told me he expects the number to climb significantly, probably closer to the figure of ninety-four released by the Journalists Union of Turkey. In late December, for instance, Simon sent a letter to Erdogan condemning the arrests of some thirty journalists in raids around the country. (Most of those reporters are still in prison, he said.)

“It’s incredibly cynical of Erdogan to cite C.P.J. as proof of press freedom,” Simon said. “Turkey is a highly repressive country.”

Remember, too, that when you start arresting journalists, the freedom for those not in jail shrinks, too. One of the journalists I interviewed while I was in Turkey was Nuray Mert, a brave and outspoken columnist for Milliyet, a daily newspaper. Last year, after Erdogan publicly criticized Mert, her public-affairs television show was cancelled. Two weeks ago, she told me that her editors at Milliyet had fired her.

Photograph by Abbas/Magnum.

==========================

Dexter Filkins

Dexter Filkins joined The New Yorker in January of 2011, and has since written about a bank heist in Afghanistan and the democratic protests in the Middle East. Before coming to The New Yorker, Filkins had been with the New York Times since 2000, reporting from Afghanistan, Pakistan, New York, and Iraq, where he was based from 2003 to 2006. He has also worked for the Miami Herald and the Los Angeles Times, where he was chief of the paper’s New Delhi bureau. In 2009, he won a Pulitzer Prize as part of a team of New York Times reporters in Pakistan and Afghanistan. He was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University in 2006-07 and a fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government in 2007-08. He has received numerous prizes, including two George Polk Awards and three Overseas Press Club Awards. His 2008 book, “The Forever War,” won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Best Nonfiction Book, and was named a best book of the year by the New York Times, the Washington Post, Time, and the Boston Globe.

Mar 12, 2012

Letter from Turkey

The Deep State

LETTER FROM TURKEY about Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. When Erdoğan and his comrades in the A.K. Party came to power, there were widespread concerns that, as ardent Islamists, they were intent on foisting a religious regime on secular Turkey. Erdoğan, for his part…

by Dexter Filkins

March 12, 2012
Kuwaiti Islamist-led opposition wins majority

Opposition secures 34 out of 50 seats in snap parliamentary elections held after anti-corruption protests in December.

”]Kuwait’s Islamist-led opposition has won a landslide majority in snap polls, securing 34 seats in the 50-member parliament, officials results showed.

The snap polls were held after the ruler of the oil-rich Gulf state dissolved parliament following youth-led protests in December over alleged corruption and bitter disputes between opposition MPs and the government.

Sunni Islamists took 23 seats compared with just nine in the dissolved parliament, while liberals were the big losers, winning only two places against five previously.

No women were elected, with the four female MPs of the previous parliament all losing their seats.

Sixty-two percent of Kuwaitis cast their ballots on Thursday, up slightly from 58 per cent in the previous election in 2009.

Voters punished pro-government MPs, reducing them to a small minority, especially 13 former members who were questioned by the public prosecutor over corruption charges.

The opposition scored strongly in the two tribal-dominated constituencies, winning 18 of the 20 available seats.

Kuwait is divided into five electoral districts, with each electing 10 politicians.

Minority Shias, who form about 30 per cent of the native population, saw their representation reduced to seven MPs from nine, with four of them from Islamist groups.

The recent demonstrations against the government led to the resignation of the former prime minister Sheikh Nasser Mohammad al-Ahmad al-Sabah, who was later replaced by another senior member of the ruling family.

OPEC member Kuwait has been rocked by a series of political crises over the past six years, leading to the resignation of seven governments and the dissolution of parliament on four occasions.

www.aljazeera.com, 03 Feb 2012

February 5, 2012
Message from Ergun Kirlikovali , President ATAA

Ergun Kirlikovali is one of the founders and long standing member of Turkish Forum – Dunya Turkleri Birligi Advisory Board.

We wish him Good-luck, and we will support his actions in the coming years and with all membership and with all available means of Turkish Forum.

We also wish good-luck to ATAA’s sister organization FTAA . FTAA is now led by President Ali Cinar who is supported by wast majority of membership during the last months election. we recognize the wast amount work with Mr. Ali Cinar has to face. Similarly, Our support will also be with FTAA if he so desires.

Dr. Kayaalp Buyukataman, President

Turkish Forum -Dunya Turkleri Birligi

==============================================

President Message By Ergün Kırlıkovalı

Dear Members of the Turkish American Community coast-to-coast:

I hope you and your family have adjusted to the hustle and bustle of the New Year after having a wonderful holiday season.

The month of January has passed with fury and left me wondering where the whole month went. When you take a look at what was achieved, you will see why.

What a start to the New Year!

ATAA component associations were busy arranging local events and our TABAN and Student Outreach programs were on the road, visiting Colorado, Nevada and Canada. Membership drive and fundraising were in full swing. ATAA Türk Evi hosted the visiting graduate students from Bahcesehir University (İstanbul, Türkiye), where distinguished lecturers like Mark Meirowitz, David Saltzman, and Gunay Evinch, have addressed the students, explaining to them how the U.S. Government operates and the U.S. legal system works.

ATAA leadership paid an official visit to the brand new headquarters of the Turkish Coalition of America only steps from the White House. Joint programs were discussed.

ATAA leadership visited the offices of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus to sign the book of condolences for the legendary Turkish Cypriot leader and the founder of TRNC, Rauf Denktash, who passed away on January 13, 2012.

ATAA leadership also paid a courtesy visit to the Turkish Embassy to show our community’s deep respect and love for our motherland, Türkiye.

ATAA leadership met with Dr. Elizabeth W. Shelton, executive director of American Friends of Turkey, to coordinate the upcoming events. AFOT will be bringing to the U.S. Dr. Ufuk Kocabas, the Project Director of the Yenikapi, Istanbul Project (the Byzantine Port of Constantinople). As you know, the Istanbul University group undertaking the excavations has unearthed 36 vessels and cargoes, going back to the Fifth Century. It has been an amazing find. As you may well know, his trip will be the first time any information about this project will be presented to American audiences, and by all indications, the audiences will be packed to see his presentation and hear him lecture.

Congratulations FTAA President Ali Çınar!

On behalf of the Assembly of Turkish American Associations (ATAA), I congratulate Mr. Ali Çınar for his election to the presidency of the Federation of Turkish American Associations (FTAA). Established in 1956, FTAA is one of America’s leading national Turkish American organizations in a critical part of the country, New York and New Jersey. Ali Çınar comes to the FTAA Presidency with vast knowledge and experience in public advocacy and community empowerment. A former Vice President of ATAA (2009-11) and as Chief Advisor to the ATAA President since June 2011, Mr. Çınar a much loved, hard-working, creative, and energetic community leader. Mr. Cinar was also the founder of the Istanbul University Mezunlari US (IUMEZUS) and its first president.

ATAA looks forward to continued excellence in solidarity and cooperation with FTAA. I wish President Ali Çınar and the FTAA Team all the success.

Elections at ATAA

The ATAA Board of Directors resolved on January 18, 2012 to start a Nominating Committee to oversee the upcoming elections where one third of the Board will be up for election.

I am grateful to Lale Iskarpatyoti for accepting to chair the Nominating Committee and members Gunay Evinch (Past President, ATAA), Tunca Iskir (Past President, ATAA), Nurten Ural (Past President, ATAA) and Mehmet Celebi (President Elect, ATAA) for accepting to serve on this very important committee.

The positions up for election are the following: Treasurer (Esra Ugurlu), Vice President Midcentral (Feridun Bek), Vice President Southwest (Sibel Pakdemirli), Vice President Northwest (Sevgi Baran), West (Maria Cakiraga). Please note that all incumbents can run again for their seats as this is their first term in office and that the race is wide open to all other qualified candidates. I would be delighted, therefore, if you kindly participate in this democratic process by nominating candidates and/or voting.

We will issue a CIS on this immediately with more election information and specifics. Due to time limitations and in the interest saving paper and labor, a separate paper mass-mailing via USPS will not be done. We will try to reach every member via this monthly e-Newsletter and a separate CIS, as well as press releases, media coverage, and www.ataa.org site. We hope, with your support, to complete the nominating process by February 15, 2012, so that the elections may be completed by March 15, and the approved by the AOD on April 15, 2012. Your cooperation and participation is, again, greatly appreciated.

Damnation Without Representation: French Memory Law

We all know what “taxation without representation” led to in 1776: Expulsion of the British from colonial America.

And now we will see what “damnation without representation” will lead to in 2012: expulsion of the French culture from the Turkish/Turkic world.

I am, of course, referring to the draconian French memory law that cleared the French Senate on January 23, 2012, which criminalizes the denial of the so-called “Armenian genocide”, allegedly carried out in Ottoman Empire during World War I. The passage of the measure, adopted a month earlier by a mere 50 out 577 deputies in the lower chamber of the French Parliament, makes a mockery of the notion of “participatory democracy”, not to mention the freedom of speech.

The WW I era atrocities in Eastern Anatolia were never tried by a “competent tribunal” as the 1948 United Nations Convention on Prevention and Punishment of genocide stipulates. “Intent” to exterminate was never proven, leaving the discredited political claim as just that. “No court verdict” was issued characterizing these events a genocide. This historical controversy has become fodder to election year politics in France, destroying the freedom of expression along with it. No law can be used retroactively, 1948 UN convention on genocide included. And yet, these rock solid facts, values, and concepts, which are foundations of modern life cherished by humanity were respected by only 86 courageous French Senators who tried to stop that shameful memory law with their “No” votes. The law passed by the “Yes” votes of 127 Senators, despite the rejection of the same law by the Constitution Sub-Committee a few days earlier. Now it looks like it is heading for the Constitution Committee for a final verdict on whether it is constitutional to criminalize thought.

Some French parliamentarians, it seems, felt compelled by ethnocentric political agenda in an election year, to play the judge, the jury, the executioner, and while at it, the expert historian. We all know they are none of these. The harsh memory law, reminiscent of those in the defunct Soviet Empire, places a severe limitation on the French democracy, curbs free speech, undermines dialogue, destroys scholarly research, and discourages scholarly dissent.

France currently serves as a co-chair country of the OSCE Minsk Group on the resolution of Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Adoption of a law upholding the victims of one ethnicity over another on a historically controversial issue would question the practicality of French role as a mediator on an issue, which both Azerbaijan and Turkey view as directly linked to Turkish-Armenian reconciliation.

This law might also be considered the epitaph of the Nabucco pipeline and the European energy security, if not also anything French in the culture of the people of the vast geography that stretches from the Balkans to the Caucasus, from the Middle East to North Africa, and from Anatolia to Central Asia.

Armenians have a cause, not a case

Armenians took up arms against their own government. They joined the invading enemy armies. They wreaked havoc among the unprotected Muslim villages of Anatolia with their Huncak, Dashnak, Ramgavar, and other bands and thugs. They demanded territory for what can only be described as the first apartheid of the 20th Century (i.e. the Greater Armenia.) These and other such aspects are grouped under the “NINE T’s OF THE TURKISH ARMENIAN CONFLICT”. If one ignores these, one ignores half the story gets no closure.

The assertion of Armenian genocide is based on a racist and dishonest version of history. Racist because Turkish suffering is deliberately ignored; and dishonest because the 9 T’s are ignored.

Just look at this 1906 photo of Cadets at an Armenian Military Academy, established in Bulgaria, with all in uniforms and their Russian “Mosin” weapons brandished. This single frame of an old photo destroys the entire Armenian narrative: that Armenians were peaceful; that they were poor, starving, and helpless; that all happened one day in 1915 without provocation; and that Armenians never killed any Turks. How much evidence does one need to wake up and smell the Armenian deception? Didn’t Armenians die? Didn’t they suffer? Yes, of course, but along with many more Muslims, mostly Turks. Wartime suffering? Yes. Genocide? No, not by even a long shot.

Social construction of Memory

This is a term used by sociologists to describe the process of rebuilding a group memory by social acts, not history’s facts. In order to make the long discredited political claims of Armenian genocide stick, Armenian propaganda, agitation, terror, raids, revolts, treason, territorial conflicts and the Turkish victims resulting from them, are all swept under the rug. Novels, letters, exhibits, parliamentary resolutions, films, rallies, political pressure, in short, anything but facts are employed in “social reconstruction” process. Such dramaturgical approaches and ethno-methodology, unfortunately shape most perceptions, feelings and behaviors. People soon start thinking “All this hype cannot be without justification.” French politicians or American columnists or others are not immune to such symbolic and seemingly humane interactions. Before long, one is consumed by “social construction of reality”, i.e. defining reality through social interactions, not objective realities, just like in the case of the alleged Armenian genocide today. Consider this: until 1990s, most media reports used the qualifier “alleged” before genocide, but now they dropped it. Why? Did new research unearth heretofore unknown information? Did a “competent court” determine Ottoman “intent” to exterminate? No and no. What happend is, the Armenians have since increased the dose of pressure to intimidation and harassment levels. That’s social construction at its worst !

May love and peace win over hate, bigotry and discrimination one day . . .

Ergün Kırlıkovalı
President
Assembly of Turkish American Associations

February 1, 2012
Turkish P.M. Erdogan: We Cannot Deny Our Ottoman Past

Posted by Ishaan Tharoor Thursday, September 29, 2011 at 2:24 pm

Turkey's Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan stands among Justice and Development Party (AKP) members during a meeting at the party headquarters in Ankara, September 28, 2011. (Photo: Adem Altan /AFP / Getty Images) Read more:

Our interview with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, published earlier this week on Global Spin, dwelled mostly on the growing shadow cast by the charismatic premier across the face of Mideast geo-politics. One question edited out of the earlier transcript raised the legacy of the Ottoman Empire, whose dominion once stretched over much of the region. As they now swagger through Cairo, Tripoli and other former Ottoman strongholds, Erdogan and — perhaps to even greater degree — his Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu have earned the monicker of “neo-Ottomans.”

Few democratically-elected statesmen in this day and age would welcome the label of imperialists. And, for whatever connotations “neo-Ottomanism” invokes abroad, it’s a far more sensitive subject domestically in Turkey. Nearly a century of Ataturk-inspired, Western-facing secularism meant those raised in modern Turkey looked with wariness upon the decadence, decay and religiosity of Ottoman times, when, after all, Istanbul was the veritable capital of the putative Caliphate.

But much has changed since Erdogan’s rise to power. Turkey no longer pines after Europe — indeed, see Erdogan’s matter-of-fact retort at the close of our interview with him — is ruled by a moderate Islamist party, and has signaled clear intent to influence events in many of the countries once ruled by Ottoman Sultans. Below is Erdogan’s response to a question I posed to him on whether he accepted donning the neo-Ottoman mantle:

Of course we now live in a very different world, which is going through a scary process of transition and change. We were born and raised on the land that is the legacy of the Ottoman empire. They are our ancestors. It is out of the question that we might deny that presence. Of course, the empire had some beautiful parts and some not so beautiful parts. It’s a very natural right for us to use what was beautiful about the Ottoman Empire today. We need to upgrade ourselves in every sense, socially, economically, politically. If we cannot upgrade ourselves and the way we perceive the world, we will lag behind tremendously. It would be self-denial. That’s why whether it be in the Middle East or North Africa or anywhere in the world, our perception has in its core this wealth that is coming from our historical legacy. But it’s established upon principles of peace. And it all depends on people loving one another without discrimination whatsoever.

Critics may wonder how willing Erdogan and other Turkish leaders are to actually admit to the empire’s “not so beautiful parts”, not least the grisly massacre of Armenians when the Ottoman Empire itself was on its last legs. Turkish diplomats on the sidelines of U.N. meetings spoke to TIME of Erdogan’s professed commitment to values of peace, tolerance and neighborly love — a lofty sentiment not exactly on display during the continued Turkish offensive against rebel Kurds in the country’s east.

Still, it’s noteworthy that the Turkish P.M. sees in the Ottoman past a “wealth” — a soft-power cachet, based presumably on the empire’s extraordinary diversity and tolerance of many faiths — to inform the present. We tend to forgive many Western powers, say the French, British and even the Americans, for tracing their foreign policies sometimes in memory (or nostalgia) of lapsed empire. An ascendant, capable Turkey has every right to walk its own post-imperial path as well.

via Turkish P.M. Erdogan: We Cannot Deny Our Ottoman Past – Global Spin – TIME.com.

Read more:

September 30, 2011