Kamil Pasha

Image from Bulent

There’s a new face around town, an e-journal that aims to fill the sweet spot of desire for fresh, cutting-edge, edgy and real reportage about Turkey. The first issue has hit the e-stands. Get it here.

Here’s what the editors have to say about the journal:

BÜLENT is a quarterly online journal which aims to encourage new ways of thinking about contemporary Turkey.

BÜLENT takes its title from a common Turkish boy’s name. It is the name of Bülent Ecevit, former Prime Minister, poet and translator, and Bülent Ersoy, a much loved transexual singer.

As two of the most iconic Bülents, Ersoy - whose public gender transition coincided with the repressive 1980 military coup  - and Ecevit – who stood at the inception of the Turkish financial crisis when a book was thrown at him across parliament – both present figures which cut across contemporary Turkey’s most interesting tensions. Not least the unpredictable shapes of identity politics, and the brute power of the written word. These two lives offer a basic departure for the journal, which aims, not so much to ‘unveil’ Turkey, as to engage with existing critical debates.

We publish articles, essays, interviews, translations, photos and multimedia works. We are looking for all kinds of collaborators. Please get in touch with us at info@bulentjournal.com

Issue Zero: April 2013

Editors: Isobel Finkel & Thomas Roueché

Tags: Fiction and Art, State of the Nation, Uncategorized // 3 Comments »

A recent article in Variety gave some information about the TV and film industry in Turkey and about social media usage. Here’s the article. Here’s the info briefly (with my comments):

Local movies took 47% of market share last year, despite only 70 local movies produced. (Fetih 1453 — see my review here — made $31 million.) Average movie ticket price is five bucks. But movie attendance is low (0.6 visits per person per year; 2.7 in the UK).

Imax has two theaters in Turkey and plans to open three more. This is particularly galling, given the razing of classic movie theaters like the Emek Cinema that date to the beginning of Turkey’s own movie industry, now sacrificed to the relentless construction of malls — into which Imax would fit perfectly, if completely without character. The entire country at present has 2000 screens. I find it hard to imagine, despite Imax’s optimism, that the present government would like more opportunities for promiscuous mingling of the sexes in the dark.

With 18 million TV homes, Turkey is one of Europe’s major markets. Half of the viewers use satellite TV or cable. More than 3 million subscribe to pay-TV. There are two dozen private national and hundreds of regional and local channels. “Who Wants to be a Millionaire” and “Pop Idol” are big, but the most popular show is Star channel’s historical soap, “Magnificent Century” (Muhteşem Yüzyıl), to which I have admitted being addicted.

42.5% of the population [of 80 million, 70% living in cities] is aged 25-54; 26.2% are under 14. There are lots of cool, stylish kids with the latest smartphones. The country has among the world’s highest social media use through mobile Internet. An estimated 30 million Turks use Facebook. Turkey ranks eighth among nations in terms of Twitter penetration. Some 71% of Turkish Internet users go online every day for entertainment purposes. According to the BKM (Interbank Card Center) data, the Turkish e-commerce market reached a whopping $25 billion in 2012.

Given that most people didn’t have home telephones in the 1980s, this is a remarkable transformation. I still remember the first phone booths in Ankara appearing in the mid-1970s; their cords were immediately cut by vandals. Anyway, who could you call?

I’ve always believed that the introduction of the cellphone at the end of the 1980s and its immediate spread was a major factor in Islamist political organizing, making it possible to set up phone trees and mobilize large numbers of people through their personal networks. I remember the frustration of trying to do research in Istanbul in the 1980s by making appointments from a phone booth, the long lines, men swinging their worry beads at the glass if you were taking too long, and the frustration of finding no one home of the few people who even had telephones that one could call. The unwritten phone booth etiquette rule was that you could dial one call (even if no one answered) and then you went to the back of the line again. Imagine doing business or political organizing like that.

Istanbul is so big that sometimes I’d spend hours to travel to visit someone (not having been able to tell them I was coming) only to find them not at home. No wonder people took to cell phones like a third ear. The Turkish custom of hosting a visitor at your door, regardless of how inconvenient, is likely related to this inability to plan ahead. Now people don’t have to visit (and getting through traffic is even worse), so why not tweet and twitter instead, like birds comfortably perched on a power line high above the gridlocked city.

Tags: Culture, Fiction and Art, State of the Nation // 2 Comments »

I thought this was very innovative and worth noting: a floating electricity-generating power plant, a “power ship” that can be parked by any shore and used to generate part of that country’s electricity needs. There is currently a Turkish “power ship”, the Fatmagül Sultan, parked off Beirut that is producing 188 MW of electricity daily, the equivalent of two extra hours of electricity for Lebanon, which has been plagued by outages, its system under increased strain with the addition of hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees. A second Turkish ship is on its way. The three-year deal will give Lebanon the breathing space to repair its own power plants and get them up to speed.

In an article in The Guardian, The owner of the Karadeniz energy company, Osman Karadeniz, said he got the idea in his travels in Africa where he noticed that lack of electricity meant that children in hospitals and clinics were dying unnecessarily and the local economy was unable to develop. Small generators were very expensive to use. He thought of the ‘power ship’ as a solution, but with no infrastructure and “not even a hardware store” in some of these areas, large power ships would be difficult to maintain. His company is now working on smaller versions for use in Africa. It is also interesting that the Turkish ambassador to Lebanon places this technical innovation in the context of Turkey’s reviving influence in former Ottoman lands. 

Tags: Foreign Relations, Science // 1 Comment »

Amnesty International is urging the Turkish government to use this crucial moment to act concretely to decriminalize dissent, at a time when a new constitution is being written where such issues are being debated and when promises have been made in this respect to the PKK in return for peace.

A package of reforms called the “Fourth Judicial Package” is before parliament right now, but Amnesty argues that these reforms fail to make the necessary legislative amendments to bring national law in line with international human rights standards.

The notorious and vaguely defined Article 301 of the Penal Code “Denigration of the Turkish Nation”, used arbitrarily to prosecute a broad variety of speech, remains in force, as does Article 318, “Alienating the public from military service”, used to prosecute support for the right to conscientious objection. Anti-terrorism laws have been used extensively in recent years to prosecute legitimate activities including political speeches, critical writing, attendance at demonstrations and association with recognised political groups and organizations. These three laws are the hammers that have continually and arbitrarily taken aim at people’s rights to freedom of expression, association and assembly to the extent that Turkey now leads the world in number of  journalists in jail.

This is a moment of potential change in which the voices of concerned people might make a difference. Please consider signing Amnesty’s petition (in English here and in Turkish here).  Amnesty’s short report is here and long report in pdf form can be downloaded here.

The right to freedom of expression is under attack in Turkey. Criminal prosecutions targeting dissenting opinions represent one of Turkey’s most entrenched human rights problems. Despite a series of legislative reform packages, unfair laws remain on the statute and continue to be abused. In this report, Amnesty International analyses the problems in law and practice relating to ten of the most problematic offences and makes concrete recommendations on the legislative changes needed to bring these abuses to an end.

Their specific recommendations:

In the Penal Code:

•Repeal Articles 301 “Denigrating the Turkish Nation”, 318 “Alienating the public from military service” and 215 “Praising a crime or a criminal” in their entirety

•Decriminalize defamation as outlined in Article 125 to treat allegations of defamation as a matter for civil litigation by taking it out of the Penal Code

•Amend Article 216 “Incitement to hatred or hostility” by repealing paragraphs 2 and 3 to ensure that only advocacy of hatred constituting incitement to violence is prosecuted

Anti-terrorism offences:

•Bring Turkey’s overly broad and vague definition of terrorism in line with the definition of the UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism

•Repeal Articles 220/6 “Committing a crime in the name of an organization” and 6/2 “Printing or publishing declarations/statements of a terrorist organization”

•Adopt guidelines for prosecutors on the application of Article 220(7) of the Penal Code that set out clear criteria for when assisting an armed group can be criminalized, including the requirement that such assistance must either in and of itself be a recognizable criminal offence, or be directly linked to the planning or commission of one.

•Amend Article 7/2 “Making propaganda for a terrorist organization” so as to ensure that it only prohibits advocacy of incitement to violence

Tags: Headscarf Debate, Politics, Rights // 15 Comments »

In YaleGlobal,  Mohammed Ayoob writes that the new deal for peace between Turkey’s government and PKK rebels to end more than thirty years of hostilities also has implications for the wider region, especially Iraq, Syria, and Iran. If Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan can convince the various political factions in Turkey to go along with the plan, Ayoob argues, Syria’s threat to harbor the PKK would be neutralized and a successful social and political integration of Turkey’s Kurdish population would provide a model for Kurds in Syria and Iran as well. An end to discrimination against Kurds would strengthen democracy in Turkey.

As I discussed in recent posts (here and here), the Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) is the major partner at the moment with Erdoğan’s AKP in writing a new constitution, a process that has been fraught with arguments and delays as the various parties disagree over wording and, in particular, over Erdoğan’s desired restructuring of Turkey’s political system to one in which the president has more power than at apresent. This is a position Erdoğan would like to occupy. The other two major parties in Parliament — Republican People’s Party (CHP) and Nationalist Action Party (MHP) oppose a presidential system, but do not have enough votes to block BDP and AKP from passing a draft. When put to a referendum, a draft constitution would most likely pass, given the AKP’s popularity and assured Kurdish support. The new constitution also potentially would guarantee minority rights and individual rights (there is some disagreement about the merits of group rights versus individual rights) and redefine Turkish national identity. It is likely that BDP support for the presidential system in the Constitution is in some way linked to AKP’s support for a peace mission in which BDP has been a major player.

Ayoob discusses in some detail the political situation of Kurds in Syria, Iraq and Iran and argues that Erdoğan’s peace deal with the PKK, “if implemented honestly and successfully, is likely to turn Syrian Kurdistan into a friendly entity much like Iraqi Kurdistan.” Iran had long supported the PKK against Turkey until rapprochement with Ankara after AKP’s election in 2002 when Turkey also forged closer ties with Iran’s ally, Syria. However, after Turkey’s split with Syria in 2011 and after Turkey allowed NATO to position an anti-missile defense system in the southeast positioned, despite Turkish denials, to intercept Iranian missiles aimed at the West, Iran reportedly revived its support for the PKK. A Turkish-PKK peace deal would remove these weapons from the hands of other regimes and strengthen Turkey’s hand against Iran and Syria. This would have repercussions in Iraq as well, Ayoob points out, where Iran supports Nouri al-Maliki’s Shia-dominated government, and Turkey supports Sunni Arab opponents of the Maliki government.

In other words, if successfully implemented, the Ocalan-AKP peace process, would bring a blessed end to hostilities that have killed over 30,000 people, would revitalize Turkey’s democratic process, bring into play a vibrant Kurdish population that had been economically and culturally sidelined for decades, but also, as Ayoob points out, would have much larger repercussions regionally.

There is a great deal of hope in Turkey that this time the peace will hold, but also many obstacles in the way of crafting an enduring peace. Some of those obstacles are in populations on both sides weaned on nationalist and militarist ideologies that will likely resist accommodation with what many see as “the enemy”, but much also lies in the manner in which the process is implemented. As Ayoob put it, “One hopes that the Turkish government acts with sagacity, indeed with magnanimity.” A punitive approach or a half-hearted one will likely end up like previous attempts where some small spark, something as trivial as too much Kurdish celebration as a busload of PKK fighters were repatriated into Turkey across the Iraqi border, relit the nationalist fire and restarted the war.

It is possible that a successful peace is now possible in part because of the particular conjuncture of a weakened nationalist military and a strong autocratic leader. But power and will alone won’t make this happen. Given decades of deep and well-placed mistrust and fear, the hands guiding the peace process must remain steady and sensitive to humanitarian concerns and people’s rights. These are not sensibilities generally associated with Turkey’s strong-man prime minister. On the other hand, the stars seem aligned in unique ways that, if interpreted correctly, light the way to a solution.

Tags: Foreign Relations, Kurds, Politics // 1 Comment »

Photo by Jenny White

Tags: Uncategorized // 1 Comment »

Good news. I just learned that my book, Muslim Nationalism and the New Turks, will be translated into Turkish and published by the well-regarded Iletişim Press. There have been quite a few reviews, quite positive ones I’m gratified to report. Most recently, a review in Al Jazeera (in Arabic).

I’m also giving a few talks, in case you’re in the area:

George Washington University in DC:
Wednesday, April 3
6:30-8:30 PM
Lindner Commons
1957 E St., NW, 6th floor
Washington, DC
RSVP here *A book signing and reception will follow.

I’ll also be speaking at Dartmouth College:
Monday, April 15
4:30 PM
1 Penn Plz # 2406
Hanover, New Hampshire 03755

Tags: Nationalism, Politics, Religion, State of the Nation, Women // Add Comment »

In information leaked by Ankara sources to the press, the peace plan announced March 21 between the Turkish AKP government and Abdullah Ocalan, imprisoned leader of the Kurdish PKK, is to proceed in three stages with implementation expected to be complete by local elections in March 2014. Stage 1: disarming of PKK militants (about 1500) and withdrawal from Turkey; Stage 2: Legal and political management of this process; Stage 3: Normalization, including the reintegration of former PKK rebels into society.

The government also plans to set up a commission of “Wise Persons” to oversee the process and possibly a commission in parliament along the lines of “Unlwaful Acts of the Past”. Legal steps regarding the return process must be considered, for instance, whether the names of returning militants should be registered. If any of the militants have “criminal pasts” or had been PKK commanders, their status must be decided. It is possible that they could go to third countries, like Scandinavian countries, that could grant them “special status”.

The Management component of the plan aims to address public opinion. A recent nationalist MHP demonstration in Bursa showed that there would be push-back in society. The issue of “village guards” also is problematic. These are around 70,000 Kurds who worked with and were armed by the Turkish state to protect their villages against PKK incursions. There might well be tensions when former PKK militants return home.

Legal changes are also in the works. For instance, there is a plan afoot to amend  and possibly abolish the Counter-Terrorism Law under which so many Kurds and journalists have been arrested, and to reshape the Criminal Code. The government also is working on a “Human Rights Action Plan” to go into effect later this  year that aims to harmonize Turkey’s best practices with the European Convention on Human Rights. A draft of the plan that gives targets and deadlines for all ministries is expected to be submitted to the Cabinet within the next few weeks. 

Tags: Kurds // 7 Comments »

There’s so much good news in a row that it’s giving me vertigo. First, the Turkish government and the PKK call for an end to their long, vicious war. Then Israel makes up with Turkey by apologizing for the Mavi Marmara incident. And now, oh the irony, the Turkish government has kindly offered the financially ruined Greek Cypriots the opportunity to join the Turkish Lira Zone, should they be booted out of the Euro Zone.

Congratulations on the PKK-government peace deal have piled up from politicians, TV personalities and even Fethullah Gulen. In a country where until recently singing in Kurdish could land you in jail, Kurdish minstrel Şivan Perwer just appeared on CNN Turk and played and sang in Kurdish for the whole country to hear. He said admiring things about Turkish musical artists Sezen Aksu and Tarkan. Even foreigners listen to them, he pointed out. “I am a child of this country; why do they not listen to me? It’s because I sing in Kurdish, isn’t it?” “Singing in Kurdish”, he said, “beautifies Turkey.” And now songs are being warbled in many languages. At the reading of PKK chief Ocalan’s message calling for peace, in solidarity a Laz musician launched into a song in Laz, a language spoken on the Black Sea coast, but not attached to any nationalist aspirations.

Now Turkey and Israel are making up. President Obama managed to give a final head butt to the Israelis in the direction the wind was already blowing. After several years of “Don’t call me, don’t call me; I don’t wanna talk anymore,“ Israel phoned and PM Erdogan answered. PM Netanyahu apologized and offered compensation for the loss of nine lives on the Mavi Marmara, an aid boat in a flotilla attempting to breach the blockade of Gaza 2010 that was boarded by Israeli commandos. The call was made at the last moment before Obama’s departure for Jordan. Obama was standing right beside Netanyahu in a trailer on the tarmac at the Tel Aviv airport. I can picture Obama handing Netanyahu the phone and saying… well, I can’t hear what he’s saying, but the body language in that trailer must have been obvious. The last thing the US needs in a region in turmoil is its two main allies in a snit.

Greek Cypriot banks invested heavily in Greece, which is in a major economic crisis, dragging Greek Cyprus down with it.

The European Union has given Nicosia until March 25 to raise 5.8 billion euros ($7.47 billion) to unlock loans worth 10 billion euros or face being cut off from the European Central Bank emergency funding in a move that would bankrupt the island.

The Greek Cypriot government had the temerity to try to raise that money by grabbing a percentage of what was laid by in the country’s bank accounts. They were especially interested in harvesting the big Russian money stored in its banks. But ordinary citizens were outraged that six to ten percent of their savings would disappear and the government was forced to cancel its raid on the nation’s piggybanks. But Turkey is coming to the rescue! If Greek Cypriot banks went bankrupt, Greek Cypriots might wish to open accounts in banks in the norther Turkish part of the island, which is financially stable. Turkey’s EU Minister and Chief Negotiator Egemen Bağış has kindly stretched out a helping hand, saying that Turkey would support an eventual transition to the use of the Turkish Lira should Greek Cyprus be forced to exit the Eurozone.

Bağış couldn’t help getting a little dig in, though, pointing out that if the Greek Cypriots had approved the U.N. reunification blueprint or Annan Plan in 2004, it would have been spared its recent economic woes. Instead, they ditched the Turkish part of the island and joined the EU on their own. (The present leader of Greek Cyprus, Nicos Anastasiades, had supported unification at the time.) 

Ah, the ironies, the payback, the cuffs to the back of the head, the warbling songs of peace. Happy spring. Newroz piroz be!

Tags: Foreign Relations, Kurds, Politics, State of the Nation, Uncategorized // 3 Comments »

Hundreds of thousands of people gathered in the predominantly Kurdish city of Diyarbakir in eastern Turkey today not only to celebrate Newroz, the Kurdish New Year, but to hear a historic message from the jailed leader of the Kurdish PKK, Abdullah Ocalan, which was read to the crowd in Turkish and Kurdish by a Kurdish parliamentarian. (Here is his entire message in Turkish.) In it, Ocalan calls for a ceasefire to the decades-old struggle between the PKK and the Turkish state that has cost more than 35,000 lives. He said the PKK was leaving its armed struggle behind and called for all PKK fighters to leave Turkey. According to news reports, Ocalan’s message said, among other things,

Today I start a new process witnessed by millions of people. The period of democratic rights, freedom and equality starts. Let us silence the weapons. The bloodshed of the Turkish and Kurdish people will end. This is a process whereby Anatolian and Kurdish communities can live together peacefully… Lay down your weapons and exit [Turkish] borders. We are shifting from armed struggle to democratic struggle…

Our fight has not been against any race, religion or groups. Our fight has been against all kinds of pressure and oppression. Today we are waking up to a new Middle East, new Turkey and a new future…

It is time for unity. Turks and Kurds fought together in Çanakkale [during World War I], and launched the Turkish Parliament together in 1920…

The basis of the new struggle is ideas, ideology and democratic politics…

I call on everyone to build democratic modernism to escape these pressures which are clearly against history and brotherhood.

After the PKK force withdraws to its bases in northern Iraq, the next step would be disarmament and reintegration of PKK guerrillas into Turkish society. The AKP government has said it was not considering amnesty for fighters, so it is unclear how this will proceed. Ocalan said the Kurds did not demand a separate independent state, but desired constitutional and judicial changes that would guarantee Turkey’s Kurdish population all cultural rights and give more power to local authorities.

Ocalan’s message comes after months of unprecedented intensive negotiations with the Turkish government. It is not hard to wonder whether the AKP could have taken this step if the Turkish army weren’t so weakened. For decades, indeed until very recently, any negotiation with the PKK and even any indication of support for the PKK or Kurdish rights in general often led to treason charges and jail terms.

This is truly an unprecedented moment and one that should be celebrated in the present context of new wars, violence, and tragedy on almost every border of Turkey. Previous cease-fires with the PKK have failed. Indeed there has been a pattern of regular ceasefires over the winter with renewed fighting in spring, but this IS spring. It feels like spring, the Turkish Spring; it feels real this time.

Tags: Kurds // 1 Comment »