Free Jake Hess posted by Richard Seymour

Just heard that Jake Hess has been detained and locked up in Turkey for reporting that exposed the oppression of the Kurds. Johann Hari requests that people help free him:

Please take just a minute to call the Turkish Embassy in Washington DC on +1 202 612 67 00 +or email them at contact@turkishembassy.org and politely explain that you expect this outstanding US citizen to be treated with decency, and released at once.

Labels: jake hess, journalist, kurds, oppression, turkey

"Why Have Moderate Reformers Failed So Uniformly across the Middle East?" posted by Yoshie

Patrick Cockburn, in his review of Robin Wright's Dreams and Shadows: The Future of the Middle East, asks: "Why have moderate reformers failed so uniformly across the Middle East?"

Opening on an optimistic note, [Robin] Wright describes how in 1983 she stood across the street from the ruins of the United States Embassy in Beirut after more than 60 Americans had been killed by a suicide bomber. At that time, she recalls, it seemed that Islamic fundamentalists had the initiative and were shaping the future of the region. "Yet a generation later," she writes, "Islamic extremism is no longer the most important, interesting or dynamic force in the Middle East."

It would be good if this were true, but in general the stories Wright relates of brave reformers battling for human and civil rights show them as having had depressingly small influence. She claims there is "a budding culture of change" represented by "defiant judges in Cairo, rebel clerics in Tehran, satellite television station owners in Dubai, imaginative feminists in Rabat and the first female candidates in Kuwait, young techies in Jeddah, daring journalists in Beirut and Casablanca, and brave writers and businessmen in Damascus." Sadly, her own research largely contradicts this thesis. Of the many opponents of the status quo she writes about, the only ones to have achieved a measure of success are religious movements: Hamas in Gaza and the West Bank and Hezbollah in Lebanon. She does not cover Pakistan, but the assassination of Benazir Bhutto in Rawalpindi in December shows that suicide bombers retain their deadly ability to shape events. (Patrick Cockburn, "The End of Jihad," New York Times, 2 March 2008)

My answer to Cockburn's question is that so-called "moderate reformers" tend to come from upper classes and stratas, which distances their policies -- liberalism in political economy, appeasement of Tel Aviv and Washington in foreign policy -- and their cultures -- very secularized and, what is worse, sometimes committed to secularism of the elite -- from those of the poorer majority who, unlike their betters, actually care about the Palestinians, and whose economic troubles (creating legions of young men too poor to marry in societies where extra-marital sex with women of their own cultures is very much discouraged¹ -- a structural problem now aggravated by rising inflation, which is in part due to the declining dollar) can't be solved by liberalism (more gender equality to enable more women to engage in wage labor and to make up for the end of "family wages" and scarcity of government jobs -- a classic liberal solution to the end of the post-WW2 economic boom).

Moreover, a number of such "moderate reformers" are quick to jettison political liberalism, whose cornerstone is habeas corpus, and side with dictatorial governments when they are confronted by terrorism . . . or sometimes a mere rise of an Islamic movement.²

The only successful liberals in the Middle East have been religious ones, such as Mohammad Khatami and his fellow reformists in Iran and the Justice and Development Party (AKP) in Turkey. Reformists in Iran, however, were done in by a poorer majority who didn't think that cultural liberalization made up for the rising earning inequality resulting from economic liberalization (cultural and economic liberalizations tend to be two sides of the same coin).

Click on the graph for a larger view.
SOURCE: Djavad Salehi-Isfahani, "Revolution and Redistribution in Iran: Poverty and Inequality 25 Years Later," August 2006, p. 34

The AKP, which also combines cultural and economic liberalism, may suffer the same fate after a decade or so in power.

1 The rulers of the Middle East have yet to assimilate the Japanese lesson: political tranquility can only be assured by thoroughgoing alienation and commodification of sex that leaves little libido for the personal and none at all for the political.

2 See, for instance, Anouar Boukhars, "North Africa: the Dilemma of the Secularists," Bitterlemons-international.org, 25.5, 28 June 2007; and Marina Ottaway, "Continued Decline Is Not Inevitable," Bitterlemons-international.org, 25.5, 28 June 2007.

Labels: class, egypt, imperialism, iran, islam, secularism, turkey

Scenes from the new frontier. posted by Richard Seymour

The Myth of the Surge. The US overcomes its difficulties by arming all sides of the civil war and letting them have at it.

Resistance in the Korengal Valley. The US encounters an "outpost of regress" in the latest version of the Injun Wars.

Ex-SAS soldier blows apart government denials of involvement in torture. Ben Griffin explains that a joint US/UK task forces has carried out torture since the occupation began.

Palestinian resistance is the "inevitable consequence" of Israeli terror and occupation, according to the UN special rapporteur. John Dugard says in the report that "common sense ... dictates that a distinction must be drawn between acts of mindless terror, such as acts committed by al-Qaida, and acts committed in the course of a war of national liberation against colonialism, apartheid or military occupation."

Bush approves of Turkey's invasion of Iraq. Ever troubled by 'outside intervention' in Iraq (the US invasion is not 'outside intervention' because Iraq belongs to America), the US has no problem with its dear ally mucking in. Shocked, shocked, by Saddam slaughtering Kurds, Turkish slaughter is just fine.

Britain calls for coup in Kenya. Britain's post-colonial domination of Kenya - still trying to 'hold the ring' between uncivilised tribes.

Labels: 'war on terror', afghanistan, empire, iraq, kenya, kurds, new frontier, turkey

World Against War - International Peace Conference posted by Keith Shilson

Watch all videos from the conference here.

Labels: afghanistan, anti-war, cairo, conference, hezbollah, iran, iraq, occupation, palestine, peace, turkey

Britain invades Iran; Turkey invades Iraq posted by Richard Seymour

Britain invades Iran:

BRITISH special forces have crossed into Iran several times in recent months as part of a secret border war against the Iranian Revolutionary Guard’s Al-Quds special forces, defence sources have disclosed.

There have been at least half a dozen intense firefights between the SAS and arms smugglers, a mixture of Iranians and Shi’ite militiamen.

The unreported fighting straddles the border between Iran and Iraq and has also involved the Iranian military firing mortars into Iraq. UK commanders are concerned that Iran is using a militia ceasefire to step up arms supplies in preparation for an offensive against their base at Basra airport.

Turkey invades Iraq:

At least 12 Turkish soldiers have been killed following an ambush by Kurdish rebels near the Iraqi border - with 32 rebels also killed, officials say.

The PKK guerrilla group claimed it had also taken "several" soldiers hostage, but this was denied by the government.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has called a crisis meeting in Ankara, which is likely to consider whether to attack PKK bases in Iraq.

But the defence minister said such action would not take place "urgently".

(Okay, so Turkey has had troops in Northern Iraq for months, while British operations started months ago, long after the US started sending terrorist squads to blow up Iranian cities, but we have to start noticing this somehow).

Labels: iran, iraq, iraqi resistance, kurds, occupation, turkey, US imperialism

Turkey Invades Iraq. posted by Richard Seymour

It is being reported that thousands of Turkish troops have invaded northern Iraq, chasing Kurdish guerillas. After all the furore about dem Islams taking over Turkey, which was being used as an excuse for a potential coup, the military leadership has been building up the propaganda for an offensive into northern Iraq (via). There has been a huge build-up of tens of thousands of forces on the border with Iraq for months, overseen by US helicopters and observers (via). The Bush administration will undoubtedly have requested that this be a quick and limited operation, for the sake of keeping it below the radar of public attention, but I'd keep an eye on this one. The Turkish military has been straining at the leash, and the Kemalists have been very critical of Erdogan for not authorising an incursion sooner. Could get very nasty.

So, US imperialism supporters the Kurds, does it?

Labels: iraq, kurds, turkey

Turkey: Kemalist elite's little putsch. posted by Richard Seymour

Say the word 'secular' to a certain variety of leftist, and they've already creamed their pants before the last syllable. It's a Pavlovian reaction, especially among those who align with the Master Class's anti-Islamic demagogy. So, what's happening in Turkey? To listen to some people, you'd think that hundreds of thousands were demonstrating because they were nervous about soft-Islamist presidential candidate, Abdullah Gul of the Justice and Development Party (AKP), surreptitiously converting the Turkish state into an Islamic Republic. The AKP are a basically neoliberal outfit whose deals with the IMF have alienated some of their supporters, and who - as Cihan Tugal points out in the latest NLR - are supported by "provincial capitalists, the pious small bourgeoisie, the newly urbanized poor, important fractions of the police and much of the liberal, left-leaning intelligentsia." They gathered this support throughout the 1990s in the previous incarnation as the now banned Islamic Welfare Party by battling corruption in municipalities, and improving public services. The party had won power and governed from 1996 until 1997 when they were ousted by a military coup. By contrast, the Kemalist elite comprises the deep-state, the grand bourgeoisie, and its epically corrupt political representatives.

It is not true that the only or main issue involved here is the soft Islamism of Gul. First of all, the government put into power after the coup under the former 'caretaker' president Bulent Ecevit, was comprehensively humiliated in the 2002 elections, receiving a tiny fraction of the vote. The only other party, aside from the AKP to pass Turkey's unusually high electoral barrier of 10% to gain seats in parliament was the People's Republican Party (CHP), which is now leading the drive to stop Gul's presidency. The CHP, like the PUK in Kurdistan and the Druze sectarian PSP in Lebanon, is a member of the Socialist International. There is a growing conflict with the PKK, and the army has been whipping up national chauvanism to assist its efforts to crush them, possibly by invading northern Iraq. But a crucial part of the AKP's support comes from the Kurds, and they have made some modest reforms in that direction, allowing some limited Kurdish language television and private Kurdish classes, while Erdogan's acknowledgment of a 'Kurdish Question' was a shocking impiety to the traditional nationalist parties, like the CHP. Further, the Turkish military would like to assist the US if it decides to attack Iran, and the AKP had previously blocked moves to allow Turkey to be used to invade Iraq. Finally, the Turkish state has recently hit a bulwark of opposition after it was suspected of arranging the murder of an Armenian journalist, Hrant Dink. Hundreds of thousands hit the streets, chanting 'the state is the killer'. So, when the Turkish military posted a warning on its website last week indicating that it would intervene militarily to prevent Gul from becoming president, its supporters subsequently brought out large crowds of mostly educated, middle class protesters, whipping up nationalist chauvanism. This display of anti-democratic nationalism, with its implied threat of a coup, has some people drooling all over themselves and mouthing the word "sheckyoolerisum" repeatedly.

Yet, what 'secularism' is there to defend, and who is the army to defend it? As one leftist Turkish newspaper points out, it was the army, during the coup d'etat of 1980, which introduced compulsory religion lessons, they who supported Islamist movements in the early stages, they who supported the founding of mosques in all the Alevi villages, they who accepted Turkish-Islam synthesis as the state ideology. Religious Affairs Presidency (Diyanet İşleri Başkanlığı) is the state institution of religion, which has a huge budget and to which all the mosques and all the imams are subject to. As Tugal points out, the 'secularisation' drive has been a conflict over the meaning of Official Islam, often used as a means of binding Turkish nationalism. Turkey is precisely not a secular state, since the state crushes religious freedom on the one hand, and seeks to appropriate and regulate religion on the other.

At the moment, Western ruling classes, while supportive of the effort to break the PKK and urgently desirous of a greater stake for the military's supporters in the government, don't appear to be backing a coup this time, perhaps because they have been reassured by Gul and his centre-right colleagues. They prefer early elections to consolidate whatever gains the military have made. The Mayday decision of the constitutional court to back a challenge to Gul's candidacy therefore faithfully reflects the nexus of local and global interests.

Labels: 'war on terror', iran, iraq, islamism, kemalist elite, kurds, turkey, US imperialism