Post by depletedreasons on May 8, 2008 3:16:03 GMT -5
May 07, 2008
POLITICAL TREMORS IN ISTANBUL
The Rise of Turkey's New Left
By Daniel Steinvorth in Istanbul
In the wake of the May riots in Turkey, another group has now entered the power struggle in Istanbul. In addition to pro-secularism Kemalists and conservative Muslims, workers and the left are now making their voices heard.
Protesters on the streets of Istanbul on Thursday, May 1: a nightmarish feeling
Istanbul and Ankara are like antipodes. Although the cosmopolitan city on the Bosporus is not the capital, it is Turkey's shimmering showcase. Ankara, in the heart of the country's rural highlands, is the capital, but despite some modernization it is far from a worldly metropolis. Rarely have the differences between these two cities been as obvious as they were on May 1, the day of labor and red flags.
PHOTO GALLERY: ISTANBUL'S MAY DAY RIOT
Turkish police arrest a protester: On Istanbul's Taksim Square, police and union members engaged in street battles on Thursday. Local authorities had banned the protests and closed the square.
Starting early in the morning, members of organized labor and leftist groups marched through the streets of downtown Istanbul, trying to ...
... reach Taksim Square in the heart of Istanbul. The police sealed all the streets and alleys leading to the square. And used ...
... unusual force against the prosters. The unionists and leftist groups were struck with police nightsticks ...
... and driven out of downtown Istanbul with water cannons, rubber bullets and armored vehicles. Here, unionists try to protect themselves with a banner.
Elsewhere, people just tried to get away from the police as quickly as they could. But the protest ...
... got further and further out of contol. Protesters responded to the police crackdown by throwing rocks ...
... and police arrested over 500 people. The protest ...
... at Taksim Square had been prohibited by city officials because, they claimed, they had evidence that attacks were going to be perpetrated during the demonstration. The unionists ...
While downtown Istanbul became immersed in clouds of tear gas, Ankara celebrated the glorious past. In Istanbul, police armed with water canons and batons clashed with thousands of demonstrators. Meanwhile, in Ankara, a delegation from the national television network laid a wreath in devout silence before the mausoleum of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of modern Turkey.
Helicopters circled loudly over Taksim Square in Istanbul, while soldiers were on parade and the sound of trumpets filled the air under a clear blue sky 350 kilometers (219 miles) to the east.
It was no accident that Turkey's two faces were so clearly in evidence on this particular day. The ostentatious memorial to Atatürk, in downtown Ankara, was the perfect place to repress and forget Turkey's turbulent day-to-day political life, if only for a short while. That turbulence, in turn, was all the more obvious in wild Istanbul, which saw one of the most violent street battles in recent years.
What's wrong with Turkey? For weeks, an ominous petition to ban the governing party, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Justice and Development Party (AKP), has paralyzed political life. Supporters of the conservative Islamic AKP and secular Kemalists in the judiciary and the military are apparently irreconcilably at odds.
In addition, the army is still waging a war against the militia units of the banned Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK). Now that the PKK has withdrawn from northern Iraq, the focus of that conflict has shifted to Turkey's interior, amid growing dissatisfaction within the Kurdish population.
To make matters worse, protests by angry workers against the Erdogan government have intensified, and not just since the May Day riots last Thursday. The government's decision to enact austere social cuts has triggered growing frustration among workers and civil servants. "I am afraid," said the notoriously good-humored television host Mehmet Ali Birand, mirroring the mood of his millions of viewers. "I believe for the first time that Turkey is truly in danger of splitting apart."
It is no longer merely an issue of two diametrically opposed worldviews, one of them strictly secular and the other deeply religious. The two camps are also at odds economically: The Kemalist establishment, fearful of losing its privileges, and those conservative Muslims who have acquired wealth without the help of the government and are now demanding a larger share of power.
The intensity of the May riots indicates that a third camp is taking shape: the disappointed working class, together with the almost-forgotten Turkish left. For Tufan Türenç, a columnist with the Turkish national daily Hürriyet, this is a positive development. In fact, Türenç believes, it could even be a stroke of luck for democracy in Turkey. "Large segments of the unions were still loyal to the AKP in the last elections. But social disparities have worsened, especially under Erdogan's pro-business agenda." The liberals and the left, says Türenç, could "bring new excitement to the political competition."
What these groups lack, however, is leadership -- the left has no charismatic leaders. As a result, the Kemalist Republican People's Party (CHP) has so far been relatively successful at representing the interests of workers. That party was founded in 1923 by none other than Turkish über-father-figure Atatürk.
"Defending the Republic and Secular Values"
Only a week ago, Deniz Baykal, a 69-year-old lawyer, was reelected as chairman of CHP. Alternately described by the press as colorless and populist, Baykal focused his last campaign on the supposed threat of a theocracy and the gradual Islamicization of Turkey.
[/quote]
Social policy, equal opportunity in education and other leftist issues are almost completely absent from CHP's agenda. "The party is elected for historic and cultural reasons," says Sencer Ayata, a social scientist. "It is the most credible in defending the republic and secular values."
Nevertheless, CHP is still a member of the Socialist International, a worldwide umbrella group for social democratic and labor parties that includes Britain's Labour Party, Germany's Social Democratic Party and France's Socialists among others. It defines itself as "naturally social democratic" -- and, most of all, as the most European of all Turkish parties.
"We were the ones who paved the way to the West," says Onur Öymen, 67, the CHP's deputy chairman. "Does a man like Erdogan represent European values? Someone who believes that a murderer, under Islamic law, could be pardoned by the family of the victim?" Öymen says that he never tires of explaining to his friends in Europe how important secularism is at their doorstep. Besides, he adds, "moderate Islamists" do not exist. "Those who believe in the Koran don't believe in it halfway, but in its entirety."
The CHP leader is troubled by the fact that the European Union sees things a little differently and considers Erdogan's experiment -- reconciling religious society and the secular state -- a success. Besides, relations between Brussels and Turkey's traditional Islamic party are already on shaky ground.
EU Tensions
EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn has already threatened to terminate accession talks in the event of a court-ordered ban on the AKP, which the secular faction would welcome. Besides, European confidence in Turkey wasn't exactly bolstered when the Kemalists fought tooth and nail to prevent an amendment to the notorious paragraph 301 of Turkey's criminal code, which makes "insulting Turkishness" a crime. After years of criticism from Brussels, the Erdogan government finally watered down the law (more...) last week. In the past, journalists and writers, in particular, have repeatedly been hauled before courts for addressing such taboo subjects as the persecution of Armenians and Kurds. They have included Orhan Pamuk, winner of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Literature, and Armenian-Turkish journalist Hrant Dink, who was murdered in Istanbul in 2007.
In the future, disparagement of the "Turkish nation" will still be an offence, but the maximum prison sentence will be reduced from three to two years. While human rights activists consider the amendment little more than window dressing, the nationalist opposition parties see it as the beginning of Turkey's demise. The move, say members of parliament in the CHP and its ultra-right allies, opens the floodgates to insulting the Turkish state.
However, it remains to be seen just how far the clearly reawakened left will manage to insert itself into ordinary political life.
The fact that Istanbul was under a state of emergency on May 1, and that tourists had the nightmarish feeling of being caught in the middle of a "war," attest to a disappointment and frustration that the established parties may not be able to channel much longer, especially not with bans or with violence.
The three trade union umbrella organizations, Disk, Türk Is and Kesk, were barred from staging demonstrations on May Day in Istanbul. A strong police presence frustrated their attempts to launch demonstrations despite the ban. Using tear gas, the police even advanced into a union building.
That was too much, even for the CHP, which is not exactly pro-union. Ali Özpolat, a CHP member of parliament, was outraged: "People can't be treated this way."
Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan.
www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,551996,00.html
POLITICAL TREMORS IN ISTANBUL
The Rise of Turkey's New Left
By Daniel Steinvorth in Istanbul
In the wake of the May riots in Turkey, another group has now entered the power struggle in Istanbul. In addition to pro-secularism Kemalists and conservative Muslims, workers and the left are now making their voices heard.
Protesters on the streets of Istanbul on Thursday, May 1: a nightmarish feeling
Istanbul and Ankara are like antipodes. Although the cosmopolitan city on the Bosporus is not the capital, it is Turkey's shimmering showcase. Ankara, in the heart of the country's rural highlands, is the capital, but despite some modernization it is far from a worldly metropolis. Rarely have the differences between these two cities been as obvious as they were on May 1, the day of labor and red flags.
PHOTO GALLERY: ISTANBUL'S MAY DAY RIOT
Turkish police arrest a protester: On Istanbul's Taksim Square, police and union members engaged in street battles on Thursday. Local authorities had banned the protests and closed the square.
Starting early in the morning, members of organized labor and leftist groups marched through the streets of downtown Istanbul, trying to ...
... reach Taksim Square in the heart of Istanbul. The police sealed all the streets and alleys leading to the square. And used ...
... unusual force against the prosters. The unionists and leftist groups were struck with police nightsticks ...
... and driven out of downtown Istanbul with water cannons, rubber bullets and armored vehicles. Here, unionists try to protect themselves with a banner.
Elsewhere, people just tried to get away from the police as quickly as they could. But the protest ...
... got further and further out of contol. Protesters responded to the police crackdown by throwing rocks ...
... and police arrested over 500 people. The protest ...
... at Taksim Square had been prohibited by city officials because, they claimed, they had evidence that attacks were going to be perpetrated during the demonstration. The unionists ...
While downtown Istanbul became immersed in clouds of tear gas, Ankara celebrated the glorious past. In Istanbul, police armed with water canons and batons clashed with thousands of demonstrators. Meanwhile, in Ankara, a delegation from the national television network laid a wreath in devout silence before the mausoleum of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of modern Turkey.
Helicopters circled loudly over Taksim Square in Istanbul, while soldiers were on parade and the sound of trumpets filled the air under a clear blue sky 350 kilometers (219 miles) to the east.
It was no accident that Turkey's two faces were so clearly in evidence on this particular day. The ostentatious memorial to Atatürk, in downtown Ankara, was the perfect place to repress and forget Turkey's turbulent day-to-day political life, if only for a short while. That turbulence, in turn, was all the more obvious in wild Istanbul, which saw one of the most violent street battles in recent years.
What's wrong with Turkey? For weeks, an ominous petition to ban the governing party, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Justice and Development Party (AKP), has paralyzed political life. Supporters of the conservative Islamic AKP and secular Kemalists in the judiciary and the military are apparently irreconcilably at odds.
In addition, the army is still waging a war against the militia units of the banned Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK). Now that the PKK has withdrawn from northern Iraq, the focus of that conflict has shifted to Turkey's interior, amid growing dissatisfaction within the Kurdish population.
To make matters worse, protests by angry workers against the Erdogan government have intensified, and not just since the May Day riots last Thursday. The government's decision to enact austere social cuts has triggered growing frustration among workers and civil servants. "I am afraid," said the notoriously good-humored television host Mehmet Ali Birand, mirroring the mood of his millions of viewers. "I believe for the first time that Turkey is truly in danger of splitting apart."
It is no longer merely an issue of two diametrically opposed worldviews, one of them strictly secular and the other deeply religious. The two camps are also at odds economically: The Kemalist establishment, fearful of losing its privileges, and those conservative Muslims who have acquired wealth without the help of the government and are now demanding a larger share of power.
The intensity of the May riots indicates that a third camp is taking shape: the disappointed working class, together with the almost-forgotten Turkish left. For Tufan Türenç, a columnist with the Turkish national daily Hürriyet, this is a positive development. In fact, Türenç believes, it could even be a stroke of luck for democracy in Turkey. "Large segments of the unions were still loyal to the AKP in the last elections. But social disparities have worsened, especially under Erdogan's pro-business agenda." The liberals and the left, says Türenç, could "bring new excitement to the political competition."
What these groups lack, however, is leadership -- the left has no charismatic leaders. As a result, the Kemalist Republican People's Party (CHP) has so far been relatively successful at representing the interests of workers. That party was founded in 1923 by none other than Turkish über-father-figure Atatürk.
"Defending the Republic and Secular Values"
Only a week ago, Deniz Baykal, a 69-year-old lawyer, was reelected as chairman of CHP. Alternately described by the press as colorless and populist, Baykal focused his last campaign on the supposed threat of a theocracy and the gradual Islamicization of Turkey.
EU CRITICIZES TURKEY OVER TREATMENT OF PROTESTERS
The European Union on Tuesday accused Turkish police of using excessive force against protesters during the May Day rally. European Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn described the use of force as "disproportionate" and deplorable during a visit to Ankara. "We reiterated our call for the Turkish authorities to act within European law and practice, and to respect trade union rights in line with EU standards," Rehn said. Meanwhile, Turkish opposition parties are calling for a government investigation and an apology from Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. In a speech given to members of his party, Erdogan admitted "mistakes" had been made, but he also lambasted the "extremists" amongst the protesters who he claimed attacked security forces and showed their "animosity towards the police." Turkey is currently in negotiations to become a future EU member.
The European Union on Tuesday accused Turkish police of using excessive force against protesters during the May Day rally. European Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn described the use of force as "disproportionate" and deplorable during a visit to Ankara. "We reiterated our call for the Turkish authorities to act within European law and practice, and to respect trade union rights in line with EU standards," Rehn said. Meanwhile, Turkish opposition parties are calling for a government investigation and an apology from Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. In a speech given to members of his party, Erdogan admitted "mistakes" had been made, but he also lambasted the "extremists" amongst the protesters who he claimed attacked security forces and showed their "animosity towards the police." Turkey is currently in negotiations to become a future EU member.
[/quote]
Social policy, equal opportunity in education and other leftist issues are almost completely absent from CHP's agenda. "The party is elected for historic and cultural reasons," says Sencer Ayata, a social scientist. "It is the most credible in defending the republic and secular values."
Nevertheless, CHP is still a member of the Socialist International, a worldwide umbrella group for social democratic and labor parties that includes Britain's Labour Party, Germany's Social Democratic Party and France's Socialists among others. It defines itself as "naturally social democratic" -- and, most of all, as the most European of all Turkish parties.
"We were the ones who paved the way to the West," says Onur Öymen, 67, the CHP's deputy chairman. "Does a man like Erdogan represent European values? Someone who believes that a murderer, under Islamic law, could be pardoned by the family of the victim?" Öymen says that he never tires of explaining to his friends in Europe how important secularism is at their doorstep. Besides, he adds, "moderate Islamists" do not exist. "Those who believe in the Koran don't believe in it halfway, but in its entirety."
The CHP leader is troubled by the fact that the European Union sees things a little differently and considers Erdogan's experiment -- reconciling religious society and the secular state -- a success. Besides, relations between Brussels and Turkey's traditional Islamic party are already on shaky ground.
EU Tensions
EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn has already threatened to terminate accession talks in the event of a court-ordered ban on the AKP, which the secular faction would welcome. Besides, European confidence in Turkey wasn't exactly bolstered when the Kemalists fought tooth and nail to prevent an amendment to the notorious paragraph 301 of Turkey's criminal code, which makes "insulting Turkishness" a crime. After years of criticism from Brussels, the Erdogan government finally watered down the law (more...) last week. In the past, journalists and writers, in particular, have repeatedly been hauled before courts for addressing such taboo subjects as the persecution of Armenians and Kurds. They have included Orhan Pamuk, winner of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Literature, and Armenian-Turkish journalist Hrant Dink, who was murdered in Istanbul in 2007.
In the future, disparagement of the "Turkish nation" will still be an offence, but the maximum prison sentence will be reduced from three to two years. While human rights activists consider the amendment little more than window dressing, the nationalist opposition parties see it as the beginning of Turkey's demise. The move, say members of parliament in the CHP and its ultra-right allies, opens the floodgates to insulting the Turkish state.
However, it remains to be seen just how far the clearly reawakened left will manage to insert itself into ordinary political life.
The fact that Istanbul was under a state of emergency on May 1, and that tourists had the nightmarish feeling of being caught in the middle of a "war," attest to a disappointment and frustration that the established parties may not be able to channel much longer, especially not with bans or with violence.
The three trade union umbrella organizations, Disk, Türk Is and Kesk, were barred from staging demonstrations on May Day in Istanbul. A strong police presence frustrated their attempts to launch demonstrations despite the ban. Using tear gas, the police even advanced into a union building.
That was too much, even for the CHP, which is not exactly pro-union. Ali Özpolat, a CHP member of parliament, was outraged: "People can't be treated this way."
Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan.
www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,551996,00.html