Reporters Without Perspective – Upcoming elections in Turkey

YASTAYIZ!  screamed the front page headline in 5cm font in this morning’s newspaper – ‘We are in mourning!’ 14 year-old Berkin Elvan was admitted to hospital on 15 June last year after being struck in the head by a tear gas canister fired by police trying to disperse demonstrators. Yesterday, a month past his 15^th birthday,  he passed away after spending 267 days in a coma. According to the family, young Berkin had been on his way to the bakery to buy bread when he became an innocent victim of excessive police violence sanctioned by Turkey’s AK Party government to silence protest against their undemocratic regime. ‘It is not God who has taken my son away. It is [Prime Minister Recep] Tayyip Erdoğan,’ said the mother, Gülsüm Elvan.

‘Turkey is weeping,’ said Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, leader of Turkey’s main parliamentary opposition party, CHP. ‘Will the Prime Minister call the family to offer his condolences? You can be sure he will not.’ In fact, Mr Kılıçdaroğlu did not use the Turkish word for ‘Prime Minister’ (Başbakan). In a play on words, he used instead the word ‘Başçalan’, which we might translate as ‘Thief-in-Chief’, in a clear reference to corruption accusations being levelled at PM Erdoğan.

Page 5 featured a lengthy piece by a popular female columnist, from which I quote (the translation is mine):

‘What if your child was shot in the head while going to buy bread? What if a gas canister went in behind his ear and he had to pull it out by himself? And he lost a huge amount of blood? He began to vomit? If his last words were “Don’t tell my father – he’ll be so sad!” Moreover if that day was Fathers’ Day? What would you do?

‘Yesterday we woke to very sad news. Berkin had left us after we had been praying for 267 days that he would awake from his coma. And police were spraying pepper gas and firing gas cylinders at the young people who had gathered outside the hospital to farewell their friend. For God’s sake, is this possible? What are you trying to do? To put more children into a coma? How many more children will you put in a coma? Enough is enough!’

Lawyers representing the family issued a statement saying, ‘[Berkin’s] young body resisted for 267 days against the damage caused by the gas canister fired by the police, the same way our people resisted against fascism.’ The newspaper also published 19 tweets by celebrities from Turkey’s sports and entertainment world expressing their profound sorrow at Berkin’s death.

Bakery in Turkey

Political demonstration in Turkey

Well, I am sad too. It’s a tragic thing when a young life is cut short – more so when that death occurs in sudden and violent circumstances. Most of us cannot imagine the trauma experienced by a mother and father as they watch their young teenage son waste away in a coma for nine months before dying in front of their eyes. It may well be true that Berkin was, as they say, on his way to the bakery – and it is unfortunate that his way lay through the middle of a political demonstration the like of which had been ongoing in the country for more than a fortnight.

What saddens me as much as the Elvan family’s tragedy however, is the way the young lad’s death is being used to score political points in the lead-up to local body elections on 30 March. Street demonstrations in Turkey are rarely peaceful. The people in our New Zealand Embassy in Ankara send out memos from time to time to ex-pat Kiwis living here. Among their warnings they include advice to avoid such gatherings, or even places where police may be congregating such as police stations and checkpoints. The reason is not merely the risk of suffering from police violence. Turkish police have, in the recent past, been targeted by terrorist groups including suicide bombers. It is by no means unusual for Turkish men (and women for all I know) to carry concealed weapons – guns and knives. Don’t mess with an American cop, an Australian cop or a Turkish cop. They tend to be a lot more pro-active than your old-time London bobby or friendly New Zealand constable, and for good reasons. Mob violence can escalate rapidly. If you’re in the crowd and all you get is a squirt from a water cannon, you may think yourself lucky.

The columnist knows this. She also must be aware that Turkey is a very diverse society where some live in communities not far removed from tribalism; where ancient codes of honour still have a stronger hold than the law of the land; honour killings, and revenge killings are not uncommon - and blood feuds may pass down through generations. When she employed those emotive sentences quoted above, and posed the rhetorical question ‘What would you do?’ was she so naïve as to be unaware of the actions her words might provoke? When she says, ‘What are you trying to do? To put more children into a coma? How many more children will you put in a coma?’ Who is the ‘you’ she is addressing? Does anyone doubt that she is more or less directly accusing the Prime Minister of responsibility for the death of young Berkin?

The lady is, of course, entitled to her political opinions, and even if I disapprove of what she says, I will defend to the death her right to say it. Well, maybe not to the death, but you get my drift. What I find especially interesting, and what is, in fact, my main purpose in putting finger to keyboard today, is that all the above words are quoted, not from some fringe anarchist broadsheet handed out by young intellectuals on a city street at the risk of imprisonment and torture, but directly from a mainstream Turkish daily newspaper. You may find it interesting too, even surprising, given that you have perhaps seen reports in news media recently referring to an analysis by ‘Reporters Without Borders’ which ranked Turkey 154^th out of 179 countries according to its ‘World Press Freedom Index’. Turkey, say the borderless reporters, ‘is currently the world’s biggest prison for journalists, especially those who express views critical of the authorities on the Kurdish issue’.

No doubt these people are well-meaning souls who believe they have a role to play in building a better world. And I feel a certain patriotic pride when I see my own country New Zealand in 8^th position, 24 places higher than the United States and 29 ahead of France. On the other hand, when I see the Maldives, Fiji and Kyrgyzstan ranked 50 places higher than Turkey I have some questions in my mind. Continuing down the list and finding that Turkey ranks below Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, Brunei and Burma, Zimbabwe and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, even Thailand and Iraq, I have to say I find the RWB’s list beyond ridiculous. At least they place Turkey marginally ahead of Saudi Arabia (163), Iran (174), Syria (176) and North Korea (178) – small consolation.

That same newspaper is free to publish a large advertisement for the CHP opposition party in which their leader says, ‘This mentality which has been working to polarize the country for 11 years can no longer govern Turkey.’ I cannot exercise a vote in elections in this country, and I have certainly no involvement in party politics – but in the interests of fair play, I have to tell you that it is the present government which has opened up discussion on ways to solves the Kurdish problem in Turkey; which has allowed Kurdish people to use their language freely, give their children Kurdish names and broadcast programmes in Kurdish on their own television channels.

Dilek and I are currently moving ourselves into rental accommodation while our apartment building is demolished and rebuilt as part of the ongoing urban renewal taking place in Istanbul. Last week we had an electrician install light fittings, and got chatting while he and his apprentice worked. It turned out that the guys were from Mardin, a city down in the south east of Turkey close to the Syrian border and not so far from Iraq. They happily admitted to being Arab, and that their native language was Arabic – they had learned Turkish after starting school. It crossed my mind that, not too long ago, such non-Turkish national pride would have been frowned upon in this country, perhaps even punishable.

If Turkey was not obviously polarised when I first arrived in the 1990s, it was because deviation from the principle of ‘Turkishness’ was actively discouraged. Take the lid off a boiling pot and steam will erupt – but it will soon settle down. Keep a sealed lid in place and you risk an explosion. Despite what some sources may tell you, there seem to me to be healthy debates taking place in at least some media in Turkey these days. Even traditional opposition parties have moderated their stance on women wearing headscarves and other formerly taboo subjects. If they would only spend more time explaining what steps they would actually take to improve people’s lives in Turkey, the majority of voters would be a good deal happier going into that election on the 30^th.

Light a Torch for Match-fixing – There’s a conspiracy under your bed

We live near a street in Istanbul called Baghdad Avenue. Probably if you headed down it in a southeasterly direction, and didn’t take a wrong turning along the way, you might actually end up in that legendary city on the Tigris River. In our part of the world, however, it is a boulevard of brand-name stores, up-market bars, restaurants and cafes - a hangout for well-heeled matrons, reincarnated middle-aged bikies on Harley Davidson hogs and YUMTUMs (young upwardly mobile Turkish urban middle classes). Despite its location on the Asian side of the city, you would be hard pressed to find a more European-looking district in this megalopolitan bridge between East and West.

Kicking a football
for justice and democracy

Our stretch of Baghdad Avenue is situated in the administrative precinct of Kadıköy, home also to the Fenerbahçe Football Club, one of Turkey’s Big Three Istanbul clubs. Support for “Fener” is strong around here, and I would be wary of making known my preference for Beşiktaş, a second member of that sporting triumvirate. Locals are also proud to have it understood that their mayor belongs to the CHP (Republican People’s Party), staunch upholders of Kemalist secularism and bitter foes of the AK Party that has governed Turkey for the past twelve years.

Last weekend there was a gathering in Baghdad Avenue. Residents were called upon to show their support for justice, democracy and the Fenerbahçe Football Club. Banners were waved, the club’s yellow and blue and the nation’s red and white; placards brandished emblazoned with the catchy but untranslatable pun: “Adalete Fener Yak” (“Light a torch for justice” – with a play on the double meaning of Fener, named after a lighthouse formerly located on the coast nearby). Our neighbours expressed in one breath undying loyalty to their beloved football team and deep-seated hatred of the Prime Minister and his government.

I received notification the other day of a workshop to be held at Brookes University, Oxford, UK. The theme apparently is “Bridging Divides: Rethinking Ideology in the Age of Protests.” Organisers observed that anti-government protests in Turkey last year seemed to unite an eclectic community of agitators: attractive (and educated) young women in red dresses, anarchist youth, respectable aunties wielding slingshots, Kurdish and Turkish nationalists, secular Kemalists, headscarved anti-capitalist Muslims and chanting football fanatics. This evidently encouraged them to ask “(1) whether similar trends have been observed in other countries and (2) to what extent political ideologies have become obsolete in today’s politics and society. In brief, we are interested in learning how and to what extent ideological divides have been transcended during the recent anti-government demonstrations in different parts of the world such as Turkey, Greece, Egypt, Brazil, Europe, and the USA.”

Turkey's next prime minister? President?

Well, I wish those people at “Changing Turkey” good luck in seeking a common factor in such a disparate group of countries. Greece, Spain, Ireland and the other PIIGS nations, yes – reacting against demands by Germany and the IMF that the common people tighten their belts so that bankers and financiers of the world can continue to live beyond our means. The UK and the USA, sure – where 99% of the population are getting increasingly cynical about the 1%’s excuses for refusing to spread their wealth around. Egypt’s probably out on its own in that group – they had a brief fling with democracy before their military (with who knows what outside support?) stepped in and reinstated the US/Israel-friendly status quo. Turkey and Brazil probably do have quite a lot in common – maybe we’ll take a look at that another day.

I just hope the artisans at that Oxford workshop manage to direct a little cynicism of their own towards the anti-government demonstrations in Turkey. Every year, two or three Turkish football teams take part in competitions organised by UEFA (the Union of European Football Associations) for the top clubs from all nations on the continent – but this year, both Fenerbahçe and Beşiktaş are absent, having been banned by the international Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), who had determined that the clubs were guilty of match-fixing in the 2010-11 season. Fenerbahçe also missed the 2011-12 UEFA Champions’ League tournament as a result of being withdrawn by the Turkish Football Federation for the same reason. Both clubs unsuccessfully appealed the CAS decision and the ban stood.

The chairman of the Fenerbahçe club, Aziz Yıldırım, was tried in a Turkish civil court on charges of fixing six matches and sentenced to six years imprisonment. He is currently at liberty while his lawyers appeal against the conviction. Interestingly the Turkish Football Federation has taken no action of its own against the banned clubs on the grounds that they could find no evidence that the match-fixing activities had actually affected any results! Wow! Mr Yıldırım, on vacation recently in Cannes, was quoted as saying that the court’s decision to jail him was part of a political conspiracy currently said to be playing out in Turkey.

Well, who can know? There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in political studies workshops. Certainly the Beşiktaş and Fenerbahçe clubs have done a great job of motivating supporters to turn out in the streets chanting confusing double entendre slogans mixing anti-government sentiment with football enthusiasm. I heard recently that the Fenerbahçe club is planning to diversify its interests and open a private university in Istanbul in the next academic year. Maybe they’ll start a political party too in time for the next general election.

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PS – As I was about to publish this post an article appeared in our Sunday newspaper under the headline: “Yeni Muhalefet Fenerbahçe Mi?” (Is Fenerbahçe the new political opposition?) Among other remarkable claims, the writers draw a parallel between the years when Turkey’s economy was strong and the years Fenerbahçe won the Turkish Premier League Championship! Apparently the correlation is high. Perhaps my last sentence was more prescient than I thought on writing it. 

Global Renewal – Back to the Sixties

I am slowly adjusting to the digital world. It’s not easy for older folks used to thinking of ‘hard copy’ and ‘soft copy’ as referring to the binding of a book. Some of us can remember a time when steam engines still powered railway locomotives and harbour ferries; when music was played back on large, fragile Frisbee-like discs rotating at 78 rpm; when a/m radios were large tasteful pieces of furniture lit up with vacuum tubes, and provided family entertainment before the advent of television!

It seems that Dilek and I may have to move house as our current dwelling is in line for urban renewal (read ‘demolition’). I have been looking glumly at shelves of books, CDs and DVDs that will soon require packing into boxes, and perhaps will not find accommodation in our urbanisationally renewed, and undoubtedly smaller, replacement residence.

US rock band Steppenwolf, 1971

So I decided to be proactive and start with the CD collection. In fact a lot of our music has already been uploaded to the computer, and we have been discovering the convenience of hooking up the iPad to the stereo system. Now I have begun examining those CDs with a more critical eye – the technology is 30 years old! – deciding which ones never get played and which ones may have tracks I didn't like much anyway.

Well, amongst the sounds of my youth that I had, in later years, upgraded to compact disc format, I came across the ‘Greatest Hits of Steppenwolf’. That band is, apparently, still performing, though with only one of the original members who, according to Wikipedia, will celebrate his 70^th birthday next April. The band’s heyday was 1968-1972, and their achievements include 25 million record sales, eight gold albums and twelve Billboard Hot 100 singles.

I didn’t know it at the time, but that evergreen musician John Kay was born Joachim Fritz Krauledat in what was then East Prussia – an outpost of German language and culture now part of Russia. As the Soviet military machine advanced in the final months of World War II, it became evident that Comrade Stalin was planning to swallow East Prussia and Russify it – which he did, with the result that tens of thousands of Germans were killed and more than two million obliged to seek sanctuary in the West.  Young Fritz’s mother was one who fled from her homeland with her baby son, eventually settling in Canada where the lad changed his name to something more acceptably Anglo-Saxon before ending up in California in the hippy-hopeful days of the mid-60s.

We may imagine that North America, especially Canada in those days, was like the Promised Land to people like the Krauledats, the still relatively untarnished Statue of Liberty holding aloft its torch of enlightenment to welcome, in the words of Emma Lazarus, ‘the tired, poor, huddled masses of Europe, yearning to breathe free’.[1]

By the time John Kay arrived in California in 1965, however, the anti-Communist excesses of the Cold War, the struggles of the Human Rights Movement and the ultimately indefensible war in Viet Nam had brought cynicism oozing through cracks in the glossy veneer of the American Dream.

Why am I telling you all this ancient history, you may be asking. The reason is that I had to make a decision about which Steppenwolf songs to load on to my computer, and which to leave on the CD that would go out with the trash. Some songs were as familiar as an old pair of shoes, but one I needed to revisit was ‘Monster’, title track of an album released in 1969. I want to share some of the lyrics with you:

And though the [United States’] past has its share of injustice

Kind was the spirit in many a way

But its protectors and friends have been sleeping

Now it's a monster and will not obey

The spirit was freedom and justice

And its keepers seemed generous and kind

Its leaders were supposed to serve the country

But now they won't pay it no mind

Cause the people grew fat and got lazy

Now their vote is a meaningless joke

They babble about law and order

But it's all just an echo of what they've been told

The cities have turned into jungles

And corruption is stranglin' the land

The police force is watching the people

And the people just can't understand

We don't know how to mind our own business

'Cause the whole world's got to be just like us

Now we are fighting a war over there

No matter who's the winner we can't pay the cost

America, where are you now

Don't you care about your sons and daughters

Don't you know we need you now

We can't fight alone against the monster

Eerie, huh! That was written and sung forty-five years ago. And I read in the latest edition of Time Magazine that the US carried out raids against terrorist targets in Somalia and Libya ten days ago. The article went on to elaborate that ‘the FBI and CIA, with the support of U.S. military forces, captured a long-sought al Qaeda leader, Anas al-Liby, in Tripoli. . . He had a $5 million reward on his head.’ I wonder who got that. Maybe the US Navy SEALs who apparently carried out the operation in Somalia.  ‘U.S. officials have not,’ we read, ‘identified the target of the operation, but one said it “was aimed at capturing a high-value al-Shabab terrorist leader.” The official also said no U.S. personnel were injured or killed. Reports of the results of the raid in Somalia have been mixed, with the U.S. official only saying that the SEALs inflicted some al-Shabab casualties.’. Possibly al Qaeda was starting to lose its shock appeal, so we needed a new mysterious Arabian terrorist group to scare us.

Anyway, it’s heartening to learn that there were no US casualties, and I suppose we must also appreciate that this time at least, real US soldiers actually fronted up to do their nation’s dirty work, rather than taking the guys out with rockets guided by a pilotless drone somewhere up in the stratosphere. Still, you’d have to wonder how the Somalians and the Libyans feel about their police work being outsourced to the FBI, the CIA and US SEALs. I well remember the indignation of my fellow New Zealanders when the French Government took it upon themselves to blow up a Greenpeace ship and assassinate a crew member in Auckland Harbour back in 1985.

But that was New Zealand, and we are one of the international good guys, at least in the eyes of the small fraction of the world’s population who know where we are. Luckily, those are the ones who count, so we enjoy a pretty easy ride in terms of criticism on the world stage. Not so Turkey. The self-appointed custodians of world morality at Amnesty International have issued another report condemning the government of Turkey for ‘gross human rights violations’ during the so-called ‘Gezi Park protests’ in June and July. The report places a good deal of emphasis on the peacefulness of the protests, and the Turkish government's denial of the right to protest peacefully. It also mentions the ‘alleged violent acts committed by protesters’ and dismisses reference to these by Turkish authorities. Another criticism is ‘impunity for police abuse’. The report asserts that ‘although the abusive use of force by police has been widely documented, the likelihood of those responsible being brought to justice remains remote’.

I don’t wish to get embroiled in a discussion of these protests yet again. The government has admitted that police handling of the demonstrations was unduly heavy-handed. Contrary to the AI claim, however, action has already been taken against some police officers, and hearings are continuing into others. In my view there is no question of ‘alleged’ violent acts by protesters. I saw and photographed burnt out buses, police vehicles and private cars, obscene graffiti and paving stones torn up to use as ammunition against police officers trying to maintain order.

Political demonstrations in Turkey are rarely peaceful. Ever since I came to the country I have seen violent running battles between anarchist youths and police officers a regular occurrence in Istanbul and elsewhere. The difference with the Gezi protests was that there were well-heeled members of the ‘respectable’ Istanbul middle classes taking part, and they were caught up in events totally new to them.

At my first football match in Turkey I was somewhat surprised to see the pitch surrounded by police armed with automatic weapons. They showed remarkable discipline, I thought, in watching the crowd the whole time, resisting what must have been a strong inclination to sneak a peek at the on-field action. Two weekends ago, a match between two big Istanbul clubs turned into a major riot and was called off as Beşiktaş supporters invaded the pitch, throwing chairs and anything else they could lay their hands on at police and security personnel.

Many of these football ‘fans’ had been involved in the Gezi Park protests (which took place during the summer off-season). One of the slogans of the fanatic Beşiktaş supporters club known as Çarşı is ‘Çarşı herşeye karşı’ – meaning ‘We are against everything!’ Well, go ahead, say I – but don’t cry if you get a faceful of tear gas or pepper spray. Interestingly, after that football riot, police carried out raids and took a number of people into custody, one of whom was the head honcho of the Çarşı group, Alen Markaryan.  At the risk of sounding prejudiced, that looks very much like an Armenian name to me. I hope he doesn’t have a secret agenda. From time to time solicitous emails arrive from my countrymen in the NZ Embassy in Ankara warning me about the dangers of being in Turkey. One of their pieces of advice is always to give political demonstrations a wide berth – and I do.

One thing that seemed to be missing from Amnesty International’s worthy attack on gross human rights abuses was any mention of what’s been going on recently in Qatar. As you probably know, Qatar is a tiny Arab emirate on the Persian Gulf set to host the FIFA World Cup in 2022. Its citizens showed little inclination to get involved in Arab Spring protests, despite being ruled by an authoritarian hereditary regime, possibly because they have the highest per capita GDP in the world, as a by-product of the country’s vast oil and natural gas reserves. Sadly, the capita to which the oil riches are distributed make up only 15% of Qatar’s two million population.  The rest are foreign nationals, the majority of whom are migrant workers making up 94% of the workforce.

A recent article in the Guardian reported that labourers working on construction projects in Qatar, many of them related to the football World Cup, are housed in sub-human conditions, have their passports confiscated, and are treated pretty much like slaves. The largest single group are Nepalese who have been dying at the rate of one a day from heart attacks and workplace accidents. The heart attacks, it seems, are caused by having to work in the ferocious heat of the Qatari desert where the average daytime temperature high exceeds 50°C (120°F).

Needless to say there is some concern among football-playing nations with more congenial climates that their players may also be candidates for cardiac arrest if the tournament goes ahead in Qatar. So how did a miniscule Arab emirate with a native population of around 250,000 manage to land the largest sporting event in the world, when Turkey, with a well-balanced, dynamic economy, 75 million fanatical football supporters most of whom are gainfully employed in their own country, much of the infrastructure already in place, and a delightfully hospitable climate, has been bidding in vain to host the Olympic games for the past twenty years?

Well, one possibility is bribery. Serious allegations have been made against members of the FIFA Executive Committee, and an investigation is ongoing. It is still possible that a re-vote will be taken and the football World Cup held somewhere else. Another possibility is high-level political interference, given that ‘Qatar has built intimate military ties with the United States, and is now the location of U.S. Central Command’s Forward Headquarters and the Combined Air Operations Center.’[2] The US is also ‘the major equipment supplier for Qatar’s oil and gas industry’, and European and Japanese firms are heavily involved in industrial joint ventures in the country.

Another thing that Turkey is criticised for these days is its foreign policy which, so we are told, is confused and in need of serious reassessment. Undoubtedly the 'zero problems with neighbours' strategy suffered in the aftermath of the Arab Spring. Does that mean they shouldn't try? Who could have foreseen the three-year civil war in Syria, or that a military-led counterrevolution in Egypt would be tolerated by an unholy alliance of Islamic neighbours and Western democracies? Turkey has to live with these neighbours just across the fence and cannot ignore the results of the violence convulsing them. There are now at least half a million refugees from the Syrian conflict in Turkey - and no longer only in camps near the border. Tens of thousands have, in their desperation, made their way to Ankara and Istanbul where they are huddled in city parks fearfully awaiting the onset of winter. The cost to the Turkish taxpayer was recently assessed at $2 billion.

As for Egypt, who actually believes the mealy-mouthed apologists asserting that the military coup was in response to the wishes of the people? The oppressive 29-year dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak, supported, financed and armed by the United States, was overthrown by a popular revolt with participants risking life and limb for their human rights. Of course a democratically elected alternative would be Islamic to some extent - just as Americans, God bless them, tend to elect Presidents with Christian sympathies. What is ironic is the support given by Muslim extremist, terrorist-supporting Saudi Arabia to Egypt's anti-Islamic military; and their being on the same side as Israel! What's the common factor here I wonder?

A musical contemporary of Steppenwolf with a more poetical bent, Don McLean, had a song entitled ‘Vincent’, ostensibly about the painter Van Gogh, but with perhaps a more universal message:

And now I think I know what you tried to say to me

How you suffered for your sanity

How you tried to set them free.

They would not listen

They're not listening still

Perhaps they never will.

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[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Colossus

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qatar_2022_FIFA_World_Cup_bid