Turkey’s emerging identity, internally and globally

Istanbul from high ground

Back in Istanbul for a couple of days now, we have had a chance to focus on politics, specifically Turkey’s self-identity and place in the world, and where the Gülen movement fits within this three-dimensional mosaic.

Yesterday we had the good fortune to spend a couple of hours with Celil Sağir, the 37-year old foreign news editor of Zaman, Turkey’s largest circulation daily newspaper. In these days of newspaper shrinkage and disappearance, Zaman has a daily circulation of close to 900,000, and growing.

Founded in 1986 by businessmen affiliated with the Gülen movement, Zaman has established a reputation as a socially conservative paper – in the Turkish context that means “respecting values of religion,” as Sağir put it – and politically liberal, meaning its editorial pages ardently endorse Turkey joining the European Union.

(By the way, Zaman also has an English language edition, Today’s Zaman, that sells about 8,000 copies per day and is an excellent read. See its website here.)

Zaman features opinion columnists who represent the entire spectrum of Turkish political thought. From advocates for Kurdish rights to secularists to Fethullah Gülen himself, Zaman has boosted its credibility, Sağir said, by showing that it does not toe anyone’s line.

“This demonstrates that different ideas can exist side by side without creating conflict,” he said. “That represents an important contribution to the democratization of Turkey.”

Turkish journalist Celil Sağir

Sağir  took us through the past 30 years in Turkish history in a concise, erudite analysis. Then today we met with Ahmed Muharrem Atlığ, secretary general of the Kadip Intercultural Dialogue Platform, part of a larger organization overtly affiliated with Gülen. Between them, Sağir and Atlığ provided us with a miniature graduate seminar in contemporary Turkey.

They referred to a “deep state” of secular elites (also known as “white Turks”) who have held fast to power in Turkey since independence in 1923. But the past decade or so has not been kind to this group, whose power is slipping away as something more closely resembling democracy takes hold.

“They are dinosaurs. As a group, their power has to die out. Day by day they are losing their power and we are very happy about that,” Atlığ said.

It’s notable that in Turkey a more pluralistic and democratic political system is being pushed for most ardently by people who believe religion needs more space in the public sphere. While you might read in the U.S. press that Turkey could be tipping more towards becoming an Islamic state with ties to Iran and Syria, the reality here appears to be quite different.

In fact, people outside the secular elite who believe, for example, that barring practicing Muslims from the military and banning head scarves on women in universities (both current realities in Turkey) is absurd, also are the ones pushing hardest for EU membership.

Ahmed Muharrem Atlığ

“We need to want to be part of the EU, even if in the end it drags on for decades and then never happens,” Atlığ said.

Change is occurring at an accelerating pace, both men said. Sağir used growing press freedom as an example. Although the country has banned You Tube because someone posted a video ridiculing Kemal Ataturk, Turkey’s founding father, most issues that were once taboo can now be written about openly in the press.

The question of the Kurds, and atrocities against Armenians in the 1920s “were impossible to write about before. Now it is openly discussed everywhere. Journalism used to be very tough in Turkey, but it is getting better.”

Sağir said it would e hard for him to imagine a journalist getting jailed for writing about these subjects, something that happened regularly as recently as 10 years ago.

Meanwhile, people on the outside who worry that Turkey’s current government, which is far more Islam-friendly than other recent regimes, will transform Turkey into an Islamic state are displaying their ignorance, Sağir said.

He said an opinion poll conducted by a U.S. firm over the past few years found miniscule and declining support for a “religious state.” Just 8 percent of Turks supported the impositio of a religious state in 2006, and Sağir estimated that number may be down as low as 3 percent now.

Why? Because Turkey’s economy is booming, people are doing well, the place hums with vitality, and most people are smart enough not to want to screw up a good thing. Plus, Turkey is a young country, and getting younger The median age is 28. About three-quarters of Turkey’s 73 million people are under 30.

So why do outsiders persist in their fretting about Turkey? We asked Sağir about an article that appeared in the New York Times June 9, under the headline “Turkey goes from pliable ally to thorn for U.S.” According to the article:

Turkey is seen increasingly in Washington as “running around the region doing things that are at cross-purposes to what the big powers in the region want,” said Steven A. Cook, a scholar with the Council on Foreign Relations. The question being asked, he said, is “How do we keep the Turks in their lane?”

Sağir had read the article and seemed barely able to keep himself from rolling his eyes and sighing. “Some people in both the East and the West are still thinking Turkey is Old Turkey. The Pentagon thinks it can still do business though generals. No! Their role has been diminishing. They know their job, and it is defense.”

What unsophisticated U.S. politicians might view as “palling around with terrorists,” by cementing stronger ties with nations like Syria and Iran is self-interest, plain and simple, Sağir said. Those countries share borders with Turkey.

“Turkey one by one is normalizing relations with its neighbors,” he said. “This does not mean we fully support them. But in pur growing economy, trade is vital. So we have to remove obstacles with our neighbors. And it is working.”

I’ll write another post tomorrow morning (later tonight for those of you in the U.S.) about Turkey, Israel, and the Gülen movement’s position on the current tensions. It’s all somewhat surprising.

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