Turkey Analyst
Vol. 2 no. 2
13 February 2009

WHAT THE COLUMNISTS SAY

CANDAR:  THE MIDDLE EAST HAS FINALLY FOUND ITS NEW NASSER
Cengiz Candar, writing in Hürriyet, Radikal and Referans, is excited over how Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan left the stage in Davos in protest against Israel.  Up until now, it would have been unimaginable that anyone would dare to confront a historical personality such as the Israeli president with the words “you know well how to kill”, the words that Erdogan uttered against Shimon Peres. But now the unimaginable has occurred, and suddenly the Arab masses, who have been orphans since the death of Gamal Abdel Nasser (the former Egyptian president) have found a new hero, a leader who can speak for them against the world powers. What will happen now? It is impossible to tell. But rest assured that the conventional way of thinking about the Middle East will no longer apply.

ÖZKÖK:  THE NEW NASSER SHOULDERS HEAVY RESPONSIBILITY
Ertugrul Özkök, editor-in-chief of Hürriyet comments the column of Cengiz Candar, saying it is one of the best pieces that he read that day. Yet Özkök is much more circumspect. It may be that the Arab street rejoices over the demonstration of Erdogan in Davos, he says. I am not sure what the Arab leaders think of the excitement in their streets. That’s their business.  As Candar notes the Middle Eastern future is more uncertain than ever. What has happened may very well ultimately benefit us, or it may not. It may lead us into a labyrinth. Erdogan left the stage himself, but it is the country that will have to face the consequences of that departure. So, Erdogan has shouldered a heavy responsibility.

BILA: TURKEY WILL NOT DESERT THE WEST
Fikret Bila in Milliyet notes that the incident in Davos has come to feed two kinds of speculations. One is that Turkey is about to withdraw from the West, and the other is that the demonstration of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan signal that Turkey will henceforth follow the lead of Hamas. Bila rejects both speculations. Turkey has been part of Western institutions such as the NATO and the Council of Europe for almost six decades. Why should it severe its links with the West when it never did so during the Cold war, when there was an alternative bloc? Where do we find such a bloc today? The assumption that Turkey would consider joining an in itself unlikely alliance of Russia and Iran is absurd. The same goes for the speculations about Turkey’s relations with Hamas. It is one thing that the Turkish government feels close to Hamas, but an altogether different thing to assume that Turkey would ever envisage following the lead of Hamas or any Arab country. That will not happen.

BIRAND: NEITHER ISRAEL NOR TURKEY CAN BE WITHOUT THE OTHER
Mehmet Ali Birand in Posta reminds that the relation between Turkey and Israel is so vital for both countries that it is extremely difficult to envisage that it could ever break up. For Israel, surrounded as it is by mortal enemies, the friendship of Turkey and the fact that Turkey supports Israel’s right of existence are vitally important. And for Turkey, being the friend of Israel amounts to being the friend of the United States as well.  A Turkey that would have become hostile to Israel would invariably lose the support of Washington.  Turkey now needs to accelerate the EU accession process. That would balance the apprehension that Prime Minister Erdogan is intent on Islamizing Turkish foreign policy and that the government is pursuing a policy which ultimately aims to abandon the principles of secularism.  Otherwise, if those fears are not assuaged, Turkey faces a chaotic future.

CIVAOGLU:  AND WHAT ABOUT THE JEWS OF TURKEY?
Güneri Civaoglu in Milliyet finds the Jewish community in Turkey less worried about recent incidents than over the implications of a possible change of the basic character of Atatürk’s republic. Referring to conversations that he has had with representatives of the Jewish community, Civaoglu notes that the Turkish Jews, although worried over the possible development of anti-Jewish sentiments, have come to feel assured by the recent statements of Prime Minister Erdogan about Turkey’s continued bilateral relations with Israel. There is an appreciation that incidents like these (Turkey’s criticism of Israel’s war in Gaza and Erdogan’s demonstration in Davos) are dependent on changing political moods. Ultimately, what counts is that the basic structure, the secular foundations remain in place.

DÜNDAR:  AM I A PERVERT?
Can Dündar in Milliyet comments on the proposal put forward by CHP mayor candidate Sefa Sirmen in Kocaeli, east of Istanbul, to open Koran courses in every neighborhood of the city. (The proposal was endorsed by party leader Deniz Baykal, who designated it as “perverse” to oppose the opening of Koran courses.) For years, CHP made things easier for the AKP by basing its opposition solely on the issue of secularism. Now, CHP is making another mistake that will be equally beneficial for AKP. Why should people vote for the imitation when they have the real goods? CHP has committed this mistake before. In the run-up to the elections in 1950, CHP began to make concessions to religion because the Democratic Party, the contender, was making good use of religion in its campaign. The words of Kemal Atatürk, the founder of CHP, that “the Turkish people had lost its ability to use its brain properly after having been forced to recite the Koran, in a language alien to it, for centuries”, were censored and forgotten. And what was the result? CHP was shattered in the election. Today, the party runs the risk of losing its most core supporters. Of course, I am not opposed to the instruction in the Koran itself. But as there are already eight thousand Koran courses, there is hardly any need of CHP starting additional ones.  If that makes me a pervert, than I am ready for treatment.

MERT:  CHP OVERTURE TO ISLAMIC CONSERVATISM LACKS CREDIBILITY
According to Nuray Mert in Radikal, there are two main problems with the CHP’s overtures to Islamic conservatism. The first one is that CHP lacks credibility as a party defending religion, after having been a secularist opposition force for so long. You can hardly expect to be viewed as sincere now, after years of opposition to the entry of girls wearing the Islamic headscarf in the universities. Secondly, CHP is out of synch with global currents. The exploitation of religion by the parties of the right since the 1950s was never only a question of giving in to the religious sentiments of the people.  Religion was also a tool used in order to suppress the left, and as such the tactics of the right-wing parties in Turkey were integral to the global struggle that was waged against communism. Since the 1980s, religion has become a tool used to sell neo-liberal policies in accordance with the global dynamics to the conservative population. CHP lacks the advantage of being connected to such global dynamics.

SAHIN: UNFAIR CRITICISM OF CHP
Haluk Sahin in Radikal finds the criticism leveled at CHP from almost every quarter disproportionate and unfair. CHP is the favorite sandbag in our public discourse. That is of course because CHP is the eternal opposition. Slugging at CHP does not entail any costs, as it does in the case of the ruling AKP. And there are no rewards to be collected by embracing CHP, as is the case with AKP. The essential question to be asked is whether CHP is making its overture to Islamic conservatism because it intends to use religion to political purposes or whether the intention is to make the political exploitation of religion ultimately more difficult. If the former explanation is the right one, CHP deserves every criticism. Yet let us not fool ourselves. The parties of the right have consistently and unashamedly used religion as a weapon against CHP for decades. The Islamists even went so far as to suggest that shaking the hand of a CHP supporter would be an act unaccepted by God. It goes without saying that the establishment of democracy will prove elusive as long as some are able to argue that God is on their side. If the CHP at least succeeds in sowing the suspicion that those who have always claimed to be speaking for God may not enjoy such monopoly, it would be welcome.

The Turkey Analyst
The Turkey Analyst is a publication of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies Joint Center, designed to bring authoritative analysis and news on the rapidly developing domestic and foreign policy issues in Turkey. It is published weekly, and includes a topical analysis, as well as translations and summaries of selected Turkish news reports. It is edited and compiled under the supervision of Svante E. Cornell, Halil M. Karaveli, and M. K. Kaya.

The analyses appearing in the Turkey Analyst are unsigned, being the consensus view of the three Editors. The Turkey Analyst occasionally publishes signed guest analyses, which are normally solicited.

The Joint Center
The Joint Center was created in 2005 through the merger of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute, at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies, and the Silk Road Studies Program, at the Stockholm-based Institute for Security and Development Policy.

The Turkey Initiative
The Joint Center launched a Turkey Initiative in 2006 in order to improve understand of Turkish domestic and foreign affairs in Europe and the United States.

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