The Turkish Question
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#3.13 PERSPECTIVES Political analysis and commentary from Turkey FEATURE ARTICLES THE TURKISH QUESTION DEMOCRACY ECOLOGY HUMAN LANDSCAPE Trade unions and deunionization Seasonal farm workers: Civil Death during ten years of AKP rule Pitiful victims or Kurdish laborers Mehmet Tarhan Aziz Çelik demanding equality? (I) Sayfa 58 Page 44 Deniz Duruiz Page 32 TURKEY REPRESENTATION Content Editor’s note 3 ■ Feature articles: The Turkish question Turkey’s Turkish identity question, Doğu Ergil 4 Well, what do Turks want? Ahmet İnsel 8 AKP’s approach to the Kurdish problem: One step forward, one step backward, Evren Balta Paker 12 The Turkish state’s GAP hocus-pocus, Mustafa Sönmez 16 Village guards: A “temporary” system ongoing for 26 years, Abdürrahim Özmen 20 “Turkishness contract” and Turkish left, Barış Ünlü 23 Feminists in the furnace of nationalism, İnci Özkan Kerestecioğlu 28 ■ Ecology Seasonal farm workers: Pitiful victims or Kurdish laborers demanding equality? (I) Deniz Duruiz 32 Urban transformation and law on disaster prevention: A pretext for lucrative investment, Yaşar Adnan Adanalı 37 Urban transformation policies and the irrepressible rise of TOKİ, Evrim Yılmaz 40 ■ Democracy Trade unions and deunionization during ten years of AKP rule, Aziz Çelik 44 The right to resist against the poverty and oppression, Ercan Kanar 49 ■ International Politics Turkey-EU Relations: What does Turkey want? Ulrike Dufner 51 ■ Culture Cultural policies on urban level: İstanbul model, Ayça İnce 53 ■ Barometer Turkey’s frailty of freedom of expression, Hüsnü Öndül 57 ■ Human Landscape Civil death, Mehmet Tarhan 58 ■ News from hbs 59 Heinrich Böll Stiftung – Turkey Representation The Heinrich Böll Stiftung, associated with the German Green Party, is a legally autonomous and intellectually open political foundation. Our foremost task is civic education in Germany and abroad with the aim of promoting informed democratic opinion, socio-political commitment and mutual understanding. In addition the Heinrich Böll Stiftung supports artistic and cultural as well as scholarly projects, and co-operation in the development field. The political values of ecology, democracy, gender democracy, solidarity and nonviolence are our chief points of reference. Heinrich Böll’s belief in and promotion of citizen participation in politics is the model for the foundation’s work. Editor in chief: Dr. Ulrike Dufner; editorial team: Özgür Gürbüz, Semahat Sevim, Yonca Verdioglu; contributors Saynur Gürçay, Zeyneb Gültekin Heinrich Böll Stiftung Turkey Representation, Inönü Cad. Haci Hanim Sok. No. 10/12, Gümüssuyu İstanbul; Telephone: +90-212-249 15 54 Fax: +90-212-245 04 30 email: [email protected] web: www.tr.boell.org Editor: Yücel Göktürk Translation: Barış Yıldırım, Defne Orhun, Forum Çeviri, Hülya Osmanağaoğlu Print Production: Farika Tasarım Date: December 2012 Printing House: Portakal Baskı it.ih.san ve tic aş. Huzur Mh. Tomurcuk Sk No 5/1 4. Levent - Şişli / İstanbul, Tel: +90-212 332 28 01 Perspectives – Political analyses and commentary from Turkey will appear quarterly and distributed for free. For subscription please send your request by email to [email protected] The magazine and each article can be downloaded from our webpage www.tr.boell.org ■ Ecology ■ Democracy ■ International Politics ■ Culture ■ News from Hbs Editor’s note e have designated this issue’s from prevalent thinking habits and realized that we cover subject as the “The Turkish had indeed internalized the dominant perspective. question”, so as to look into the “What do Turks want?” is a question which meets Kurdish question by asking not with resistance and triggers knee-jerk reactions: “What do Kurds want?” but rather “Why do you ask us this question?”, “We don’t W“What do Turks want?”, thus pointing at the need demand anything; ask it to them”. We believe, to upend the dominant perspective to achieve however, that such questions deviate us from the a peaceful resolution. The expression “Kurdish essence of the problem, and we should instead question” centers on Kurds and turns them into question why the Turkish majority cannot or does the problem. In fact, as indicated by Ahmet İnsel not accept the precondition for living in peace with in his article in this issue, at the core of the other social groups –namely, equal rights. problem lies not Kurds and their demands, but When you reformulate the question as such, rather the failure to fulfill these demands. This, it becomes inevitable to abandon the dominant in turn, stems from the official ideology which is perspective. In other words, the question “What founded on the “Turkish identity”, as emphasized do Kurds want?” suggests a relationship of power by Doğu Ergil in his piece. Accordingly, the gist of and hierarchy, tantamount to a well-experienced, the matter is the refusal of the dominant “Turkish” shrewd father weighing whether he should grant majority to grant equal rights to one fifth of the his ill-behaved son a wish, in view of his correct society. upbringing. Once the question is reversed, In discussions on the Kurdish question the however, “Turks” become the mischievous kids and distinction “us” (Turks) and “them” (Kurds) comes the demand is directed towards the other party. up frequently: This distinction and the resulting These articles highlight various aspects of viewpoint stand at the very heart of the problem. the political position based on the dominant Thus we have decided to turn these stereotypes perspective. If the society wants to live in peace, inside out and ask “What do Turks want?”, “Why it is necessary to go beyond the dominant do Turks deny the legitimacy of Kurdish demands perspective and accordingly shed a critical light on for equality?”, in short, to direct our attention various dimensions of the matter at hand. to the “Turkish question”. Setting out from Finally, we refuse to close this editorial with such a concern, the articles forming the cover the regular cliché which goes “of course, Kurds subject focus on various “Turkish mindsets” and for their part should behave in such and such “conceptions of Turkishness” which underly the fashion”, which is in fact a covert apology. Rather, problem. we insist on inviting our readers to reflect on the In this way, we can start to reflect on how “Turkish question”. the majority’s perspective lies at the heart of the problem, and steer away from memorized On behalf of the stereotypes. While preparing the cover subject, we Perspectives team as a team had a hard time distancing ourselves Cover: The citizenship definition in in the constutition of The Republic of Turkey. Heinrich Böll Stiftung 3 Turkey’s Turkish identity question he seeds of the “Turkish question” were on ethnic or racial similarity. The evidence for this sown in the process of nation-building policy was in the making. that the leadership adopted with a view In June 1923, Jewish, Greek, and Armenian to construct a nation-state from the civil servants were dismissed and replaced by remnants of the Ottoman empire. This Muslims. Freedom of movement was restricted for Twas a leadership that had seen the empire slip non-Muslims throughout Anatolia. The decision through its fingers and vanish in the misty recesses was taken so hastily that many people were not of history. able to return to their hometown and remained This leadership opted, in a nutshell, for a stranded wherever they had travelled. To make “small nation” concept on the basis of the ethnic matters worse, the migration of Jewish citizens to lineage and faith identity of a group (the majority) Palestine was prohibited. of its citizens rather than a “great nation” that In September 1923, a decree banned the would include all those living on the political return to their homes of Armenians who had geography called the “fatherland”. In other words, emigrated from Cilicia (the region around Adana) this was an attempt to create a nation on the basis and from Eastern Anatolia. not of what is, but what ought to be. The state In December 1923, a community of Jews itself was conceived and later functioned as an living in Çorlu, Thrace, were ordered to leave the apparatus of domination of the nation that ought city within 48 hours. The decision was put off to be (of the “Turk”). as a result of the plea of the Chief Rabbinate, The attitude of the state to those “other” but a similar decision was taken for Çatalca and citizens was either to get rid of them (i.e. immediately enforced. send them abroad), to transform them (i.e. The Pharmacists Law of 24 January 1924 assimilation), or to marginalise them in order to made opening a pharmacy a prerogative for subject them to surveillance. These choices led “Turks”. to establishing an authoritarian centralism based In pursue of the Attorneys Law adopted on on the domination of the majority rather than a 3 April 1924, 960 attorneys were assessed for voluntary political union of the different groups “good morals” and 460 were disbarred. Hence 57 (of varying ethnic and cultural affiliation) living per cent of Jewish lawyers were deprived of their in the country. However, this domination at times profession, as well as three Greeks and Armenians took the shape of a setup that required recourse out of four. Prof. Dr. Doğu Ergil to coercion rather than being based on a peaceful In the wake of the adoption of the Civil Code Doğu Ergil received his B.A. form of unity. The logic of the policy pursued on 17 February 1926, the Armenian, Jewish, degree in sociology and as reflected in the official discourse makes the and Greek communities were successively forced psychology from Ankara situation indisputably clear: to declare that they would forgo the exercise of University, M.A. degree in On 16 March 1923, at a tea party organised minority rights granted to them by the Lausanne modernisation and social by the Small Merchants’ Association of the Adana Peace Treaty.