on the Way to Its New Constitution

Ronald D. Rotunda

N LATE MARCH, 2004, , English, although there were simultaneous a private university in , and the translators for those who felt more comfort- Turkish Foreign Policy Institute hosted able in . At one dinner, the Turkish a conference titled, “Iraq on the Way to Its Foreign Minister, along with others, spoke INew Constitution.” About half of the par- only in English. English is the lingua franca ticipants were from Iraq – including several of Europe, even in this Eurasian country. from Iraqi universities, a few members of the Turkish television provided live coverage. Constitutional Committee involved with The Conference and the views of some Iraq’s new draft constitution, and representa- of the Iraqi participants give us reason to tives of private, nongovernmental organiza- dampen optimism as to the future of Iraq tions from Iraq. Most of the rest were from and democracy in that troubled region of the , with a few British participants, one world. of whom lived among the Kurds of north- The Turkish Foreign Policy Institute has ern Iraq for four years, advising them how been in existence for many years, but Bilkent to build a government when the British-U.S. University, the other host, was founded only no-fly zone protected them. I was one of two recently, in 984. Its first students entered in American lawyers invited to participate. The 986. It has about 0,000 students and all other was Bruce Fein, a former Associate instruction is in English. The name is an ac- Deputy Attorney General in the Department ronym of “bilim kenti,” which is Turkish for of Justice and adjunct scholar and general “city of science and knowledge.” The name re- counsel with the Assembly of the Turkish flects what universities do: they are centers American Association. The conference par- that produce or create knowledge (the re- ticipants numbered about 25 in total. search), they preserve it (via the library), and The entire conference was conducted in they distribute it (by teaching the students).

Ronald Rotunda made the trip described in this article while he was George Mason University Foundation Professor of Law at the George Mason University School of Law. The views expressed here are his own.

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About 25% of the students at Bilkent are is the airport security. My baggage and I on scholarship. They pay no tuition and were searched once in New York. When I the University gives them a stipend to boot. arrived in Istanbul, I was searched two more Bilkent instituted, in the second year of in- times, although I had never left airport secu- struction, the practice of student evaluation rity. One guard in particular took me aside of courses and instructors, which was not a and patted me down, extensively, with his common practice in Turkey at the time. The hands. He was quite young, and when he faculty comes from 43 different countries. touched my private parts, I quickly moved English is the only language of instruction. back and was about to protest when he The founder, İhsan Doğramacı, is now stopped. I was glad that was over. president of the university’s board of trust- When I was in Istanbul over 20 years ago ees. He is a pediatrician married to a pedi- as a Fulbright Lecturer, the toilets in the air- atrician. He turned 89 a few days after the port were merely holes in the ground. The air- conference ended. He is very alert, active, port restrooms in Ankara gave you a choice and old enough to remember rule under the of what to use: there were American-style . I had dinner and lunch toilets and also some holes in the ground. with him, and he has interesting stories to Perhaps some people prefer the old way. tell of life in those times. He inherited mon- When I arrived at customs in Ankara, I ey, and he used it to found two universities. noticed the security police all over, as one He was born a Turk within the borders of would expect in the capital city of a coun- what is now modern-day Iraq. Professor try that has seen more than its share of ter- Ali Doğramacı, his son, is now the rector of rorist acts. There was also a prominent sign Bilkent University. Both have a natural inter- that declared, “no smoking,” in English and est in Iraq, the land of their ancestry. Turkish. That is remarkable for a land that is My travel to Ankara started with luxury. the Mecca of tobacco. Right next to the sign I was told that tickets would be waiting for was a security officer … smoking. me in the first class section, and there they Recall that I had a first-class flight from were. The Turkish Airlines’ ticket agent said New York. There were minor problems: the that he knew it was me when I walked up overhead light on my airline seat did not because he had been “warned.” work – the only seat in the plane with that When the flight attendants served our problem, so it was hard to read when the meals on the New York-to-Istanbul route, flight attendants turned out the lights. I de- they gave us real metal flatware except for cided, given the lack of light, to see a movie, the knife, which was plastic. It was a little but my stereo headphones only broadcast to reminder of how terrorists have changed my left ear. our lives. While we all had dull plastic but- Compare my travails with the journey of ter knives to cut the steak, we had real metal Iraqi conferees; they had to take a bus from forks, the tines of which were very pointy, Baghdad to the Turkish border, where they much more dangerous than a metal butter finally were able to catch a plane. They could knife. Oddly enough, on the Istanbul-to- not use the Baghdad airport, which is not Ankara leg of the journey, the flight atten- quite ready for prime-time because of the dants gave us metal knives as well as metal fear that SAM missiles will hit commercial forks. Go figure. jets. The Iraqis suffered no jet lag from their Another reminder of our post-9/ world 8-hour bus trip, but I would not have want-

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ed to trade places. ist are of very low wattage, because of the When I arrived in Ankara, I noticed that energy shortage. I could see the stars clearly; many of the houses and apartment build- I even saw, faintly, the Milky Way, which ings are modest. Some are in need of repair. one would never see in any large American Yet, all over, I saw satellite TV dishes. Some city because of light pollution. Even though places are unpretentious on the outside but Ankara has over .5 million people, there is have beautiful marble on the floors and walls less evening light there than in any a town of on the inside. One does not need to read the 00,000 people in the United States. guide books to know that Turkey is famous The energy shortage was also reflected for its marble. in the obligatory electricity conservation in My plane had left Washington, D.C. at my hotel room, which was set up so that the 2:30 p.m. on Saturday, Eastern time, and I electricity would only work when I placed my arrived at my Ankara hotel about 5 p.m. on electronic key in a special holder. Whenever Sunday, Turkish time. Turkey is 7 hours I left the room, I had to take my key with me ahead of my body time and I did not sleep in order to secure readmittance, and, when I much on the plane, so I was tired, but I want- did that, the lights would then automatically ed to stay awake to make the adjustment to turn off. This mandatory conservation hit the new time zone. So, before the dinner my home when I left my laptop on and plugged first evening, I took a long walk (about 30 in so that it could recharge. Instead, when I minutes each way) to a well-known shopping returned I found that it had discharged be- center to search for postcards. The hotel did cause all the electric lines were dead. Several not appear to have the entrepreneurial spirit, times during my short trip the lights flick- for it offered no postcards. Oddly enough, ered and went off in the hotel, during the neither did this massive shopping center. conference, and in a private home. At the shopping center, I promptly saw I got lost walking back to the hotel from huge electric signs advertising Burger King, the shopping center. But the people were Toys “R” Us, and other American brands. quite friendly and the few I met gave me di- People in the United States often express rections. At one lonely stretch of the road, a fear about foreign competition. The xeno- truck stopped and the driver just wanted to phobes have not traveled abroad, and do not ask if I was all right. appreciate how ubiquitous are American We had a small, informal dinner my first products. In Turkey, like every other country, evening with a few of the participants. I asked most things exude Americanism – American the conference organizer privately why there goods, American music, American language. were no French or German participants: Many Turks speak English. If you ask some- “We thought they would not be helpful,” he one if they speak English, a typical answer simply said. is, “But of course.” American dollars are the The conference started the next morning, universal currency. I gave the bellhop a one- about 6 hours after I had arrived in Ankara. dollar tip (worth about .35 million Turkish It was hard to get used to the 7-hour time Lira at the time of my visit) and he became change. I managed, however, with a com- my instant best friend for my entire trip. bination of coffee and natural adrenaline, When I walked to and from this major which kicked in when someone called on shopping center, it was quite dark: there are me and the television camera turned my way. very few street lights here, and those that ex- Consequently, I adjusted a bit faster than I

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would have if I had been a tourist on a less- the shares directly. The government could demanding schedule. Of course, that meant create 0 oil companies, each with oil wells that when I returned home late Wednesday throughout the state. The government could night five days later, it was a lot harder to then distribute shares of each of these com- teach my Thursday evening class the next panies to each of the Iraqi citizens. Because day. the citizens are not used to capitalism, the When our conference began, one of the government might impose a few restrictions, first issues concerned the Kurds. While such as forbidding Iraqis from selling the some Turks referred to “our Kurdish broth- shares for a certain number of years. ers and sisters,” others were fearful that an These companies could start paying divi- independent Kurdistan might seek territo- dends immediately, to pump money into rial expansion into present-day Turkey. They the economy and to give the Iraqis a con- also wanted protection for Turkish-speaking crete sense of what capitalism is all about. Iraqis, and were concerned that Kurdistan Because each oil company would own oil would be unsympathetic to their plight. wells throughout the country, citizens in Turks and Kurds have a history of not get- the South would have an economic inter- ting along, and Turkey has not always been est in the North being prosperous. Ditto for sympathetic to the Kurds. citizens in the North. Economic interdepen- The non-Kurdish Iraqis wanted to make dence promotes peace. sure that the central government would con- The government could raise the funds for trol the oil in Northern Iraq (Kurdistan) to operating expenses by imposing a withhold- discourage Kurdish secession. The draft con- ing tax on the dividends, so that the people stitution provides that “the natural resources would appreciate first, that government ser- of Iraq” belong “to all the people of all the vices cost money, and second, that money regions” of Iraq. One Iraqi – an Islamic fun- really comes from each of them individually. damentalist who opposed women’s rights The Iraqi government should secure its funds and argued that “all of the problems of Iraq the way other capitalist governments raise are caused by the American troops” – was money, by taxes, not by running a monopoly. vehement that the central government, not With such a system, each Iraqi citizen a regional government such as Kurdistan, would end up with an equal share of the should control the oil, in order to keep Iraq oil wealth. Eventually, these shares should whole. be fully marketable, so that any Iraqi could The secular Turks and the Iraqi funda- choose to utilize these shares to raise capital mentalists differ on many things, but not to open up a business or to establish some about this issue. A Turkish participant other commercial operation. quickly agreed, and argued that the central One person said that I was “flamboyant” government’s control of the oil wealth will and “colorful.” I asked if he was talking about make it less likely that the Kurds would seek my bright pink bowtie. “That too,” he said, to leave Iraq and create their own state. “but I’m really talking about your proposal.” I responded that the citizens of Iraq Another said that it just could not happen. should own the means of production – not Yet another Iraqi said, “How could the peo- in a Marxist sense, where it is really the ple own the wells if they do not already own politicians who own the companies – but in the wells?” Margaret Thatcher found a way. the capitalist sense, where the people own The government can simply create the shares

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and distribute them, give them away, to the One of the Iraqis attending the confer- people to own directly. ence lives in Baghdad but has a visa to the As for the Islamic speaker who claimed U.S., so he could leave Iraq whenever he that “all” of Iraq’s problems were caused by wants. He told me that he follows American the presence of American troops, I said that television and that life in Baghdad is much I hoped he was right, for it meant that Iraq better and less violent than the U.S. media would have no problems when the troops portrays it. He was optimistic and thought left. He looked at me in stony silence and did that the American media is too pessimistic. not respond. On the other hand, the comments of some Sadly, it seemed that many Iraqis just do of the other Iraqis at the conference suggest not understand how capitalism works, and that the road to a peaceful, secular democ- why a market economy can make the poor racy that respects minority rights will be long people much better off than they ever were and arduous. when Saddam controlled the oil wealth and Many of the conference members thought doled out perks to the Iraqis like a stern par- it was a mistake for the United States to dis- ent rewards small children for being seen band the Iraqi army so quickly. It meant that, and not heard. all at once, about 400,000 people were out If the Iraqis do not understand capitalism, of work and heavily armed. They had every they cannot be capitalists, just as they can- incentive to sell themselves, or their weap- not be democrats if they do not understand ons, to the highest bidder. Several speakers minority rights. Giving them shares would thought that the U.S. made another mis- be the first important step in understanding take by appearing to encourage sectarian- how a market economy works and the ben- ism when it classified people as members of efits it can offer. certain groups, such as Sunnis, Shia, Kurds, There are many reasons for pessimism re- and Turkmen. There are Sunnis, for example, garding the future of Iraq. A Kurdish-speak- who are fundamentalist, but others are not ing participant privately told me that Grand observant Muslims and think of themselves Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, a leading religious foremost as doctors, or lawyers, or something figure in Iraq, really is a moderate and rejects else. One should not encourage people to Iran’s theory of clerical rule. But in the next think of themselves as belonging to groups few months, one of his enemies is likely to with little common interest in each other ex- have him assassinated. A likely suspect: the cept for religion and ethnic origins. cleric, Moqtada al-Sadr, who is in his early United States officials picked the Iraqi 30s, has routinely denounced the occupation, Governing Council, based in large part on is trying to raise his own militia, and incites ethnic and religious affiliations. There is, violence against American troops. Al-Sadr for example, one Turkmen who was picked likes and wants to run things. Shortly after because he is a Turkmen. Several Turks at my return, the Iraqi Coalition Authority an- the conference thought that there should be nounced that it would execute a months-old two Turkmen. At some point there will be arrest warrant for al-Sadr for the murder of a national convention of Iraqi delegates. Life a rival cleric in 2003. One does not need the there is too chaotic to have regular elections power to prophesize in order to put al-Sadr at this point, so State Department officials on any short list of suspects if al-Sistani is have said that the occupying powers will killed. probably pick delegates to a national conven-

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tion, and these delegates will be chosen along only democracy as a form of government. ethnic lines – yet another example of how On our second night, we all had din- we encourage people to think of themselves ner with the foreign minister, who arrived and organize their interests along divisive late because he was working on the Cypriot ethnic lines. problem. I suppose one could call Cyprus Oddly enough, we have very few hard the never-ending problem. When we went facts about the demographics of Iraq. The to dinner, we had a police escort to and from last complete census was taken about 50 years our hotel to the government building. It ago. We now think that there are approxi- seemed a bit pompous and unnecessary, but mately 24.2 million Iraqis as of mid-2003. perhaps it reflected the importance of this How many of these are Kurds or Turkmen? conference to Turkey. We do not know unless we ask people if they While I had no free time, I thought that classify themselves as Kurd or Turkmen. We I still might find a little time to buy an illus- can speculate how many Turkmen there are trated Koran as a souvenir. In all of Ankara, now, by extrapolating from 50 years ago, but I was told, I was unlikely to find a Koran. I in that time frame, many of the Turkmen was told that I would have more success buy- may have stopped using their Turkish lan- ing it in the United States. That little com- guage and given up their Turkish identity. ment illustrates how secular Ankara has The estimates of the number of Turkmen in become. The skyline is dotted with mosques Iraq today range from over 2 million (by the and people may call themselves Muslim, but pro-Turkmen demographers) to a few hun- that does not mean that all of them really are, dred thousand from other commentators. or that they wish to dictate religious obser- When Iraq conducts a new census, should vance to nonbelievers. Like the secular Turks, the census questionnaire even ask people there may be many secular, non-fundamen- their religion or language of preference? If talist Iraqis, although they certainly are not the basis for representation in a modern de- the vocal ones. mocracy is the number of adults voting (one It is much too early to reach a conclu- person, one vote), should we even bother sion on the future of Iraqi democracy. There to ask people if they are Muslim, and, if so, are certainly some reasons for optimism. what kind, and whether the person actually Saddam is now in prison, both Iraq and attends the mosque weekly? We can give Afghanistan have been liberated by a foreign people the right to vote without ever know- military that seeks no booty or tribute. Libya ing their ethnic background or religious pref- is making gestures that seem designed to erences. The purported leaders of the various make it appear more moderate to the world factions want to know how many people are stage. Oman has broadened its voting rights in “their group,” but that does not mean that and Qatar has a new constitution. the Coalition occupation must comply with On the other hand, the conference gives their parochial interests. us many reasons to be pessimistic. Some of About 47% of the people in Iraq are es- the Iraqis want no role for women. The draft timated to be less than 8 years of age. That constitution says that women are equal, but gives us a reason for a little optimism. If the they are not equal in the eyes of the funda- transition to democracy is successful – and mentalists, who were not shy about express- that is a big “if ” – in only two decades the ing their opinion. Some speakers clearly did great majority of the country will have known not believe in minority rights: if the major-

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ity agrees to something, why, in their view, religious views on their countrymen, about should a minority be able to stop action that the importance of disenfranchising women, discriminates against the minority? about the need to create an Arab Muslim Some speakers wanted Iraq to be an “Arab state. They are not on the right side of his- State,” but those desires made the ethnic tory. Iraq needs a George Washington, or a Kurds and ethnic Turks feel insecure. One Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founding fa- participant went further and wanted to im- ther of the Turkish Republic, not aspiring pose Islamic law. tyrants. Those speakers who participated in the On the other hand, other Iraqi speakers conference and who opposed a modern embraced more modern views and under- democratic state learned, at least, that people stood the need for compromise in order to can disagree without being disagreeable. The create a democratic nation. All of them were conference can claim this very modest suc- weary of war and grateful to the American cess, but Iraq will need more than that to coalition for liberating their country. In this survive. conference, even the most contentious saw It is sometimes said that hypocrisy is the that they and their opponents could speak tribute that vice gives to virtue. If that is true, their mind, freely during the day without it is an inauspicious sign, for some speakers fear, and still dine together without enmity were not even hypocritical: they did not be- at night. Even the hardline Iraqis saw people lieve that it is a virtue to have a secular gov- quarrel without becoming quarrelsome. ernment that gives equal rights to women, If the Iraqi experiment works and a free, promotes peace and prosperity, and has no democratic, and secular Iraq emerges in the pan-Arabic aspirations. They spoke openly Middle East, it will change the history of the about their desire to impose fundamentalist world.

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