GUARDING THE STATE COLLECTIVE POLITICAL ACTION IN THE TURKISH PRESS (1950-1980) Cem Akaş 1 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The author wishes to acknowledge the generous support of TÜBA, the Turkish Academy of Sciences, in the preparation of this study. Expressions of gratitude are also due to Yapı Kredi Publications for their unfaltering understanding since the beginning of the author’s graduate career. Kathryn Kranzler’s meticulous editing immensely contributed to the readability of the text. The author would also like to thank all those who, through the years, insistently posed the ontological question of how much longer he planned to remain a student – this is hopefully what they have been waiting for. 2 CONTENTS PREFACE ix Chapter Page 1. Introduction: Theory and Historical Background 1 2. Associations: From Passive Resistance to Concerted Action 36 3. The Power of Symbols 79 4. Action in Writing: Petitions, Telegrams, Statements, Ads, Journals 104 5. “Smoky Mountain Top”: Demonstrations, Marches, Protests 137 6. Collective Action in the Press, the Press in Collective Action 202 7. The Learning Curve: Students in Action 222 8. Necropolitics: Violent Political Action 237 9. CONCLUSION 263 BIBLIOGRAPHY 281 3 PREFACE I was in Ankara in 1999, at the General Staff Headquarters, for my military service; during periods of rest I re-read Erik Jan Zürcher’s Turkey, A Modern History for inspiration on what to choose as a research topic for my Ph.D. dissertation. My general idea was to take a closer look at the “regime question” in Turkey, focusing on the last fifty years. I thought I would analyze the history of democracy in Turkey since 1950 as the history of three concurrent, non-linear transformations: that of the military, with its increasing (and increasingly adept) grip on politics; that of the citizenry, that collective locus, of which the ideological apparatus of the Rousseauian-Durkheimian state of the 1920s took special heed, with its struggle to come into its own throughout the history of the Republic; and that of the legislative, executive and judicial bodies, which I tended to refer to as the institutions of the political sphere, with their at-best wavering and as-a-rule decreasing command of the powers vested in them. The arena for the interplay of these transformations was set, in my opinion, by the “Project”, that is, the teleological state which claims to be the harbinger of modernization, bent on securing its own survival more than anything else. Through the decades, the military has become the guardian of the Project, even though this has at times been severely contested. Fault-lines formed within the citizenry itself. Overlaps notwithstanding, one segment of society aligned itself with the guardians, another assumed the responsibility of Marxist, liberal-democratic or conservative- nationalist criticism, and still another got involved in the politics of identity; all of these segments tried to come to terms with the large-scale social change brought on by economic growth and the global process of integration. Faced with a demanding 4 and rapidly evolving society, the institutions of the political sphere proved, more often than not, to be incompetent at both guarding the Project, at providing new and sustainable alternatives, and at providing more than unprincipled populism and patronage in a generally oppressive milieu. The Republic of Turkey has embraced a democratic regime since 1950, albeit with fits and starts, and a long list of disclaimers. Many students of Turkish politics today find the regime still too authoritarian, the presence of the military too pronounced in political matters; what they see is a regime which pays only lip service to the requirements of a democratic society where civil rights and liberties abound and are safely entrenched. The fact that there has been a series of military “interventions” in 1960, 1971, 1980 and 1997, and that since then the need for interventions has evaporated only because of the indisputable stronghold the military has established vis-á-vis its political counterpart, has added gravity to these assertions. Others like Bernard Lewis, in a more positive assessment of this militaristic bend, have begun to ask whether Turkey is moving towards an idiosyncratic model of democracy. I was convinced that the manner in which the Republic was founded in the 1920s had proven to be a determining factor for the future of the regime – the “for the people, despite the people” approach of the founding fathers who professed to be social engineers out to shape a backward, though proud and able, people into a modern Western society, defined a Project which needed to be defended at any cost. This Project, broadly aiming at modernization, with its specific content always changing, nevertheless fixed the way the guardians of the state approached the political sphere, its structure, its function, its actors, their actions and relations. This was one of suspicion and bare tolerance, which was cultivated through the years to 5 become a pronounced anxiety over the survival of –not society but- the state. This in turn dictated how much of a republic or democracy this was to be: not much of either, since it lacked the social contractual moment, in fact excluded from its very definition of citizenship large sections of the population on ethnic and religious grounds, and had a tradition of curtailing freedom of expression, thus undermining the very essence of communicative action. Another outcome was the shrinking of the political sphere in real and perceptional terms: it grew less and less capable of solving problems and coming up with viable visions for the future; politics increasingly assumed the characteristics of a game divorced from any concern for “real” matters and was keyed to inter- and intra-party bickering; the citizenry no longer felt represented by its deputies, and the parliament lost its importance as it turned into a mere theater for this dull show. On the other hand, however, I recognized that society itself was proven to be highly dynamic, in utter contrast to what goes on in Ankara. The social texture has kept up a rapid pace of change since the 1950s, the populations of cities have grown, the distribution of the work force has shifted away from agriculture towards industry and services, the country and its individuals have become globally more integrated, the GNP has risen (though, in comparison, not as fast as it should have), as have glaring inequalities in income distribution, inflation, and corruption. On top of this came the quest for the recognition of “difference”: the Republican discourse attempted to mold the citizenry into a monolithic body, declaring everyone “Turkish” and that Turkish society was one in which no class conflicts existed. This of course was a conscious denial of the Marxist model of society, and a strong-willed endorsement of the organic structure of Durkheim. It became apparent in the 1970s, however, that these claims to difference –be they religious, ethnic or otherwise- 6 could not be eradicated by such a sleight of hand. In response, the guardians grew even more defensive and suspicious of critical and self-critical thinking. The political sphere became markedly powerless as fundamental questions pertaining to the definition of the “good life” were forcefully excluded from public debate in continuous attempts to “manage” crises. The end of the 1990s clearly demonstrated, in my opinion, that the state –or the various guardians thereof- was hard put to continue its politics of exclusion: civil demand for the entitlement to discuss and decide on various different versions of the “good life” came to the forefront. The worst fears of the guardians came true: Islamist and Kurdish nationalist sentiments became heavily politicized, thus replacing the Left and Turkish nationalism so active in the 1970s. Embedded in this cursory sketch of the last half-century of Turkish history were, I found, the essentials of a legitimate approach: informed by theories of Locke, Rouesseau, Marx, Habermas, Rawls, Touraine, communitarianism, and republicanism, I decided to tackle, on the one hand, the legacy of the Republican era prior to 1950, and to determine how the communitarian-republican (going on to authoritarian) elements of its discourse shaped the struggles to bring about and to then constrain a public sphere where communicative action (a la Habermas) could take place. On the other hand, by shifting the focus from a state-centered approach to a society-centered approach, I hoped to capture what had been most lacking in the studies of this period: the politics of the people. This would help me track the interplay of the three transformations mentioned above, and assess in light of this interplay how the Turkish public sphere functioned in the second half of the century. My study would focus primarily on the missing element, that is, political actions taken “by the people”, on a grass-roots level and on a national scale. These actions 7 would include organized as well as ad hoc protests, citizens’ initiatives, and participation in local decision-making processes. The main point in doing this would be to test the validity of my conviction that the citizens of the Republic were much more involved with the regime than is allowed for in most of the dominant writing in this field, in the era under discussion. These are not the least troublesome thoughts to foster during military service, and on a number of occasions I was summoned by my superiors to explain the notes I had taken, and what I thought the problem with the regime was. Zürcher’s book also raised some eyebrows. One night I came across in it a passing reference to “Radio Non-Listeners Associations”, founded throughout the country by people who were disgusted with the Menderes regime in the late 1950s.1 I immediately realized this was exactly the sort of inspiration I had been looking for – the capacity of Turkish people to find ways in which to express themselves politically, even under the most adverse conditions; the humor, the wit, and the vulnerability of those ways; and the inability of political sphere to respond to this in any way other than repression.