Crescent and Star; Turkey Between... | Buy

Chapter One

DREAMING IN TURKISH

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My favorite word in Turkish is istiklal . The dictionary says it means "independence," and that alone is enough to win it a place of honor in any language. It has special resonance in Turkey because Turkey is struggling to become independent of so much. It wants to break away from its autocratic heritage, from its position outside the world's political mainstream, and from the stereotype of the terrifying Turk and the ostracism which that stereotype encourages. Most of all, it is trying to free itself from its fears--fear of freedom, fear of the outside world, fear of itself.

But the real reason I love to hear the word istiklal is because it is the name of Turkey's most fascinating boulevard. Jammed with people all day and late into the night, lined with cafés, bookstores, cinemas and shops of every description, it is the pulsating heart not only of Istanbul but of the Turkish nation. I go there every time I feel myself being overwhelmed by doubts about Turkey. Losing myself in Istiklal's parade of faces and outfits for a few minutes, overhearing snippets of conversation and absorbing the energy that crackles along its mile and a half, is always enough to renew my confidence in Turkey's future. Because Istanbul has attracted millions of migrants from other parts of the country--several hundred new ones still arrive every day--this street is the ultimate melting pot. The country would certainly take a huge leap forward if people could be grabbed there at random and sent to Ankara to replace the members of Parliament. Istiklal is perfectly named because its human panorama reflects Turkey's drive to break away from claustrophobic provincialism and allow its people to express their magnificent diversity.

That drive has been only partly successful. Something about the concept of diversity frightens Turkey's ruling elite. It triggers the deep insecurity that has gripped Turkish rulers ever since the Republic was founded in 1923, an insecurity that today prevents Turkey from taking its proper place in the modern world.

No nation was ever founded with greater revolutionary zeal than the Turkish Republic, nor has any undergone more sweeping change in such a short time. In a very few years after 1923, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk transformed a shattered and bewildered nation into one obsessed with progress. His was a one-man revolution, imposed and steered from above. Atatürk knew that Turks were not ready to break violently with their past, embrace modernity and turn decisively toward the West, He also knew, however, that doing so would be the only way for them to shape a new destiny for themselves and their nation. So he forced them, often over the howling protests of the old order.

The new nation that Atatürk built on the rubble of the Ottoman Empire never could have been built democratically. Probably not a single one of his sweeping reforms would have been approved in a plebiscite. The very idea of a plebiscite, of shaping a political system according to the people's will, would have struck most Turks of that era as not simply alien but ludicrous.

In the generations that have passed since then, Turkey has become an entirely different nation. It is as vigorous and as thirsty for democracy as any on earth. But its leaders, who fancy themselves Atatürk's heirs, fiercely resist change. They believe that Turks cannot yet be trusted with the fate of their nation, that an elite must continue to make all important decisions because the people are not mature enough to do so.

Atatürk's infant Turkish Republic was a very fragile creation. Sheiks and leaders of religious sects considered its commitment to secularism a direct assault on all they had held sacred for centuries. Tribal chieftans and local warlords realized that a strong centralized state would undermine their authority. Kurds who dominated eastern provinces sought to take advantage of the new state's weakness by staging military uprisings. European powers hoped it would collapse so that they could divide its territory among themselves. The new Soviet Union actively sought to subvert it and turn it into a vassal state.

In this hostile climate, Atatürk and his comrades came to think of themselves as righteous crusaders slashing their way through a world filled with enemies. They ruled by decree and with a rubber-stamp Parliament, equating criticism with treason. During their first years in power, arrest and execution were the fate of their real and imagined opponents.

Three-quarters of a century has passed since then, and in that time Turkey has changed beyond recognition. The nation that faced Atatürk when he took power was not only in ruins but truly primitive. Nearly everyone was illiterate. Life expectancy was pitifully short, epidemics were accepted as immutable facts of life and medical care was all but nonexistent. The basic skills of trade, artisanry and engineering were unknown, having vanished with the departed Greeks and Armenians. Almost every citizen was a subsistence farmer. There were only a few short stretches of paved road in a territory that extended more than a thousand miles from Iran to Greece. Most important of all, the Turkish people knew nothing but obedience. They had been taught since time immemorial that authority is something distant and irresistible, and that the role of the individual in society is submission and nothing more.

If Atatürk could return to see what has become of his nation, he undoubtedly would be astonished at how far it has come. Muddy villages have become bustling cities and cow paths have become superhighways. Universities and public hospitals are to be found in even the most remote regions. The economy is unsteady but shows bursts of vitality. Turkish corporations and business conglomerates are making huge amounts of money and competing successfully in every corner of the globe. Hundreds of young men and women return home every year from periods of study abroad. People are educated, self-confident and eager to build a nation that embodies the ideals of democracy and human rights.

The ruling elite, however, refuses to embrace this new nation or even admit that it exists. Military commanders, prosecutors, security officers, narrow-minded bureaucrats, lapdog newspaper editors, rigidly conservative politicians and other members of this sclerotic cadre remain psychologically trapped in the 1920s. They see threats from across every one of Turkey's eight borders and, most dangerously, from within the country itself. In their minds Turkey is still a nation under siege. To protect it from mortal danger, they feel obliged to run it themselves. They not only ignore but actively resist intensifying pressure from educated, worldly Turks who want their country to break free of its shackles and complete its march toward the democracy that was Atatürk's dream.

This dissonance, this clash between what the entrenched elite wants and what more and more Turks want, is the central fact of life in modern Turkey. It frames the country's great national dilemma. Until this dilemma is somehow resolved, Turkey will live in eternal limbo, a half-democracy taking half-steps toward freedom and fulfilling only half its destiny.

The most extraordinary aspect of this confrontation is that both sides are seeking, or claim to be seeking, the same thing: a truly modern Turkey. Military commanders and their civilian allies, especially the appointed prosecutors, judges and governors who set the limits of freedom in every town and province, consider themselves modernity's great and indispensable defenders. They fear democracy not on principle, but because they are convinced it will unleash forces that will drag Turkey back toward ignorance and obscurantism. Allowing Turks to speak, debate and choose freely, they believe, would lead the nation to certain catastrophe. To prevent that catastrophe, they insist on holding ultimate political power themselves and crushing challenges wherever they appear.

Yet what this means in practice is that state power is directed relentlessly against the very forces in society that represent true modernity. Writers, journalists and politicians who criticize the status quo are packed off to prison for what they say and write. Calls for religious freedom are considered subversive attacks on the secular order. Expressions of ethnic or cultural identity are banned for fear that they will trigger separatist movements and ultimately rip the country apart. When foreign leaders remind Turkey that it can never become a full member of the world community as long as its government behaves this way, they are denounced for harboring secret agendas whose ultimate goal is to wipe Turks off the face of history.

These attitudes have turned Turkey's ruling elite into the enemy of the ideal that gave it life. Originally dedicated to freeing a nation from dogma, this elite now defends dogma. Once committed to liberating the mind, today it lashes out against those whose minds lead them to forbidden places. It has become the "sovereign" against which its spiritual ancestors, the Young Turks, began rebelling in the nineteenth century.

"Our sovereign and our government do not want the light to enter our country," the Young Turk theorist Abdullah Cevdet wrote in 1897. "They want all people to remain in ignorance, on the dunghill of misery and wretchedness; no touch of awakening may blaze in the hearts of our compatriots. What the government wants is for the people to remain like beasts, submissive as sheep, fawning and servile as dogs. Let them hear no word of any honest lofty idea. Instead, let them languish under the whips of ignorant gendarmes, under the aggression of shameless, boorish, oppressive officials."

The Young Turks were members of insurgent groups that defied the absolutism of Ottoman rule during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These groups built a rich tradition of dissent that shaped the intellectual and political life of the late Ottoman period and laid the foundation for Atatürk's revolution. Their principles were admirable, but most of their leaders believed instinctively that the state, not popular will, was the instrument by which social and political change would be achieved. They bequeathed to Atatürk the conviction that Turkish reformers should seize state power and then use it ruthlessly for their own ends, not try to democratize society in ways that would weaken the centralized state.

Turkey's effort to rid itself of this authoritarian mind-set has been difficult and scarred by trauma. Not until 1950 did military commanders, the vanguard of Atatürk's new class, allow free multiparty elections for Parliament. To this day they watch politicians closely. Three times they have staged coups to depose elected governments. After the last one, in 1980, they ruled the country for three years, and before returning to their barracks they wrote a new constitution and called a national referendum to ratify it. Criticizing the document or campaigning for a "no" vote was illegal, and in the end ninety-one percent of voters approved. This constitution, which remains in force, was written to embody the needs of Turkey's military-dominated elite. The article guaranteeing freedom of speech and the press stipulates that "the exercise of these freedoms may be restricted for the purposes of preventing crime." Another article bans "any news or articles that threaten the internal or external security of the state." A third asserts: "Fundamental rights and freedoms may be restricted by law, in conformity with the letter and spirit of the Constitution, with the aim of safeguarding the indivisible integrity of the state with its territory and nation, national sovereignty, the Republic, national security, public order, general peace, the public interest, public morals and public health."

These articles and a series of laws passed to bolster them have been used very effectively to prevent the flowering of Turkish democracy. In the 1990s, however, it became clear that the true core of the constitution was Article 118, which established a body called the National Security Council, composed of five elected officials (the president, prime minister and ministers of defense, interior and foreign affairs) and five generals (the chief of staff and the commanders of the army, navy, air force and gendarmerie). Article 118 stipulates that the government must give "priority consideration" to its decisions.

For most of the 1980s Turkey was dominated by Turgut Özal, an energetic visionary whose rise to power the departing generals had tried to prevent. He managed to impose a measure of civilian control over the armed forces, and during his years as prime minister and then president, the National Security Council remained in the background. But after Özal's death in 1993, Turkey entered a period of political upheaval in which small-minded politicians bickered while the country drifted toward social and political fragmentation and a new Kurdish revolt in the eastern provinces reached an `alarming peak. The politicians' failure to confront these challenges created a vacuum, and to the relief of many Turks, military officers stepped in to fill it. They became Turkey's true rulers, assuming the power to veto every government policy of which they disapproved. The vehicle they used to exercise this power, and use to this day, is the National Security Council. It is not a forum for debate or discussion but a place where generals come to tell the country's elected leaders what to do.

The council usually meets once a month, and although its deliberations are private, television reporters are admitted for a few minutes to film the members as they arrive and settle into their seats. The pictures they take perfectly convey the balance of power within the council. Elected government leaders sit on one side of a long table, shifting uncomfortably like guilty schoolboys. The military commanders, ribbon-bedecked and unsmiling, sit opposite, glowering at their charges as they pull folders from their briefcases and prepare to deliver their decrees. Always they speak with a single voice, and always it is understood that their will must be done.

In 1997 I visited the Islamic Republic of Iran to write about the election that brought Mohammed Khatami to that country's presidency. On the plane trip back to Turkey, I reflected on the curious system by which Iran is ruled. There is a fully functioning government headed by an elected president and including a parliament and various local authorities. But there is also a second center of power, the Council of Guardians, composed of religious figures and headed by a mullah they choose for a life term. The government is elected by the people, who are human and therefore fallible, but the Council of Guardians is guided by God, who is infallible. Whenever there is a conflict between the two branches, therefore, the Council of Guardians must be right. What it decides must be done, regardless of what the people or their elected representatives want.

As my plane entered Turkish airspace, my thoughts slowly drifted from the country I was leaving to the one to which I was returning. Comparing Iran's political system to that of Turkey, I saw a remarkable similarity. Turkey has a diverse and often feisty Parliament that chooses a prime minister according to the outcome of free elections, as well as a cabinet and all the trappings of bureaucratic state. Ultimate power, however, rests with the National Security Council, dominated by military commanders accountable only to each other. The commanders draw their authority from Atatürk, who though long dead remains Turkey's secular god. Because they defend Atatürk's principles and believe they know instinctively what he would do in any situation, their decisions must take precedence over those of fallible politicians. To allow civilians to overrule them, they believe, would be an unforgivable betrayal of both duty and the nation's sacred guiding spirit.

There is one glaring difference, of course, between the roles of Iranian mullahs and Turkish generals. The mullahs use their power to enforce a reactionary theocratic order based on hatred of the modern world. Turkish officers detest that order, and wield their power in an unrelenting battle to assure that it can never take hold in their country. They want what most Turks want: a society that is free, democratic and secular. The great question they now face is whether the tactics they have used to promote those ideals for four generations are still appropriate or whether it is time for them to relax their grip and let civil society bloom.

To portray Turkey's political system as a form of military dictatorship would be unfair. Certainly military commanders, like many powerful civilians, harbor a deep mistrust of the people and an abiding fear that if given the chance to do so, the people would make disastrous mistakes and bring Atatürk's magnificent edifice crashing to the ground. But these commanders and the system by which they exercise power also provide a measure of stability that Turkish politicians have been unable to offer. In the absence of a strong constitutional tradition or a long-established social consensus, they are a bulwark against Islamic fundamentalism and other threats to Atatürk's modern state. Turks are acutely aware of this uncomfortable reality, and many sleep soundly at night because they know the generals will not allow anything to go too badly wrong.

For years, Turkish officers took great pride in public-opinion surveys that showed the armed forces to be the country's most trusted institution. This was not so great a compliment as it seems. It is illegal to criticize the armed forces, so no newspaper may publish stories about waste, corruption, brutality, abuses of power or other negative aspects of military life. Being thus protected, military institutions naturally seem to exist on a higher moral plane than others. Yet in their hearts, many Turks feel a sincere respect, admiration and even `affection for their men in uniform.

Part of the reason for this is historical. It was, after all, the army that established the Turkish Republic against the will of European powers, rallying behind Atatürk to rescue the nation from impending doom. The Republic's first leaders rose from military ranks, and it was their collective act of will that ripped Turks away from their old ways, reversed their long decline as a people and set them on the road toward freedom and prosperity. It is frightening to imagine what Turkey would look like today without the influence of its army. Quite possibly it would be somnolent and isolated, like Syria, Iraq and other Middle Eastern countries where democracy and individual rights are concepts about which citizens dare not even dream.

All young Turkish men must serve in the army, which means that virtually every adult male is a veteran and that most families have had the experience of seeing sons in uniform. Turks do not fear their army or consider it oppressive, the way terrified Africans and Latin Americans did when cruel military dictatorships dominated their societies. Most see it as a benevolent force that has successfully defended Turkey against foreign and domestic enemies, and that truly has the national interest at heart.

Some things the army has done are widely viewed as tragic errors--such as its decision after the first military coup in 1960 to convene a tribunal that convicted Prime Minister Adnan Menderes and two of his cabinet ministers of treason and then sent them to the gallows. Other stains on its record, like the imprisonment and torture of thousands of political activists following the 1980 coup or the brutish tactics used to suppress Kurdish rebels in the 1990s, are not much discussed outside intellectual circles. People understand that these excesses occurred, but choose either not to dwell on them or to believe they were necessary to preserve the nation. In much of Turkish society there is a desire to believe the best about the armed forces and their commanders.

Turks have a vivid collective memory of the chaos out of which their nation was forged. Over the years they have also watched several nearby countries--Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union, Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan--dissolve into fratricidal conflict. These experiences have convinced them of the supreme value of stability. In Turkey it is not hard to find thoughtful, worldly people who believe their country is not ready for full democracy. They know that once Turks are allowed to speak and write freely, to form political parties that advocate unorthodox ideas and to challenge long-held principles in the court of public opinion, Turkey will become more turbulent. That is something they deeply fear. They doubt their society can withstand the clash of ideas that is the essence of democratic life.

"You in the West also had long periods of backwardness and intolerance," a Turkish diplomat once told me as we walked along a quiet corridor in the foreign ministry in Ankara. "You had dictatorships, civil wars, religious fanaticism, the Inquisition, all kinds of horror. Then, over a period of centuries, you climbed out of that hole. You had the Enlightenment. You had philosophers who wrote books about democracy. Very slowly, people started to understand and accept these new ideas. You began to have governments based on democratic principles. Now, because you went through all that, you can give your people complete freedom. Your societies are stable enough to handle it. But it's not the same here. Our Enlightenment began only seventy-five years ago. It's too soon to lift every restriction. The risk is too great. We could lose everything."

This rationale for limiting democracy is repeated constantly in Turkey. After a while it begins to sound like what an overprotective mother might say about her child. No mother would allow her four-year-old to cross the street alone or handle knives or play with matches, but there must come a time when, however reluctantly, she accepts that her child has grown up and is able to handle the responsibilities of adulthood. The fear of popular will that underpins Turkey's political system is like that of a mother whose child turns fifteen and then eighteen and then twenty-five and older, but is still not trusted to leave home alone.

When I asked my diplomat friend how long he thought it would take before Turks grow wise enough to assume the responsibilities of freedom, he stopped in his tracks and turned to me, a very serious expression on his face. Obviously he had pondered this question before. "It's been three-quarters of a century since this process started," he said. "Maybe after a century has passed we'll be far enough along." Then, after another pause, he repeated the key word with emphasis: "Maybe."

Many Turks, especially the impatient young, feel profoundly insulted by this contempt for their intelligence. Why, then, do they not rebel against the army's insistence on guiding the political system? One reason, at least during the 1990s, was the widely held belief that without a strong military hand, Kurdish rebels and religious fanatics would plunge the country into crisis. But with the rebellion over and fundamentalists in retreat, another unpleasant reality still hangs over the body politic. No matter how committed one may be to the principles of democracy, the inescapable reality in Turkey is that the political class deserves its poor reputation. Military schools are far superior to those most civilians attend, and as a result the average officer is considerably more likely than the average politician to understand history, speak foreign languages and grasp the principles of effective government. It is no wonder, then, that many Turks like the idea of a military hand on the tiller of state.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from CRESCENT AND STAR by Stephen Kinzer. Copyright © 2001 by Stephen Kinzer. Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.