I lived in Turkey (Istanbul) for one year, made some good friends and was active in the Gezi Park protests. While the country is now highly polarized, all sides have some things in common which help explain these measures.
Turks typically have a feeling that everybody conspires against them. Not only against the country, but also against them personally. Americans and Jews are always among the prime suspects of any conspiracy.
The kemalists have nurtured a strong national identity with flag, anthem, the infallibility of leaders, language and territory. Criticism is simply not welcome, but the internet is full of it.
Istanbul, and let alone the rest of Turkey, despite the rich cultural past is not international or multi-cultural. It is a given that most people are inclined to distrust cultures they are not familiar with.
None of these factors are exclusive to Erdogan. That helps explain why internet censorship is prevalent in Turkey and does not cause much uproar at all.
Now the AKP movement is extra zealous in 'protecting' the people from sex and gambling. That does not help either.
* disclaimer: I tired giving a generalizing brief on Turks, plz don't take it personally.
>> I'm not sure what you mean by that. It's not very easy to criticize something/someone in Turkey without being called names (depending on your view), but Kemalists are usually cool with criticisms as long as you're not insulting Ataturk. You may cite the infamous Article 301, but Kemalists did not write that law (I agree that this is debatable).
In my experience, there are more discussions that touch on the national psyche. Some things that are barely open to debate are the Kurdish language and territory, the treatment of Armenians (I am avoiding a specific word here), war crimes during the war of independence, a pogrom against Jews and Greeks in the 1950's, purifications in Hatay and Bozcaada. I think all countries have their taboos, but your strong identity does not make discussions easier.
>> [Turkey not being multi-cultural] is wrong on so many levels. Turks are very welcoming people and I've never heard one bad thing from my foreign friends who had visited Turkey. Turkey is also known for being multi-cultural. It's even probably more diverse than the US, which is why there are so many problems within the country -- because there are so many voices.
Please don't get me wrong on this one. Turks have been very welcoming to me and I loved my time there because of that. Still I wouldn't qualify Istanbul as a multi-cultural city. The Greeks, Jews and Armenians left a long time ago and Turkey never attracted big groups from far-away colonies. Most immigration have been Turks returning from other places.
Istanbul is very Turkish. Food, language, (business-)culture. This struck me, coming from Amsterdam and Rotterdam. I am not saying it is good or bad, but definitely different from what I expected.
>> This is also not true. In the context you used "uproar" is a relative word, but people did protest the new law and it was probably the biggest one since Gezi Park protests. (May want to read this: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/innovations/wp/2014/01/2...)
Some friends of me were there :) Still the internet (and press) censorship is not a new phenomenon and most people let it slide.
In conclusion, I was trying my best to explain to a 'westerner' in what ways our standards do apply to Turkey. If I missed the mark, it is because I also see through western eyes. Don't get me wrong: the power, optimism, camaraderie and restraint that the protestors showed at Gezi was the most beautiful thing I ever experienced. Stay strong: Her yer Taksim, her yer direnis.
> Still I wouldn't qualify Istanbul as a multi-cultural city.
I have this theory that social entities, be it countries, ethnicities, or other types of groups, end up with slogans and myths that are designed to counteract the reality about the group. What with America's "land of freedom" and Russia's "wide and generous Russian soul". Similarly, Turkey's "multiculturalism and tolerance". It's part marketing, part self-delusion therapy on the social entity's part to keep it from disintegrating...
Hey, thanks for that write up. It is an opportunity I can't resist to see someone who can give me a thorough and relatively objective opinion on a question that has been bugging me for some time.
Can you shed some light on the political movements in Turkey regarding its neighbors? How is the Ottoman period perceived. What are the population's general sentiment towards neighboring countries. What do they say about it in their HS History textbooks?
I'm born in the region and was always genuinely curious.
I cannot avoid generalizations in answering this and I am pretty sure any Turk would be more qualified to answer, but there it goes:
I don't think the political movements are really defined by views on foreign policy. Notable exception being Syria which grabs a lot of attention.
To the west Turks still see the Balkans as their hinterland. They feel a deep connection to the fate of the Bosnian Muslims and have yet to forgive the Serbs. They are not so fond of Greece (long history), but have a neutral attitude towards Greeks. Bulgaria is viewed an odd little brother from another father.
To the north, the wars with Russia have been long forgotten. Russia now represents a big economical opportunity. I wouldn't think that Russians and Turks are very compatible characters, but business is business.
To the east there are some Turkic countries with whom the Turks feel a spiritual connection, starting with Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan. They represent the ideal of the nomadic society from the historic homelands. Georgia is a bit like Bulgaria. Armenia, they would rather forget about. Too many open wounds. Iran is a dangerous country. Militarily mighty, unreliable and very different.
The south represents economic opportunities. The Arabs are basically walking bags of money. I was surprised by the deep connection the Turks felt towards the Syrians. They have been very welcoming towards the refugees.
About the Ottoman period. There is a feeling that Turkey's rightful role is to lead the region once again. Not that it means that the Ottomans sultans should make a comeback. Although one of the most popular TV series is set in the Ottoman era. People love the costumes and the court intriges.
I don't know how the history books teach about this period. Would be very interesting.
Many people here in Hacker News, Turkish and non Turkish tried to exploit this news as an oppurtunity to attack Turkish people by making some generalizations and talking about massacres, which are totally unrelated to the problem at hand.
They fail to realize that the Internet restriction practices are not specific to any one particular country. Similar practices are emerging in Britain, Ukrain and even in the USA.
If I was to talk about Internet restriction in the USA would I start talking about individuals in the USA or what kind of massacres took place in the past in America? How big a non-sense would that be!
We are faced with serious problems here in Turkey and most of those problems are artifically created and one-sided. The Internet Restriction law was proposed by only 27 parliament members and law's passed wo asking others. It's sure to die soon because it's created in a one-sided manner by a small group of blind people.
Countries like China, Iran and now Turkey are just slightly ahead of the curve of what will come toward us.
While the progressive part of the Turkish population looks for help and support from the "Western civilization", the "Western civilization" struggles with internet censorship and privacy themselves.
The sense of superiority of this western society is really strange: when disapproving and rejecting this kind of developments in the Middle East, they pretend that is intolerable and they cite the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. But in the meantime, they themselves trivialize their own actions and policies regarding censorship and privacy breach that is getting worse.
Public opinion is just as schizophrenic. Such news is read with pity and denigration, without any realization that their own future is maybe not much better.
But hey, we are just much better and things like this will never happen here!
This is exactly what I mean. With a simple terminology trick, both are doing the same.
Do you really think that the domestic propaganda machine (of both) doesn't label these people as terrorists? How is Assange and Snowden treated? Were they terrorists?
Wasn't this the country that wanted to be part of the European Union? When they said that, I thought they were going to take steps in the right direction. But years have passed and that's obviously not the case.
They pushed for EU membership when their economy was in shambles. It seemed like an economic necessity for which they were (sort of) willing to make changes.
The opinions within the EU itself were always diverse, but what counted is that Turkey was a strategic and economic asset. Moreover it was a place where the EU could 'do good' with their superior moral values (sarcasm intended).
The first contribution of the EU was to keep the AKP in power. Every previous Islamic party was either outlawed of removed from power by the military. Both the army and the supreme court decided against that, because that would mean Turkey would never join the EU (which they needed at that time).
Turkey dragged its feet in making changes, likely because they were not so convinced the EU has superior morality. Meanwhile Turkey rebounded economically and the role within the region grew. It also saw Romania a Bulgaria admitted into the EU while these countries did not even live up to the economic demands of joining.
When Erdogan took full control, several things happened. Corruption went rampant and civil liberties were restricted. The country is being islamized. These things led to the Gezi Park protests and a diminished confidence from investors. Funny thing is that the more progressive part of the population only now starts to realize that EU membership could result in better civil rights.
Meanwhile the EU keeps broadcasting mixed signals. They criticized Erdogan but let him get away with attacking and lying to him own people. France and Sweden are among the strongest advocates of Turkish membership. Sweden has the strongest civil rights tradition and France has the strongest separation of church and state. The idea still seems to be: "when they come into contact with our superior standards, they will change accordingly".
My opinion? That is an arrogant thought and it will not work. It did not work for immigration waves and it certainly won't work for 75 million Turks. The EU will not change Turkey, but Turkey will change the EU.
Thanks, you wrote a couple of interesting comments.
As a Swede, I think you shouldn't try to apply logic to Sweden's position. Most [foreign] policy are decided because of economic interests and/or internal Swedish (politically correct) politics.
And about changing a society -- it takes a few generations to modernize. But it has to come. Sure, it might be harder for muslim countries (e.g. there is no real demand to execute people leaving the religion in Christianity!). Since a liberal and open society seems to be needed to e.g. get rid of corruption. With rampant corruption you just have, well, a pile of shit (see Romania and Bulgaria, which you mentioned; I work in Romania right now).
The previous paragraph is, I believe, the thinking in West Europe. I tend to agree. China is the obvious counter argument to this position, we'll see where they end up when the Chinese GNP/capita gets closer to a rich country.
The EU commission (which is the unelected organisation that actually decides) simply wants power, so if Turkey wants to join and play Trojan horse, they will certainly let them.
Because of this, and regardless of the Turkey issue, can we please stop referrring to Europa, or the European Union as "democratic" ? It's not. Let's just stop pretending.
> The EU commission (which is the unelected organisation
What are you talking about? It's elected, maybe not by the people directly, but by their (elected) representatives. That's the same as saying that the US president isn't elected, because s/he isn't elected directly by the population.
In practice, the US president is directly elected by the population. Every state has a law declaring that their electors (the representatives that really 'elect' the president) will follow the majority vote counted within that state.
Granted, if you look at wikipedia it'll say its an indirect system, but that's only a technicality.
Ok, then I was wrong. I've previously heard that in theory, the electors could change their mind, so that's why the parties only nominated their most senior, most trusted members for electors.
Euhm no. The distance between the commissars and elected officials is much bigger.
They're appointed by vote by foreign ministers of the member states (as a group, they can't include or exclude individuals), who are elected as a group (again, no apointing individuals) by the local parliaments. By that standard, the new CEO of Microsoft is an elected official. Also note that most European commissars are not appointed by the current governments of the member states.
As if that's not bad enough, why don't you look at the results of European referenda, how the people voted on the creation of Europe in the one instance they were asked.
The European Parliament has neither serious power nor a mandate. Most voters don't bother to show up. It's a circus act, not a congress of people's representatives.
In fact, it's very existence doesn't have a mandate. We never agreed to surrender our national sovereignty to a European government.
When the people in my country where asked in the only major referendum ever held in our history, our answer was a loud and clear "no". The EU has zero democratic legitimacy.
Forgive me for calling out your comment shallow. As a former Turkish resident, I did try and make an effort in reading up and understanding about Turkey.
While it is not fair to say I have no idea about Turkish history, I might have missed the mark. Please feel free to correct me, I can take criticism. I take it better than an offhand remark that I am clueless.
The thing is I am sick and tired of correcting simple mistakes. Basically almost all your comments requires at least a paragraph of explanation - correction - counter arguments, and to be honest I don't think there is a point of doing it.
It's not about you, only just couldn't hold myself, sorry about non constructive reply.
I know in 1974 Turkey invaded a European country and is still holding its land. Now you will say it was a peace keeping operation which might not be true but in case it is, its 2014, and Turkish military is still occupying the land of another country. An EU country which obviously veto's its accession to the EU.
When I said shallow, I exactly meant comments like this. What was the circumstances? How about 1974 Cypriot coup d'état by EOKA-B by the support of Greek military Junta? Nikos Samson's nice words about joining homeland? Death of hundreds of civilians? Sorry but nothing is as simple as it seems.
Travelled Europe (25 countries) by car two summers ago. There are many "European Union" countries way behind Turkey at pretty much everything.
My conclusion was that it was very clear that the only reason Turkey was not included in EU was because it is not Christian. That's a perfectly fine choice if that's what EU chooses to be, but they should face the truth about themselves.
This seems to be a calculated move by the Justice and Development Party (AKP) in response to two things:
- Widespread dissent that was not publicly expressed suddenly became public in the gezi park events, and the internet was a huge catalyst in expressing dissent and disseminating information, as well as organizing protests (Long topic, more here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_protests_in_Turkey)
- There has recently been a fallout between AKP and their longtime allies, the Gulen Movement (weird religious cult-cum-political-power http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%BClen_movement). This has resulted in the Gulen people uncovering a ton of dirt on AKP members, including mind-blowing corruption scandals that include millions in cash being kept in shoeboxes in the personal residence of the owner of a national bank and important people being complicit, including the PM Erdogan's sons. AKP's response was to shuffle around 350 police officers to replace them with their own men, and unsurprisingly the police refused to carry out the prosecutor's orders for arrest. The prosecutor was also fired. The cabinet was reshuffled. A "judiciary coup" took place where they tried to change the laws to have the head of the judiciary elect the prosecutors, so they could elect their own prosecutors, so they could find prosecutors which would not indict AKP (http://www.todayszaman.com/news-336883-erdogan-govt-rolls-ba...)
Throughout this internal fallout, documentary evidence was often released anonymously on the internet (records of phone conversations, photos of documents, etc). AKP suddenly realized that it's not to their benefit to allow this.
- The Telecommunications Communications Directorate (yes, redundant name, TIB for short) head can immediately order content to be removed.
- TIB can ask for any information they want and the hosting providers have to supply it, no due process needed (no DMCA safe harbour-ish clause)
- You need permission from the TIB head to begin a questioning process about any TIB employee (i.e. abuse abounds)
- Hosting providers must keep IP addresses for 1 year instead of 6 months
- IP, DNS and URL blocking will be implemented (previously it was DNS only), but of course no one knows how they're going to acquire the hardware for deep packet inspection.
- No hearing required for complaints about websites that allegedly involve a violation of personal rights. A decision is immediately made.
- Hosting / Service providers must respond to requests in 24 hours.
- The directorate has permission to "fight cyber war", which seems to be a patriot act-ish catchall phrase to do whatever they want.
That's nothing new in that country, before free-internet was a hot-trend, Turkey used to genocide and massacre thousands of Kurdish people just because they wanted to speak in their mother tongue, and west was OK with it, because we needed Turkeys support during the cold war, the same situation continued after the cold war in other forms, Turkey and Iran use these kind of acts as an old and continuing process mostly for racial purposes.
We can't compare this to the paradigm that exists in the US or EU.
And after the internet age, when the facts hit the people who were not even aware of it went "Oh shit, did our military really do this to those people?". If it wasn't for internet, most Turks would stay ignorant of the military power abuse in the Southeast, the way a regular US citizen didn't hear about Guantanamo Bay. So what is your point? Should Turkey degenerate more or should Turkey try to improve? If Turkey cannot improve, the few in power will abuse it, and this time even more people will suffer.
Orwellian control of the internet will not make power abuse go away, it will increase it.
The best analogy I can come up with is proverbial ostrich hiding his head when threatened. Long story short, the ostrich doesn't survive then again this is a myth purported by Pliny. But this does not hide the fact that this act is parallel to that.
Turks typically have a feeling that everybody conspires against them. Not only against the country, but also against them personally. Americans and Jews are always among the prime suspects of any conspiracy.
The kemalists have nurtured a strong national identity with flag, anthem, the infallibility of leaders, language and territory. Criticism is simply not welcome, but the internet is full of it.
Istanbul, and let alone the rest of Turkey, despite the rich cultural past is not international or multi-cultural. It is a given that most people are inclined to distrust cultures they are not familiar with.
None of these factors are exclusive to Erdogan. That helps explain why internet censorship is prevalent in Turkey and does not cause much uproar at all.
Now the AKP movement is extra zealous in 'protecting' the people from sex and gambling. That does not help either.
* disclaimer: I tired giving a generalizing brief on Turks, plz don't take it personally.