by Aydin M.
17 October 2011. A World to Win News Service. The following is a contribution to the discussion of how to view the Turkish regime and its role in the world.
The new role that Turkey has sought and has been encouraged to play has become more evident in its behaviour towards Syria, where a mass protest has been going on for months. Turkey's leaders have even asked Syrian head of state Bashar Assad to step down. Turkey has been trying to increase its influence in Syria by accepting Syrians fleeing the regime's brutality and also by imposing an embargo on arms shipments. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said, "If there are planes carrying weapons, or such shipments by land, then we would stop and confiscate them." (New York Times, 23 September 2011) Turkey has gone so far as to challenge Iran, a country with which it had good relations in the past and one of the main backers of the Syrian regime. According to the same report "Turkey intercepted an arms shipment from Iran to Syria in August, and it seized the cargo of an Iranian plane bound for Syria in March."
But Turkey's renewed activity in the region is not limited to neighbouring Syria. Erdogan's tour last month to Tunisia, Egypt and as the first head of country to visit Libya, the three Arab countries that have undergone regime changes this year, cannot be underestimated as routine diplomatic visits. In fact this new role has been noticed by many observers who attribute it to the intelligence of Turkey's leadership in skilfully taking the right side in the Arab revolts and thus becoming more respected and influential in the region. It is said that Turkey has a vision and good sense of how things are going, and more than that, that it represents a solution, or a key component of a solution, to the region's instability. Another NYT article puts it this way:
"[I]n an Arab world where the United States seems in retreat, Europe ineffectual and powers like Israel and Iran unsettled and unsure, officials of an assertive, occasionally brash Turkey have offered a vision for what may emerge from turmoil across two continents that has upended decades of assumptions." (26 September 2011)
Over the last couple of years Turkey has also been trying to influence the Arab world by publicly distancing itself from Israel and expressing sympathy for the Palestinians.
The truth is that Turkey did not take the right side at the right time. For a long time and especially in 1990s, Turkey was Israel's strategic regional ally. Their friendly political relations as well as military and security cooperation was unhidden, as was the fact that this was part of cooperation with the US and other Western imperialists in their domination of Middle Eastern peoples. In an attempt to influence the Middle East, Turkey also worked hard to buy the friendship of Muammar Gaddafi of Libya and Bashar Assad of Syria and also developed good relations with the Islamic Republic of Iran. It sent tens of thousand of immigrants to work in Libya. Turkish relations with Libya were such that as a Nato member, Turkey opposed its intervention in Libya.
Clearly Turkey is playing a more important role in the Middle East and doing its best to increase its influence in the region, and new developments in the region have encouraged those ambitions. It is important to examine their sources and content.
Turkey and the international scene
There is no doubt that Turkey's ambitions cannot be separated from the international scene and the new imperialist world order that has partly taken shape or at least that the imperialist are trying to forge.
Erdogan's Justice and Development Party (JDP) was elected last June with a large majority for the third consecutive time, with a voter participation of 87 percent. This victory represented a new development in Turkey's ruling class and its relations with Nato and the Western imperialists. The most important aspect of it is that some of the Kemalist elements (named after Mustafa Kemal Atatutrk, the founder of the modern Turkish state) in the political structure of Turkey's ruling class are losing their traditional political colouring and a new form of political structure is emerging. The main goal of this political reform is to establish a more powerful and stable rule so that Turkey can play a strategic role in the Middle East in accordance with Western imperialist interests as well as its own. These reforms have been influenced by a range of major developments in the social-economic structure of Turkey, such as a greater development of capitalism and the formation of a relatively powerful Kurdish bourgeoisie.
The JDP first came into office in 2003 with the support of the US and the European Union. It envisaged the launching of an extensive privatisation programme, beginning to integrate the Kurdish bourgeoisie into the political structure, and helping to carry out US and Western plans in the Middle East.
To further understand the necessity of such changes for Turkey's ruling class and their imperialist backers, it is necessary to briefly examine the development of Turkey's political power structure from an international perspective.
Some background
The Turkish state under Kemal Ataturk was formed in 1923 after the collapse of Ottoman Empire in World War 1. This was part of the Middle East political order that took shape after the war. After the Second World War and especially in the 1950s, Turkey played a major role in the imperialist bloc headed by the US to counter communism and the Soviet Union, which remained the US's chief rival even as it changed from a socialist society to a capitalist one in a phoney state "socialist" form.
But the political structure that took shape during that time no longer conforms to today's imperialist world order and requires some changes.
In economic terms, especially over the last few decades, Turkey has undergone major capitalist development and its economy has become even more deeply integrated into a globalised capitalist system.
The other important development is the formation of a relatively powerful Kurdish bourgeoisie that is seeking a greater share of the country's power structure.
Pitting Turks against the oppressed Kurds and using Turkish nationalism to unite all different factions of the ruling class has always been an important part of Kemalism. But there has been increasing pressure to qualitatively expand the Kurdish bourgeoisie's role in the power structure. For example, one capital condition posed by the European Union for Turkey's admission into its union was that it "resolve the Kurdish question". Undertaking such reforms was not easy for the Turkish power structure, but refusing was not easy either.
In fact, given the present situation, such reforms developed into a necessity. Erdogan promised to reform Turkey's constitution in regard to the status of the Kurds.
In the 1990s the collapse of the Soviet bloc created room to integrate Turkey even more deeply into the capitalist world order and repair some of its most important flaws so that it could become a strategic player in the region. The "war on terror" at the beginning of this century made that an urgent issue for the imperialists.
The economic reform to restructure Turkey's economy and integrate it deeper into the imperialists' world economy started earlier, after the military coup that took place in 1981. Turgut Ozal, who became president in 1983, started to implement the reforms that the IMF and WB had designed for Turkey. They brought about tremendous economic changes as well as an economic crisis that accelerated the large displacement of population from the countryside and the formation of slums around the large cities, rampant inflation and extensive unemployment.
Another round of reforms that was proposed by the IMF for Turkey started in 2001. By then Turkey had received a 31 billion dollar loan from the IMF.
The repayment of these loans and interest was consuming half of Turkish GNP. The country's currency, the lira, lost half its value, and people were fast losing their purchasing power and savings. When the JDP came to power, they started to sell off all state-owned enterprises, even ports and roads. Foreign companies were given access to all sectors of economy except oil.
According to the latest figures, Turkey's economic growth is around 9 per cent and its per capita income is twice as much as in 2002, around 10,000 US dollars. But its unemployment is 11.5 percent and its economy is stamped with the illness of unevenness that has divided the country into the big rich cities and the remote and poor and backward regions. The fissures among different regions are deep. A few big cities such as Istanbul, Ankara, Izmir and Adana account for 49 percent of the GNP, while regions such as southern and eastern Anatolia have a share of only 4 percent. This uneven development is a serious limitation for Turkey's economy and could ruin the whole plan for Turkey.
The rise of an Islamist party
The army has played an important role in building the present political structure. The main aim of the 1980 military coup and the formation of a military government was to uproot the communist and revolutionary left trends in Turkey, especially after the revolution that overthrew the Shah's regime in Iran. In order to block the growth of communists, the army started to promote Islamism. The popularisation and propaganda of religious ideology that started then has continued through today.
The generals in power made religious study in schools mandatory. This had a certain impact on the educational system. History was taught from a religious point of view. The teaching of biology and other sciences was influenced by religious beliefs. Using Christian-fundamentalist textbooks as the model, textbooks were rewritten explicitly on the basis of "creationist" theory (the claim that living things did not evolve but were created by god). Generating an anti-evolutionist climate was part of the programme to promote religion. (See Cloning Creationism in Turkey, National Center for Science Education, Edis Taner/1999, pp. 30-35)
In fact the role of religion in the state has its roots in the Ottoman Empire and has never been diminished. The regime's Religious Affairs Department was founded early in the Turkish Republic, in March 1924, on the day the caliphate was abolished.
This department's job was to help unify the ruling class. "Charged by law with managing Islam, the department has been enshrined in the Constitution ever since the country's first military coup in 1961, with the present Constitution, a relic of the 1982 coup, explicitly charging it with the task of furthering national unity." (NYT, 28 September 2011)
State promotion of Islamism went even further as the armed struggle of Kurdish nationalist PKK [Kurdish Workers Party] expanded towards the end of 1980s.
Following the increase of poverty in the remote areas and the war in Kurdistan, the army was facing two internal threats: the PKK and the growth of fundamentalism. The army then used the Islamic forces against PKK and other leftist forces, while at the same time applying pressure to some Islamic forces, including those in the state apparatus such as the Islamic Welfare Party. When this party was banned from political activity in 1998 , Erdogan was one of its leaders. He fled to the US and established close relations with US politicians. He finally "saw", he says, the necessity of a "strategic alliance of the Islamic forces of Turkey with the US". When he returned to Turkey he founded the JDP. The party won the 2002 elections with the support of the US and at least some Turkish army generals. The JDP also took control of the Turkish Parliament. Paul Wolfowitz, at that time the US assistant defence secretary, was closely watching and even supervising the process.
Some people argue that the Turkish army opposed this process because the army advocates secularism. In fact the army has never advocated secularism, and the Islamists who run the government are not opposed to the army or military rule. In fact, together they form a state machine based on the monopoly of "legitimate" violence, with the security of the ruling class as its central goal. The JDP has brought the Turkish state a bigger mass base than the army could have dreamed of. Turkey's regime as a whole is using this mass base or "legitimacy" to arrest, imprison and punish opposition forces, workers and journalists, and is using its arms to suppress the Kurdish people and regions. The role that "Kemalism" once played, along with the army; is now being played by "modernised" and "Westernised" Islamic ideology and forces, along with the army (and with a continuing major role for Turkish chauvinism). The army has been and continues to be the main pillar of the political system of the Turkish ruling class, which is deeply dependent on imperialism.
This is the secret of what is known as "the Turkish model' in today's Middle East.
Turkey as a model
At the same time, it is important to distinguish between the new role that Turkey has been assigned to play in the region, on the one hand, and the "model" it is being said to offer other Middle Eastern countries.
For nearly a decade the US in particular has been promoting Turkey as its caretaker in the region. Obama has continued to follow this policy. In fact, the US has seen the so-called "democratisation" of Turkey's political structure, and its blend with a modernised Islam, to forge a relatively stable and powerful political system, as a good thing for American imperial interests because they may strengthen Turkey's ability to play this role for the US.
After winning the June elections, Erdogan said this was not just a victory for Turkey but from Turkey to Bosnia, Beirut, Damascus, Ramallah, Nablas, Jenin, Quds (Jerusalem) and across north Africa. Much of this region that Turkey wants to influence was once under the control of the Ottoman Empire.
Turkey had already taken some steps to raise its reputation and authority in the region. For example, it attempted to help resolve the nuclear dispute between the West and Iran, intervene in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and influence Pakistan. Its attempts to gain a gateway into the Middle East by establishing good relations with Libya and Syria were also part of that.
However the start of the people's uprising in Tunisia and Egypt and its quick spread throughout the Middle East, and the intentions of the US and other Western imperialists to influence and control these uprisings, created new opportunities for Turkey.
The US and European imperialists are looking at Turkey as their Islamic broker in the region. The fact that Turkey is governed by an Islamic party can help it sell itself as a force that "belongs" to the region. Dumping military cooperation with Israel after the Zionists attacked the ferries carrying aid to people of Gaza was a gesture with a similar purpose, although Turkey has been careful to limit its opposition to Israel. For instance, it pulled the Mavi Marmara out of the most recent aid flotilla. Since the Turkish ship was supposed to be the main vessel, this was a major factor in sabotaging the flotilla and avoiding a confrontation with Israel.
Turkey might be the role model that the imperialists are showing in their shop windows in some ways. What they are offering to other countries in the Middle East is that they can combine dependency on world capitalism/imperialism with Islam. Also, perhaps the role that the Turkish army plays as not only the heart of the state but the ultimate supervisor of the government could be reproduced in some countries in various forms. However the role allocated to Turkey as the US's caretaker in the region cannot be offered to other countries in the Middle East.
Limitations of this plan
The Turkish system and regime suffer from very serious weaknesses. Whether or not Turkey can resolve them is not clear yet and depends on many different factors and the way they develop.
The Kurdish question is one of them. It is true that one of the important issues Erdogan wants to deal with in the current review of the constitution is the status of the Kurds. A reform might be able to integrate part of the Kurdish bourgeoisie into the state apparatus, but even if that goes smoothly and temporarily reduces some of the contradictions, the fundamental contradiction – the fact that of that Kurds are an oppressed nation – will remain and the discrimination against them and other minority nationalities will not end. The oppression and suppression of the Kurdish masses will continue and aggravate the contradiction sooner or later.
In early October the Turkish police detained more than 140 pro-Kurdish political activists in coordinated raids all over Turkey. According to reports among those arrested were a number of elected mayors from Kurdish regions in south-eastern Turkey. This is in addition to the hundreds of pro-Kurdish political activists already in jail. Further, after Erdogan's electoral victory in June, his government launched intensive military air and artillery operations against the Kurdish rebels. The Turkish government has reportedly applied to buy or lease drones (pilot-less missiles) to use against the Kurdish rebels. This shows the kind of reform that Erdogan is going for.
Another political aspect of the new ruling power is its Islamism. It is true that the kind of Islamism espoused by Erdogan's party is currently acceptable to the US and other imperialists and has turned out to be an advantage for Turkey's ruling class. However that doesn't eliminate the fact that the Turkish state is in some way a religious state. Even at the height of "Kemalism" the Turkish state had inherited this aspect of the Ottoman Empire's legacy, and with an Islamic party in power this aspect has been strengthened.
“The Religious Affairs Department, with a budget of 1.5 billion dollars, and with its own news service and a dedicated trade union... Employs more than 106,000 civil servants including 60,000 imams and 10,000 muezzin, all of them trained, hired and fired by the state... state-educated theologians pore over the hadiths of the Prophet Muhammad in the library and issue the religious rulings known as fatwas.... The department writes the sermons for Friday prayers in mosques across the country as well as the textbooks for the religious instruction that is mandatory in schools. It publishes books and periodicals in languages including Tatar, Mongol and Uygur, and issues an iPhone app featuring Koranic verses and a prayer-time alarm.” (NYT, 28 September 2011)
The point is that this combination of state and religion might be different from that of Iran or Afghanistan but under fast-changing economic conditions could give rise to contradictions, as could the discrimination against minority religions. And sooner or later the honeymoon with Islamism could come to an end, and generate problems both for the Turkish ruling class and its imperialist backers. The whole plan could possibly turn into its opposite.
There are also other important issues that could pose grave problems for the current plans for Turkey.
Turkey's economic growth on a weak basis, such as the great fissures between big cities and remote villages, and dependency on imperialist loans and short-term investments, could make the economy very shaky. In case of recession imperialist capital could exit and the economy turn into a disaster.
Even assuming that Turkey can overcome its conflict with Greece over Cyprus, an issue that has the potential to inflict a big blow on Turkey's ambitions, Turkey's new role could impose even more strains on these other political contradictions and could break the back of Erdogan and the imperialists' plans.
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