Blog Action Day 08 - Poverty

It's Blog Action Day - and the theme is poverty. It is such a huge theme - where does one even begin? Too big. So I will tell a small story of the kindness of strangers.

As an undergrad, I spent a few weeks one April traveling around Turkey with Francesca. We were on a budget of around £5 a day, if I remember correctly, not least because my parents had cut off financial support for a while for reasons I don't need to get into here. I had six months' worth of Turkish at that point, and I taught Francesca the essentials - greetings, please and thank you, and "I am a student, I have no money." Towards the end of our time there we were in Cappadocia, and it was Ramadan. Ramadan is particularly hard on the Turks, many of whom are very dedicated smokers, but we did not encounter any irritability, or anything other than the customary hospitality. On our way out of town to catch the bus to Ankara, a woman saw us passing and invited us into her house - which looked something like the one pictured here, but without the snow at that time. Although she was fasting, and clearly not at all wealthy, she pressed on us food for the journey - including delicious fresh tomatoes and spicy peppers. Insisted that we take it and asked for nothing. And of course, the memory of this - and other acts of simple kindness - remain fresh for me today.

It has been my experience traveling, particularly but not only in the Middle East, that those with little to share are often the most willing to do so. There is nothing romantic about this, and certainly nothing to celebrate about poverty in general. It is the practical solidarity and kindness of the poor. And it is a rebuke to the rampant materialism celebrated by so much of Western culture, and a necessary corrective to the acquisitiveness and consumerism that do so much to threaten not only our beleaguered planet, but also (as even the doctrinaire free-market fundamentalists are now forced to recognize) the sound functioning of economic life in general. We need a simpler life for all, a more even distribution of wealth, and a re-evaluation of consumer capitalism as the tasteless and dangerous system it is. We must connect in kindness and solidarity, value our fellow human beings over the acquisition of mere things, lift the whole planet out of poverty in a sustainable way. Every action towards that end, however small, is useful and hopeful.

Ostrich Syndrome

Transsexual diva Bülent Ersoy joins a long line of prominent public figures, including Orhan Pamuk, in undergoing prosecution for thoughtcrime. Criticizing the military is, as the BBC's Sarah Rainsford points out, a gamble. But what the military and its allies in the judiciary have to realize is that they have lost this one. It is no longer feasible, let alone desirable, to suppress all criticism of how the Turkish state has managed its Kurdish problem. If uncritical admiration of the military was ever established hegemonically, it has broken down by now. This is not in itself a problem. There is plenty to admire about the Turkish military. It should realize that criticism is not the enemy - that there are worse enemies, including complacency and paranoia. Let the Diva voice her concerns, let the writers examine the problem and propose solutions. The debate will be healthy. More to the point, it is already going on and is unlikely to be stopped now. So the best move is to get heads out of the sand and into the discussion.

Saved for the assassin's bullet

So the AKP government avoided being deposed by the 'secularist' (actually Kemalist sectarian) judiciary, getting away with a wrist-slapping (see last post.) And now President Gül is off to Armenia. Now, on the one hand, it's football, the nearest thing we have to a universal human religion, so maybe he'll be fine. On the other hand, rabid nationalists on both sides - Turkish and Armenian - will be lining up to take a shot at him. I only hope the Turkish and Armenian security people decide to do their job well this weekend. The AKP has a strong enough popular mandate to actually do something about their country's poor relationship with Armenia. And Armenia should take note of what a dodgy ally they have in Russia, given what they just got up to next door, and perhaps take this opportunity to thaw relations with Turkey (and, even, Azerbaijan by proxy.) There's change I can believe in.

Turkey Decides

One of the best-selling books in Turkey in the past few years was one in which Washington DC is destroyed in a nuclear explosion caused not by an Islamist radical, but by a Turkish military intelligence officer desperate to save his country from US occupation. Metal Fırtına (Metal Storm) by science fiction writer Orkun Ucar and journalist Burak Turna, is a near-future political thriller in which the United States, fresh from its occupation of Iraq, invades its NATO ally Turkey. The heroes of the book include the country’s present Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and the armed forces General Staff, who work together to pull political and diplomatic victory out of military defeat. Yet the real-world political crisis gripping Turkey today sets Mr. Erdogan and the military on a dangerous collision course. Americans need to pay attention.

On my last visit to Turkey in 2005 Metal Fırtına seemed to be everywhere—in the headlines as much as the bookstores—as the country’s intellectual elite agonized over the chauvinist mood that seemed to have swept the country. There were many flag-waving demonstrations in response to perceived insults to ‘Turkishness,’ be they from Kurdish youths demonstrating in the streets, or writers addressing the massacre of Armenians in the dying days of the Ottoman Empire. Fast forward to 2007, the year in which the events of Metal Fırtına are set. Turkey’s streets are full of demonstrators once more. In January, thousands marched in Istanbul in solidarity with the murdered Armenian journalist (and patriotic Turkish citizen) Hrant Dink. In late April, hundreds of thousands demonstrated in Istanbul ‘to defend secularism.’ And on May 1^st almost 600 supporters of Turkey’s labor movement were arrested as thousands tried to rally in Istanbul’s Taksim Square. The present crisis goes beyond party politics. What is at stake is the nature of the Republic. The ruling Justice and Development Party’s candidate, Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul, secured 357 out of 361 votes cast by members of the People’s Assembly in the first round of the presidential election. Mr. Gul’s center-right party (known by its Turkish initials AKP) has been in government since 2002. In government, but not fully in power. For while sovereignty rests with the National Assembly, any government serves only at the pleasure of the military, the self-appointed guardians of the principles of the Republic founded by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in 1924, who have intervened in politics with coups in 1960, 1971, and 1980, and by pressuring an Islamist cabinet to resign in 1997. The military warned that it had concerns about the election. The Constitutional Court, at the request of the main secularist opposition party, then annulled the vote.

The AKP represents Islamist politics of a peculiarly Turkish kind, a fusion labelled by some ‘Muslim Democracy.’ The party is socially conservative, but has not pushed an overtly Islamist agenda. It has frequently stated its commitment to the principles of the Constitution, including Ataturk’s version of secularism. It has presided over a period of successful economic reform, the revitalization of Turkey’s commercial and cultural capital, Istanbul, and some tough but broadly positive negotiations with the European Union about Turkey’s eventual membership. Mr. Gul has led those negotiations, and was put forward for the presidency as being less controversial than Mr. Erdogan, less likely to provoke the military to intervene. And yet here we are again.

Mr. Erdogan responded to the setback in combative form, calling on the Assembly to approve early elections and setting out a package of constitutional reforms including making the Presidency directly elected by popular vote. The Assembly elections may show that Mr Erdogan represents the majority of his country rather better than do the opposition and the senior ranks of the military. They may not: uncertainty is the essence of democracy. The AKP is not the enemy of democracy, nor of the West, nor of Ataturk’s Republic. We must hope that if Mr Erdogan wins a new mandate, Turkey will show itself to be a mature democratic republic rather than lapsing back into the pattern of periodic crises and military interventions that has marred past decades.