GYANOPROBHA

WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE, WHO NEEDS ENEMIES?

According to a STRATFOR intelligence briefing that was passed on to me (presumably available only to subscribers), entitled "Why the PKK is baiting Turkey", the PKK's attacks on Turkish troops are intended to draw Turkey into an incursion into northern Iraq. The eventual aim is to revive the revanchist hopes of unifying the Kurdish people, now spread over Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria, into one nation. But the Kurds of northern Iraq are not really interested, according to this report. They have tasted prosperity and comparative peace, and wish to enjoy the prospects of growing rich with the oil that they have in their own territory, preferably in a federal Iraq that allows the Kurds to sell their own oil to the international market. Hence the desperate attempts to provoke a Turkish attack into northern Iraq, "in hopes that the confrontation between Turkey and the PKK will become a confrontation between Turkey and the Iraqi Kurds". The PKK expects that once this happens, the US will support the Kurds against the Turks.

The problem with this analysis is that it leaves out of account the fact that both the US and Israel have, for reasons of their own, been supporting the Kurds, initially against Saddam Hussein, and now against Iran, for some time. Not only do the US and Israel hope the oil resources of Mosul and Kirkuk will fall into the laps of their oil companies, but it will hopefully split up Iraq permanently, and give them a friendly power right at the border with Iran and the Sunni provinces of Iraq. Sen. Joe Biden has already proposed a bill to divide Iraq into three areas, according to the relative local majorities - partition and rule, in the grand colonial manner familiar to South Asians from their recent history. US and possibly Israeli special forces have been operating inside Iran alongside Kurds trained by them, planting spying devices to detect signs of nuclear activity, and also encouraging the Mujahedin-i-Khalq, an armed group of Iranian "terrorists" (in the US State Department definition) dedicated to the overthrow of the present Islamic regime in Iran.

Moreover, the PKK that’s attacking Turkish military units inside Turkey has little popular support among Turkish Kurds. The latter have benefited from the investment in the local economy and the greater cultural freedoms that the AKP government has been providing in the region over the last few years. They also have rather dire memories of the last disastrous confrontation with the Turkish army in the 1990’s. Former PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan too has reportedly lost interest in confronting the Turkish state. (No surprises there!)

For some reason that I don’t entirely understand, the possible role of Israel in promoting the recent surge of violence from the PKK is being ignored even by al Jazeera. It’s probably not a direct role, and may well be a spillover that the Israelis did not intend, but are not in a position to control. The Kurds in northern Iraq have received arms from the US and training and other kinds of support from Israeli special forces and academics and politicians because Israel is interested in cultivating the Kurds to gain a foothold within Iran. In fact, Israeli support for Kurdish revanchist aspirations was already the subject of a long investigative piece by Seymour Hersh in The New Yorker on June 28, 2004. Some of this support has spilled over into groups operating under the name of PKK in Turkey and PJAK in Iran.

Turkish-Israeli “friendship” is now as fragile as Turkish-US friendship, primarily because the redrawing of the borders in the region to the advantage of Israel has long been an ambition of both the US and the Israelis. [See “The Clean Break” document and its analysis.] Ankara has opposed a break up of Iraq (along for instance the Biden proposal) right from the beginning, because they perceive it as a potential source of support for attempts to create Kurdistan at their expense. Israel on its part has not taken too kindly to Ankara wooing Basharul Asad, inviting Khaled Meshal of the Palestinian Hamas to visit Ankara from his sanctuary in Damascus to publicize the plight of the Palestinians, and the new alignment with Iran under the AKP against Kurdish attempts to revive attacks on both these countries.

The US is easily in a position to control the Kurds if they wanted to, either directly or through their puppet al Maliki in Baghdad. So why don’t they? It can't be out of sympathy with Kurdish national aspirations. After all, as the Kurds were reminded by Henry Kissinger, no less, when he refused to send arms to the Iraqi anti-Saddam resistance, "the US government is not an eleemosynary institution." Probably because they have their hands full just dealing with the failing or failed “surge”, and the renewed bisectarian unity that is forming among the Iraqis against US occupation. Besides, if the US foreign policy advisers had a clue, they would have figured out long ago the real cost of the support for the Armenian genocide resolution in the Senate, in terms of increased popular hostility against the idea of supporting the US through the base at Incirlik.

Today's Zaman, a Turkish news daily sympathetic to the ruling AKP, has reported that Erdogan will press Olmert to give up Israeli support for the Kurdish militants in Turkey. Let's see how far Olmert will comply. He will probably plead ignorance, or that the Israeli government have no control since those training and arming the Kurdish fighters are private military contractors. After all, instant and plausible deniability is why governments hire PMC's in the first place.

WHAT ABOUT AN IRAQI GENOCIDE RESOLUTION?

Take a look at the official definition and scope of the term "genocide". A careful reading of the definitions, and more importantly, a meticulous examination of the evidence for and against, could conceivably make a prima facie case for the word "genocide" to apply to the massacres and deportations of the Armenians in eastern Anatolia in the period 1915-20. But applying the actual label of genocide at this time does nothing to further establish the guilt of the perpetrators, nor to mitigate the suffering of their victims. To my mind, whatever happened was bad enough. Would the crimes committed lose their enormity by a determination that they did NOT constitute genocide? What would change if Turkey were to admit that it WAS a genocide? The people who were responsible have died, and either been killed, or were sentenced by Turkish courts after World War I, as the resolution itself admits. The whole point of examining the evidence - and there is enough evidence of criminality, even if there may not be enough to officially label it a genocide - should be to warn present and future generations of politicians and citizens, not just in Turkey but all over the world, not to allow such a crime to be committed again.

And THAT point has been lost, especially in the US itself. The very same Senators who submitted the resolution - Mr. Schiff (for himself, Mr. Radonovich, Mr. Pallone, Mr. Knollenberg, Mr. Sherman, and Mr. McCotter) - voted as follows on the authorization of the use of force in Iraq (HJ Res 114 107th Congress October 10, 2002)

For - Radonovich, Knollenberg, Sherman
Against - Pallone
McCotter - No record. .

Gary Ackerman and Christopher Smith, who voted for the Armenian Genocide resolution, also voted for what turned out to be the Iraqi genocide, despite being in a position to know that they were being fed lies by the President and those who wanted the invasion.

Has the US senate itself reflected (in the words of the resolution) "appropriate understanding and sensitivity concerning issues related to human rights, ethnic cleansing and genocide" in Iraq after the invasion that it supported overwhelmingly? The horrendous scale of the killing and displacement of almost a fifth of the population of Iraq is well documented in the public domain, and can arguably amount to a genocide within the terms of the UN definition cited above. So why doesn't the Turkish Parliament pass a resolution to apply the term genocide to the deaths and displacement resulting from the sanctions imposed on Iraq since 1991, and the subsequent invasion and occupation of the country? For good measure it could also have those responsible identified as war criminals under the Nuremberg definitions of crimes against humanity.

In my dreams!

THE "THREAT" OF ISLAMIC DEMOCRACY

William Dalrymple's comment in the Guardian's Commentisfree blog has attracted the usual hysteria from roving bands of Islamophobes, but makes a plausible case for the view that the real impetus behind the growth of political Islam has been the search for a popular response to western policies in the Muslim world. If you take a look around the countries of west Asia, you are likely to see western support going to monarchies like Jordan, Saudi Arabia or the Gulf States, or to an electoral dictatorship called Egypt. Democratic opposition to western policies in the region takes the shape of support for Islamic parties. Dalrymple cites Hamas in Palestine and the Hizbollah as the most dramatic examples of parties that win popular support, but the basis for their support are the capacity for these parties to support social welfare programs that the state has failed to provide, and the fact that they form the focus of the resistance to Israel, the main western "representative" in the region. Dalrymple notes that Bush's desire to be a missionary bombardier for democracy has indeed worked in a destructive, perverse way: popular anti-western resistance forces have coagulated around Islamic parties not because of their Islamic teachings, but because they provided the only credible resistance to western destruction.

But do these Islamic parties really represent an alternative to western economic domination and to the injustices of global capitalism? Dalrymple writes that "the religious parties tend to be seen by the poor, rightly or wrongly, as representing justice, integrity and equitable distribution of resources." But these parties have never had to actually run a government, except, locally in Lebanon. And when they did in Afghanistan, they were a disaster, both socially and economically. So it's difficult to judge their potential as alternatives to the present order of immiserising capitalism. Judging by the record of Islamic parties like the AKP in Turkey, which has also gained in strength in the last elections mainly because the opposition lacked a credible program, it seems possible to combine successful economic management according to the Washington consensus - high growth, lower inflation, a business-friendly economic climate - with programs that address the needs of the poor, at least to a limited extent, and in the medium term.

Dalrymple's key insight is that political Islam wins by addressing secular concerns - the standard of living, stable jobs, quick compensation for war damage, active resistance to armed attacks by western forces - and not by conjuring up visions of paradise attained through violent jihad, which is the Islamophobe's standard version. This has the reassuring implication that the motivation for political Islam does not come from the desire for a theocracy, but from the desire for worldly justice and well-being.

But try telling that to the Kemalist elite in Turkey! To them modernity can never have an Islamic definition, only a western one. Therefore, AKP's successful economic management and their desire to join the EU is a facade or veil, concealing the desire to ultimately create an Islamic theocracy governed by the sharia. For the Kemalist, to be a believer in European secularism, but to be turned away at Europe's door for being a Muslim country, poses a painful dilemma, only resolvable by Turks trying to be as western as ever. But the only judges of Turkish westernness are the Europeans, with their secularism and liberalism and enlightenment and human rights and democracy and humanitarian intervention. Unfortunately for the Kemalists, most Turks want the human rights, democracy and the worldy benefits of capitalism, but still see themselves as being Muslim too. In the present context, this brings constant reminders of western double standards and hypocrisy.

This hypocrisy has been brilliantly captured in a satirical posting responding to Dalrymple's comment from one Rasher101. It's well worth quoting in full. (I now find it's been deleted by the moderator. Shame on you, CiF!)

Surely the time is right for military intervention to bring democracy and freedom to the American people?

These poor people languish under a corporate dictatorship in which financial moguls decide on who they can or can't vote for, in which so-called 'elections' are morass of gerrymandering, registration irregularities and outright fraud, and in which a student can be dragged away and tasered for asking the wrong question. This is a country in which people can be locked up for years without trial, in which the government can spy on its citizens as it wishes, and in which tens of millions of people are abandoned to live wretched lives with minimal wages and no healthcare. America is also a regime reputed to possess Weapons of Mass Destruction - and it has used them in the past. It is not only a threat to the world's security but a blight on the world's conscience. The case for military intervention is overwhelming.

It is clear that, by removing the deeply unpopular American regime, by ending the threat from American WMD and by bringing free and fair elections to the American people we would be making the entire region of North America and the North Atlantic much more stable. By invading and occupying America to create a free and democratic state we would be establishing a friendly nation in the heart of North America. This would be an example that would spread, particularly to Britian and Israel, nations with their own history of violence and aggression and who also threaten global security.

The initial invasion would have to be followed by a nation-building exercise as Americans are trained in critical thinking, free speech and democracy. Americans have been subjected to a nationalistic and simple-minded press and media for decades, to the extent that many are no longer aware of even the basic geography of the world, never mind its social and cultural diversity and complexity. Many have even degenerated into religious fundamentalism. Their education and training would therefore take years, and so it is realistic to expect that we would be obliged to maintain 'enduring bases' throughout America to maintain an overwatch role and to ensure that the Americans make the right choices.

Our liberation of the American people would surely be welcomed with flowers and with cheers as our tanks and soldiers marched through the rubble of their cities. Yes, many Americans would die, but collateral damage happens in all wars, however noble (not that we would be counting American deaths!!). Americans, with their gun culture and school shootings and death penalty and mass incarcerations, are much more used to violence and death than we are. They don't feel the same pain when their children are killed and maimed - they're used to it. It really doesn't bother them as much. Sure a few thousand Americans would be shot at our checkpoints, and thousands more would die under our bombs. But that's the price of freedom. Don't worry about it.
The costs of the intervention would not be too great. I estimate $2 billion over three, four - not more than six months. After that America should be in a position to refinance its own reconstruction (overseen by us, of course). It is true it might be difficult to get UN Security Council approval for this intervention, as justified as it is, but we should go ahead anyway. After all, we know our cause is just, that WE are right, and that those predicting disaster are just communist cowards.

Oh, wait! I just found out that America reached peak oil in 1969 and that its current reserves are small and dwindling rapidly. My bad! Forget the whole thing!!

MICHAEL RUBIN TALKS TURKEY

In an effort to appear to be a friend of Turkey, Michael Rubin regurgitates the anxieties of Turkey's secular elite: Turkey is on the road to become another Iran, only Mr. Erdogan's conceals this cleverly under the guise of his push towards the EU. This is a view that is heard frequently in Kemalist circles who continue to be suspicious of the AKP despite their much better record of governance. The economy is a poster child of neoliberal reformers, and even though there is always a tendency towards economic volatility, exchange rates have been much more stable recently than in the past. On the question of joining the EU, the Europeans seem disinclined to believe the insistent protestations of the Turkish elite that they are secular and liberal. The fact that they are Muslim as well seems to count against them. The declining popularity in Turkey of the project of joining the EU could easily have been foretold, if one were mindful of the European tendency of continuously changing the goal-posts, and the finger-wagging on human rights that accompanies every move made by the "patriotic" Turkish lawyers to haul up free-thinking intellectuals for "insulting Turkishness".

Mr. Rubin should stop worrying about Islam in Turkey. Yes, the Turks are Islamic, but theirs is a far more liberal intepretation of Islam, and secularism is well entrenched in the organs of the Turkish state. The real dangers come from the increasing credence being given by the GWOT, and by Israel's actions in Palestine and Lebanon, to the basic Islamist message of Islam under siege all over the world. If Mr. Rubin is so worried about upholding democracy and secularism, should he not start with whatever country he calls home – Israel or the US? In both these countries, both democracy and secularism have been much more visibly at risk.

When Jewish historians like Tony Judt are stopped from criticizing Israel’s policies, when the Israeli government can rely on the support of rabid extremists like Avigdor Lieberman, when the US President can push through the Military Commissions Act, when the influence of religious extremists in both countries is so powerful and visible, perhaps Mr. Rubin should set an example by criticizing these tendencies than attacking a much more successful democracy that doesn’t go around attacking other countries.

If you wonder why he doesn't, see Mr. Rubin’s profile (see also here) he comes from the same stable as people like Michael Ledeen and Richard Perle, and other neocon-Zionist warmongers. Little wonder he has found time to be a visiting lecturer at three Kurdish universities in northern Iraq, where coincidentally the Israeli special forces have also been training their militia for the day when Iraq will split into three separate provinces. The ambitions of Rubin and friends seem to include instigating and furthering the bloodbath in Iraq (and possibly even beyond into Turkey), so that US-Israel friendly regimes can eventually be installed in the regions of a de-federated Iraq that have the oil.

Here's more on Rubin from Karen Kwiatkowski. Nice poem at the end, too!

ORHAN PAMUK AND HIS COUNTRY

Few Turks seem to be able to bring themselves to express unreserved pride in the first of their countrymen to get a Nobel. My students have been talking to me about Orhan Pamuk out of curiosity about how I would react to the views of some of them that he is a traitor for the comments he made a few months ago in an interview, condemning the killings of Kurds and Armenians in what is now Turkey. Others cautiously venture the view that , although he is obviously a great writer, he seems to have "bought" himself the prize by trashing his country to the world.

I aks these students whether they have a problem with the French law (still not ın force) banning the denial of the Armenian genocide. Of course they do!

Well, then they can't have it both ways, I tell them. If you don't approve of the French ban on Armenian genocide denial, you can't ban Pamuk and others from expressing their opinions about the Armenian genocide. In both cases, it's a breach of the principle of free speech. If you want a debate on whether or not what happened to the Armenians was a genocide, then you need to allow both sides to express their views - both in Turkey as well as in France. Using the same argument, the Armenian-Turkish columnist Hrant Dink was fierce in his criticism of the French law because he does believe that there was a genocide, and wants to say so anywhere. He even offered to disobey the law in France and court arrest there.

This argument has nothing at all to do with the facticity of the genocide.

But of course, it's possible to allow freedom of speech, and still silence people by allowing them to speak only to others who share their views, or ignoring them altogether. This is what has happened largely to antiwar critics of US foreign policy in the US, and to a lesser extent in the UK as well. Chomsky might draw standing-room-only crowds in the US at his speeches, but his books are seldom published by the mainstream press, and the last time the NYT published his dissenting views was probably in the early seventies. The blogworld, however, which is threatening to become more powerful than the mainstream media, is full of his admirers and detractors and abuseers. If that were to happen here, Pamuk would be allowed to say what he likes, but no one would pay him the blindest bit of notice except his acolytes and admirers. His detractors too would not find much of an audıence for all their hard blowing.

A lot of people seem to be unaware that Pamuk has been speaking at gatherings protesting the war in Iraq, at lectures where Chomsky was the main speaker, and in antiwar circles generally. It did not surprise me - as it seems to have done a number of my students - that he made the statement that he did about the Armenians and the Kurds. But that is what one might expect a humane writer to do in a society that claims to follow modern values - express sympathy for victims of state violence, never rush to condemn public enemies, get up the noses of the powerful, and generally be a gadfly. One of the virtues claimed for modernity and western civilisation and other bloated concepts was supposed to be precisely the capacity to allow the freedom to dissent. In the tradition of Orwell, Said, Chomsky and many others, intellectuals have a duty to "speak truth to power", although in fact historically they have simply provided the justifications to the powerful for whatever they wanted to do. I have not read enough Pamuk to know whether his novels reflect this dissenting tradition, but he has on occasions dissented sharply from some of the actions of the Turkish state, as indeed have many others.

TURKS AND ARMENIANS

Turks have long endured Armenian accusations of genocide by the Ottoman state under the triarchy of Enver, Cemal and Talat despite the fact that Turks have repudiated the Ottoman state in 1923. Moreover, Armenians are a small but free minority in Turkey now, and have long enjoyed many more freedoms to maintain their ethnic identity than have the Kurds, although this is now changing slowly in favour of the Kurds.

The Turks are anxious to deny the charge of genocide, fearing that admitting it would burden them with compensation claims. Besides, the historical record is contested, despite the fact that even some Turkish historians like Taner Akçam and Halil Berktay claim that there was a genocide.

I have found from my own incomplete and sporadic inquiries into this question that there is a much greater diversity of views on this among Turkish historians than among the Armenians. I also discovered that there are at least three different positions.

1.       There was no genocide, but an attempt to relocate the Armenian population from the main population centres in the South-East of what is now Turkey because of their alignment with the Russian side. Many Armenians died in the process of being moved, but there was neither an intent nor a motive nor a plan to exterminate them.

2.       There were orders issued to kill the Armenians who were found to be supporting the Russians, but in certain areas, these orders were rather freely interpreted by the local governors. Nevertheless, it did not amount to a genocide.

3.       There were orders issued to kill off the Armenians which were carried out not only in Erzurum, Kars, Van, etc, but also elsewhere in Turkey as well.

Turkish historians can be found supporting each of these positions. On the other hand, some records show that after the first world war, British attempts to establish the massacres failed, and those Ottoman officials who had been arrested and removed to Cyprus on charges that they were involved had to be released.

If practicing historians have grounds to differ among themselves to such an extent, then it probably means that the evidence is inconclusive, and it is wise for those of us who are not practicing historians to keep an open mind on this question, examine as much of the evidence as we can, keep up with the the debate among historians, and make up our own minds on the basis of the most compelling evidence and its interpretation - not an easy task for most of us.

I also believe that even if genocide is eventually proven, there is no international law under which the present Turkish state can be held to be responsible. The German practice of compensation to the Jews is not a comparable precedent because the events in the German case were much more recent, many of the perpetrators were still alive, many of them were corporate entities like Bayer, and there was also a large element of guilt on the part of the German people which compensation went some way to assuaging. The responsibility of the present Turkish state towards the descendants of the victims of such a genocide is not even a moral one, just as I cannot be reasonably be held to be morally responsible for any crimes committed by my grandfather.

There IS a frequently ignored moral dimension to this issue, however, and that dimension exists even if there was no genocide. What happened here was that large numbers of people were victimized (either “ethnically cleansed”, killed through neglect or just massacred). But there is a moral responsibility for everyone, Turks AND others, to try and ensure that such crimes (and victimization of innocent people IS a crime) are never repeated again. To be more specific, there is a responsibility to ensure that innocent people are not victimized for actions taken by their leaders. This is what has happened repeatedly and with impunity under the auspices of the Great and the Good - the so-called international community - in  Bosnia, Kosovo, Chechnya, Palestine, Afghanistan and Iraq, to cite only the cases in the last fifteen years.

When Turks defend themselves (unnecessarily in my view) by claiming that there was no genocide, only a movement of populations, they forget that this is not really a defence against a crime, because what was done was bad enough. What was done was wrong for the same reason that the actions of the Israeli government in Palestine, of France in Algeria, of India in Kashmir and the north-east of the country, of the US in Vietnam and Afghanistan and Iraq and a number of other countries, are wrong. The fact that the ethnic cleansing was done to stop the contamination of the Armenian population with Russian instigation against the Ottoman state does not make it right, but it is certainly a lesser crime than killing them off. And because we live in the kind of world that we do, it may sometimes be necessary to commit a lesser wrong to avoid committing a larger one. But it still remains a moral truth that innocent people should not be victimized for the actions of their leaders.

If I were a Turk, my position would be as follows: I’m not sure that there was a genocide. But even if there was, it changes nothing for the present. I cannot, and don’t need to, either defend or apologize for a crime committed 90 years ago. Secondly, even if there was no genocide, whatever happened there was bad enough. That's why we should say or do nothing to trivialise the pain of those who lost their family in those horrendous events. We should instead ascertain the truth of what happened, as far as possible, understand why they happened, and learn from the events how to prevent their recurrence. As citizens of the 21st century, we should try and ensure, in whatever way possible, that such victimization of innocent people does not recur anywhere in the world.

Any other stance – either of indifference or of partisanship – increases the chances of similar things happening again.

MUSLIM TURKEY AND SECULAR, MODERN EUROPE?

Turks are discovering yet again - ironically, this time under a government with Islamic roots that has pushed the country closer to Europe than any previous secular government - that the Europe they wish to join is less secular and modern than they had thought.  Atatürk forcefully pushed Turkey into adopting European standards of dress, comportment, public life and politics. Now his children want to claim European ideals as their own, while the Europeans are busy trying to unburden themselves of the commitments that their ideals demand.

Chancellor Schröder  welcomes the choice of Cardinal Ratzinger for the Papacy on the grounds that he is a German - but why should it matter to a modern country? Isn't modernity all about transcending such tribalisms, and appointing the person with the right merits for the job?  And Turks have  realized that the Vatican has chosen a Pope who opposes the entry of their country to Europe on the grounds that it is Muslim - but why should that matter in a secular Europe? Isn't secularism about keeping religion as an institution confined to the private sphere of family and personal life?

Something seems to have gone wrong if those who claim to be the mantle bearers of the Enlightenment, with its legacy of modernity, universal humanity and secular values, still choose to identify with people, not on the basis of their humanity, but on the basis of their nationality. Something has gone wrong if the religious identity of a people is used as an excuse to exclude them from joining a political and economic union. It may be that  the Pope does not speak for the people of Europe in rejecting the Turks because they are Muslims. But then certainly no European public figure, to my knowledge, has disavowed the Pope's stance.

Is secular modernity to harsh, too "clean" an ideal for humanity? Or has something happened (apart from imperialism, the two world wars and the cold war, and the triumph of capitalism) to divert Europe from its own ideals?   

Perhaps the metaphysical silence of the Enlightenment itself allows this paradoxical situation to arise. Perhaps secular modernity as a basis for politics is as mistaken as Wittgenstein's initial search for a language that perfectly mirrors the world.  Perhaps it's time for  non-European traditions of thought to seek their own secularism for present times, and define their own modernity. Clearly this cannot be done as if the west didn't exist or can't be a part of this search, or as if there is some single, monolithic and essential non-west.

In other words, those outside Europe should heed Gautam Buddha's final words to Ananda: "Seek your own salvation with diligence"; but through dialogue with all parts of Europe that are open to such dialogue.

TURKEY AND THE EU

In an earlier posting, I expressed my suspicions about the nature of the European Union project: in whose interest is it? The post rested on the assumption that it was an undemocratic project created to further the reigning neoliberal economic order.

I have just received a commentary published in Le Monde Diplomatique that reinforces my suspicions. Funnily enough, in the same issue, there is another article, by Ignacio Ramonet, that supports the idea of Turkey joining the EU, demolishing the objections that have often been raised in by Europeans to Turkey's entry. It concludes: "For the other major countries of the Eastern Mediterranean, Turkey’s membership will provide a concrete message of hope, peace, prosperity and democracy." How these ideals can be realized under what the first commentary claims is a fundamentally undemocratic political order, remains to be seen.

TURKEY AND THE EU

I wrote this to a student who was responding to an article in The Spectator that I had sent him.

I keep fearing for Turkey, especially for the disappointment that I believe may ensue as the accession process moves forward. I fear Turks might find that the EU that they will end up joining isn't the EU they wanted to join. I happen to agree with the author of the article that the tendency of the Turkish elite to treat the EU as a medicine they have to take to get back into health (or into the club of 'civilized nations') is sapping its self-confidence. The fact is that, as the history of the last century and this one has demonstrated, Turkey doesn't need lessons in civilization from the west . There ARE things that Turkey needs to change, but that's something the Turks will need to figure out themselves.

Now you might object and say: so what are you complaining about? Turks HAVE decided how they want to change, and that is by joining the civilized countries club of the EU! But has there really been an informed public debate between different opinions and perspectives on this in Turkey? Most Turks seem oblivious of the fact that (a) historically biased perceptions in Europe about Turkey may be about as difficult to change as the historically biased perceptions that Turks have about Arabs. Add to that the fact that (b) the EU is a group of democracies agreeing to be governed by an unaccountable and secretive bunch of people known as the EU Commissioners; the EU parliament has practically no powers. And (c) the EU is in the process of abandoning its own social charter to monetarist and free market ideological tendencies. What do you think the so-called flexibility of the labour market is all about but the right for employers to return to the kind of Dickensian capitalism that you see in the US now?

The problem here seems to be that the LIBERAL (as opposed to the nationalist or Islamist) right in Turkey sees the EU as representing an opportunity for more foreign investment and an even more aggressive adherence to free market ideology, and a greater respect for secular and "democratic" values (unburdened by any REAL Accountability, Responsiveness to public opinion or Transparency - the A R T of Democracy, get it?!;-)); whereas the left (to the extent that one exists) seems to be anxious to avoid the possibility of a right-wing nationalist or Islamist state, and therefore finds itself agreeing with the liberal right with whom they share their love of secularism and "democracy". So the EU seems such an attractive alternative to a nationalist or Islamist fascism, that no one has bothered to actually ask the really tough questions about the prospects of democracy and economic governance AFTER Turkey joins the EU. On that, the media and the public seem to be willing to leave it to the experts - central bankers and economists within the dominant (Washington) consensus. This is very dangerous for ordinary Turks, in my view. But then, I don't want to seem the arrogant foreigner who knows more about what's good for Turks than the Turks themselves. But I do think an open well informed public debate is always a good thing, whether for Turks or for anyone else. The reason why it doesn't happen as often as it should is because too many powerful people either seem uninterested in any debate that is likely to curtail their exercise of unaccountable power, or - more deceptively - interested in being in control of setting the terms and agenda of the debate. That is a dominant characteristic of almost every single "democracy" in the world, if you notice carefully.

Despite my reservations about the EU, I still think that on the whole, it would probably be a good thing if Turkey joins the EU, but ONLY after a thorough examination of and public debate on all the issues, and only after all the people have had a chance to assess the likely impact on their lives. For instance, to what extent is the EU a project driven by the interests of corporations rather than by those of ordinary people? What sort of protections will be available against abuses of human rights, including abuses by corporations of their workers? How accountable will the EU superstate be to ordinary people?

As I said, the good things expected to come from the EU should be adopted anyway, whether the EU accepts Turkey or not. Why should better compliance with human rights standards and better environmental regulation and better corporate governance and banking supervision be conditional upon adoption by the EU? Aren't these things good in themselves? The answer is probably: Yes, they are, but in the current conditions in Turkey, joining the EU is the only way the divisions among the different political interests in this country can be resolved. But this answer assumes that politics in both Turkey and in the EU will remain static for 10 years, or however long it takes for the EU to admit Turkey.

Another thing that most people fail to recognize is that in the dominant neoliberal form of capitalism, there IS a contradiction between democracy and human rights on the one hand and economic "reform" on the other. Just ask the Bolivians and Brazilians and the Argentinians, and practically any country where the World Bank have had a hand in "reforming" their economies. Any good that comes from better human rights (e.g., stronger unions, better working conditions for workers, better provision of health and education)or environmental regulation becomes a cost of business, and therefore is resisted by businesses, and therefore by governments keen to encourage foreign investment. The only place where this doesn't happen is in the Nordic countries, and more broadly in many European countries. But even in Europe, there is always a tension between the social charter and the interests of business, with the pro-business lobby dominating the central banks and finance ministries. That's why you should pay attention to these calls for reform: ask yourself "Reform for whom?"  and who is calling for them? Well, usually, the reform is for the corporations, not for workers, or those on unemployment benefits, or at the lower end of the income scale. This is clearly evident from discussions about flexible labor markets. Notice also how capital mobility is always regarded as a good thing, but mobility of people is always resisted for cultural reasons. But even those who are pro-immigration are not those who want welfare benefits to extend to immigrant workers, because that will drive up the costs for businesses. The net result, if my fears come true, is that the EU will increasingly resemble the US, where social conditions have been receding for the last two decades to an earlier stage of capitalism. Believe me, you don't want to join that kind of Europe!

Ultimately, what kind of model of capitalism will Turkey adopt? The Nordic model or the Anglo-American/neoliberal one? Or can it evolve its own? Turkey has a young population, vibrant and dynamic industrial and service sectors. With the right mix of public education and health policies Turkey can, within a few decades, become a formidable economic power, primarily because the economically productive population of present-day Europe would have shrunk to unsustainable levels. But whatever it does, no capitalism can sustain itself politically for long by marginalizing the working class, but by giving it a stake in the system. This Europe has managed to do, but is now under pressure from its monetarist/supply side/neoliberal central bankers and chambers of commerce to break with the welfarist model that it developed after WW2.