Thursday, October 24, 2013

Trick or Treat? Turkey's Revolutionary Conundrum

"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;" 
- William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)



Trick or Treat? 
Turkey's Revolutionary Conundrum

The current uprisings in Turkey have been characterized by many as being a clash between the pro-Islamic social conservative forces led by Turkish PM Tayyip Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP), and the secular demands of the urban Turkish population.

To characterize the current struggles in this dichotomy, however is extremely dangerous. Not only it reinforces a western orientalist perception that followers of Islam as being inherently irrational and despotic, but also simplifies the issue while failing to address the greater, complex, and more fundamental flaws with the Turkish political landscape. Although resistance against the social conservative and Islamic-inspired policies or Tayyip Erdogan have been influential in adding to the outrage of the current protesters and the general public, and which portrays the current government as an exceptionally authoritarian, limiting oneself to this rhetoric provides only an incomplete narrative. 

The current AKP government is, in fact, the latest expression of a long tradition of authoritarian and patriarchal regimes which have been at the rule of the country since the establishment of a secular Turkish republic by Kemal Ataturk in 1923. Similarly, it could be said that the protests are not new in their expression of discontent against this tradition, and the violence with which the Turkish government has attempted to quell the protests is also not a new phenomenon, but represents a familiar policy of suppression and oppression of those groups, whatever their political and religious affiliation, which threaten the authority of the state and the government. In fact the protests are not, at their core, a conflict about Islam vs. Secularism, but a categorical refusal of a patriarchal and exclusionary system of governance. The Islamization policies of Tayyip Erdogan have simply been, for many, the spark that ignited the kindle of discontent.

The Demographics of the Protests 

One of the most impressive aspects of the Taksim/Gezi protests and their nationwide expression is the wide variety of demographics and political affiliations which compose the protesting groups. Starting with environmentalists, who were the ones who initially refused to allow the trees of Gezi Park to be cut down for the gentrification process of the area, the expression of discontent with the current government has galvanized and involved socialists, communists, anarchists, LGBT, anti-capitalist muslims, kemalists and many others in a wide constellation of political interests with one common line - the erosion of power of the AKP. The motives behind this erosion however differ from group to group: while the kemalists are simply utilizing the protests to discredit and weaken their greatest political adversary for the benefit of the Republican Party (CHP), other interests are more reformists in advocating change within the current political system, and the more radical ones (comprising a large part of the protesters) instead are eager for a complete dismantlement of what they percieve as an inherently unjust and unbalanced system in favour of a more inclusive and participatory socio-political arrangement.

It must be noted that Turkey's current pseudo-"democracy" in fact is quite exclusionary. Numerous laws prevent the establishment and consolidation of interest groups and parties which do not fall within the CHP and the AKP, and which prevents minority groups and interests to have an voice in the determination of the affairs of the nation. Most notoriously, a law which prevents the consolidation of any party without a minimum of 10% prevalence within the population has come under particular scrutiny, as it effectively prevents smaller parties and minorities from entering the political arena, and for the popularization of their ideals.

Within the extremely restricted spaces offered by the current Turkish political system it is not surprising that many of the smaller and more radical groups involved in the struggles have adopted the only pragmatic (and ideological) stance that would allow for that freedom to be expressed - a complete dismantlement of the system and its reconstruction into a participatory democratic process. The point upon which many of the involved protesters, groups, and political ideologies differ however is how to achieve such a feat. 

Alternative Governance

Following ninety years of iron-fist military rule which resulted in three coups (in 1960, 1971, and 1980), and a decade of oppressive AKP rule, the urban Turkish population has realized that there is little hope for genuine democratic participation in a system that is inherently flawed and, for the first time in Turkish history, the masses are questioning how to organize themselves to provide viable and alternative way of expressing their hunger for democratic participation.

How would one envision the socio-political arrangements of post-revolutionary Turkey? The foundations of these arrangements have already been laid in the establishment of the over seventy-two popular forums which are scattered across the country and are present in almost every major urban centre in the nation. Although locally focused, these already existing participatory democratic structures could quite easily be expanded to provide a national framework of decision-making similar to that of the people's congresses which, until the disastrous NATO operation which culminated in 2011, ruled the nation of Libya, or to the neighbourhood Centres of the Revolution (Centros de la Revolucion - CDR) in Cuba. The main difference between such examples and the Turkish popular Forums, is that the latter do answer to a central governing body.

At this moment, the Forums are only dealing with issues related to the current struggles and protests, but have the ability to be much more. It should be taken for granted that the more established political interests will not allow such a governance system to cement itself in the mainstream institutional political arena, and it is unrealistic to expect those same interests to magically and spontaneously adopt such a system themselves. What is prossible is that, should their existence and support endure, these forums could establish an alternative and parallel system of governance that could, in time, erode the legitimacy of the centralized institutionalized government and the parties affiliated with it. That is to say that little by little, step by step, and with the strong support of the population these forums could expand their decision-making authority to a wider variety of issues, and eventually set up their own "governmental" apparatus. The more such legitimized and popular authority grows, the more that of the established institutions is eroded. Entire areas of the large urban centres could be effectively become self-managing communes under the control of the protesters where decisions about their affairs are decided in the forums.

In order for such a grand democratic project to be successful however, the Forums must seek to expand their influence and support not only amongst those already convinced of their utility, but to those who may even currently be contrary to it, and other marginalized and dispossessed segments of society. The leftist revolutionary movements have the possibility to benefit from the outrage of those who don't necessarily agree with their ideological line to advance their struggles and attempt to coax those opposing voices into their own ideological sphere through this democratic process. At the same time, such groups have to be careful not to compromise upon their demands and ideology for the sake or garnering support from those who still adhere to an institutionalized conception of governance. 

Although seemingly far fetched, the protests have already had similar effects. Through a common line of discontent, groups and individuals who never stood in solidarity with each other, and thus were mutually antagonistic,  had the chance to interact for the first time. This interaction between marginalized as well as more mainstream groups has profoundly affected the perceptions of those involved in the struggles, as they learnt to view those groups as other humans with something in common, rather than "others". This has been largely the case for the Kurdish minorities, as well as the LGBT population whose acceptance amongst the protesters (despite initial hesitations) is now almost unconditional.

The Role of Unions

Despite the relatively weak positioning of worker's unions in the Turkish political landscape, their participation in the nationwide protests has been instrumental. In Taksim, union workers were the first to "teach" the younger and less experienced protesters how to build effective barricades against the police's armoured vehicles. As a protester whom I met mentioned

"First when there were only environmentalists it was ok, but you know, we were just sitting around and passively resisting arrests, and it wasn't working. When the workers and the football team supporters started to come down, they knew what they were doing! Hahaha. You see those fences [pointing]? They could dismantle them in just a minute, and bring them over and create barricades against the police. And that's when we really started putting up a resistance..."

Despite this initial sign of support, unfortunately, there has been little subsequent and explicit interaction between the bulk of the protesters and the worker's unions. In order to put real pressure on the government, however, this relationship must be revitalized and capitalized upon.


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