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  • Turkey awaits Obama with mixed emotions

    Los Angeles Times
    April 4 2009


    Turkey awaits Obama with mixed emotions

    Turks are excited about his visit, but they don't want him to bring up
    touchy subjects and belittle their country.

    By Laura King
    8:46 AM PDT, April 4, 2009

    Reporting from Istanbul, Turkey -- It seems Barack Obama's face is
    everywhere these days, gazing out from posters on practically every
    street corner.

    That's because one of Turkey's largest banks has appropriated his
    image for an advertising campaign that cheekily plays off the crisis
    enveloping U.S. financial institutions. In the campaign's TV ads, an
    actor playing the president says ruefully, "If only our banks were
    like this one."

    Obama's planned visit to Turkey beginning Sunday night, his first as
    president to a predominantly Muslim country, is being greeted with
    eagerness and excitement here -- but also with a trademark dose of
    prickly nationalism.

    The stopover is viewed with pride as an affirmation of Turkey's
    importance as a bridge between East and West, a moderate and
    strategically positioned NATO ally with the ability to mediate with
    hard-line Muslim governments. For a partnership bruised by the
    perceived highhandedness of the Bush administration, particularly
    during the run-up to the Iraq war, the visit is also seen as a
    much-needed balm.

    "Maybe Turkey needs the U.S., but no one should forget for a moment
    that the U.S. definitely needs us too," said Emrah Goksu, a
    24-year-old student watching the crowds go by in Istanbul's Taksim
    Square.


    During the visit, hot-button issues such as Kurdish aspirations, human
    rights and Turkey's denial that ethnic Armenians were the victims of
    genocide early in the last century are likely to stay well in the
    background. But even veiled references to such controversial matters
    will present plenty of opportunities for outbursts of indignation,
    especially from right-wing politicians and their supporters.

    Human rights groups and others, on the other hand, fret that diplomacy
    will prevent the new president from raising issues they believe need
    public airing but are branded as taboo.

    "What I want to know is whether Obama thinks of Kurds as terrorists,
    as we are always being called here," said Serhat Baglas, a trucker
    from the mainly Kurdish town of Kars. "I want to know whether he sees
    us as equals, as people."

    Draconian security measures, together with a traditional willingness
    by police to rough up demonstrators, probably will prevent
    anti-government protesters from airing their views within the
    U.S. president's sight and hearing.

    In Ankara, the capital, Obama is scheduled to address parliament --
    considered a great honor for a foreign leader -- and visit the
    mausoleum of Turkey's founding father, Kemal Ataturk.

    Even before it takes place, though, the visit has provided a reminder
    of the near-cult of personality surrounding Ataturk, which is viewed
    uneasily by Western governments and human rights groups as an
    instrument of repressing free speech and free expression.

    The reverence for Ataturk, who largely created Turkey's secular system
    of government, is so extreme that criticism of him can draw legal
    prosecution or the threat of it. It has spurred in part the repeated
    blockage of YouTube by authorities, lest irreverent videos posted on
    the site impugn his image.

    Last week a magazine superimposed Obama's head on a famous photograph
    of Ataturk extolling the virtues of the Latin alphabet he had just
    imposed to replace Arabic script, a gesture meant to propel Turkey
    into a more modern Western milieu. In the original picture, Ataturk,
    clad in a business suit, is gesturing at Latin letters on a placard.

    But almost as soon as it hit the newsstands, the magazine, MediaCat,
    had to hastily post a notice on its website explaining that the image
    was not meant as a reference to Obama being in a position to provide
    Turks with any sort of tutorial on Western virtues, but rather to
    invoke the spirit of change the U.S. leader embodied for his own
    people.

    Obama's visit comes when many Turks are disillusioned over the
    multitude of obstacles to their nation's bid to join the European
    Union. The ruling Justice and Development Party, which has made EU
    hopes a policy centerpiece, suffered a rebuke in municipal elections
    last week, seeing its margin of victory shrink compared with national
    elections in 2007.

    Nationalist parties have long hammered away at the government of Prime
    Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, accusing it of kowtowing to the West in
    hopes of gaining EU acceptance.

    Perhaps mindful of that, Erdogan seems to have been seeking to appear
    more independent-minded and less inclined to do the West's bidding. In
    January he angrily stalked out of a session with Israeli President
    Shimon Peres at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. And
    last month Erdogan criticized the prospective choice of Danish Prime
    Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen as the new chief of the North Atlantic
    Treaty Organization.

    In Turkey, as across the Muslim world, there was fury over the 2005
    printing in Denmark of cartoons of the prophet Muhammad. Turkey has
    also complained repeatedly about Denmark allowing a Kurdish-language
    TV station to broadcast from there.

    Despite a sense of longtime grievance directed at the West in general
    and the United States in particular, Turks tend to see the new
    American president as fresh, young and energetic. Many make approving
    note of his well-traveled background and his ethnic heritage,
    including, of course, his Muslim father.

    "We hope he will be a symbol of change all over the world," said
    27-year-old Suzan Kose.

    In a country where polls in recent years have indicated an
    overwhelming degree of anti-American sentiment, many commentators
    described the visit as an opportunity for the United States to turn a
    new page not only with Turkey, but also the Muslim world.

    "Obama seems to have understood the importance of gaining Turkey,"
    columnist Murat Yetkin wrote in the daily newspaper Radikal. "Or more
    importantly, of not losing it."
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