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The Irish Times
March 12, 2011 Saturday
Opinion:
Modernisers, or atavistic Islamists?
by PATRICK SMYTH
WORLD VIEW: Journalists arrest has put the nature of Turkey s ruling
part back in the spotlight
SINCE IT came to power in 2002, Turkey s Justice and Development Party
(AKP) has been, depending on your perspective, the poster boy for the
successful accommodation of Islamism to democracy and pluralism, or a
stalking horse plotting at the heart of Turkish society to undermine
its cherished secular state.
A party determined to embrace Turkey s place in the EU, successfully
to modernise a booming economy, state and society? Or an
authoritarian, backward-looking, veil-wearing, enemy of western
values?
Now the worrying arrests over the last two weeks of six journalists,
bizarrely alleged to belong to terrorist organisations and to have
been part of two conspiracies to overthrow the government,
Sledgehammer and Ergenekon , has brought the differing interpretations
of the party s true nature to centre stage again at a sensitive time.
It matters, and not only to Turkey. In Germany the arrests have fed
right-wing anti-Turkish EU accession propaganda. While in the wider
Middle East, where Turkey is playing a stronger diplomatic and
mediating role than at any time since the days of the Ottoman Empire,
they undermine the aspirations of moderate Islamist groups, not least
in Egypt, to promote the democratic Turkish way.
Prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan insists the AKP played no part in
the arrests while the secularist opposition, in whose view Erdogan s
party can do no right, sees them as a further attempt to stifle
dissent ahead of elections, a tightening noose on the country s
already pressured media.
But even the country s AKP president, Abdullah Gul, has expressed his
concern over the arrests, describing them as developments that the
public conscience cannot accept , while the European Parliament this
week expressed strong concerns about media freedom.
The existence of plots against the government should not be
discounted. The army, with allies in the deep state apparatus and the
academic and legal establishments, has overthrown four governments
since 1960. And although its leadership professes now a commitment to
democracy, many generals and senior officers still hold extremist
views and are quite capable of the alleged plotting first unveiled in
the Ergenekon case in 2007.
It is the first time in Turkey s history that the generals have faced
this sort of judicial probing, albeit in special courts, and there are
hundreds of defendants in the two slow-moving trials, mostly from
within the state security apparatus, but also now some 60 journalists.
Supporters of the controversial trials believe they are essential to
establishing the rule of law in Turkey and ending the traditional
culture of impunity in the military.
Yet there are real questions now from liberals and those outside the
hardline secularist opposition about whether the state is overreaching
itself and in doing so damaging a worthwhile process. Two of the
journalists arrested last Friday, Nedim Sener and Ahmet Sik, have
strong records of uncovering human rights abuses and exposing the deep
state the group they now stand accused of working for. Thousands took
to the streets in protest after the arrests.
Sener received the International Press Institute s World Press Hero
award last year, for his book about the 2007 assassination of
Armenian-Turkish journalist Hrant Dink. In it he sought to expose
links between the murder and state security forces.
Sik s most recent book probed the Ergenekon case and asked whether
prosecutors had lost the run of themselves by concentrating too much
on
plots and not enough on actual crimes of the past involving the military.
And at the time of his arrest he was about to publish a book on the
role within the police of an influential Islamic brotherhood led by
Fethullah Gulen, a Pennsylvania-based imam. They are reported also to
be close to the AKP. Whoever touches [them] burns, Sik shouted as he
was led away.
Confused? You thought the plotters were secularists? Well, join the
bewilderment shared by most Turks at their murky security world of
mirrors.
The chief Ergenekon prosecutor insists Sener and Sik were arrested for
other activities , not their writing, but leaked transcripts of their
interrogation show the prosecutor s preoccupation with questions about
their attitude to the Gulemists.
What is also not clear is the extent to which the latest prosecutions
are the direct work of the AKP, or of its allies within the
notoriously independent state prosecution or legal divisions. Though
deeply regrettable, are they perhaps better seen as a symptom of
precisely the challenges faced by the party in reforming the country s
dysfunctional state?
They are certainly damaging the fraught Turkish bid for EU membership.
Turkey has so far opened 13 chapters in its accession talks with the
EU but they are widely seen as going nowhere, courtesy of German and
French foot-dragging. Turkish exasperation has seen Erdogan recently
upping anti-EU nationalist rhetoric. If they do not want Turkey in,
they should say this openly . . . and then we will mind our own
business and will not bother them.
Election talk? Or another straw in the wind hinting at the AKP s true nature?
From: A. Papazian
March 12, 2011 Saturday
Opinion:
Modernisers, or atavistic Islamists?
by PATRICK SMYTH
WORLD VIEW: Journalists arrest has put the nature of Turkey s ruling
part back in the spotlight
SINCE IT came to power in 2002, Turkey s Justice and Development Party
(AKP) has been, depending on your perspective, the poster boy for the
successful accommodation of Islamism to democracy and pluralism, or a
stalking horse plotting at the heart of Turkish society to undermine
its cherished secular state.
A party determined to embrace Turkey s place in the EU, successfully
to modernise a booming economy, state and society? Or an
authoritarian, backward-looking, veil-wearing, enemy of western
values?
Now the worrying arrests over the last two weeks of six journalists,
bizarrely alleged to belong to terrorist organisations and to have
been part of two conspiracies to overthrow the government,
Sledgehammer and Ergenekon , has brought the differing interpretations
of the party s true nature to centre stage again at a sensitive time.
It matters, and not only to Turkey. In Germany the arrests have fed
right-wing anti-Turkish EU accession propaganda. While in the wider
Middle East, where Turkey is playing a stronger diplomatic and
mediating role than at any time since the days of the Ottoman Empire,
they undermine the aspirations of moderate Islamist groups, not least
in Egypt, to promote the democratic Turkish way.
Prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan insists the AKP played no part in
the arrests while the secularist opposition, in whose view Erdogan s
party can do no right, sees them as a further attempt to stifle
dissent ahead of elections, a tightening noose on the country s
already pressured media.
But even the country s AKP president, Abdullah Gul, has expressed his
concern over the arrests, describing them as developments that the
public conscience cannot accept , while the European Parliament this
week expressed strong concerns about media freedom.
The existence of plots against the government should not be
discounted. The army, with allies in the deep state apparatus and the
academic and legal establishments, has overthrown four governments
since 1960. And although its leadership professes now a commitment to
democracy, many generals and senior officers still hold extremist
views and are quite capable of the alleged plotting first unveiled in
the Ergenekon case in 2007.
It is the first time in Turkey s history that the generals have faced
this sort of judicial probing, albeit in special courts, and there are
hundreds of defendants in the two slow-moving trials, mostly from
within the state security apparatus, but also now some 60 journalists.
Supporters of the controversial trials believe they are essential to
establishing the rule of law in Turkey and ending the traditional
culture of impunity in the military.
Yet there are real questions now from liberals and those outside the
hardline secularist opposition about whether the state is overreaching
itself and in doing so damaging a worthwhile process. Two of the
journalists arrested last Friday, Nedim Sener and Ahmet Sik, have
strong records of uncovering human rights abuses and exposing the deep
state the group they now stand accused of working for. Thousands took
to the streets in protest after the arrests.
Sener received the International Press Institute s World Press Hero
award last year, for his book about the 2007 assassination of
Armenian-Turkish journalist Hrant Dink. In it he sought to expose
links between the murder and state security forces.
Sik s most recent book probed the Ergenekon case and asked whether
prosecutors had lost the run of themselves by concentrating too much
on
plots and not enough on actual crimes of the past involving the military.
And at the time of his arrest he was about to publish a book on the
role within the police of an influential Islamic brotherhood led by
Fethullah Gulen, a Pennsylvania-based imam. They are reported also to
be close to the AKP. Whoever touches [them] burns, Sik shouted as he
was led away.
Confused? You thought the plotters were secularists? Well, join the
bewilderment shared by most Turks at their murky security world of
mirrors.
The chief Ergenekon prosecutor insists Sener and Sik were arrested for
other activities , not their writing, but leaked transcripts of their
interrogation show the prosecutor s preoccupation with questions about
their attitude to the Gulemists.
What is also not clear is the extent to which the latest prosecutions
are the direct work of the AKP, or of its allies within the
notoriously independent state prosecution or legal divisions. Though
deeply regrettable, are they perhaps better seen as a symptom of
precisely the challenges faced by the party in reforming the country s
dysfunctional state?
They are certainly damaging the fraught Turkish bid for EU membership.
Turkey has so far opened 13 chapters in its accession talks with the
EU but they are widely seen as going nowhere, courtesy of German and
French foot-dragging. Turkish exasperation has seen Erdogan recently
upping anti-EU nationalist rhetoric. If they do not want Turkey in,
they should say this openly . . . and then we will mind our own
business and will not bother them.
Election talk? Or another straw in the wind hinting at the AKP s true nature?
From: A. Papazian