IT’S THE WEDGE ISSUES, STUPID: TURKEY AND THE U.S. FOCUS ON POLARIZING, UNPRODUCTIVE POLITICS
Corey James Prachniak

Georgetown Independent
ia/storage/paper136/news/2008/03/31/Commentary/Its -The.Wedge.Issues.Stupid-3289598.shtml
March 28 2008
DC

It seems a reasonable observation that when people do not have much
control over their government and political process, they narrow in
on a few divisive issues that they have little hope of affecting but
that for some reason rile them up.

In America, I get frustrated when people won’t vote for a candidate
because they think he or she is a Democrat and will therefore raise
taxes and make gay marriage legal (foolish stereotypes), or is a
Republican and will ban abortion (probably something that a single
office holder has no ability to affect).

America is not a true democracy. As a democratic republic, citizens
elect representatives who vote on behalf of their constituencies for
specific issues. Turkey, however, has a far less democratic system.

Turkish citizens vote only for the party they prefer, not particular
candidates, and from this single vote the parliament, president, and
prime minister are eventually selected. Who specifically fills these
offices is all worked out internally within the party mechanism-taking
representation one major step further from the voter. It follows,
then, that this same type of counterproductive issue is even more
dominant in Turkish politics.

What I have found thus far from my travels and discussions in Turkey
is that many Turks do not really like any of the political parties.

They find all the parties to be quite flawed, and are forced to
simply choose the lesser of several evils. I often find myself in
this position in America, but-thanks to primaries, and our ability
to vote for individuals and not parties-there is at least a chance
that a voter could find a candidate whose views are fairly close to
her own for whom to vote.

If the Turks have less of an ability to influence their government
than Americans do, it would make sense that they also focus on issues
based more on passion than productive practicality. This has proven
true in the domestic arena, where it seems the only thing people
will talk about the headscarf ban issue. The current ruling party,
the Justice and Development Party (AKP), supports lifting the ban on
Muslim women wearing their traditional headscarfs in universities.

The country’s secularists want to keep the ban, as they find it
inappropriate and against the secular nature of Turkey to allow
religious symbols to be worn on university campuses. No one seems to
care about the economy, taking steps domestically to join the E.U.,
or many other issues.

The trend also proves true in terms of foreign policy and global
issues. Certainly the American presidential elections will have a
big impact on the global community with some issues specifically
affecting Turkey.

And yet, when I met with a few Turkish parliamentarians in Ankara,
they had little to say about the matter. One remarked that they are
all very good, qualified candidates with whom Turkey would be happy
to work. Perhaps this is just a political line, but the idea that
all of the American presidential candidates will affect Turkey the
same is ridiculous, especially if we include former candidates who
have by now dropped out.

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ.) says that the war in Iraq may well go on
for one hundred years. Whereas Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL.) has promised
all combat troops out within six months of him taking office and Sen.

Hillary Clinton (D-NY) wants to take a slightly more moderate stance.

As Iraq borders Turkey, surely these differences in opinion would
make a difference.

How about the fact that Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE) wanted to create a
three-state system in Iraq that would create a quasi-autonomous
Kurdish state at Turkey’s back door? This would be a devestating
blow to Turkey’s strategy of tackling the issue of its own Kurdish
population, which has on the one hand led to terrorism and on the
other to poor treatment by the government of this ethnic minority.

The position of Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO) that Mecca and Medina should
be bombed if the U.S. is again attacked by Muslim terrorists would
hardly resonate well in this almost entirely Muslim state.

Even in the fairly liberal, tourism-heavy town of Alanya in which I
currently reside, the issue of Israel still stirs up strong emotions;
when Israel invaded Lebanon in the summer of 2006, murdering scores
of civilians and ravaging much of the state, some shopkeepers here
closed their doors to Israeli tourists. It should be noted that
former candidates Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) and Rep. Dennis Kucinich
(D-OH) were two of about 15 congresspersons who did not vote to
support Israel’s actions.

For all of their differences, no one here seems to really care. The
only thing many Turks care about regarding American politics is whether
or not America will produce a non-binding resolution labeling the
actions taken against the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire a "genocide."

The Turkish Coalition of America recently sent out a press release
entitled "Turkish American Community Responds to Presidential
Candidates." My professor forwarded it to me, thinking that it would
be an endorsement of some kind, or an overview of important issues.

Instead, it is essentially ten paragraphs saying that the candidates
had better not call the Armenian tragedy a genocide. The coalition
writes that the "Armenian dispute with Turkey is being politicized
to the point of becoming an issue in the U.S. election campaign."

As someone who follows the election with sickeningly close attention,
I must say that this issue has not broached the top hundred issues
debated by the candidates, and never will. I empathize with the
Turks and their sensitivity about the Armenian issue-many Americans
can still not come to call the annihilation of thousands of Native
Americans genocide. But that does not change the facts.

The fact of the matter is that there are dozens of issues in the
American election that will greatly affect the Turks and the Turkish
Diaspora in the U.S. and elsewhere. To narrow it down to a single issue
that-while certainly provocative-has no impact on people’s everyday
lives, I believe, is a poor choice. It is just as counterproductive as
homophobic Americans casting their votes solely based on keeping the
LGBT community from having any rights, or pro-abortion rights folks
being scared into voting for whoever has the cleanest pro-choice
record, all without regard for other concerns.

Why do citizens of republics limit themselves to focus on so few
issues, and ones that are often the most divisive, that barely effect
them at all, and that the person they’re voting for probably won’t
be able to impact anyway? Why not instead take a broader look at the
political consequences of electing each person or party?

One answer is that people pick these foolish issues to follow when they
feel that they will not really have an impact on their government no
matter what they do-it’ll be the same old politics at play no matter
what. Voting with their head won’t help, so they might as well go
with their gut.

The political establishment encourages this, because the phenomenon
is cyclical: the more people who vote and act this way, the less
power the electorate has. In the U.S., this meant giving George
Bush a second term in 2004 because the Swiftboat Veterans for Truth
didn’t like Kerry. In Turkey today, it means that the headscarf
issue has consumed domestic politics, and people couldn’t care less
about the U.S. election- so long as no one uses the word "genocide"
in discussing Armenia. The world keeps spinning, and governments keep
moving farther away from the hands of the people.

Prachniak is a Government and Theology junior.