Today’s Zaman, Turkey
April 6 2008

Ideologies and the politics of polarization

by DOGU ERGIL

In a previous article I tried to analyze the social and economic
causes of polarization in Turkish society. This time I will try to
indicate the ideological and political causes.
The constitutive ideology of the republic is nationalism.
Nationalism has to have two basic aspects to be inclusive and
comprehensive. 1) It has to "see" the variety in what is to be the
"nation" and try to reconcile differences by providing a
"supra-identity" to all social and cultural groups that make up the
society. 2) It has to set in motion an economic system that would
incorporate all groups in a grand (and more modern) division of labor
and to acculturate all groups in the official language and across the
board basic education given in that language.
None of these could be realized in full, due to either a wrong
conceptualization of nationhood or inefficient administration of
economic affairs. First of all, Turkish nationalism is based more on
ethnicity and religious creed than political solidarity of different
ethnic and religious groups. Ethnic "Turkishness" and the Sunni brand
of Islam (particularly the Hanefi interpretation) formed the bases of
citizenship and nationhood. This exclusive understanding of the
nation not only neglected those who did not fit into these
categories, but they were also laden with negative values and
attributes. The "internal others" would either agree to be Turks and
Muslims, or they would remain suspicious aliens in "our" world and
country.

Hence Turkish nationalism, like all nationalisms, was built on a
"we-they" dichotomy and continuum, but basically the "they" category
was internally construed. So the Turkish society could not build a
national unity and political solidarity against the "they" that were
internal to the society. The internal "they" had to be either
demonized and extradited or assimilated beyond recognition. An
ideology (nationalism) that ought to be unitary turned out to be
divisive and destabilizing by creating fault lines within the nation.

The end result is traumatizing: Kurds and Turks are at odds in owning
the country; Turks and Armenians or Jews are at odds in interpreting
a shared history; Sunnis and Alevis are at odds in defining the terms
of co-habitation; the pious are at odds with those who define
themselves as secular; those who look for a more contemporary
political and legal system are at odds with those who claim to be
followers of Atatürk, who is the architect of the world they know;
every woman with a covered head is labeled a fundamentalist and a
threat to the state; every homosexual is a danger for national
morality; all minorities are fifth column agents of imperialist
forces, and every follower of Atatürk is a putchist for others who
pursue other political projects. All these fractures do not allow for
the making of a national spirit shared by all or yield a pluralist
democracy based on the recognition and reconciliation of differences.

In the final analysis, Turkey was bereft of a single political
nation. The Turkish (ethnic) nation created its counterpart: the
Kurdish nation. Now two nationalisms sharpen on each other. The
secular nationalism that disregarded the cultural heritage of the
society created its counterpart: religious nationalism (the pedigree
of the incumbent Justice and Development Party [AKP] comes from the
Milli Görüº, or National View, which in fact defines the nation as an
assembly of believers). But more importantly there is the "nation of
the streets," which is much more dangerous because it exists between
the cracks of social classes and ethnic and religious communities.
This "nation" is the neglected youth of this society that neither
goes to school nor is employed. This parasitical young population by
the millions poses the greatest danger to the security and its
stability of the society.

This brings us to the great rift between the haves and the
have-nots; between the educated and the un- or undereducated; between
the men and women that the republican administrations failed to
bridge, putting Turkey in 86th place in the UNDP Human Development
Index. While there are 394 public libraries in the country, there are
400,000 teahouses where the idle youth mainly linger. According to UN
figures, in terms of the book stocks of countries, there is one book
per 25 persons in Japan. In France this ratio is one to seven. In
Turkey it is one book to 12,089 persons. In terms of the amount of
investment in education, with $142 per capita, Turkey is among the
category of most stingy countries in educational spending. The end
result is revealed by UN figures: According to the UNDP’s 2008 "Youth
in Turkey" report, the population between the ages of 15 and 24 is
more than 12 million. Of these 40 percent, or 5 million, neither goes
to school nor works. Women are worse off both in terms of education
and employment. An estimated 2.2 million women have lost their
chances for education and are unemployed. This is the youth we are
fighting against on the mountaintops, in the urban underworld and in
our cozy "secular" social environments. We have learned the hard way
that poverty and hopelessness neither marry secularism nor flirt with
the rule of law. Yet these are the by-products of the system we have
built and still maintain as if it was the right thing to do for
national security and stability.

06.04.2008