WEIRD TURKEY
by Burak Bekdil
Hurriyet
Nov 19 2008
Turkey
"Weird Turkey" can pop up anytime: while you read newspapers, stroll
down the road, talk to strangers, talk to friends, listen to the
politicians, listen to missionaries of this or that faith, or even
when you lock yourself at home.
"Turkish affairs" are always entertaining, but sometimes they can be
unnervingly entertaining. The Crescent and Star increasingly borders on
various degrees of schizophrenia, paranoia, otherness and polarization.
Sadly, Turkey looks lost in a tiring soul-search; it looks like
an enigma that still chases its lost identity 85 years on. But its
demographic and cultural zigzags never cease to amaze; its social
contrasts never fade.
"Weird Turkey" can pop up anytime: while you read newspapers, stroll
down the road, talk to strangers, talk to friends, listen to the
politicians, listen to missionaries of this or that faith, or even
when you lock yourself at home but suddenly get a call reminding you
of where you live. This was "Turkey" in the last couple of weeks:
1. In Turkey, there isn’t torture but people may die under torture:
When the 29-year-old Engin Ceber who was arrested for distributing
a leftist newspaper died in detention, Istanbul police launched
an investigation and proudly announced that the deceased had not
been tortured. A few days later, Justice Minister Mehmet Ali Å~^ahin
publicly apologized to Mr Ceber’s relatives for the torture that had
killed their son. Most recently, a full forensic report confirmed he
had died under torture.
But will any authority investigate why the initial police report
firmly stated that Mr Ceber had not been tortured? Will anyone tell us
what action will be taken against the officials who denied torture in
Mr Ceber’s case? Or will those police officers continue to "protect
our security?" And by the way, will anyone explain if distributing
a leftist newspaper is a reason to be arrested in EU-candidate Turkey?
2. Tayyip Erdogan is a reformist, his good friend Silvio is an
"advocate" of Turkey: Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s "good
friend Silvio" was in Turkey last week. Apart from being Mr Erdogan’s
good friend, Silvio is also Italy’s prime minister. And yes, that’s
the man who described President-elect Barack Obama as "tanned" and
boasts of himself as an "advocate" of Turkey.
No doubt, the Italian impolitic has an interesting sense of humor. But
assuming he was not "joking" when he commented on Turkish politics,
Silvio Berlusconi thinks that (a) his good friend Tayyip is a true
reformist, and (b) Turkey’s secular system has been strengthened
under Mr Erdogan’s rule.
I am confident that Silvio "Silviocchio" Berlusconi’s love affair
with Turkey has nothing to do with the love affair his dear friend
Tayyip has for Italian-made military helicopters and other weapons
systems. But talking about Italian-made weapons systems and Silvio
"the advocate of Turkey" Berlusconi, allows me to remind him of the
growing disquiet in the corridors of security offices in Ankara about
a suspected systematic delivery of Italian-made arms to the PKK.
3. Our orphans are well looked after as long as a duchess does
not mingle: Former Duchess of York, Sarah Ferguson, and her TV crew
secretly filmed orphans in special care houses in Turkey (and Romania)
and exposed the horrifying conditions in which the children were
being kept.
According to Nimet Cubukcu, the minister whose portfolio includes
orphan care, the images were part of a premeditated campaign to
smear Turkey’s image and block its EU accession. But what about
Romania? Were the unpleasant images of Romanian child care houses
part of a premeditated campaign to oust Romania from the EU?
Ms Cubukcu need not worry. The Crescent and Star produces more than
enough material on a daily basis to smear its own image. The minister
can always look at a randomly chosen opinion poll that would tell
her what percentage of the EU populace thinks Turkey is a decent
democracy that deserves full membership.
According to Ali Babacan, Turkey’s foreign minister, the poor orphans
whose images appeared on a British TV station were not upset by the
conditions they had to endure, but by the methods they were filmed. I
bet they were! By the same logic, we can always think that Mr Ceber
was not upset by the torture he had to undergo, but that his soul
was terribly upset by the news coverage of his torture.
4. Barack Obama is a Kurdish villager – by soul: Residents of a
Kurdish village in eastern Turkey sacrificed 44 sheep to celebrate the
election of Barack Obama as America’s 44th president. What an original
thoughtfulness: 44 sheep for the 44th president of the United States
of America! The surviving sheep in the village must have prayed and
thanked God that the United States does not have a history of six
centuries and has not had 156 presidents.
Meanwhile, the placards the villagers held out during the celebrations
read "You are a real hero" and "You are one of us." Perhaps someone
in the White House should remind President-elect Obama that he is
now Kurdish, in addition to Hawaian, Kenyan, Indonesian, American,
French, German, Italian, Greek, Cypriot, Arabic, Jewish, Armenian
and probably Nepalese and Peruvian too.
5. Mr Erdogan’s government has improved gender equality – to ranking
123rd !: The prime minister has often been praised, in addition to
his liberal reformism, for his commitment to gender equality. The
seal of approval for the Turkish men whose wives habitually marry at
child age, must not let their hair be seen by others, and are almost
always housewives, came in the form of a World Economic Forum, or WEU,
report. The WEU’s Global Gender Gap study put Turkey into the 123rd
place among 130 countries.
–Boundary_(ID_LDaWlEvciW0WW5FdZSxQOw) —