Los Angeles Times
April 5, 2009 Sunday
Home Edition
Turks eager to meet Obama;
The president’s visit is viewed with pride as affirming the nation’s
importance and as a balm to bruised ties.
by Laura King
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 tonight, 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.
Demonstrators instead staged small but raucous protests Saturday, with
some shouting, "Yankee go home!"
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 he
raised concerns about the choice of Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh
Rasmussen as the new chief of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization,
who was named to the post Saturday.
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 African 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."