Jim Meyer's Borderlands

CV Updated

2010-01-28T18:34:00Z

Thursday, January 28, 2010

In case anyone is interested, I've made a number of updates in recent days to the CV posted on the Bio section of this website. I've added a number of my more recent activities, in addition to transforming many of the existing entries into active links.

Shots from Japan I: Tokyo

2010-01-28T04:47:00Z

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

I got back from Japan two nights ago. It was a great trip, taking me to Tokyo, Osaka, and Kyoto.

I'd been to Sapporo, Osaka and Kyoto once before, in 2007, but I'd never been to Tokyo. As was the case back then, this trip was made in connection with the Slavic Research Center at the University of Hokkaido. The folks at the SRC have made an incredible contribution to the study of Islam in Russia, and in addition to running their own symposia over the years they've also formed partnerships with other universities in Japan to hold a number of joint conferences and workshops.

The workshop I participated in last week was held at the University of Osaka and was called "Comparative Research on Major Regional Powers in Eurasia—Islamic Institutions and Imperial Reach." It was great to see a lot of old friends from Sapporo, Osaka, Kobe, and elsewhere, as well as make some new ones.

Earlier in the week I'd also had the opportunity to meet up with a couple of scholars from the University of Tokyo, which was also very enjoyable. Just as Sapporo (where Hokkaido University is located) is the center of Russian studies in Japan, Tokyo is the center of Middle Eastern studies, so I was able to make some good contacts in both of my fields of specialization.

Anyway, here are some of the photos that I took during my trip:

Somewhere in Tokyo

Downtown Tokyo, near Ginza

Taken from Hama-Rikyu Teien on the Sumida River

Also taken from Hama Rikyu-Teien, a park in southern Tokyo not far from the river and Tokyo Bay

Ginza skycrapers from the garden of the imperial palace. You can't really see the palace, but the gardens are nice.

From Ikebukuro station, about a quarter-mile from my hotel

An Ikebukuro street at night

A street behind Shinjuku Station in Shinjuku

Rare daylight shot of Kabuki-cho

Near Shinjuku Station

"Mama-say, mama-sa Asakusa, mama-say, mama-sa Asakusa!"

Okay, that's all for now! Before too much time passes I'll try to put up photos from Osaka and Kyoto.

US helping to patrol disputed 'border' between Northern Iraq and rest of Iraq

2010-01-27T00:17:00Z

Tuesday, Jan. 26, 2010

According to the New York Times, the US military is going to begin patrolling the unofficial 'border' which separates the areas of northern Iraq from the rest of Iraq.

This northern front, or “trigger line,” dates to the American invasion in 2003. As Saddam Hussein’s army collapsed, Kurdish forces called the pesh merga pushed from their three provinces in the north [note from Jim: these are Dahuk, Arbil, and Sulaymaniyah] and occupied sections of Nineveh, Kirkuk and Diyala Provinces that the Kurds had historically claimed.
They have controlled the areas ever since, despite calls by Iraq’s government and regional Sunni leaders for them to withdraw to the “green line” that established the internal Kurdish boundary before 2003.

It seems likely that this move will upset both the Iraqi central government and Turkey. In the case of the Iraqis, the unilateral support provided by the Americans to the Kurdish government in Northern Iraq with respect to a disputed internal border must surely seem like an appallingly colonialist move. Does anyone recall the efforts of British and French statesmen, following their victory in the First World War, to redraw the borders of what had once been the Ottoman Empire?

The three provinces in green have been administered by the Kurds since 1991, thanks to the American-created and UN-enforced safe haven

In Turkey, meanwhile, political leaders and citizens across the political spectrum have long been suspicious of American support for the Kurds in Iraq. Many people feel that the United States is attempting to create a separate (or at least very autonomous) pro-American buffer state, one that the United States would support in its effort to acquire territory from its neighbors.

Some questions:

If the United States (even under Obama!) appears to be pursuing an imperial plan of backing regional minorities in their territorial disputes with existing states in the region, how does this differ from the support given by European states vis-a-vis Balkan separatist movements in the nineteenth century? By providing diplomatic and sometimes military support to the aspirations of Greek, Serbian, and Bulgarian nationalists, European states often placed enormous strains upon the efforts of Ottoman statesmen to hold the empire together.

Is the United States likewise supporting the partition of Iraq today? Regardless of the actual intentions of the United States (which under both Republicans and Democrats tends to provide moralistic justifications to its foreign policies), this is how such actions will be seen.

Does this development express the influence of Joseph Biden? As a presidential candidate, Biden co-authored an article with Leslie Gelb in which they argued in favor of dividing up Iraq into "three largely autonomous regions."

What kind of signal does this send to Iraqis about US support for the government of Nuri al-Maliki, whose government is in a border dispute with the Kurdish authorities in the north? Here's the American line:

American commanders have emphasized that the checkpoints are not meant to preclude negotiations between Arabs and Kurds over the final internal boundaries of the Kurdish region, though the hope is that cooperation on the ground will give momentum to a political — and peaceful —resolution of the underlying dispute.

So, the presence of American soldiers patrolling an internal "border" that is unrecognized by the state of Iraq will somehow provide "momentum" to a political solution of the dispute? How is that so? Surely, this will take away any impetus for negotiation on the side of the Kurds.

I'm not arguing the advantages or benefits for the Kurds of forming their own state, autonomous zone, or whatever--that's their business, and the business of the counties currently possessing the territory that the northern Kurds want. But Americans should realize the potential for the types of conflict that we could be allowing ourselves to be drawn into if we maintain a military presence in Iraq (and in Afghanistan, for that matter, which also has an ethnically mixed population).

Two more questions:

How must the government of Turkey and its citizens be viewing this? They must be wondering if the United States, having acquiesced to Kurdish demands in its border dispute with Baghdad, would likewise support Kurdish efforts to create a state out of Turkish territory. The United States is a NATO ally of Turkey. How would we respond if a very powerful ally of ours were supporting the efforts of neighbors we considered to have territorial claims upon our borders?

If you were in the Turkish or Iraqi government, would you trust the Americans on this issue?

More Coup Talk, Media Talk in Turkey

2010-01-25T23:25:00Z

Monday, January 25, 2010

The Turkish newspaper Taraf has once again published documents alleging a coup plot by the Turkish military to topple Turkey's AK Party government. According to Taraf, this plot (supposedly called 'Balyoz,' or 'sledgehammer') was developed in 2003, just one year after the AK Party came to power.

I've written about Taraf before on this blog. As I wrote in my earlier post, in a very short period of time Taraf has become very influential among foreign media correspondents covering Turkey, and the paper has become well-known for publishing sensational allegations pertaining to the Turkish military's supposed determination to overthrow the Turkish government of Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan.

While Taraf has often been lauded in the foreign media for its presumed courage in taking on the Turkish military, the newspaper's allegations regarding the supposed plans of the generals (and hundreds of others!) also need to be read in the context of the ongoing Ergenekon investigation. The Ergenekon investigation, of course, originally began as an inquiry into state-sponsored death squads but has since been almost entirely transformed into a search for anti-AK Party coup plotters. This radical shift in the investigation--which curiously has almost entirely supplanted the original focus on state-sponsored death squads rather than being conducted in parallel to the original investigation--has implicated a wide range of civilian figures, including journalists, academics, and NGO figures critical of the AK Party and its policies of greater tolerance towards the public display of Islamic piety in Turkey. Meanwhile, several other figures who have been directly implicated in allegations of state support for death squads (mainly in the southeast of Turkey) remain free.

Meanwhile, Taraf's editors are obliged to fight off rumors in the Turkish blogosphere that the newspaper is actually a front for supporters of Fetullah Gulen. Gulen is a Muslim religious figure from Turkey who fled to the United States in 1998, apparently in fear of being arrested in the wake of of Turkey's "February 28 process," which had been initiated the previous year in opposition to individuals and organizations considered by Turkey's military leaders to be opposed to the secular nature of the Turkish state. FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds, who has been officially (and legally!) prevented from discussing her work at the FBI by a gag order, has claimed that Gulen has ties to the CIA.

Fetullah Gulen

[I should also note that Zaman, another Turkish newspaper with a very user-friendly English-language site, is also widely considered in Turkey to be a front for Gulen. Like Taraf, Zaman has become extremely influential among foreign observers--I won't mention them by name, but readers can often see which sources these people are citing--writing professionally on Turkish politics.]

So yet another allegation has been made in Taraf, this time concerning an alleged coup plot which took place seven years ago and was never put into effect. Once again, Turkish military leaders deny the charge, and claim that Taraf is out to get them. The Ergenekon investigation continues, but it is now little more than a search for enemies of the AK Party. The original purpose behind the investigation--uncovering crimes committed by the state against its citizens--has been almost entirely forgotten.

Meanwhile, an important rival of Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan has been silenced. Aydin Dogan, the media mogul who was hit with a $2.5 billion tax fine last year, resigned from Dogan Holding on January 1 of this year. His resignation fell on the heels of the resignation of Ertugrul Ozkok, longtime editor of the newspaper Hurriyet--one of the most important components of the Dogan media empire.

What's going on? I don't know exactly--but it does seem clear that an intense battle for power is taking place. Erdogan and the AK Party--who just a couple of years ago narrowly avoided having their party shut down--are perhaps fighting for their political lives. The Ergenekon investigation may very well be a weapon in Erdogan's battle against the Turkish military and a broad swath of individuals who would likely support an anti-AK Party coup, even if they're not actually involved in planning one.

Taraf, Zaman, the Dogan Group, Sabah-ATV...one thing's for certain, the battle for the media in Turkey is largely tied to the political battles currently taking place along a number of fronts.

I've written about these connections between the media, politics, and Ergenekon before on this site, and I've already repeated myself too much. Nevertheless, the details keep getting stranger, and the plot keeps getting thicker, so it's hard not to return to these questions--especially when I tend not to be very satisfied with the way these topics are treated in most of the English-language commentary that's out there.

One thing we can probably all agree on, however, is that we'll probably never get to the absolute bottom of this.

Release of Agca a mockery of justice, trial

2010-01-20T09:53:00Z

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Mehmet Ali Agca has been released from prison after serving only ten years of his sentence for killing Turkish journalist Abdi Ipekci in 1979.

The face of a murderer: Agca released after serving just 10 years

Agca (pronounced "Ah-jaa") who is now 52, is better known internationally as the man who shot Pope John Paul II in 1981. After serving 19 years in a jail in Italy for his assassination attempt on the Pope, Agca was pardon at John Paul II's request and then transferred to a Turkish prison in 2000 in order to serve his punishment for killing Ipekci ("Ee-pek-chi").

Agca is a veteran of the left-right political violence that plagued Turkey back in the 1970s. While both leftists and rightists committed their fair share of killings, rightist-nationalist terrorists (known as the "Grey Wolves") were often protected by security officials responsible for keeping the peace. Agca (pronounced "Ah-jah"), who was convicted of killing the "liberal" journalist Ipekci, was allowed to escape from prison after serving just 6 months of his sentence. Before long, he was back at work, shooting the Pope in St. Peter's Square, probably under the direction of the Bulgarian government. At the time, Bulgaria was a satellite of the USSR, which feared the influence of the Polish-born Pope on the Solidarity movement then taking place in fellow Warsaw Pact member Poland.

Agca's release comes at a time when Turkey's security forces have been prosecuting the Ergenekon investigation for nearly two years. I've written plenty about Ergenekon--look here for previous posts if you're interested--so I don't want to repeat myself too much right now. Long story short, Ergenekon began as an investigation into state support for death squads and assassins like Agca, but has since been transformed into a search for "coup plotters" supposedly determined to bring down the AK Party government of Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan. Conveniently enough for the prosecution, a large number of the accused plotters apparently kept very careful notes regarding their illegal plans and left these notes in places where the police (which are a component of the Ministry of Interior, and therefore led by political appointees) were able to find them.

So, even as journalists, academics, and NGO leaders considered unfriendly to Erdogan's government sit in jail after being arrested on specious charges of plotting to overthrow the government (since when does the Turkish military need journalists and academics in order to carry out a coup?), people with obvious connections to state-sponsored murder walk free.

Agca is one of these people. So is Sedat Bucak, about whom I've written a number of times. Bucak was the member of parliament who was found, after a car accident in 1994, to have been riding around with a right-wing terrorist from the 1970s, Abdullah Catli, a comrade in arms of Mehmet Ali Agca. Catli was wanted at the time by Interpol, and the car in which they (and a senior police figure from Istanbul) were riding also contained several state-issued weapons, thousands of dollars in cash, silencers, and several green (mean 'privileged') passports issued to Catli in a number of aliases. All of these passports had been signed personally by the then-Minister of Interior, Mehmet Agar. These events constituted the "Susurluk" scandal, named after the town in Western Turkey where the accident occurred. Bucak was the only survivor of the crash.

Bucak, Agar, former Turkish Prime Minister Tansu Ciller, and many others are obvious persons of interest for any serious investigation into state involvement in planning assassinations and protecting assassins. However, none of these individuals have been brought to trial in connection with Susurluk or other cases of state-support for assassination and murder. A trial against Agar, in which he was accused of "forming a criminal gang" but which was undertaken outside of the framework of the Ergenekon investigation, began last year but has gone nowhere. Meanwhile, Bucak has never been tried or seriously questioned for his role in Susurluk, nor has Ciller. The fact that none of them have been question in relation to Ergenekon makes it clear, in my opinion, that this trial is not really about unearthing crimes of this matter.

People in Turkey seem to have largely lost interest in the Ergenekon investigation. It has become so compromised, so ridiculous, that even the bloggers and journalists who cover Turkish politics from abroad, and who breathlessly--and often uncritically--reported on the scandal for months, have begun to question its foundation. Compared with a year ago, Ergenekon is much less of a story nowadays.

But here is something that should be remembered: the Ergenekon trial, no matter how absurd and deformed a direction it has taken since the beginning of 2008 (which was also when the AK Party learned that the state prosecutor would start a case against it in an effort to close the party), was, at one time, actually based upon something real. There really are, in fact, thousands of cases (such as this one) of alleged state involvement in murdering, kidnapping, and extortion, as well as instances when state officials appear to have been assisting murderers like Catli and Agca. These are things that need to be investigated, and the fact that the Ergenekon investigation has been transformed into an apparent political witch-hunt doesn't mean that the original impetus for the investigation--uncovering wrongdoing committed by state officials--has become any less important or urgent. On the contrary, more than ever the apparent abuse of power and criminal conduct of state officials in the 1990s and beyond needs to be laid open, but now Ergenekon has effectively been turned into a trial against supposed coup-plotters.

Agca's release makes a further mockery of the Ergenekon investigation and trial, if such a thing is possible.

Busy times/Going to Japan

2010-01-17T05:01:47Z

Sunday, January 17, 2010

Happy New Year! I hope you're all doing well.

Things are good with me. As I mentioned in my previous post, I spent a week in Istanbul over New Year's as part of a project I'm working on for the SSRC's "Teaching Islam in Eurasia" project. It was great to be back in Istanbul, but pretty hectic as well. The weather was often great, and I met up with a lot of friends. But perhaps most important of all, I ate and drank really well.

I bought a lot of stuff in Beşiktaş, I bought two kilims, a Turkish tea pot, a new watchband--many things. But I did not buy any fish.

At the Sakıp Sabancı Museum in Emirgan. That's the Bosphorus in the background.

At Saray, a dessert shop in Nışantaşı. If I'm not mistaken, this is the first place I ever had chicken breast dessert.

[I have pictures from earlier times in Turkey here, here and here, in case anyone is interested]

On my way back to Detroit from Istanbul I spent a night in Amsterdam. I hadn't been looking for a flight that included a stopover in Amsterdam, but was really happy to find one included in an inexpensive ticket. I'd done this once before, on my way back to the US from Moscow in 2004. That summer I'd arrived in Amsterdam at 6 pm with a 2 pm flight the next day, and had had a blast even though my time was pretty limited.

I was looking forward to a similar trip this year. Unfortunately, snow in Amsterdam delayed our flight quite a bit, and it was after 10 by the time I checked into my hotel. Most of the decent restaurants seemed closed, which was a drag, but I had a great time anyway. Amsterdam is a gorgeous city, and in the morning there were about two inches of snow on the ground. I walked around for a couple of hours and had a tremendous time, but unfortunately have no photos because I left my camera in the hotel room.

The second semester at MSU started this past week, on Wednesday. I'm teaching two classes: the "Making of Modern Turkey" and "Russia to 1917." Both classes are upper-divisional, which means they're capped at 40 students.

It's pretty cool, I think, that I get to teach this combination of classes. When I think of all of the jobs I applied for and thought of applying for back when I was on the market between 2006 and 2008, at how many of those places would I have been able to teach classes on both of the regions where I work? Not many, I would guess, but fortunately for me I've managed to repress those years--only seldom do I wake up screaming now, wondering how I'll type up a syllabus overnight to beef up the application of a job I'm applying for.

It's nice that those days are over.

On Monday morning I'm flying to Tokyo, and then am heading to Osaka. The purpose of this trip is to participate in a workshop entitled "Comparative Research on Major Regional Powers in Eurasia--Islamic Institutions and Imperial Reach" at Osaka University.

Actually, there's a fair bit of academic interest in Islam and Russia in Japan, and a number of the leading scholars working on Islam in Russia are Japanese. In particular, the Slavic Research Center at Hokkaido University has been very active in setting up conferences and workshops, publishing valuable studies, and doing an incredible amount towards bringing together scholars from Europe, Japan, the US, and the former USSR.

A couple of years ago, I participated in one of these workshops--"Asiatic Russia: Imperial Power in Regional and International Contexts." It was a blast. We started off in Sapporo, where Hokkaido University is located, then headed down for two more workshops in Kyoto and Osaka. I was a postdoc at Columbia at the time, and took a couple of extra days at the end to hang out in Kyoto (photos from the 2007 Japan trip are here). Frankly, I wish I'd stayed longer. What did I have to get back to in New York?

Anyway, I'm making up for that now! Actually, I did try my best to see if there was any way I could possibly avoid missing class this upcoming week--there wasn't. Leaving first thing Thursday morning could have gotten me into Osaka by Friday night, with the symposium starting up on Saturday and lasting through Sunday night.

That seemed crazy to me, so I'm taking both Wednesday and Friday off--a graduate student from my department is showing a film to each of my classes--"Russian Ark" for the Russian class, and "Mustafa" for the Turkish one. Frankly, I'm really sorry I won't be able to watch "Russian Ark" with my students. It's an amazing film--but maybe one which has to be sold a little bit.

MLK Day makes it easier to go, so I'll get to unwind for a couple of days in Tokyo before taking the bullet (I think, or at least very fast) train from Tokyo to Osaka. Actually, I'll be working a fair bit in Tokyo, preparing for the workshop and also working on a second project that may be developing. If possible, I hope to meet up with some Japanese colleagues in Tokyo.

Well, that's all for now. If possible I'll try to send some photos from Japan.

Heading to Istanbul

2009-12-28T14:51:04Z

Monday, December 28, 2009

Well, I've finished my first semester as an assistant professor! Actually, I taught my last class on the eleventh, but the semester didn't officially finish for me until Sunday night of last week, when I submitted my grades.

It's never easy leaving beautiful Bozeman...

It's good to be finished with things. This semester I taught only one class, which I'm very thankful for. I was so nervous when the semester began! Lucky for me, my students were really patient with me and helped make the semester a good one.

In the Spring I start teaching my normal course load of two classes per term. I'll be teaching one class on Russian imperial history ("Russia to 1917") and another course I designed myself called "the Making of Modern Turkey." Classes don't start until January 13, though, so I've fortunately got some time to think about other things before the new semester begins.

Anyway, I flew out to Michigan on Sunday of last week and since that time have been relaxing at my parents' place in Ann Arbor. It's great to be back in town.

...but it's good to be back in A2

I've mostly been hanging out with family and friends, and on Saturday my Dad and I attended the Little Caesar's Pizza Bowl in Detroit. The game, which was called the Motor City Bowl until GM and Ford gave up their sponsorship this year, is played at Ford Field (home of the Lions!) in Detroit. As someone who grew up attending University of Michigan football games for years, watching Marshall and Ohio University battle it out in an indoor stadium wasn't the most exciting thing in the world, but it was still really great to finally see Ford Field (a nice stadium, considering it's got a roof) and to hang out in downtown Detroit.

The Eiffel Tire: one of the best-known landmarks on the way to Detroit from Ann Arbor

Ford Field

Tomorrow I'm flying to Istanbul. I'm going there as a participant in a program sponsored by the Social Science Research Council, or SSRC. For years, the SSRC's Eurasia Program has been bringing together scholars from the US and the former Soviet Union through a series of workshops relating to the theme of "Teaching Islam in Eurasia." My participation in this project--with which I was associated peripherally when I was in graduate school--involves writing, along with a co-author from the former USSR, a set of research priorities that the SSRC should focus upon in the future with respect to this theme. We hope to have this paper finished by May, but for now the SSRC is flying both me and my co-author (Shovosil Ziyodov, a professor of Islamic studies in Tashkent, Uzbekistan) to Istanbul this week so that we can talk things over while we stroll along the banks of the Bosphorus and contemplate the relative merits of poğaças and açmas. Good times!

I'll be in Istanbul for a week before returning to Bozeman by way of Ann Arbor. If possible, I hope to post some Istanbul photos (as well as some shots from Amsterdam, where I'll be staying one night on my way back to the US) here later on this week and next.

On the Kurdish and Armenian Initiatives

2009-12-13T15:21:00Z

Sunday, December 13, 2009

One of the biggest stories to have emerged from Turkey this year was the so-called "Kurdish initiative" (Kürt açılımı, or Kurdish 'opening').

The "Kurdish opening" was announced in the Spring of this year, but has actually been around for a while. On January 1 of 2009, the Turkish government set up TRT 6, a television channel which broadcasts in Kurdish. Then, during the municipal election campaign earlier this year (nationwide municipal elections in Turkey are treated as referenda on the performance of the sitting national government in a manner similar to midterm elections in the United States), Prime Minister Erdoğan went even further in his efforts to woo Kurdish voters to his party. Prior to the March 29 elections, Erdogan not only promised that he would allow Kurdish-language radio, but also spoke Kurdish himself publicly at a campaign rally--something which is actually illegal in Turkey.

Over the course of the Summer, manifestations of the Turkish government's supposed new thinking on the Kurdish issue could be detected in the form of a variety of mostly small but symbolic cultural initiatives, such as allowing: a Kurdish-language sermon to be broadcast on television, a play to be performed in Kurdish, the reversion to Kurdish of place names which had previously been changed to Turkish, the naming of children with distinctly Kurdish names, and even adding the Kurdish letters Q, W, and X (which don't appear in Turkish words) to the Turkish alphabet. On November 12, Erdoğan's AK Party called for increased freedom for Kurdish broadcasting and education, igniting brawls on the floor of parliament. Meanwhile, local municipalities in the southeast began constructing bilingual Turkish and Kurdish roadsigns reflecting the different names used for villages. These and other developments have been discussed frequently in the writings of Jenny White, Yigal Schleifer and others.

The "Kurdish Initiative" was undertaken alongside a parallel "Armenian Initiative," which was devoted primarily to improving relations with the state of Armenia, while certain cultural concessions such as those granted to Kurds* were likewise offered to Armenians living in Turkey (as a non-Muslim community considered unassimilable, however, Armenians in Turkey have long held many of the cultural rights that Kurdish organizations could only dream of).

As was the case with the Kurdish Initiative, the Turkish-Armenian rapprochement drew enthusiastic support from the United States, with Hillary Clinton attending the signing of the Turkish-Armenian protocols in Zurich last October (Clinton was not the only international observer attending the signing, which also brought Russia's Sergei Lavrov and Javier Solana of the EU). While the United States and other international observers cheered on the rapprochement, the government of Azerbaijan--which has had a very close relationship with Turkey since gaining independence in 1991--fumed publicly over Turkey's apparent sell-out of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, while the political opposition and large numbers of citizens in Turkey, Armenia, and the Armenian diaspora also opposed the agreement.

Under the watchful eyes of Hillary Clinton, Sergei Lavrov, and other foreign observers, Turkish FM Davutoğlu and Armenian FM Nalbandian sign a set of protocols promising to move ahead with diplomatic relations. Zurich, October 2009

With respect to both of these "openings," my main question concerns the motives of the Erdogan government. What was the Turkish government attempting to get out of these initiatives? Should the two initiatives be grouped together coherently, as a pair, or else do they simply represent two separate sets of policies that Erdogan's government has adopted for different reasons? And what are the chances for these initiatives of advancing, on the one hand, the cause of peace and prosperity in the Caucasus, and, on the other hand, improving relations between the Turkish state and its Kurdish citizens?

I've already written quite a bit about the Turkish-Armenian rapprochement, so today I'm mostly going to discuss the Kurdish initiative, which is in the news right now because the self-styled "Kurdish party" in Turkey, the DTP (which translates into "Democratic Society Party") has just been closed down. The closure occurred after Turkey's constitutional court ruled in favor of a petition for closure which had been brought to by Chief Public Prosecutor Abdurrahman Yalçınkaya on November 16, 2007.

First of all, it is important to distinguish the political government in Turkey--that of the prime minister and political parties--from the permanent government. In Turkey, the position of public prosecutor is not a political appointment. Indeed, Yalçınkaya is the very man who, just four months after he had opened his case against the DTP, opened a closure case against the sitting government--that is, against Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan's AK Party. In March of 2008, the closure case against the AK Party was launched, with Turkey's Constitutional Court deciding in July of 2008 against closure. Six of the ten justices voted in favor of closure, with the petition needing seven votes in order to pass.

Thus, there is nothing obviously self-contradictory about the parliamentary government of Erdoğan pursuing one set of policies towards the granting of more Kurdish cultural rights and freedoms, and the closing of the DTP. Indeed, I have often suspected that one of Erdoğan's goals in pursuing the Kurdish initiative was to strengthen the AK Party's position in the southeast at the expense of the DTP.

As I wrote back in March, gains made by the DTP in the southeast represented a large part of the AK Party's loss in support. Then, after Erdogan's party lost ground nationally and especially in the Kurdish-dominated southeast of Turkey, there was a government crackdown against the Democratic Society Party (DTP in Turkish), a political party known primarily for its demands for Kurdish cultural rights in Turkey. Then, just a few weeks later, over 50 DTP members, including 9 provincial chairmen and 5 district party chairmen--were arrested. [Once again, it's important to distinguish between the parliamentary government and the judiciary and police, which are part of the permanent state. However, in this case the distinction is a bit murkier, since the police are under control of the Ministry of the Interior, which has been in the hands of the AK Party since 2003].

The crackdown on the DTP may or may not have been connected to people in Erdogan's government, but in any event it was public knowledge that a case had been levied by public prosecutor Yalçınkaya and that a decision would likely be made by the Constitutional Court sometime this year. By getting out ahead on the Kurdish issue and building upon the gestures towards Kurds that Erdoğan had been making in the run-up to the municipal elections in the Spring of 2009, it seems likely that the AK Party had to have been thinking at least somewhat in terms of expanding its base in the southeast with its dual message of Islamic piety and Kurdish cultural rights.

Moreover, there is an intellectual consistency to a party that is 'liberal' (in the Turkish stance) with regard to the public display of Islamic piety (meaning that the AK Party promotes 'individual choice' with regard to the wearing, for example, of headscarves). By taking on secularism as it has traditionally been understood in Turkey, and also by taking on the military and much of the opposition through the Ergenekon investigation, the AK Party is taking on the system, the whole düzen. And the Erdogan government's approach to the Kurdish and Armenian initiatives--while also without question each motivated by a number of other factors--likewise represent, I think, an effort to undermine this system, the operating logic upon which the state has largely been based during the republican era. I'm not saying this is necessarily a good thing or a bad thing, but that's how I read these developments to at least some extent.

What seems particularly clear to me, however, is that the Erdogan government's approach to the Kurdish initiative seems to have been, at best, incompetently undertaken, and at worst doomed to failure from the start--and perhaps deliberately so. With respect to the Armenian initiative, for example, people in Turkey are not, by and large, against the idea of establishing diplomatic relations with Armenia per se. What bothers some people is that, a) it doesn't seem like a strategically intelligent choice to trade oil-rich Azerbaijan for "untrustworthy" Armenia as a partner in the region, and b) closer cooperation with Armenia may lead the Turkish government in a direction on the genocide issue that many Turks might not be prepared to follow. Nevertheless, nothing of substance has really been accomplished on the Armenian front (Azerbaijan and Armenia are still talking about the future status of Nagorno-Karabakh), and at any rate the fate of Azerbaijan will not send lots of people into the streets in Turkey. But what would really outrage large numbers of people in Turkey would be if the Turkish government were to appear to express anything but the most generic form of regret for the "events of 1915."

And the reason why large numbers of Turkish citizens would be opposed to any apparent softening on the genocide issue is that they are the products of the Turkish educational system. While the Turkish Ministry of education ultimately halted distribution of Sari Gelin, a film which argues that the Armenians committed genocide against "Turks," there is still nothing that most schoolchildren learn in their history lessons that will ever prepare them for discussing the Armenian genocide issue or the Kurdish issue in a complex way. I'm not saying that no one in Turkey talks about these issues in a complex way--many people do, no thanks (in most cases) to what they've learned in their history lessons and from their government-published history books. How are people supposed to react if, after seeing Sari Gelin, they hear that their government is expressing remorse for what "Turks" (actually, Anatolian Muslims of various ethnicities) did to Armenians? If the Turkish government were really serious about putting the Armenian genocide issue behind them, they would do something about the way this issue is discussed in schools in Turkey.

This is also the case with respect to the Kurdish initiative. It's one thing to change a few laws and grant a few more freedoms, but it's quite another to actually work to change people's thinking on an issue. For as long as official Turkey--and the ministries of Education and Culture in particular--are talking about the Armenians, the Kurds, and the Turks in the ways that they do, it will be extremely difficult for many Turks to accept attempts to mollify the Kurds and the Armenian state with a series of mainly small and symbolic measures that never really address what Kurds and Armenians consider to be the main issues. Unserious or incompetent reforms aren't going to make anyone happy, excepting (for a time, perhaps) well-meaning foreigners who don't know much about the region.

And things haven't been going well for the Kurdish Initiative. The largest opposition party, the Republican People's Party (CHP) has campaigned against the initiative, and the Nationalist Action Party (MHP), which will surely factor largely in the next elections, has held a series of rallies against the initiative as well. In what marked one of the last positions adopted prior to the Constitutional Court's ruling on its closure, even the DTP had pronounced the initiative 'over,' with DTP leader Ahmet Turk now linking the success of the initiative with the conditions of imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan.

Meanwhile, a hero's' welcome was granted in October to returning PKK guerillas who had accepted the Turkish government's promise of lenient treatment to PKK fighters surrendering themselves to government forces. Images of enthusiastic crowds in southeastern Turkey treating the PKK fighters as heroes were broadcast all across Turkey, and even a number of Kurdish activists criticized the DTP for poorly organizing (sabotaging?) the reception. Now, with the closure of the DTP, rioting has been occurring in cities all over the country.

This video, which I lifted from Jenny White's Kamil Pasha blog, claims to be showing Kurdish rioting in the southeastern town of Yuksekova in response to the closure of the DTP.

A hero's welcome for former PKK fighters last October. Was the DTP trying to steal the AK Party's thunder?

The decision by the Constitutional Court to ban the DTP did not occur in a vacuum. Indeed, there have been a number of instances in which local officials have not been entirely getting with the "Kurdish initiative" program, even harassing children who appeared to be breaking long-standing taboos. In many instances, it seemed clear that local officials were by no means on the same page as that of Erdoğan's government when it came to easing restrictions on the Kurdish language.

This disconnect between the state and civil servants can also be seen with respect to the proposed policies of the Kurdish initiative and the attitudes and sensibilities of many people in Turkey. The Erdogan government is attempting to deal with the Kurds in a rather Ottoman way-- through the granting of collective rights (though ethnic rights, as opposed to religious ones, which was the Ottoman style). But what the government really needs to do is explain to citizens of Turkey of all ethnic and religious backgrounds how everyone can gain from a more liberal cultural, social, and political environment. Liberalization is difficult to achieve in an illiberal setting. Without hitting the issues of nationalism, the state, and personal freedom head-on, putting Kurdish on roadsigns or TV will do little but prompt Kurdish groups to ask for more, while others will challenge these concessions at every turn.

In other words, in order to succeed the Kurdish Initiative shouldn't be framed simply in terms of granting more rights to the Kurds, but rather as part of a larger initiative dedicated to treating everybody in Turkey like human beings who deserve respect in relation to a wide variety of issues both large and small. But this is something that people in power in most countries--not only Turkey--often have a difficult time accepting. Frankly, there are a lot of people in Turkey (again, Turkey is not unique in this respect) who are crushed by forces beyond their control--this happens not only to Kurds, but to others as well. My sense is that if the Kurdish Initiative were discussed within a broader context of freeing Turkish citizens from corruption, torture, intimidation by government officials and police, powerlessness in the face of wealth, economic exploitation, and a host of other problems, people other than Kurds would be a lot more receptive to it.

With respect to both the Kurdish and the Armenian initiatives, I think the time for symbolic gestures has passed. If Turkish people are going to accept these initiatives, I think a lot more will have to be done to explain why such gestures are not simply concessions, but rather important to the interests of everybody in the country.

One last point: I do think that it's admirable to bring these issues up, and maybe something truly is better than nothing--if having Kurdish village names written on signs is a positive step for some people, then great. The problem I have is with bringing up these issues in an unserious way. Why did the AK Party leadership wait until the DTP was on the execution block before the idea of a 'Kurdish opening' began to make sense? Maybe Erdogan and the AK Party government are interested solely in brining an end to bloodshed and the repression of Kurdish culture in Turkey. If so, that's great, and I wish them the best. If, however, this initiative was simply the product of political posturing without political courage, a real plan, or a genuine commitment to get people to accept change, then it will fall apart because a real plan is what the Erdogan government needs now.

* Obviously, the term "Kurd" is not completely self-explanatory, and "Kurds" are not necessarily the only ones who would like to see (or be able to benefit from) changes in the law pertaining to the status of the Kurdish language or other matters. This is also true with respect to "Armenians."