I recently read a fascinating and disturbing article in The New Yorker, by Jon Lee Anderson, on the rise and defeat of Islamists in Mali. I was struck by two particular descriptions of the Islamists’ behavior:

“In the central square, Idrissa had witnessed the beating of one of the jihadis’ own men, who had been accused by his comrades of raping a young girl. The spectators loudly criticized the jihadis for a double standard. “Everyone was angry because they didn’t kill him,” Idrissa said. Afterward, the jihadis had gone on the local radio station and warned that anyone who spoke badly about their men would be killed.”

The other:

“Then, on day two, the Islamists came,” he recalled. He had asked the leader what he wanted. Naming the northern towns of Mali, he had said, “Timbuktu, Gao, and Kidal are Muslim towns, and we want to make Sharia in them. We are not asking. We are saying what we are doing, and we’re here to make Sharia.”

What I found so troubling was not only “the usual” Al Qaeda-related atrocities, but even more so the Islamist’s clearly voiced goal of destroying an existing social system through violence, devastation of cultural heritage (vandalizing local temples and libraries). This was tied together with the idea of creating a different social order based on sexual control, and the replacement of any traces of modern knowledge by radical interpretations of old religious texts. The irony is that these readings are just as contemporary as the lifestyle the Islamists try to erase.

In my opinion, these two quotes illustrate the power of violence combined with unquestionable certainty, able to undermine an entire civilization—its customs, morals, social order, and authorities. They fall apart in the presence of arrogant brutality. The people are too “civilized,” too cultured to defend themselves. The Islamists reject a civilization they claim is morally corrupt, and instead attempt to replace it with a modern essentialist take on an imagined Golden Age of religious purity.

The case of Islamists in Mali is an extremely vivid example of a contemporary violent essentialism we can witness in many different places and with changing force. There are the extreme right-wing nationalists and Christian religious fundamentalists in Europe and the US, the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn activists in Greece, the Le Pen nationalists in France, the Tea Party in the US, as well as the Polish nationalist youth, with neo-Nazi and pagan ties, who recently tried to interrupt Zygmunt Bauman’s lecture at the University of Wrocław.

All these groups seem to play on a fantasy of a bygone era of a harmonious society formed solely by “us,” without outsiders or deviations from the unanimously accepted norms, “inventing” their traditions, as Eric Hobsbawm would have named it. The past is idealized into the present in a form deeply conservative but also modernly total, one in which men rule and women obey; the “we” are the masters, the “others” are the slaves. There is no space for sexual freedom or mental sickness. Foucault’s descriptions of these freedoms in the Middle Ages seem, on the contrary, extremely modern.

In this sense, the current fundamentalist movements are essentialized ideas of a glorious past, devoid of any ambiguity. They are definite, brutal and all-encompassing in a way only an extreme mixture of Enlightenment and Totalitarianism could lead to. They are belief systems based on a logic of the elimination of “otherness.”

The past to which they refer, never was. The refusal to acknowledge the ambiguous, heterogeneous, histories of cultures, religions, ethnicities, and civilizations, makes these movements arrogantly, violently contemporary.

Since May 27^th, the people of Turkey have staged one of the most diverse, inclusive and democratic protests that Turkey has ever seen. People from every political commitment came together and acted in solidarity against a gentrification project, which intended to transform a park into a shopping mall and hotel. More importantly, protests strongly underlined the fact that the multitudes are fed-up with the erosion of their civil liberties, lack of freedom of expression and increasing state intervention in everyday life. During the course of the protests, Prime Minister Erdogan’s authoritarian and irresponsible governmental style fueled more protests. Demonstrations spread all over the country like wild fire. Police brutality against the peaceful resistance resulted in hundreds of injuries and four deaths.

Since the neoliberal-Islamist Erdogan government came to power in 2002, there has been a wave of privatization and appropriation of public and of natural resources. Numerous large-scale gentrification projects were implemented despite public opposition with direct police violence. For instance, one of the most renowned resistances in Turkey was staged at the city of Bergama. After a long legal battle the Turkish government was allowed to operate a gold mine that utilizes a dangerous cyanide-leeching process. Villagers organized themselves against this illegal governmental intrusion. Over the years, with the help of activists and lawyers, the people of Bergama repeatedly won the legal battle against the gold mine—the Turkish constitution protects the livelihood of the people. However, the Erdogan government passed consecutive executive orders to essentially circumvent the juridical system. Ultimately, Koza-Ipek Holding, who had close ties to the conservative government, started to operate the mine in 2005.

In many respects, the Bergama gold mine was the one of the first major political defeats for the people who tried to defend their commons. At the time, many liberal intellectual figures (in the Turkish context these liberals are an offshoot of neo-conservatism) provided support to the government, despite the fact that there has been ongoing massive privatization. In part, some saw the Erdogan government’s struggle to grasp control of public institutions as a justified move against “the ancient regime,” which was represented by the secularist elite and Turkish republicanism known as Kemalists. At the time, the fight against the so-called “Deep State” characterized public agenda. The “Deep State” was initiated largely as a journalistic term, depicting a mafia-like organization within the state, which sought to overthrow the government. Considering the fact that Turkey has a long history of coup d’états, one, of course, can understand and support Erdogan’s move against the anti-democratic military as a legitimate act.

However, the Erdogan government’s crack down on military conspiracy transformed into a witch-hunt, and included many writers and academicians, and eventually largely lost its credibility. Most importantly, public discussions about the “Deep State” effectively neutralized fundamental questions about state power and its consequent paternalistic role in the Turkish society. In other words, the discourse about the “Deep State” was a strategic move promoting to the public the idea that there were two separate Turkish states, one being bad and represented by old regime, and the other being democratic, egalitarian and transparent, represented by Islamists.

The “Deep State” jargon played really well for Islamists as a quasi-theoretical journalistic framework, as they wanted to get rid of any opposition and access all tools and functions of violent state power. From the beginning, the democratization process was not conceived as a legitimate goal but only as an isolated stage where Erdogan government could take control of the state apparatus. The nature of state power did not change. It just changed hands. During this time, poverty and inequality widened. Human rights violations persisted. Freedom of expression suffered, and women’s participation in the public sphere dropped.

Today, thousands of intellectuals, students and activists are in prison, and the majority of them are Kurds, characterizing a poor human rights record. There is tight government control over the media, judicial system and all the other ostensibly independent government institutions. Moreover, as I mentioned in my previous post, over the years, as he increased his popular votes, Erdogan became increasingly authoritarian with low tolerance for his critics. In many instances, he gave orders to independent attorneys and judges, and called on media bosses to fire their columnists. He also blocked criminal investigations of state crimes. As a result, checks and balances do not exist.

During the last ten years, there has been a lack of a salient opposition, in part because of the old binary modes of thinking, but mostly because of Erdogan’s control over the Turkish media and their so-called liberal writers whose primary job has been to constantly attack the left. In this regard, one should understand the Occupy Gezi movement as the rejection of current politico-organizational models and parties, as none of them truly represent the vibrancy and diversity of the youth on the streets at the moment.

During the Occupy Gezi protests, independents commonly stand side-by-side with the nationalists, anticapitalist-Islamists, gays and lesbians, Kurds and people from across the political spectrum. Gezi Park was a site where the possibility of co-existence was proven as a viable model for Turkish society. The common demands for freedom of expression and civil liberties, as well as frustration with the Erdogan government’s authoritarianism, united the people of Turkey. Protesters raised their voices against neoliberal transformation, and reclaimed their commons.

One thing is clear now. Over the course of three weeks, Erdogan proved that he is far from acknowledging what is happening in Turkey, and what the demands are. He is, in fact, delusional and often ill informed about the Turkish society’s demands. Instead of an open dialogue, he chose to repress the revolt, polarize the country, relying on the old binary opposition game that he use to play with the republican secularists. This is perhaps his biggest mistake to date; he does not understand the diversity of protesters and their demands.

There have been clear messages from the streets. Protesters do not want aggressive politics based on nationalist identities, religion or gender. They are ready to form coalitions, talk to each other, and most importantly, they are ready to share their stage with other opposing views. Occupy Gezi was a festival, an inclusive democratic event where participation brought life to a new form of democracy. It was a truly an agonistic public sphere organized from the ground up. If we are smart enough, there were many valuable lessons for the progressive left and the social democrats. It is a hopeful moment. From Istanbul to New York, from Athens to Brazil, crowds are gathering for similar demands, to reclaim their commons, for freedom and for democracy. No matter what the immediate outcome is, a new form of solidarity has been born.

Hakan Topal wrote this piece before the recent protests and repression in Turkey. It provides a perspective for understanding those events, as it highlights the tragedy of Syria and how Turkish policy is implicated. -Jeff

At the end of May, the Syrian civil war consumed more than 94,000 civilians and destroyed the country’s civic and cultural heritage. In addition, the civil war crystallized regional fault lines along the sectarian lines; on the one side Sunni Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey, on the other side Shiite Iran, Iraq and Hezbollah (Lebanon) represent ever-increasing nationalistic conflicts.

While Assad’s army commits war crimes, kills thousands of civilians, and unleashes its terror on its population, factions within the Free Syrian Army utilize comparable tactics to bring Assad’s supporters to submission. This is a war with plenty of religious morality but without ethics. In a recent video circulated on YouTube, a Free Syrian Army guerilla cuts the chest of a dead Syrian soldier and eats it in front of the camera. How can we make sense of this absolute brutality?

Islamists who have no interest in democratic transformation hijacked the Syrian revolution. Any salient voices for the possibility of a diplomatic solution are silenced, effectively forcing the country into a never-ending sectarian war. Can the total destruction of the social and cultural infrastructure be for the sake any political agenda or social imagination? What will happen when the regime falls? Is there a future for Syrians?

And tragically, the civil war cannot be simply contained within Syria. It is quickly expanding beyond its borders, scratching local religious, sectarian and political sensitivities, especially in Turkey and Lebanon. A recent bombing in Reyhanli—a small town at the Turkish-Syrian border with largely Arab Alevi minority population—killed 54 people and subsequently, the Turkish government quickly covered up the incident and accused a left wing fraction having close ties with Assad regime of mounting the attacks. It was a premature and doubtful conclusion. Leftist guerillas have no history of attacking civilian targets in city centers. A couple of weeks after the attacks, the Turkish hacker group Redhack uncovered some early intelligence reports that identified the possible attackers, linking them to the Al Nusra Front—an Al Qaida association operating freely in Syria—supported from Turkish bases. The government was silent about these intelligence documents.

Criminal investigation is continuing. However, no matter who executed the Reyhanli terror attacks, be it Assad sympathizers in Turkey, the Assad regime, or the Al Nusra Front, the objective is to pull Turkey into the circle of war by provoking local sectarian divisions. In fact, Turkey’s ethnic, cultural and political fabric is extremely sensitive to Syrian civil war. Nevertheless, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan lacks any governmental responsibility or wisdom; instead of carefully navigating the Syrian crisis, he gambles with the Islamists on the faith of Assad’s regime and pushes Turkey to its very limits both financially and culturally. After the Reyhanli attacks, the Turkish public became aware of the fact that Turkish foreign policy lacks any salient political calculation. There is no exit strategy. At this moment, Turkish minorities are on high alert, feeling the increasing religious and nationalistic oppression and day-to-day discrimination. Today, in a ground-breaking ceremony, Erdogan named the third Bosporus bridge as Yavuz Sultan Selim, the Ottoman king who persecuted Anatolian Alevis in the end of 15^th and beginning of the 16^th centuries.

Since the Islamists took control of the government over a decade ago, neo-Ottomanist imperialist ambitions have fueled Turkish foreign policy. Erdogan and his team imagined a Middle East where Turkey plays a big brother role, leading regional economic transformation into a big functioning market. The transformation in the region after the second Iraq war was considered a historic opportunity for Turkish neoliberal-Islamists. Total disbelief of western democratic models wrapped-up with Arab Occidentalism created a fertile ground for Turkey’s increasingly colonialist hunger, that accesses huge young Arab markets, reaching oil fields and extending political influence. These imperial ambitions at first presented themselves via so-called “soft power” moves; Erdogan established very close connections with the regions’ notorious dictators and leaders. For instance, he frequently visited Assad and his family, and called him a close friend. He had no trouble receiving the Al-Gaddafi International Prize for Human Rights in Libya for his “distinguished service to humanity”—no, this is not a joke. He supported Sudan’s Omar al-Bashir, a war criminal whose supporters committed genocide in Darfur.

When it comes to Arab Springs, Erdogan and his team were caught unprepared. He scrambled his policies to adjust to the reality on the ground. These days, when it comes to Syria, Erdogan speaks about democracy and human rights, he (rightly so) asks Assad to step down and stop committing war crimes. However, how can we trust an Islamist who has been a keen supporter of war criminals?

A year ago, with direct knowledge of the government, Turkish military planes bombed and killed 34 Kurdish (Turkish) citizens from Roboski village, who were simply smuggling gas and cigarettes. It has been over 500 days since the incident and the Turkish government blocked any attempts for a criminal investigation. Currently, there are thousands of students, academics and journalists in Turkish prisons. In fact, Turkey has one of the worst human rights records within the developed world. Every time the opposition presses Erdogan’s government for justice, he effectively changes the public agenda by bringing forward issues such abortion or alcohol ban to further divide society, playing to his Islamist base. With his notorious temper, street charisma and machismo, he may be a popular figure on Arab street, but with his divisive right-wing agenda, he is far from a democratic leader who can promote peace or democracy in the region. While the Arab youth thinks highly of him, they forgot the fact that what they need is not another powerful patrimonial figure to replace their unfortunate dictators. When democracy is served only as an option for minorities, it presents itself as the dictatorship of the majority. This is now playing out in the streets of Turkey, which I will explore in my next post.

Sadly, if we can identify a common tread among societies in the Middle East, it’s the chronic hypocrisy inflicted by all governments, public recklessness and immunity. It is not Islam per se, but years of Middle Eastern-style patrimonial government that paralyzed societies. Not to mention that internal and foreign policy lacks any long-term strategic thinking. The possibility of dialogue and careful diplomacy is replaced with bullying; politics is understood as a pure power game where those in power have the right to absolute appropriation of commons, suffocating minorities and opposition.

Syria has become a sad corner of the world where there are no good fronts any more. Evil has consumed the territory. Cities are in ruin. Turkish support for Islamists in Syria created more bloodshed rather than providing a swift solution. While Turkey also pays a price for the long lasting civil war in Syria, Turkish foreign policy is sidelined in any decision-making process. The U.S. and EU do not want to step into to the hell— fearing that a western intervention would have larger consequences. In the mean time, as the war is escalating, it is pulling Turkey and Lebanon, two of neighboring countries, into regional abyss. Erdogan’s government will be remembered as one of the losers.

The really sad thing about Syria, whoever wins this war, is that they won’t have a country to celebrate.

Unlike recent posts that have analyzed media performances, today I want to present some direct political criticism. Rather than “perform” our distinguished art of analysis, as we have recently been doing on this blog, I want to underscore the notion that powerful media set our agenda and our performing analyses are determined by what is given to us by media as bones to chew, often with quite negative results. Nothing original, but the topic and the circumstances are.

There is a fundamental difference between the way news is produced and read in the United States and Europe. Here, we have one or two authoritative print sources. Thus, much of the reflection presented at Deliberately Considered draws on reports from The New York Times. This is in sharp contrast to European practice. I miss my daily reading of at least two or three newspapers to tap into contrasting opinions or sources of information. The near monopoly in America is troublesome. Perhaps I exaggerate, but I worry that there can develop an unquestioned prevailing commonsense, with the media reiterating the obvious, instead of challenging dominant points of view and generating new areas of debate.

This struck me in the reports and commentary concerning the Hamas-Fatah reconciliation deal, announced two weeks ago. All of what has been written in the Times columns since the surprise reconciliation announcement in Cairo has re-hashed the usual storyline: Hamas is not a peace partner. Israel has good reason to feel threatened by a national unity government, and Congress should use aid as a threat to push moderates not to accept a deal with the Islamists. This Monday, an editorial summed up the argument.

The only good thing in this editorial was its subtitle, “Continued stalemate with Israel will only strengthen extremists,” but, ironically, this disappeared in the online version. Indeed, the remainder of the piece is just a series of peremptory remarks (“we have many concerns,” “the answer, to us, is clear…”) and hollow statements. Yet, intriguingly, the top ten most recommended replies to the online version were all critical of Israel, showing how people can resist the newspaper’s views.

Nonetheless, I am deeply concerned: first, because this commentary illustrates how the media tend to have short memories when it comes to the Middle East. It is strikingly odd to say, “Fatah was committed to peace” when, at the peak of the second intifada or twenty years ago, Fatah was as much the enemy of peace (Arafat the arch-terrorist) as Hamas. As striking is the apparent obliviousness to the fact that Israel actively favored the emergence of Hamas back in the 1970s and 1980s in order to undermine the influence of the P.L.O.

Second, the usual argument about pre-conditions to return to negotiation is seriously flawed. Hamas, it is well known, should recognize the Quartet’s three principles announced in January 2006, namely renouncement of violence, accepting previous agreements and recognition of Israel. But, as other experts have underlined in a report analyzing the problematic western policies vis a vis Hamas:

“With the exception of the conditionality on violence, these political conditions are legally dubious, a fact whose seriousness is magnified by the participation of the U.N., in the Quartet. The conditionality on Israel’s recognition has no legal grounding in so far as only states (and at most the PLO as the internationally recognized representative of the Palestinian people, of which Hamas is not yet part), and not political parties, can recognize other states. Furthermore, as Palestinians promptly note, the peace process between Israel and other Arab states has never been made conditional upon the Arab world’s recognition of Israel or its right to exist.” (Report by Nathalie Tocci What Went Wrong? The Impact of Western Policies towards Hamas and Hizbollah. CEPS Policy Brief No. 135, 16 July 2007).

Third, the western chancelleries’ idée fixe that current West Bank Prime Minister Salam Fayaad must remain in this position in a national unity government is also an insult to most of the Palestinians. Remember, his party won only 2.4% of the national votes in the last legislative election in 2006, so there are legitimate reasons for many Palestinians to ask for a change.

Fourth, the aid argument is used again in this Times editorial, as elsewhere in Yemen, or earlier in Egypt, in relation to negative conditionality (“If you don’t do this, we will cut our aid.”). It is sad to see aid, in this dominant line of reasoning, being used as a stick, rather than as a carrot promoting actors towards pluralism, effective cross-partisan collaboration or much-needed reforms in the field of education or justice.

Finally, there has been little critical reflection as to why the transition government in Egypt, busy with so many important changes at home, would focus such effort on the moribund reconciliation process that failed under Hosni Mubarak and Omar Suleiman since 2007. Why did Egypt recently declare its willingness to keep Rafah’s crossing continuously open, and even worse (ultimate crise de lèse-majesté) to state that it would welcome the recognition of a Palestinian State in September by the General UN Assembly (the body that voted for the creation of Israel back in 1948)? Maybe one should reflect on these questions and realize that the past stalemate around Gaza was simply not viable. One way for the current government in Egypt to ease the pressure exerted by its population and the Islamists was to take effective measures to bring the Gaza situation closer to normalcy. What Egypt has been doing in the last weeks in relation to the Palestinian issue is sound politics, and the fact that Turkey has also supported these changes gives more regional credibility to this initiative.

Yes, continued stalemates will only strengthen extremists.