To His Excellency Abdullah Gül

President of the Republic of Turkey

T.C. Cumhurbaşkanlığı Genel Sekreterliği

06689 Çankaya

Ankara, Turkey

July 1, 2013

Your Excellency,

We write to you to express our grave concern regarding the developments in Turkey in connection with the popular protests that began with the protection of trees in Gezi Park in Taksim. As a result of unexpectedly harsh police repression, these protests soon grew to encompass widespread grievances about government intrusion into different forms and values of life and to express the democratic demands of the masses. These demands include greater transparency and popular participation in processes of decision-making about urban restructuring plans and reforms, better accountability of political leaders and bureaucrats, the protection of fundamental rights, and the speedy and effective public prosecution of members of the security forces, whose use of excessive and targeted force on peaceful protestors has scandalized the global public.

As current faculty of the New School for Social Research, which was founded as a home for scholars who became refugees of Nazi rule in Europe and who were known to the world as the “University in Exile,” we are proud to maintain a sincere and ongoing commitment to fostering democracy around the world, the freedom of speech and protest, and the free exchange of ideas. We see this commitment as the constituent element of our history and identity as a research institution that cultivates the highest standards of scholarship as well as the ethos of public engagement and active citizenship.

In this light, we are deeply concerned about the news from Turkey regarding the violent suppression of protestors, the arbitrary detention of individuals on grounds such as participation in peaceful demonstrations, use of social media, provision of volunteer medical care to the wounded protestors, or exercise of legal representation or counsel, and the preemptive labeling of peaceful protestors as “terrorists” by members of the government. We consider the wave of arbitrary detentions, some of which remain incommunicado, as a serious violation of the constitutional right of citizens in a democratic country to express their grievances and opinions in a peaceful way. The real test of a democracy is not only how it builds consensus among a plurality of values, different opinions, and interests, but also, and more importantly, how it treats dissent.

As faculty of the New School, we condemn police brutality and ask that those responsible for giving the orders as well as those executing the orders for the use of excessive force be immediately brought to justice. We denounce in the strongest possible terms the making of threats and intimidations toward individuals who exercise or plan to exercise their right of civil disobedience and toward those who shelter protestors from pressured water, tear gas, and rubber bullets. We ask for an immediate end to the detention of individuals who have done nothing other than participate in peaceful demonstrations. We call upon the government to cease its polarizing and demonizing rhetoric and its resort to measures reminiscent of a “state of emergency” in which citizens are treated like enemies. We encourage the adoption of a conciliatory public discourse as well as the active promotion of measures that enhance democracy, both through the decrease of the 10 per cent national electoral threshold and the creation of new, local channels for direct participation.

We express our deepest condolences for the four citizens of Turkey who have lost their lives in the recent events and our sympathies for those who have lost their eyes, suffer broken limbs, and endure other serious injuries. We are saddened by the thousands of people who have reported human rights abuses and physical injuries, and we are worried about those who face legal persecution on the seriously dubitable charges of terrorism and organized crime. We trust that Turkey will emerge a better and more democratic country from this experience but see that such an outcome will be possible only if the current situation is considered to be an opportunity to affirm fundamental rights and liberties, the legitimacy of peaceful disagreement and organized dissent, and the illegitimacy of the deployment of arbitrary violence, detention, and intimidation tactics by the state upon its own people. We appeal to your office to support our call.

Best regards,

Faculty of the New School for Social Research

New York City, NY, USA

Signatures:

Elaine Abelson

Zed Adams

Andrew Arato

Cinzia Arruzza

Banu Bargu

Tarak Barkawi

Jay M. Bernstein

Richard J. Bernstein

Omri Boehm

Chiara Bottici

Christopher Christian

Alice Crary

Simon Critchley

Stefania deKenessey

Oz Frankel

Nancy Fraser

Jeffrey Goldfarb

Orit Halpern

Lawrence A. Hirschfeld

Bill Hirst

Andreas Kalyvas

Paul Kottman

Benjamin Lee

Arien Mack

Elzbieta Matynia

Inessa Medzhibovskaya

William Milberg

Joan Miller

Dmitri Nikulin

Julia Ott

Timothy Pachirat

Ross Poole

Christian R. Proaño

Hugh Raffles

Janet Roitman

Lisa Rubin

Willi Semmler

Anwar Shaikh

Ann-Louise Shapiro

Rachel Sherman

Ann L. Stoler

Jenifer Tally

Miriam Ticktin

Kumaraswamy Velupillai

Ken Wark

Eli Zaretsky

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.

The summer came late this year. So did the Turkish Spring. A week ago, few would have guessed that people from all walks of life would join this week’s protests in Turkey. After all, public protests are not a commonly accepted thing in Turkey. Especially in the post-1980 military coup era public, protests are mostly depicted both by politicians and by the mainstream media as works of “marginal groups.”

The protests that spread throughout all Turkey started at the Taksim Square in Istanbul. The AKP government planned to change the structure of Taksim Square, which involved the uprooting of trees in the Gezi Park in Taksim. The plan was to rebuild the demolished Topçu Barracks from the Ottoman Empire, adding a new shopping mall. Concerned with the diminishing sources of oxygen and gathering places in Istanbul, environmentalist protests started in the park. Another common concern was that public recreational areas as well as forests are demolished as a result of the arrangements between the government and groups within the business sector. The movement was commonly named “Occupy Gezi,” saluting its predecessors. The police harshly crushed the peaceful protesters. People were injured and killed as a result of compressed water, plastic bullets and tear gas attacks.

This news was not easy to follow. The mainstream media refused to give sufficient coverage of the state terror. News channels that would normally cover breaking events live only covered the protests briefly. The coverage was sterile and did not focus on the asymmetrical force used by the police. People have had to search for alternative news sources to reach reliable information. The social media, once more, turned into an invaluable source. People shared names of channels that covered the protests and the police reactions. Many people followed the news from Halk TV or channels streaming over the internet.

The protests spread to other cities, Ankara and Izmir being two of the most prominent ones. Even within the cities, protests have varied in their emphases. What is for sure is that this movement, like other occupy movements, does not have a hierarchical leadership or strong party identification. Nevertheless, Taksim creates an important focal point for the movement. A commonly heard slogan in today’s protests everywhere was “Her Yer Taksim, Her Yer Direnis (Everywhere is Taksim, Resistance is Everywhere)!.” I heard it being used in Kadikoy and Bostanci in Istanbul. Throughout Turkey, it was used as a slogan in Ankara, Izmir, Antalya, Bolu, Adana, Artvin to name a few. Protesters abroad used the slogan in Berlin, London, Madrid and beyond.

The movement also provided a momentum that had legal and political consequences. The head of the Constitutional Court, Haşim Kılıç has stated that state interference in the lifestyles of citizens is unacceptable. The Sixth Administration Court of Istanbul, in response to a motion from Taksim Gezi Park Preservation and Embellishment Association, suspended the Topçu Barracks Project.

The protests are about much more than the park. They reflect the anger over the years of repression and the hubris of the government. The variation in the locations of these protests demonstrate how broad the basis is. Social and political priorities of the groups vary but all are equally fed up with the growing authoritarianism of the regime. Teenagers were there, so were old people. The most economically prosperous neighborhoods in Istanbul showed their solidarity with the protesters in Taksim by gathering in the streets, building long car convoys, honking, banging pots and pans, opening and closing the lights in their apartments at night. Supporters of the fiercest rival soccer teams (Galatasaray, Fenerbahce, Besiktas) joined the protests, with their jerseys on and walking arm in arm with one another.

The way the government have responded to the protests shows the world that as a democracy, Turkey still has a long way to go. Perhaps the first step is to understand that the rights and duties of citizens in democracies are not limited to showing up once at the ballots every four years and then keeping silent until the next elections. People have things to say, about issues such as what they can consume in the public sphere, about the landscape they inhabit, and the constitution that governs them. If the government does not provide legal and institutional means for the citizens to make their voices heard, they will create their own platforms as the recent protests demonstrate.

Andrew Arato is an expert in constitutions, a pressing topic in Turkey right now.

I read the news about the Turkish referendum on constitutional reforms with great interest. Turkey is a bridge between East and West.  Europe meets Asia in modern booming Istanbul. It’s a place where the commitment to democracy and to an open Islam is the official policy of the governing Justice and Development Party.  It’s a place of great hope and promise, where instead of the clash of civilizations, there is dialogue and reinvention. But it is also a place where people committed to secularism worry about the prospects for their modern way of life.  I tried to follow the news reports about what happened, but they were unclear.  I understood that a sweeping package of constitutional reforms were approved, that the referendum purported to bring the Turkish constitution up to European standards, but also that the opposition was claiming that the package was a systematic power grab.  Is this a sign of democratic progress as the ruling party spokesman declared, or is it, as the opposition declared, a significant regression?  I called my friend and New School colleague, Andrew Arato, a distinguished expert on constitutions, who has been working with a group of young scholars on constitutional issues in Turkey.  He agreed to answer my questions. I opened by asking him whether the referendum results were good or bad news?

I think bad. The successful Turkish referendum of September 12 was ultimately about court packing. Not only is the manner of choosing judges for the Court now altered, but six new judges presumably friendly to the government will be added to the Court within 30 days.

This is a point missed by almost all Western commentary on the event. Court packing is always bad business. The way is now almost open for the AKP (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, the ruling Party with leaders who have an Islamist, but are committed to membership in the European Union) to remake the country’s secular constitution entirely on its own.

I understand that it is never a good idea to have a political party, let alone a political leader, even one that we passionately support, to have the power to remake a constitution at will. FDR was one of the greatest Presidents in our history, but when he was having a hard time getting his New Deal reforms through the court and tried to pack it with his supporters, it was in retrospect a good thing that the American public and their representatives turned on him.  So the general concern I get.  But do you have particular reasons to be concerned?

It was indeed wrong for Roosevelt to try control judicial outcomes by Court packing.  But the meaning of this device is especially troublesome in potentially more authoritarian settings, for example, the introduction of formal apartheid in South Africa, and during Mrs. Gandhi’s emergency in India. In South Africa, the parliament was about to deprive the colored (mixed race) voters of their franchise, and the Appeals Court resisted. This was overcome by packing  both the court and the Senate. As to Mrs. Gandhi, at issue were both her so-called corrupt practices in an election, as well as the Court’s ability to defend rights against the easy amendment possibilities of the constitution. In the end the Court won, but only after a destructive emergency when the democracy was almost lost.  The packing of the court in Turkey is reminiscent of these two dangerous cases.

Further, it is not obvious that the Turkish electorate would have voted for this type of scheme had it been honestly presented. It was not. The Court packing and changing provisions were only two articles of a highly attractive twenty  six article package that the voters could approve or reject only as a whole. The people had to choose between all or nothing.  This tragically repeats the approach of the military dictator, General Evren, in 1982.  Then: vote for military’s constitution if you want one good thing (namely the end of the junta’s rule) or continue the military dictatorship.  Now: the population had to confirm an immense increase in the power of the ruling party if it wanted any of the many goodies in the package…

The AKP has operated as a moderate Islamic one (they say conservative) so far. But, there is no guarantee that it would continue to do so when it has the power to change the constitution of the country at their will.  The project to combine the secular traditions and institutions in Turkey with the religious commitments of the vast majority of the Turkish population is now apparently going to go unchecked by any political or social force other than the ruling party.

Why just apparently unchecked?

I qualify my judgment for three hopeful reasons. First, because even a packed Court may still act like a Court. The eternity clauses of Turkey’s present constitution concerning secularism and republicanism, plus the preamble involving the separation of powers (incorporated in an eternity clause) still gives the Constitutional Court a foothold to control constitution making, if it wishes to. While the apartheid regime did control its newly named  judges, Mrs. Gandhi in the end did not.

It’s possible that just as in the United States there is no guarantee that the appointed judges will act in the way their patrons want.  They may actually take their constitutional responsibilities seriously using their own judgment.

And there are the relevant European institutions, which until now seem to have been fooled by the package. But, once its real meaning becomes clear, I think they will not be fooled and the response could be devastating.

And further there is the matter of the Turkish electorate itself, it has means to respond and defend the constitutional order.

Nonetheless the key problem remains – the referendum permits Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and President Abdullah Gul of the ruling party to pack the court.  The editors of  The New York Times naively call on them to “not pack the court with political loyalists and religious extremists.” I fear that was the very point of the exercise.