One of the more notable additions to the new Turkish cabinet, whose members were announced today, is Erdogan Bayraktar, head of the newly-created Ministry of the Environment and Urban Planning. An argument could be made for making one ministry in charge of both protecting the environment and developing the cities (rapidly growing, in Turkey's case) that are threatening it, but the appointment of Bayraktar is certain to raise red flags. A first-time MP, Bayraktar was most recently head of TOKI, Turkey's powerful state housing agency, which has been one of the main forces behind Turkey's much-criticized "urban renewal" projects, which have led to entire communities being displaced and vast swathes of undeveloped land turned into cookie-cutter high-rise neighborhoods. In terms of both environmental protection and urban planning, TOKI's record is not great. Several Eurasianet articles about the agency and its actions can be found here.
The European Council on Foreign Relations recently released an interesting study called "What Does Turkey Think?", which consists of several essays by prominent Turkish analysts who take a look at key keys issues facing Turkey foreign and domestic policy. The whole study is worth reading, but I found an article written by Osman Baydemir, the Kurdish mayor of Diyarbakir, particularly interesting -- especially in light of recent events.
Baydemir is a member of the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party, which was able to get 36 of its members into parliament following Turkey's recent elections. The party, though, is refusing to take parliament's membership oath because several of its MP's are currently in jail awaiting trial on terror-related charges and the courts are refusing to release them.
Although Baydemir's article came out before the election, it sheds light on how the BDP looks at Turkish politics and what animates its own politics. From his piece:
For those who are not in power, there is little democracy. There is no legal protection for workers whose factories are closed down, for women who are murdered by their husbands, and for children given 100-year jail sentences for throwing stones at armed policemen, or for regions in which the natural environment has been destroyed. The most significant cause of insecurity is the fact that, from the day it was founded, the republic has been informed by a belief that “the people do not know what is best for them, but we do”. This has shaped efforts to modernise and then democratise society from the top down, using radical methods to realise an exclusionist enlightenment mission.
As expected, the members of the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) boycotted today's swearing-in ceremony of the new Turkish parliament to protest the exclusion of six of the party's members who are either in jail or had their eligibility to enter office stripped.
Now it seems the party might be upping the stakes in their standoff with the state and creating a kind of "shadow parliament" in the Kurdish stronghold of Diyarbakir, in southeast Turkey. From the pro-Kurdish Firat News Agency:
Labor, Democracy and Freedom Block has announced that they will continue to boycott the parliament and hold the group meetings each week in Diyarbakir until the problem of six detained deputies is resolved.
Making a statement to the press on behalf of block deputies after the meeting at Diyarbakır Cigerxwin Youth Cultural Center, Siirt MP and former BDP Co-Chair Gültan Kışanak has repeated the Labor, Democracy and Freedom Block's decision to boycott the parliament.
Kışanak, remarking that they are aware of their duties and responsibilities, criticized that the political power doesn't take any concrete steps towards a solution.
Kışanak underlined that the YSK's decision to strip off Dicle of his legal mandate and not to release five deputies who are detained under the "KCK case" is a political coup against the solution opportunities, noting that they will continue their struggle in an active way until a solution is found to the current problems.
Turkey's newly elected parliament is set to be sworn in tomorrow, but there is the distinct possibility that a large chunk of the new MP's will either boycott the event or show up and not swear in.
From Today's Zaman:
The main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP), which is reported to be planning not to attend the parliamentary oath-taking ceremony on Tuesday in protest of a court decision to bar two of its deputies from Parliament, will reveal its decision on the issue half an hour before the oath-taking ceremony, a CHP official said on Monday.
CHP İstanbul deputy İsa Gök said CHP leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu will call a press conference on 2:30 p.m. on Tuesday and announce the party's decision whether to attend the parliamentary oath-taking ceremony or not.
News reports claimed on Monday that CHP deputies will not take their parliamentary oath unless a concrete step is taken by Parliament in order to pave the way for its two jailed deputies to hold office. CHP İstanbul deputy Oktay Ekşi is expected to be the only CHP deputy to take his oath as he will preside over the session as the oldest member of Parliament.
The Centre for Economics and Foreign Policy Studies (EDAM), a Turkish think tank, has just released a very interesting paper that looks at the benefits and costs of Turkey's ambitious economic goals, which aim to have the country among the world's top ten by 2023, and places them in a global context. The paper, written by Prof. Jean-Pierre Lehmann, takes a close look at the potential social costs of the kind of growth Turkey would need to reach its goals. From his paper:
Turkey is a middle-income country. Still, with 8.2% of the population living on less than $2 a day and 27% below the national poverty line, clearly Turks stand to benefit considerably from growth – so long of course as the fruits of growth are shared with the poor.
And that is one of the many nubs of growth. The process of growth has its downsides and the outcomes are by no means obviously equitable.
On an occasion of visiting a chip factory in Korea in the mid-1980s, I was told that the young female workers (aged 16 to 19) worked 14 hours a day, 28 days a month. This comes to roughly 98 hours a week – considerably more than the working hours in Turkey which range, I am told, from 49 to 59 per week.
The point is this: no country has succeeded in achieving growth without exploiting its workforce and polluting the atmosphere. In many cases, there has also been widespread destruction of nature. Japan’s high economic growth during the “miracle years” resulted in possibly the worse case ever of mercury poisoning, causing what became known as the Minamata disease; while the pristine beauty of the Inland Sea (among other sites I was fortunate to visit before the “miracle”), which had served as a source of inspiration for generations of Japanese poets, was forever destroyed for future generations by the installation of petro-chemical plants.
Does Turkey's rapid urbanization play a role in the continuing electoral success of Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP)? Veteran Turkey analyst Andrew Finkel thinks so. From a new piece of his:
At 12 June’s general election, Turkey’s governing Justice and Development party (AKP) pulled off a rare political hat trick, securing a third consecutive parliamentary majority and doing so with an ever-increasing share of the popular vote. The result is a clear endorsement of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, whose style and personality continues to dominate Turkish politics. It is also his answer to a growing chorus of critics at home but also abroad who accuse him of having abandoned his party’s EU-oriented reform agenda in favour of an increasingly centralised and autocratic style of rule. The AKP is now the party of the new urban middle class. The party is literally building its own constituency, a process in which the opposition finds it hard to engage.
You can find the full analysis here. And for more background on Turkey's powerful housing authority (TOKI), which has been playing a rapidly increasing role in the country's urbanization, take a look at this previous Eurasianet piece.
The Hurriyet Daily News has a report about the reopening of a long-closed Armenian church in the city of Diyarbakir, in southeastern Turkey. From the article:
Hearkening back to Diyarbakır’s cosmopolitan past, diaspora Armenians and clergy held a small service in a local church Saturday in what many hope is a harbinger for a more multicultural future in the southeastern city.
“The sounds of the call to prayer and church bells will mix here on this land from now on,” Diyarbakır Mayor Osman Baydemir said following the service at the restored Surp Giragos Church. “There were major sorrows experienced in the past. We [condemn] the heartlessness of those days in our hearts and we want a new start.”
The reopening of the Diyarbakir church comes in the wake of the higher profile service last September at the Akdemar Church near the city of Van (see this previous Eurasianet story and photo essay). While the reconciliation process between Turkey and Armenia remains seriously stalled, it appears that a more grassroots kind of reconciliation process is happening in eastern Anatolia, with local administration trying to come to terms with the past.
Say what you want about his politics, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is one brave man.On Tuesday, after his bus convoy was attacked by rock-throwing protestors in the Black Sea town of Hopa, he continued on to even more hostile territory: the historic city of Trabzon. The issue in Trabzon was not so much politics, but something even more divisive (in Turkish terms, at least): football (aka, soccer).
Erdogan is a well-known fan of Istanbul's Fenerbahce team, which became this year's Turkish premier league champ after just narrowly beating Trabzon's Trabzonspor for the title. Turks take their football and their teams with deadly seriousness and Trabzonspor team officials and fans are crying foul over Fenerbahce's victory, claiming it was rigged and implying there was even prime ministerial support for it. From the Hurriyet Daily News:
Many Trabzonspor fans have pointed to a meeting between Fener supporter and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Fenerbahçe chairman Aziz Yıldırım and captain Alex de Souza with only weeks left to go in the season as evidence of a fix. Furthermore, the revelation that some Fenerbahçe players sent text messages to their Ankaragücü counterparts before a match in mid-May, demanding that they “not cause trouble for them in a match being played with only a week left until the end of the league” has deepened the anger in the city. Fener won that match 6-0, driving them closer to the title.
Erdoğan came to the city Tuesday for an election rally, but was by met hundreds of Trabzonspor fans clad in maroon and blue – the team’s colors – who protested him and his government while accusing him of stealing the team’s long-awaited championship. One placard visible said, “We do not want a Fenerbahçe supporter as prime minister.”
As previously reported on this blog, new Turkish regulations that would strengthen the government's ability to filter the internet have caused a lot of friction in the country and even led to wide-scale protests.
The regulations, which are supposed to go into effect later this summer, have recently been defended by Turkey's Deputy Prime Minister, Bulent Arinc, who said the filtering is designed to keep internet users from accessing pornographic and violent material, as well as sites that might be terror-related. Today, Arinc again defended the filtering program, saying among the sites to be weeded out by the state's filters are some that show you "how to kill your wife."
The regulations -- which would require each internet subscriber in Turkey to sign up for one of four filtering programs -- have recently also led to a war of words between Arinc and Umit Boyner, the head of Turkey's largest association of businessmen and industrialists, with the Deputy PM accusing her of wanting to "liberalize" porn because of her criticism of the filtering plan. More details here.
Strict new regulations introduced by the Turkish government had put many of the country's drinkers in a funk. Among the new regulations were ones that tightly controlled who could buy alcohol at festivals and other large events and also made it more difficult for catering companies to serve alcohol at events.
But some of those regulations have now been suspended by a Turkish court. More from the Hurriyet Daily News:
The ruling party tabled one of the most disputed articles in the law, one which had banned alcohol sales at events and activities “for children and young people,” dealing a blow to festival and concert organizers and attendees.
The regulation had come under particular fire for defining “young people” as those up to 24 years of age, a provision the court said contradicted existing laws that set 18 as the minimum legal age for buying and consuming alcohol.
The Council of State made its decision as it continued to examine a petition by the Ankara Bar Association seeking the annulment of the entire bill. It also suspended a second provision of the law that had prohibited shops from selling liquor in small bottles, which regulators argued made alcohol easier to access for young people.
The regulation was passed in January by the ruling Justice and Development Party, or AKP, with the aim of protecting young people from alcoholism. Its adoption triggered protests saying that the party was targeting liberal lifestyles.
