Globalization: Enemy #1
As bits and pieces of the indictment of the AKP submitted by the Chief Prosecutor of the Supreme Court of Appeals are translated, other insights emerge from the sometimes strikingly revealing language. Ihsan Dagi, a professor and political commentator, called attention to the anti-Western language in the indictment and argues that there is more at stake than closing the AKP. The Ergenekon provocations and the indictment of the ruling AKP are meant to serve to discredit Turkey in the eyes of the EU, cut ties to the global market, and isolate Turkey from the EU and the West.
Dagi points out that on p.117 of the indictment, the AKP is described as an “ally of the central powers of globalization.” Dagi: The underlining fact in the closure case and the Ergenekon organization is their anti-Western attitude. They are aware of the fact that Turkey’s integration with the West leads to a fundamental reshuffle in Turkish politics that eliminates the central role of the bureaucratic-Kemalist elite…. The strategy is clear: First disconnect Turkey from the EU and its democratizing dynamics, then finish off domestic actors and process that are in favor of reform.
Click here for Dagi’s complete essay
The distrust of globalization is an interesting component of this political and social battle. Even though AKP can be criticized for its creeping conservatism, it has opened Turkey’s economy and society to outside influences far more than ever before. One would think this would be welcomed by Kemalist secularist urban elites whose lifestyle and tastes are Western.
What, then, is the problem? Perhaps the problem is the counter-intuitive influx of liberal laws and ideas, also from the West, that allow ideas, beliefs, and their associated lifestyles to flourish that Kemalists had thought to leave in the trash heap of history — religiosity and its open practice; ethnic and religious diversity; freedom to say things others might not want to hear.
These days Westernization cannot be done piecemeal — accepting only one brand of lifestyle and only some Western ideas — because globalization means that once the doors to the West are open, all of it, good and bad, from freedom of speech to MacDonald’s, comes flooding through.
I quote from the piece you’ve quoted:
These days Westernization cannot be done piecemeal — accepting only one brand of lifestyle and only some Western ideas — because globalization means that once the doors to the West are open, all of it, good and bad, from freedom of speech to MacDonald’s, comes flooding through.
Except that this is not what we see. ‘Liberal laws’ trickle in only when forced by the EU and the mindset behind them is mainly talked about but not manifested in actions.
I’ll give you a few quick examples. We have a PM who openly complains about not being able to get the verdicts he wishes against journalists. We ended up with a very restrictive internet law that passed through the parliament with nary a peep from the know-it-all liberal quarters. To top it off, not only is the expression of ethnic and religious diversity no more protected than it used to be, there are strong indications that the power of plurality will be trumping pluralism in areas where no such problem existed previously (eg your last blog entry about the place that shall remain nameless, that you have erased.).
Getting a multi-billion dollar company to hand out franchises in a country is far far different than importing a kind of popular mindset whereby the government is both restrained from ifringing upon and is forced to actively protect people’s liberties. I’m no social scientist, but picturing both of those things coming in through the same supposedly open door seems false. You could, by the same token, argue that the legal presence and the protection of the property rights of the United Fruit Company and Coca Cola was evidence of the spread of civil liberties in Guatemala.
This ‘Kemalist secularist elite’ rhetoric is obscuring the reasons behind the legitimate worries of the semi-secularized class who’d thrive both socially and materially under a truly open, free and globally-integrated market economy. You do not measure progress in this vein by looking at the presence of huge companies and how the members of observant religious plurality are expressing themselves (en masse with the same fashion, BTW) but by looking at the openly atheist folks, weird and wonderful marginal groups, and small businesses run by staunch individualists that thrive w/o aid of or interference from the government. That climate, I’d argue, cannot be imported because it is a matter of culture and a certain attitude towards government. That said, I’d also agrue that the flourishing of the coltural mindset behind this supposed liberal heaven can very easily prevented by a government whose PM speaks in despicable code like “we didn’t import science from the west but their immorality” or one that completely warps the playing field of entrepreneurs by keeping the climate where gov’t contracts, permist and licences are the main way to wealth.
If our liberal-minded civil servants with academic jobs wish to opine on such issues, they could do far better than attempting to feed us empty platitudes about free markets that they lack the life experience to judge, and freedoms the lack of which they are mostly shielded from. When a vocal professor draws the ire of the Kemalists, he keeps his job and can take off to the West on leave. When a known atheist site is repeatedly shut down[1], in part, becuse the owners are too scared to appear in court and disclose their identities, that they can buy ‘globalization fries’ at the local McD’s is small consolation.
[1] I’m not assciated with them (I’m too pious!), but I have exchanged comments with one of the owners on Turkish blogs. That’s how I know about the repeated closures. Here are the details with some gratuitous Muslim-bashing thrown in: http://www.opednews.com/articles/1/genera_kelly_o__080115_muslims_suppressing_.htm