The Bitter Pill Will Make Us Well
Excerpts from Kerim Balci’s more optimistic column (click here for full text):
Turkey is passing through a fateful crossroads in her history….The discussion in Ankara is painful, but it is also healthy. We will indeed lose some time; but hopefully we will gain a lot in the way of consolidation of democracy and separation of powers. This is an illness to be cured, and the medicine is bitter; but the complaint should be about the illness, not about the medicine…
It is also harmful for the image of Turkey. The Turkish economy is already highly dependent on the flow of foreign investments and low long-term interest loans. Turkish foreign policy is formulated with a West-bound (not bound by the West) orientation and the membership bid for the EU is the engine of not only the political and economic reforms in Turkey, but also its global strategic mobility. Image deterioration is detrimental for all these “indispensables.”
The Turks have this beautiful proverb: “The arm is broken, but it is kept within the sleeves.” I learned an even more radical one lately: “Don’t criticize me in front of the foreigners; take me to an isolated place and kill me there!” This is the Turkish sense of honor about their private issues and these private issues are being disclosed these days.
I am not arguing that Turkey shouldn’t have let the Europeans “intervene” in its domestic politics. That is, as I wrote recently, inescapable under the international agreements we signed with the EU. But the fact that both the AK Party lobbyists and their ulusalci [ultra-nationalist] antagonists are exposing Ankara’s political pandemonium is not helping Turkey at all. Not all foreign diplomats and politicians are able to understand that this is an internal crisis Turkey can and will pass through anyhow. That is the bitter medicine we needed to take to mature our democracy and extract from a merely electoral democracy a culture of democracy.
Hmm, interesting, this coming from a Zaman columnist: “The Constitutional Court […] also is filling a gap that needed to be filled.”
Also, the title of the article, “With Ankara in a mess, we need Turks abroad to do more “, is interesting, too. It reminded me of Buyukanit’s criticism directed towards Turkish-Americans regarding their not doing enough about Armenian genocide allegations.
And what should Turks abroad do? This: “The synthesis of a Muslim nation with a secular government is the image Turkey is trying to ‘market’ in the West and the East and that is the kind of lobbying Turkey expects from her sons and daughters abroad.” Is this (click) the marketing material Turks abroad are to work with?
From Radikal (tr) (click): FM Babacan complains: the US is couching CHP. He goes on to identify ‘the US’ as all professional militants of the world posing as analysts, and their offense as attacking in foreign media outlets Turkey, Turkish electorate and government. Who are these militants? Rubin, Pipes, et al? No. Apparently, it was Zeyno Baran who got under Babacan’s skin by suggesting that CHP’s (or ulusalci’s) antagonism towards the West is not about fundamentals, but an emotional reaction caused by a broken heart. Or something to that effect (excuse the imprecision). Baran, or the US, is thus nudging CHP (giving it tips and ideas) so as to enable this grand old party of Turkey’s redeem itself from domestic and international pariahdom. I think that the FM should chill, take Balci’s proverbial advice maybe… Also note that Balci was praising the same Zeyno Baran for doing the marketing he wanted Turks abroad to do.
It really is all very interesting. AKP must be feeling that they are losing their international support, and the bankers and lenders started looking into how their ousting can be smoothed out. (According to reports, there is not one AKP MP who doesn’t believe the Court will close the party down.)
Also, this is a side issue (maybe not), but those proverbs Balci likes so much can be said to have been major tools, if not the cornerstone, of isolationist nationalist thinking in Turkey. How does today’s ulusalci thinking differs from that? Beats me! Or, maybe, Baran is right, and theirs is not so much thinking, but an emotional reaction.
Anyway, enough rambling from me.
Correction: Please replace all references to FM Ali Babacan in my previous comment with AKP Deputy Chair Egemen Bagis.