Sunday, May 1, 2011

The Kids Are Alright?

 
 


By Murat Cem Mengüç

Last week in Turkey was marked by the celebrations of the Turkish National Sovereignty and Children’s Day (April 23), a combined holiday which celebrates the transfer of political sovereignty from the Ottoman Sultanate to the Turkish people and acknowledges the orphans of the nation’s martyrs. During the same week, political campaigns for the coming parliamentary elections took off as well. Fought with nasty retorts and personalized attacks, political campaigns are always more suitable for the gossip driven front pages of the Turkish media, and judging from the headlines of April 23, they surely stole the spot light. Trusted polls still indicate that AKP (Justice and Development Party) is due for its third landslide victory, but the scene is far more polarized than the previous elections. Also, the events surrounding the election campaigns suggest that the classic institutions of CHP (People’s Republican Party) and MHP (Nationalist Movement Party) no longer fight the Islamist conservative AKP by themselves. Opposition to AKP has become an intimidating block, and some polls suggest that MHP and CHP are the leading parties in the three major cities. Beneath them, a tacit coalition operates loosely and tries to destabilize AKP on a regular basis. TKP (Turkish Communist Party), SDP (Socialist Democratic Party) and BDP (Peace and Democracy Party) all joined in to create an environment in which they could carve a piece of the electorate at any cost.

A recent example of this tacit coalition was the general outcry arguing AKP was cracking down on journalists. Having become a meritocracy of its own, AKP is long accused of silencing is critics. This time the occasion arose with the banning, by the Turkish court, of an unpublished book. about Islamist leader Fetullah Gülen and his influence on Turkish politics. Gülen’s followers are dear to AKP, but it was not clear if AKP was involved at all. In the heavily charged Ergenekon trials, trying to explain the paramilitary activities of the Turkish State against its own citizens in the Kurdish East, the book became evidence because its author was arrested in connection to the trials. Rightfully so, the media and citizens united against the banning of a book yet to be published, and the common finger pointed at AKP, without a valid discussion of the reasons why the court may have benefited from keeping an unpublished document unpublished, suggesting that most of this criticism was reactionary.

A similar event was the protests staged by angry college students who believed a cheating formula for the state university entrance exams was circulated. This centralized exam is an archaic institution and determines the future of all students who wish to study at government universities. The cheating formula was never unearthed but TKP and SDP mobilized the youth, holding banners and chanting slogans that accused AKP for having masterminded a cheating formula to benefit its own meritocracy.

Later came the banning of 12 independent candidates from the approaching election lists, 7 of whom were Kurdish. This last incident caused widespread street protests in major cities; one person died, a number of post offices and banks were set on fire, and AKP headquarters and public busses were stoned. BDP and PKK sympathizers organized demonstrations, while banners and slogans argued this political ban was designed to benefit the AKP. However, there was no clear sign at all that AKP was involved.

The election campaigns began in this climate, and the leader of AKP and Prime Minister Recep Tayyib Erdoğan stated that he was ready to bring thousands of people to the streets to counter these nonsense protests against his electorate. In response, Devlet Bahçeli, the leader of the MHP, stated that he could confront Erdoğan’s people with his grey wolves (the mythological symbol of Turkish fascism, here referring to his youth groups). Erdoğan’s answer retorted that Bahçeli’s “dogs” would run for their lives when confronted by the will of people. Then, an eyewitness video in which the police officers from Sivas were shown chanting a fascist march on the streets and identifying themselves as the grey wolves was circulated widely. A bystander was seen making the grey wolf sign to celebrate their courage as well. The city of Sivas has been a hub of political confrontations between the religious conservatives, fascist nationalists and Kurdish fractions for many years.

Obviously, AKP has become more confident and feels cornered at the same time. The party is nervous and thinks that it is indispensable as well. It forgets that it is a tolerated, not fully supported institution. It is permitted to do politics as long as it doesn’t turn up the volume of its ideological discourse.[1] Of course, where the arguments are personal and the media is thirsty for sensation, this is a hard task. Thus, Zaman (the leading religious daily) argues that jamaat (religious community supporting the AKP) is being turned into a scapegoat for anything that goes wrong.

This year, Turkey celebrated the 90th anniversary of its national sovereignty as a country where the media loves sensation, the military is on trial in civil courts, the police officers chant fascist slogans, the Kurdish minority burns banks and post offices, and the mass graves of recent history are being excavated reluctantly. While a coalition against AKP jumps at any chance of being in the headlines and pointing its finger at a democratically elected government, they lack reflection. Obviously, one day, the AKP government will be ousted, most probably by a confused coalition. However, the ultimate victims of this ousting may be the Turkish democracy and the reactionary Turkish youth, herded into the streets by opportunist politicians. The last national holiday celebrated the Turkish children but generated little interest. The next national holiday is May 19 and is dedicated to the Turkish youth. Economic data, the unemployment rates, rising food and oil prices, constant news of revolution in the Middle East, and the escalating tone of Turkish politics suggests a perfect atmosphere in which this year's youth may become  next years tool for a collision. If the politicians are to drive them into the streets in ever growing numbers, the Turkish Military may become involved as well. Some politicians think that the military is too busy to do this, but they may be wrong. The Turkish military has its own agenda and is ready to seize the best opportunity to put an end to the Ergenekon trials, which ruined its reputation.


[1] Readers might like the following essay on this subject. Hakan Yavuz, “Is There a Turkish Islam? The Emergence of Convergence and Consensus” Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, Vol. 24, No. 2, October 2004.
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Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Important piece on Saudi Intervention in Bahrain

Cross-posted with "From the Field"
 
Caryle Murphy provides interesting detail on the March 16, 2011, intervention in Bahrain by Saudi Arabia.  There are a variety of notable elements in the piece:
  • King Abdullah and company have been riled by the U.S. embrace of reform in Egypt and in Bahrain. 
  • They signalled this in several ways, including refusing to receive Hillary Clinton and Bob Gates.
  • Hardliners in Bahrain have been intent to sabotage active reform efforts by the Bahraini crown prince, and the hardliners have willing collaborators in Saudi Arabia.
  • Once "requested",  the Saudis were glad to lead the charge into Bahrain and launch a wave of repression and thuggery against the majority population in Bahrain.
  • Reading between the lines, there is good reason to question how much freedom of action the Bahraini leaders truly enjoy.  The Saudi godfather is not easily ignored, especially given the financial dependence of Bahrain on the KSA.
  • Notable for it absence from Murphy's account is any mention of a significant role by Iran, which has the poppycock peddled by King Hamad in recent weeks.
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Thursday, March 31, 2011

The Reverse Orientalism of the Turkish Left


by Murat Cem Mengüç

During a recent workshop entitled “Violence in Ottoman Anatolia” at New York University, Christine Philliou summed up the emergence of the Turkish Republic and its leading architect Mustafa Kemal Atatürk with an allusion to Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan. She rightfully suggested that Atatürk resembled Hobbes’ Leviathan, who was in search of bringing order to a chaotic environment. The richness of this allusion is obvious to all of us who are familiar with the history of late Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic. Hobbes’ prominence in European Enlightenment literature and his usefulness for the intellectual construction of Western imperialism make it an even more captivating metaphor.

As we all know, Hobbes’ description of the human political realm as a chaotic environment sprang from not just his belief that human beings were evil by nature, but also from the fact that he was writing during the English Civil War (1642-1651). Similar ideas and similar epochs of history furnished many other intellectuals to cut clean slates for their favorite authoritarian rulers. But, in the Turkish case, depicting the early Turkish Republican regime and particularly Atatürk as legitimate leviathans of their people also helps generate, what I will call for the lack of a better term, a reverse orientalism. This reverse orientalism, especially, helps official Turkish historiography to depict Atatürk and his people as the subjects of a chaotic environment, which resulted from the evil nature of other people and argues that they were rightfully fighting to create a zone of order, stability and self-expression. Most primary and secondary schoolbooks in Turkey to date narrate the Turkish Independence War (1919-1923) accordingly.

The most convenient aspect of this reverse Orientalist narrative is the fact that it transforms the Ottoman Turks into subjects of Western imperialism, making them a part of the so-called Third World, which lost its sovereignty and had to fight for its freedom from the yoke of Western Imperialism. In doing so, the Ottoman Turkish genocide of the Armenians, as well as the prosecution of other civilian masses like Kurds, Greeks and Arabs, become either fabrications of Western imperialism, or isolated episodes of an Hobbsian chaos that was about to swallow the Turkish nation.

On another level, the same reverse orientalism also allows the Turkish intellectuals to comfortably navigate diverse ideologies. In fact, some of the expressions encountered in the Turkish media regarding the recent Middle Eastern revolutions suggest that the old camps of the Turkish progressive left and the Turkish republican left can be easily altered in the radius of this reverse orientalism. For example, a leading columnists of the progressive left, Ahmet Altan, from whom we would expect a more careful language and a deeper sympathy towards the developments in the Middle East, openly writes that “Turkey is not like the other countries in the Middle Eastern garbage heap.”[1] This statement indicates that the status of Turkey is somewhat different than its underdeveloped neighbors who continue to live in political slums. Similarly, a leading columnist of the republican left, Banu Avar, argues that the recent NATO supervised war on Gaddafi is nothing less than a European imperialist project designed to subjugate the innocent Muslim masses.[2] Avar is outrageous enough to quote the Lybian state television as a viable source for her claims and show that her heart beats for the Muslim masses of the world, as long as they do not run for the government in her country. It seems that Hobbsian expressions of chaos not only speak about the absence of clear ideas and ideologies, but also may lack clear ideas and ideologies in themselves. Ignoring the legacy of the Ottoman Turkish imperialism in the Middle East, Turkish opinion makers of the progressive and republican left carve special statuses for themselves, whether hiding behind fake statuses of oppressed masses or distancing themselves from these masses by thinking that they have achieved something better already.

Interestingly enough, the Turkish Islamist political camp, the camp that is most deeply dedicated to the legacy of the Ottoman Empire, does not suffer from such an identity crisis. Not only that it openly supports the NATO actions against Gaddafi, but also it keeps winning elections.


[1] http://www.taraf.com.tr/ahmet-altan/makale-misir-baskanlik-cinayet.htm
[2] http://www.ilk-kursun.com/2011/03/banu-avar-yazdi-bugun-libya-yarin-kim/
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Sunday, March 27, 2011

JAPAN QUAKE SHAKES TV

by Philip J Cunningham




When the biggest earthquake in memory hit Japan at 2:46 PM on the afternoon of March 11, 2011, it took less than ten minutes for the bright, cluttered screens of Tokyo top six stations to be drained of color, commercialism and fun. With a disaster unfolding, TV stations were under intense pressure to change the tone of their broadcasts and offer news and safety advice.

To review broadcasts from that afternoon, is to be transported back to a turning point in which everything suddenly changed. The state of TV, as it existed at that precarious moment, good, bad and banal as it might have been, is now a broadcast relic, the last gasp of normalcy before the earth shook Japan to its core, the sea swept the Northeast with tsunamis and a nuclear crisis broke the easy access to electric power that has been a hallmark of modernity in Japan for decades.

For an illustration about how the 3.11 quake is changing life in Tokyo, with particularly focus on the airwaves and the energy-guzzling lifestyle promoted on TV, please view my latest piece at http://www.japanfocus.org/-Philip_J_-Cunningham/3506 Read more on this article...

Tuesday, March 15, 2011

WORDS ON THE JAPAN DISASTER FRONT

by Philip J Cunningham

The world of information made possible by Twitter technology is vast and fascinating, but what really rises above the Twittering noise, random comments and repetitive multiple posts of second, third and fourth hand material is the work of an intrepid individual, sharing, in short installments, an eye-witness view of an evolving situation. It is a take on the news as old as the news itself, first person testimony, offering a degree of coherence and individual fidelity that stands head and shoulders above the random, aggregate posts of a busy Twitter feed.

In a matter of just a few days, one of the most privileged, affluent societies in Asia has been hit and laid prone with multiple disasters, and though the worst may be over, it's far from over yet. Japan, indeed the world as a whole, will feel the influence of the deadly March 11 earthquake, tsunami, related aftershocks, eruptions and subsequent damage to nuclear power plants and more generally the economy for years to come.

The following is the tweet record of an American reporter, now an Asia correspondent for VOA, with 18 years experience in Japan as he covers what could be fairly described as the biggest news story of his career

The reporter is Steve Herman and his twitter tag is W7VOA.

Steve Herman and I worked together in the International Division of NHK in 1990-1, sharing a Tokyo office while working as televison producers on Asia Now and China Now respectively.

Even then, long before he became a radio correspondent for CBS and later President of the FCCJ, I thought him the epitome of a newsman, one who was living and breathing news round the clock. A solid reporter with an excellent understanding not just of international news issues but the minutae of how things work in Japan, Steve is a good guide to a big breaking story.

The veteran reporter happened to be out of Japan when the big quake struck but managed to get back in country, despite disruptions at airports and rail lines, within a day. His posts chronicle a journey across Japan as he seeks access and interviews in the three hardest hit areas, Fukushima, Miyagi and Iwate prefectures.

His intial entries in this informal online diary commence with short notes about news he is reading and re-tweets of posts made by other journalists he is following on Twitter, reacting to news rather than reporting it, and appropriately enough, as it takes him the better part of a day to get on the scene. RT is short for re-tweet and sometimes he posts links to published articles that he likes or makes reference to.

Once he’s on his way to the scene of tsunami damage and dysfunctional nuclear power plants, the second-hand news and reactions to the news are gradually replaced by first-person anecdotes, sensations, interviews and reporting. When the earth starts shaking, he describes it. Then he finds out more about the quake or aftershock, and tweets the best information available to him at the time.

Sometimes it's an earthquake warning with no earthquake, sometimes an earthquake without warning.

The constant tickertape flow of tweets by him and other people on the scene start to be incorporated into news updates which are also tagged, retweeted and made reference to on the Internet, TV and radio.

In short, by looking at a series of thoughtful on the scene tweets, one can get a feel for how information travels, how information is culled and selected and how it is then broadcast and repeated until it becomes the received understanding of an event.

This sort of tweet diary is interesting even when second-hand and third hand information is collated and forwarded, but it really is at its best when it shifts to the first person, and the tweeter on the scene is telling us about things he or she sees, hears, wonders about and analyzes in an original way.

Following his twitter reports in real time is to be transported into the urgency of a breaking story in the company of a cool, seasoned guide who does not flinch in the face of obstacles or bad news. Even with the haiku-like discipline of writing in short bursts, there is narrative arc and a building sense of drama as the reporter moves onto the scene and traverses difficult, sometimes outright dangerous territory.

For all their news value and dramatic impact, tweets are also snippets of personal conversations put to print. In Steve’s case, as he makes a dash from a safe part of Japan to an area at risk, his friends on Twitter urged him not to go, to consider the dangers, to which his response was simple and firm.

“It's my job.”

Here, then, a record of informal tweets from veteran Asia correspondent Steve Herman as he does his job. While investigating a tough, multifaceted breaking story, he took the time to tweet updates about things he saw and heard and gleaned from official sources. His short, abbreviated observations were informative enough that within a few days time he had ten thousand “followers” reading and re-tweeting his posts, including fellow journalists, all the while filing formal, in-depth reports for Voice of America.

The posts here have been copied from his twitter history, and thus are in reverse chronological order. To better sense the drama of an unfolding story in which each subsequent development is unknown, one might browse his posts by scrolling from the bottom up.


Steve Herman
@W7VOA ÜT: 37.373258,140.371634
Voice of America (VOA) Bureau Chief/Correspondent, based in Seoul, mainly covering NE Asia (Korean peninsula & Japan)


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Saturday, March 12, 2011

COMING SOON: TO EACH NATION, ITS OWN INTERNET

by Philip J Cunningham


When reveille sounds, it's time to wake up and smell the coffee.

The US military is now thinking of ways to block and segregate the internet into smaller ‘‘cyber nations’’ which would be easier to monitor and control.

During this era of incessant online babble, blogs, tweets and cacophonous concatenations, the internet has become a virtual Tower of Babel, an ambitious, overloaded unitary structure breaking at the seams. It's only a matter of time before it crumbles.

That, in a nutshell, is the view put forward by a group of US military thinkers in the latest issue of Strategic Studies Quarterly, who see the breaking up and "Balkanisation of the Internet" as natural as it is inevitable, and not without public benefit, assuming that the 'Net reorganises along traditional, nationalistic lines.

Theirs is a clarion call to end the utopian, universal stage of internet development and instead to hunker down and build national bunkers.

The internet has been imbued with a feel-good idealism since its inception, despite it having been a quasi-military invention. It was developed by a generation familiar with John Lennon's utopian lullaby Imagine, dreamily invoking the idea of a world with no countries. And some cyber utopians took a cue from that, driven by the concept that "information wants to be free", a formulation first given voice by Stewart Brand and dramatically acted out more recently by Julian Assange.

But even if information wants to be free, there are the vagaries of human nature that have to be taken into account.

Just as a handful of hijackers can burden millions of jet flyers, in the communication commons the bad behaviour of a few can change the rules of the game; trolls lurk in comment sections, spammers clog up your inbox, data-miners violate your privacy, hackers close your system down.

These problems are being addressed on an ad hoc basis, mostly by the private sector, to make the cooperative, interdependent venture known as the internet safe for commerce and communication.

And then there is the US military, which has bigger fish to fry.

Entrusted with the keys to the world's biggest nuclear arsenal, bound by social contract to guard the nation with vigilance, it should come as no surprise that military thinkers are more worried about information control than information freedom.

The US Cyber Command, which works closely with the National Security Agency and other intelligence agencies, is tapping technology organisations such as Google, Intel and Microsoft for help with cyber-defence, integrating traditional concepts of military preparedness and defence of the state with new borderless technologies.

If military thinkers tend to be more orthodox in their regard for the sanctity of national borders, it is in part a reflection of the role they assign themselves to play as defenders of the nation.

Where a tech geek might revel in faster computation speeds and an advertiser might obsess over ways to get more clicks, and academics might demand unfettered freedom of expression, it is natural that military thinkers should want to consider the same technology with an eye to violations of sovereignty and security, especially with regard to command and control systems and energy infrastructure.

Inspired by the folk wisdom that good fences make good neighbours, there is a school of thought in the US military that posits a not-so-distant future in which the worldwide web will be divided up along national lines.

(TO READ ARTICLE IN FULL, PLEASE CLICK HERE)

(as published in the Bangkok Post, March 12, 2011) Read more on this article...

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Turkish Islam and the Middle Eastern Revolution

At a recent panel discussion, a Palestinian colleague pointed out that when a dictator falls, with him disappears his imagined enemies. The fact that the Egyptian, the Tunisian and now the Lybian revolutions did not have Islamic fundamentalism as their common denominator suggests that most of this so called global Islamic fundamentalism was in fact imaginary. Historically speaking, global Islamic fundamentalism was similar to the phenomenon of the Eastern Question, meaning that it was mainly cultivated in the Western minds and turned into a practice with Western financial aid in order to fend off socialism and communism. When the Cold War ended, the economic and political data still indicated that the cooperation of capitalism and democracy wouldn’t be tenable forever. Western civilization was forced to re-imagine itself in this conjecture, unfortunately with a renewed emphasis on domestic authoritarianism, so as to hush and tame its native critics. At that stage, global Islamic fundamentalism emerged as a newly discovered evil half brother of global capitalism. It became the leading hero of all fear factors and justified domestic authoritarianisms.

Among the critics of the West, Muslim thinkers always had a special status. They challenged the most central tenet of Western civilization, its so-called secularism. Muslim thinkers argued that democracy was not exclusive of religious expressions of morality, and the idea of secularism was an illusion. They were pretty much right on both accounts, since most Western governments maintained capitalistic alliances with the religious institutions of their citizens and allowed room for religiously motivated parties to take part in democratic elections.

The explicit attack these Muslim thinkers waged on Western civilization made them ideal candidates to become the new nemeses of the West. Many of them were educated in the West, developed their theories with a mixture of Western ideas and grew into strong ideological lobbies through the financial help of British, Israeli and US authorities. They did not represent the majority of the Muslim people among whom they organized themselves but readily accepted to be pitted against the socialist and communist fractions of their native communities.

It is in this context interesting to listen to the ongoing argument in the Western media, that there is something called Turkish Islam, and it is a valid alternative to global Islamic fundamentalism. ‘What is Turkish Islam?’ one wants to know. When did it become an antidote to other Islams? And, at a time when a number of revolutions proved that global Islamic fundamentalism is not the common denominator of popular discontent in Muslim societies, who needs an Islamic antidote?

To begin with, the argument that a Saudi Arabian, Egyptian or Tunisian community should practice Turkish Islam is akin to suggest that these people do not need their customs and reason. In my classes, to explain the process of Islamic jurisprudence and its Ottoman/Turkish variants, I often refer to Abu Hanifa, an 8th century orthodox Muslim jurist from Iraq. It is reported that Abu Hanifa refused to eat things that Qur’an and the Hadith didn’t approve. Given that he was a truly orthodox judge, and text oriented, it is reported that he never relied on local tradition or speculative precedents either. Thus, it seems, he never consumed a watermelon in his life, which must have been a remarkable feat in a place like Iraq. Abu Hanifa’s teaching also argued against the consumption of shellfish, based on very similar grounds. Today, the majority of the Turkish Muslims describe themselves as Hanafi, the Sunni sect founded upon the teachings of Abu Hanifa. However, they regularly enjoy watermelon, and a deep fried clam sandwich made with fresh bread and tartar sauce is one of their most popular late night snacks. This raises no controversy among the Turkish Muslims because the practice of sharia allows room for local customs and speculative reason to be practiced as well. For obvious reasons, it would be ridiculous to ban shellfish in a country surrounded by Mediterranean and the Black Sea. Similarly, watermelon, which arrived to Egypt in second millennium BC and soon afterwards made itself to Anatolia, is traditional delight in Turkey.

Meanwhile, what is called Turkish Islam in the Western media is nothing more than a metropolitan conservative middle and lower class religiosity. It is not a theological school but a pseudo-ideological stand, cultivated in reaction to the Turkish state nationalism. Although most nationalist movements embrace the religious sensitivities of the masses they desire to represent, Turkish nationalism was of a different kind. For example, to my knowledge, Arab nationalism, in all its forms, was more willing to recognize its mainly Muslim profile. Turkish nationalism, on the other hand, emerged in confrontation with the Ottoman Empire’s Muslim religious imperialist image, which the sultan/caliph used fervently. In its various forms, Turkish nationalism always argued that it was a modern and secular nationalism. This was particularly so for its state sponsored variant, which used the separation of religion and state as the central tenet of its ideology.

This so called Turkish Islam is a conservative religiosity, postulated as a viable ethical alternative to conservative nationalism. It is a substitute for nationalism, and it appeals to the Turkish speaking middle classes who are tired of state nationalism. These middle classes are not theologically superior moderate citizens; they are religious conservative consumers who follow the Western economic recipes for capitalist prosperity and happen to be Muslims. Thus, anyone who is familiar with the history of Islam should know that all Muslim societies have their own version of this so-called Turkish Islam. What they do lack is the pro-capitalist democracies in which their moderate religiosity could imagine itself as a voting block.

At a time when we are witnessing a chain of revolutions, arguing that Turks have invented an ideal Islamic model highlights the fact that the West is still looking for an Islam of its own version rather than observing the existing trends. Those who argue that a moderate Islamic conservatism is an antidote against fundamentalist Islam, and want to export it to the Muslim people should take a look at the European outlet stores in the Middle East or observe the duty free liquor stores of their home town international airports. Most Muslims already live their lives according to their customs and speculative reason. Orthodox men like Abu Hanifa remain the kings of their own dinner table. Most importantly, revolutions do take place for moderate reasons Read more on this article...

Sunday, February 20, 2011

No longer thwarted: Egypt's Hizb al-Wasat finally gains legal status

Cross-posted with:
From the field: No longer thwarted: Egypt's Hizb al-Wasat finally gains legal status
Links for AR Norton's study of Hizb al-Wasat are on From the Field.
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Friday, February 11, 2011

The Egyptian people have toppled Mubarak, an extraordinary moment, but the regime has not been toppled, not yet.

The military has taken power, but in reality the military has--even since the 1952 coup-- held the balance of power in Cairo.

The Egyptian military has always lurked in the shadows of the Egyptian regime. The levers of influence were seldom exposed to view.  Yet, when senior civilian politicos, such as Osama al-Baz, reflected on the regime and its prospects for reform, they often pointed to the powerful role of the generals and vetoes they held in their back pockets.  For years, as expectations grew that Husni Mubarak's son Gamal would succeed his father, it was the military veto that thwarted him. 

Now the power of the generals is in the sunlight.  There are some reasons to be optimistic: the army generally showed commendable discipline in its response to the last three weeks of demonstrations, and the demonstrators--whether intuitively or shrewdly--embraced the soldiers; the officer corps is highly professional, promotions are based on merit not connections, and no officer or soldier wishes to be seen as an oppressor of the nation that it is pledged to defend; a skilled group of opposition figures is poised to negotiate a transition, and the Ikhwan have wisely forged consensus with the non-Islamist elements while also remaining in the background; and, the actions and misactions of the military will be in full international view.

Nonetheless, the senior officers have a big stake in the existing system, not least economic interests.  In retirement, many senior officers move to industries dominated by the military, and others move into the thriving private sector.  But many others infiltrate the civilian branches of government.  They will want to protect their prerogatives.  The military leadership will prove cautious about dramatic changes, and they will be nervous about permitting a powerful civilian government to challenge their privileges, or hold officers accountable for their misdeeds. The deep suspicion of the Ikhwan will not be erased, so the generals will want to be assured that the Ikhwan (still an illegal entity) will gain no more than a marginal role in politics. 

When Presidential elections are held, you can be sure that the military will have satisfied itself that its interests will not be jeopardized.  It is too early to determine who all the contenders for the Presidency will be, but it is now clear that Amre Mossa, is a front runner.  He is widely respected, and, indeed, is a man of integrity.  He was the popular Foreign Minister of Egypt, so popular that Mubarak that "promoted" him to become Secretary General of the Arab League in order to keep him well distant from Egyptian politics.  But a lot may happen in a year of transition, and many secrets will be exposed, so keep your bets in your pocket for now.
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Sunday, February 6, 2011

EMBRACING THE OPPOSITION

BY PHILIP J CUNNINGHAM

A powerful regime, facing a rare moment of vulnerability, is all of a sudden interested in reform and willing to talk. It invites its arch-enemies to the negotiating table. But once the crowds are gone, what guarantee remains that the police state will not regroup and retrench and strike back with a vengeance?

Egyptian Vice President Omar Suleiman met with members of the opposition over the weekend. What remains unclear is if the Mubarak regime is sincerely extending an open hand of peace to the opposition, or trying to draw them in close enough so they can be slapped or lured into a trap. Is the inclusion of the Muslim Brotherhood a heartfelt bid to hear all sides or a plan to sow division in a protest that to date has been notable for being leaderless, secular, spontaneous and youthful?

Given the low esteem with which the Muslim Brotherhood is viewed in Israel, Europe and the US, extending an olive branch to the banned, radical opposition might seem paradoxical at first. But it is sometimes easier for entrenched power to deal with its arch-enemy, the enemy that it knows, and not only knows, but probably needs, as an existential doppelganger. On a certain functional level it may be easier for a ruthless power to deal with, if not respect, another ruthless, tightly organized entity, rather than deal with a random mass of peaceful moderates without a hierarchical political organization.

Certainly in other places, at other times, this paradoxical embrace of the opposite can be seen in effect. After Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the US found it easier to work with Japan’s old wartime elite than the communists, pacifists and trade unionists who opposed Tokyo’s war on Asia. In recent decades, Beijing’s rulers have found it easier to engage the Communist Party of China’s arch-enemy represented by the KMT party on Taiwan, rather than deal respectfully with rag-tag individuals such as Liu Xiaobo, and many thousands of others, who demonstrated at Tiananmen Square in 1989.

Thus, what appears at first glance a gesture of inclusion on the part of the Egyptian regime might in fact be a bid to exclude the moderate core demonstrators and keep the focus on mutually antagonistic extremes instead.


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Friday, February 4, 2011

EVERY UPRISING IS DIFFERENT



Philip J Cunningham


Every uprising is different. But given shared human strengths and weaknesses, the dynamics of crowd behavior, crowd control, and crowd chaos play out in ways that strike a common chord. Having written about popular protest, cultural clashes and street marches in East Asia for two decades now, there are certain commonalities that come to fore as the events in Cairo, as reported by Al Jazeera and other Internet sources, unfold in real time on my computer screen.

-Truth is an early casualty of any conflict, and the media comes under pressure almost immediately. Competing media narratives diverge wildly, usually the storytelling of the government pitted against the storytelling of the protesters. Distortions to the truth range from outright lies and censorship, to mudslinging, misdirection and deliberate prevarications. There is obfuscation and startling clarity. There are also moments of heartfelt expression, courageous calls for change and sometimes shocking clandestine reports from the frontlines of the conflict.

-Television stations are a coveted resource for those seeking political control. State television, even when it is reduced to producing propaganda, is such an effective transmitter of information, (including mis-information, mis-direction, taboos and telling silences) in regards to an escalating crisis that it can inadvertently help fan the flames of nationwide protest. Even when the details of a mass incident in progress are garbled or distorted by heavy-handed censorship, the fingerprints of the heavy-handedness are visible for all to see. The odd, Orwellian quality of manipulated news, what with its revved up nationalistic fervor, glaring contradictions, threatening reassurances and a rather too loud pleading of innocence, is politically charged enough to betray meta-truths about the abject nature of the regime.

-Reporters and citizen Journalists are at risk. Be it for their truth-telling capacity or simply a vengeful way of blaming the messenger, journalists often get roughed up as public disturbances unfold. Journalists are detained and denied access to key locations, often in the name of safety. Western journalists are especially easy to find as they tend to hole up in luxury hotels where they are subject to surveillance, harassment, and confiscation of film, memory chips, cameras, etc.

-Al Jazeera TV. The upstart TV station based in Qatar has come of age, although it observes, like every news service on the earth, certain ground rules and avoids certain sensitive topics. Its unique take on world news is largely ignored by US cable TV providers, but luckily Al Jazeera Internet streaming can reach a truly global audience, providing a service to viewers whose television and cable service is tilted in favor of the national agendas of the traditional media giants such as CNN, BBC, Fox and ABC. In what might be understood as a backhanded compliment, Al Jazeera has been accused of meddling by the Egyptian government.

-The Internet. Online news services, specialist blogs, Twitter and social networking tools have helped get the story out as well. Advanced information technologies, and the costly, complex devices required to view the news on, are convenient when they work well, and they work especially well across borders at global distances, but remain largely out of the reach of the poor and can be rendered momentarily worthless when the plug gets pulled, as was the case in Egypt when the Internet was turned off. The technology itself is neutral, and there are various ingenious ways to get around blocking, but despite the freedom of expression hype, modern tools are no different from the printing press or radio in the sense that they can be used to further things good and bad and can be used to promote the cause of either side through skillful public relations and information control.

-Word of mouth. Fortunately, the information ecosystem is full of diverse platforms and incidental redundancies; if one technology fails, or is blocked, other ways of transmitting information remain. This includes everything from hardy, traditional technologies such as landline telephones and fax machines to hand-painted banners, chants, slogans and word of mouth.

-Rumors. Rightly or wrongly, rumors take the place of reliable information when reliable information is hard to come by. Rumors serve to excite people to action. The more severe information control at home, the more likely agitated citizens are to turn to the latest gossip on the street.

-Crowd dynamics. When a large crowd manages to gather and assemble, especially in an environment where political gatherings are generally banned and ruthlessly suppressed, success breeds success. If ten, a hundred, a thousand brave individuals get away with the impossible, it inspires others to follow.

-Something in the air. When a large crowd asserts itself in public space and coalesces on symbolic ground, a window is opened to possible political change, an opportunity not normally evident. An indefinable “something in the air,” combined with concrete opportunities for assembly, adequate channels for expression and a broad consensus that change is desirable if not necessary, helps kick-start a major public uprising. When this takes the form of staking out contested ground in the heart of the capital its significance is magnified in a way that enables a crowd to grow exponentially. Under the natural evolution of such circumstances, the crowd is likely to be diverse and composed of people from all walks of life.

-Safety in numbers. When the numbers soar to the hundred of thousands, not only do individual members of the crowd begin to feel uncannily safe –however illusory that protective aura might be – but it gives rise to a sense that a historic turning point is at hand. Suddenly, due to a confluence of rising frustration, mutual reinforcement, strength in numbers and chance developments, there’s a perception that an unprecedented and largely unexpected overhaul to the status quo just might be possible. It’s a bid to hit society’s reset button.

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Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Hard truths in Hardtalk

posted by Philip Cunningham

There's a telling moment in the February 1, 2011 BBC Hardtalk interview when host Stephen Sackur asks US publisher and billionaire Mortimer Zuckerman if he supports democracy. He does but he doesn't. The non-verbal shift of gears is comical, but the subject itself is not. The hypocrisy brings to mind another wealthy publisher, self-styled human rights activist and opinion leader, Robert L. Bernstein, formerly of Random House, who recently attacked Human Rights Watch, a group he himself helped to found and fund, for having the temerity to criticize Israel.

An excerpt of the exchange below sums up an attitude that permeates America's "democratic" elite.


Sackur: Do you believe in democracy?

Zuckerman: Totally...

Sackur: Totally?

Zuckerman: Without question.

Sackur: In the Middle East?

Zuckerman: Ah, well, no. The Middle East....


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Sunday, January 30, 2011

Egypt: Sentiments vs. Advice


[Cross-posted with From the Field]

“Some may argue that the events unfolding in the Middle East now are too unpredictable to warrant a wholesale shift in U.S. foreign policy, that transferring support from loyal satraps to an untested popular opposition may backfire if that opposition fails or is put down, that the U.S. needs reassurances of friendly allies (often at the expense of democracy). But America is not simply a bystander in all of this -- its actions and words will affect the outcome. They will signal to opposition and regimes alike how far each can expect to go in challenging -- or repressing -- the other. Opposition movements (and would-be opposition movements) secular or Islamist are not only waging a battle against authoritarian oppression -- but a battle against the ways in which the U.S. manifests its quest to secure its geo-strategic interest."

I know and respect the three authors (Amaney Jamal, Ellen Lust and Tarek Masoud) of this piece, but I do not fully share their prognostication.  No doubt, the Obama administration like its predecessors has been complacent about the stability of Egypt, as a number of scholars and analysts have warned.  Nonetheless, despite a few misstatements along the way, including by VP Biden and SecState Hillary Clinton, the Obama administration has handled the Egypt crisis sensibly, if not deftly.  When the demonstrations began on January 25th, it was not clear how much momentum the protests would sustain.  It is unreasonable to expect the U.S. to turn its policy on a dime, and the administration would have been derelict to do so.

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Saturday, January 29, 2011

Mubarak chooses a familiar general as the first Vice President in thirty years


“My analysis is, the government will leave them until they reach a level of exhaustion---Abdel Moneim Said, who heads the state publishing house al-Ahram.
Egypt is in a moment of enthusiasm when the people are propelled by adrenalin, coffee and anger.  Don’t stay up waiting for them to nod off to sleep in exhaustion.  The Mubarak regime has relentlessly worked to depoliticize society, but the people are now highly politicized, meaning that they share the view, many of them at least, that there is a political solution—Mubarak must go.
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Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Fascism as a Family Affair

by Murat Cem Menguc

A September 2010 Turkish referendum on constitutional reforms was an occasion for Turkish people to also express their political opinions outside the official polls. Internet based social networks like Facebook were swamped with posts in favor of or against constitutional reform. Some Turks argued the reforms would undermine Turkish sovereignty, and the US/Israeli alliance was using the Justice and Development Party (AKP), Kurds and the European Union and promoting constitutional reforms to achieve its own ends. Some people on Facebook expressed even more radical opinions, showing that Turkish fascism is still a force to be reckoned with. Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of these expressions was that they came from friends and family.

Internet-based social networks put us in touch with the people we already know. Unfortunately, people act more open and edgy on the Internet.[1] Since 2009, my Turkish friends and family started to embrace Facebook, along with, I discovered, some of their radical political tendencies.[2] During the aftermath of 9/11, many people became unreasonably critical of the US.[3]

According to some Turks, events like Ergenekon trials, which were almost exclusively about Turkish internal corruption, were also designs of outsiders like the US and Israel. When the Mavi Marmara incident occurred, and Israeli troops killed nine Turkish citizens, it was further explained in these premises.

Also, most Turkish nationalists saw the September 12, 2010 referendum as an attack on their secular-national identity. During the build up to the referendum, many changed their Facebook profile pictures to the Turkish flag, an image of Atatürk or to the simple word Hayır (no), indicating that they were against the reforms. For example, my aunt M began to spend hours on Facebook posting nationalist literature denigrated AKP’s credibility.[4] Another trend was inviting people to join Facebook groups against the reforms. Most popular among these had around half a million members, a remarkable number if one considers that most popular Facebook games like FarmVille had less than 60 million players.[5]

During this time my friend T also changed his profile picture to the Turkish flag and started posting anti-AKP propaganda. T cross-listed anti-Kurdish Facebook groups and argued that the referendum was designed by EU to free Abdullah Öcalan and give unlimited legal rights to the Kurds.[6] He shared derogatory images of the Kurdish MPs, like Emine Ayna.[7] One of his favorite videos showed a group of Turkish soldiers beating a Kurdish man.[8] T’s friends celebrated these posts. When one of his female friends wrote, “This is not the right way to treat these people. It is too violent,” she was quickly rebuked. I saw that she eventually gave up under peer pressure and decided that the best thing to do was de-friend T. Under the video, I wrote that T was a racist, and we could not be friends anymore. T was very angry, accusing me of not knowing anything about Turkish politics. Perhaps having lived in the US for so long, he argued, I had become a sympathizer of the US/Israeli alliance. T had clearly forgotten that it was the US/Israeli alliance that handed to the Turks the most valuable trophy of the war against Kurds: Abdullah Öcalan himself.

By de-friending T, I realized that I had to be more careful on Facebook or I could lose access to my own words. When I cut myself off of his network, my words and name remained on his side of the conversation, but I could not see or edit them. Ironically, T could not erase my words either, unless he also erased the video and his friends’ celebratory remarks.

I was also disappointed for having lost my small window to Turkish racism.  Luckily, I soon became friends with my cousin K, who described himself as a ırkçı/faşist (racist/fascist). I decided to act cautiously. K was a true family member and M’s son. He had previously told me that he considered me a role model and wanted to move to the US. I asked him why he considered himself a racist/fascist. He boldly wrote that he was not a universal racist; he only hated Israeli Jews. I told him social networks were not safe places to declare radical political opinions. After all, you are in the tourism business and want to come to US, I told him; if you want to reap the benefits of US capitalism, you have to renounce your racism and fascism. To my surprise, K agreed. He cleaned his profile; however, he continued to post announcements promoting a no vote for the referendum. K believed AKP and the Kurds, along with the EU, were pawns of a larger conspiracy designed to destroy Turkish sovereignty.

In the end, Turkish people overwhelmingly voted Evet (yes) for the reforms. I was relieved that these friends and relatives were a minority. M went back to playing FarmVille, and K started posting Rhianna videos. Meanwhile, I accepted the friendship request of F, another cousin. As soon as I clicked on F’s profile, I discovered two pictures of Hitler. I asked him what he liked about Hitler in particular. He wrote that in Turkey, it was not a crime to like Hitler. I let this comment pass and pressed him: Why Hitler and not Atatürk? He wrote that he liked many people, along with Atatürk, but his real hero was Hüseyin Nihal Atsız, a valuable historian of the early Ottoman historiography. Unfortunately, he was also a leading voice of Turkish racism. I told F that Atsız and Hitler were shallow political thinkers who did not understand that hating ethnic groups destroyed the culture and economy of multi-ethnic societies like the Ottoman Empire and Turkey. Atsız, I wrote, disliked everyone, including Boşnaks like us. My suggestion that he had Boşnak origins made F furious. He wrote that he was the grandchild of Ottomans and a true Turk. He argued that because I lived in US, I probably had Jewish friends and liked them, but one day they would surely betray me. My conversation with F died after this post, and my comments just lingered beneath the image of Hitler.

Obviously these incidents do not constitute a large enough sample group to analyze contemporary Turkish fascism, nor do they mean that during the recent months Turkish fascism gained a new momentum. Nevertheless, they underlined one irritating fact: When we become members of social networks, we also expose ourselves to the opinions of others. In the discourse of my Facebook account, Turkish fascism emerged as a recognizable strain of what Ernst Renan called “the daily plebiscite,” and AKP and Kurds represented a union of collaborators serving under a larger conspiracy designed to undermine Turkish identity. The same discourse shared common elements with its historical brother, European fascism; it was anti-Semitic and admired people like Hitler. Nevertheless, the hatred of the Jewish people and admiration of Hitler came as a reaction to a so-called covert US/Israeli alliance against Turkey. Most unfortunately, this discourse belonged to people whom I considered friends and family.


[1] Although it focuses on intelligent humor, following website underlines some of the general personality disorders found in Internet users. http://www.cracked.com/article_17522_6-new-personality-disorders-caused-by-internet.html
[2] Following website discusses the appeal and growth of Internet based social networks in Turkey. http://eu.techcrunch.com/2010/01/23/turkey-the-land-that-embraced-facebook-friendfeed-and-startups/
[3] One interesting group in this respect was dedicated to accusing the leading pro-reform newspaper Taraf as an American spy organization. http://www.facebook.com/TarafIcimizdekiAmerikadir
[4] One of the most popular authors was Banu Avar. http://www.ilk-kursun.com/konu/ilk-kursun/banu-avar/
[5] http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Referandumda-HAYIR-Diyoruz/125815394100922
[6] http://www.facebook.com/#!/Kurtacilimiistemiyoruz,
[7] Following image depicted Emine Ayna with flies hovering over her backside, which was an obvious gimmick. www.network54.com/Forum/248068/thread/1276674790/1277331987/Confederation+of+Turkey-Kurdistan
[8] A search of the phrase “PKK leşleri”, which means PKK corpses in derogatory form brings up around 95 entries. Almost all of these entries are accompanied with hate speech.

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