Read The New York Review Abroad Online
Authors: Robert B. Silvers
At least Oran was not charged with any crime or fired from his job at the university, as he might have been a few years ago. He and other progressives realize that attempts to change Turkey will set off reactions, not least from a reactionary and ultra-cautious establishment. Still, a transformation is underway in Turkey, and a central part of it involves Turkey’s still troubled relations with its minorities.
—July 14, 2005
1.
Turk Ulusal Kimligi ve Ermeni Sorunu
(
The Turkish National Identity and the Armenian Problem
) (Istanbul: Iletisim Yayinlari, 1994).
2.
In May, the ECHR ruled that Ocalan’s trial “was not tried by an independent and impartial tribunal,” and called for a retrial.
3.
That decline is bound to be accelerated by the crisis that was precipitated by the rejection by French and Dutch voters of the new EU constitution. Now Turks have even less of an idea than they did of what sort of EU they might eventually join—or, indeed, whether rising anti-Turk sentiment in member states might keep them out.
4.
Yahudi Turkler, yahut Sabetaycilar
(
Jewish Turks, or Sabbataians
) (Zvi-Geyik Yayinlari, 2000), a collection of articles on the subject by Mehmed Sevket Eygi, a prominent Islamist columnist, contains the assertion that “a few thousand Sabbataians control the country’s affairs,” but provides no evidence that this is the case. He says that Istanbul contains “secret synagogues” where Sabbataians worship, but does not say where they are. Like other writers on the subject, Eygi makes no attempt to distinguish between sincere converts to Islam and Sabbataians, which further weakens his assertion that Sabbataiism is a thriving sect. It seems no more than a scurrilous anti-Semitic label.
5.
Efendi: Beyaz Turklerin Buyuk Sirri
(Dogan Kitap, 2004). With fifty-six reprints to date,
Efendi
is one of Turkey’s most successful nonfiction books of recent years.
6.
Birikim
, June 2004.
7.
In his statement on April 24, Bush referred to the “mass killings of as many as 1.5 million Armenians during the last days of the Ottoman Empire.” This contradicts Turkish claims that there were no mass killings and that only a fraction of that number died. Although Bush was accusing the Ottomans of an appalling crime, the fact that he did not use the word “genocide” was presented in Turkey as cause for celebration.
8.
Some people contend that, unless Turkey recognizes that a genocide took place, no appraisal of the past can be considered complete. I am not so sure. It is unlikely that Turkey’s justice minister would have reacted so aggressively to the proposed conference at Bosporus University if he did not fear that the event would be useful to those who advocate recognition of genocide. His reaction, naturally, was strongly attacked by such advocates, including a group called the Campaign for Recognition of the Armenian Genocide. It is hard to imagine that the experience of Bosporus University will encourage other Turkish institutions, especially ones that value academic integrity, to stage conferences of their own. They would inevitably get caught up in the dispute between proponents and opponents of genocide recognition—a dispute that often has the result of drawing a semantic veil over the Armenian tragedy of 1915.
9.
In Turkey, it is now possible to buy books arguing that genocide took place in 1915, as well as memoirs, written by Armenians who survived the deportations, that describe appalling behavior by the Ottomans. The success now being enjoyed by Fetiye Cetin’s story of her Armenian grandmother, who was rescued by Turks, has prompted others to admit that they, too, have Armenian antecedents. In fashionable Istanbul bookshops, it is possible to find, on the same shelf as Soner Yalcin’s
Efendi
, novels that celebrate the Ottoman cosmopolitanism that Yalcin finds so objectionable. Such books sell less than the chauvinist ones, Karakasli concedes, but that they are largely available is new and important. “In the past, you only heard one view.”
10.
Turkiye’de Azinliklar: Kavramlar, Teori Lozan, ic Mevzuat, Ictihat, Uygulama
(
Minorities in Turkey: Notions, Theory, Lausanne, Internal Regulations, Interpretation, Implementation
) (Iletsim Yayinlari, 2004).
Yasmine El Rashidi
It was still springtime in Cairo. The people had spoken in Tahrir Square. They had defied the intimidation of a panicked police state. They had booed and hissed the wooden, uncomprehending, patronizing words of the man who ruled them for thirty years. Mubarak’s dictatorship was over
.
But what then? Political transitions from authoritarian rule are never easy and always messy. Elections, even if free and fair, are not enough. Democracy needs institutions to safeguard the liberty of its citizens; it needs independent judges, trade unions, political parties, mass media
.
Without such institutions, conflicts of interest and struggles for power cannot be resolved in peace. Liberal democrats are seldom the winners in the aftermath of revolutions. Still, Egypt might be lucky. Too much optimism would be foolish, but so would giving up on hope
.
—I.B
.
TO JUDGE BY
the streets of Cairo on the morning of March 19, it seemed that a good chunk of my city’s 19 million residents were taking part in the constitutional referendum. The roaring old school buses that rattle my windows when they pass in the morning were not to be heard, there were hardly any cars on the usually clogged streets, and the daily flood of people making their way through the dense web of thoroughfares and alleyways was absent. The only signs of traffic or crowds were around the hundreds of designated polling stations. It had been nearly five weeks since protesters in Tahrir Square had brought down President Hosni Mubarak, and Egyptians throughout the country were voting on an all-or-nothing package of nine constitutional amendments. A win for the yes votes promised to lead to parliamentary elections as early as June, returning power to a civilian government following the military’s temporary takeover. If the no votes prevailed, it might start the process of political reform over again, or it might cause the military to pursue a different strategy.
After decades of oppressive rule, in which elections had been pro forma exercises marked by violence and fraud, Egyptians were elated that their ballots would finally count. Many were voting for the first time in their lives. When the results were announced the next day, they seemed unambiguous: 77.2 percent had voted for the amendments—ostensibly an endorsement for reform—and just 22.8 percent had voted against them. The reality, as I had discovered in the days leading up to March 19, was far more complicated. Only 18 million of Egypt’s eligible 45 million voters participated (though, as many have reported, this was the country’s highest turnout on record). In fact, most of the activists who had had a leading part in the revolution dismissed the referendum as cosmetic, when what was needed, they felt, was an entirely new constitution. Moreover, many who voted yes had little sense how these amendments were going to change the country’s political life.
The referendum had been conceived by the Egyptian armed forces as part of its response to the youth protesters, who were pressing for sweeping reforms to the political system that had sustained Mubarak in power. After it formally assumed power on February 11, the day Mubarak stepped down, the military had suspended the 1971 constitution and appointed a constitutional committee to address these demands. Instructed by the military to “get this over with” as soon as possible, the eight members of the committee—among them a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, two professors of law, and a respected judge—had been given a free hand to redraft any of the constitution’s 211 articles and select a referendum date. Key priorities for the protesters were the abolishment of the emergency law, the revision of all articles concerning presidential elections and executive power, and a redrafting of Article Two concerning the state and religion, as well as of other articles concerning the rights of citizens.
Despite pressure by activists for a complete overhaul of the constitution, however, the commission’s recommendations—arrived at seemingly in a matter of days—were far narrower: on February 26, the military announced only nine proposed amendments, to be voted on three weeks later. From the start it was clear where the emphasis lay. While leaving many of the protesters’ demands—such as the electoral process—unaddressed, the proposed changes revealed some of the recurring concerns of the military, such as the fear of “foreign” interference in the country’s affairs.
The most significant of the amendments would limit presidents to two four-year terms, allow independent candidates to campaign, and bar from office anyone who holds a foreign passport or, oddly, has a “foreign” spouse (Mubarak’s wife, and President Anwar Sadat’s wife before her, both had British mothers). It also would establish new legislative powers, providing for a subsequent revision of the constitution by a committee chosen by the new parliament.
Although military leaders had met privately with activists before the announcement of the referendum, protest leaders were quick to denounce the amendments as inadequate. “To us, the regime was a failed one, which means that its constitution too is failed,” the activist Esraa Abdel Fattah told me. Esraa, who had been jailed under Mubarak’s regime for organizing a nationwide protest on April 6, 2008, in solidarity with striking laborers, was one of the planners of the January 25 protest that started the revolution. She had been meeting with the military and the interim cabinet on a regular basis, and was among those who proposed appointing Essam Sharaf, a civil engineer and former transport minister who had participated in the Tahrir uprising, as interim prime minster, which the military leadership did following the resignation of old-regime holdover Ahmed Shafiq on March 3.
Esraa was also one of the handful of activists and policymakers who were invited to meet US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during her visit to Cairo on March 15. The weekend before, I found Esraa in her office at the Egyptian Democratic Academy, an organization that uses social media to promote democracy and human rights, flipping through her recently recovered state security file. She told me that Clinton
has to understand the proposed amendments are completely inadequate. We are not ready for elections. We need a transitional three-person presidential council, comprised of two civilian leaders and an army one. We need at least a year to raise awareness and prepare the people for elections. Political awareness and engagement is currently lacking. If the United States wants to help, there needs to be a balance between military aid and that to civil society. We need help with this coming phase. Talk is not enough.
After the meeting, Esraa called me. “Hillary responded positively to what I had to say,” she said. “Although she didn’t have firm responses, she took general criticism well.”
In the weeks leading up to the referendum, there had been a few further moments of victory for the revolution. On March 5, crowds of activists overran state security bureaus across the country, including the state security headquarters in Cairo. For many, the
Amn al-Dawla
, or State Security Investigation Service, had been one of the darkest forces behind the Mubarak regime—known for its random arrests and the torture of activists, and for keeping surveillance files on millions of people—and its sacking seemed to consummate the defeat of the old order.
Yet at the same time, the protest movement had fragmented. There were widespread reports of robberies and lawlessness; tensions between Muslims and Copts had reignited; the army had released Islamist political prisoners, including those accused of assassinating Sadat in 1981; and stories of detentions and torture were continuing to surface. At a women’s rights demonstration on March 8, thugs stormed the crowd in an attack reminiscent of the pro-Mubarak violence against the Tahrir uprising a month earlier. The police, meanwhile, were still largely absent from the streets, while the army and its tanks seemed to be just standing by. Amid this growing sense of unease, many who had taken part in the uprising thought the referendum was hasty and ill-conceived, and activists like Esraa drew on all their political connections to try to pressure the military to postpone it.
Meanwhile, the debate on how to vote in the referendum intensified on social network sites and TV talk shows. Even the popular youth radio channel 104.2 Nile FM—whose young hosts spin popular Western tunes and invite guests to talk about dating, love, and movies—was discussing the constitution. Yes and no camps swiftly took shape. Activists and the members of the upper-middle class
were calling for no; they wanted a new constitution and more time to raise political awareness among the nation’s 80 million people. Those who felt the referendum was taking place too soon—a group of reformists that included presidential hopeful Mohamed ElBaradei—hinged their argument on readiness. None of the opposition coalitions and movements had secured the resources or organization to mobilize large numbers in an effective way, and their supporters worried that a yes victory would result in a parliament divided between the Muslim Brotherhood and members of Mubarak’s old patronage network. Moreover, such a parliament would then be free to redraft the constitution to its liking. “Bad news,” one activist told me. “We’ll all be dead.”
But the limited Cairo- and Alexandria-based campaigns of the no advocates had little chance of winning over the broader public. The Muslim Brotherhood, the ultra-conservative Salafis, and groups affiliated with the former party of Mubarak, the National Democratic Party (NDP), were endorsing the amendments and targeting their efforts at the working classes—laborers and farmers. The Muslim Brotherhood—the largest and most organized movement apart, perhaps, from the remaining political network of the former regime itself—initially distributed flyers urging the yes vote as a religious obligation. But activists and the media quickly got wind of this strategy—stirring up long-standing suspicions about an underlying Brotherhood agenda to turn Egypt into an Islamist state—and the Brotherhood adopted the more palatable slogan “Yes is a vote for stability.” The day before the referendum, around noon, I could hear from my desk the distant sound of an imam promoting yes-for-stability in his Friday sermon; there were reports that the same was taking place at mosques across the country.