Vali Nasr argues there are important policy implications to be drawn from the stalled rise of Islamic civilization. VALI NASR
Bahman Baktiari
Bahman Baktiari
Friday, August 31, 2012
Thursday, August 30, 2012
Judith Butler on being Jewish and criticizing Israel |
" So, on the one hand, Jews who are critical of Israel think perhaps they cannot be Jewish anymore of Israel represents Jewishness; and on the other hand, those who seek to vanquish anyone who criticizes Israel equate Jewishness with Israel as well, leading to the conclusion that the critic must be anti-Semitic or, if Jewish, self-hating. My scholarly and public efforts have been directed toward getting out of this bind. — Judith Butler
Columbia University Press
Bahman Baktiari
Columbia University Press
Bahman Baktiari
Wednesday, August 29, 2012
Tuesday, August 28, 2012
Desmond Tutu refuses to share a platform with Tony Blair
Archbishop Desmond Tutu has withdrawn from an event later this week in Johannesburg because he feels he cannot share a platform with Tony Blair. See the ARTICLE
Isolating Iran ?
Sanctions against Iran are not only counterproductive but deprive U.S. businesses of markets, keep Israel's security in a state of limbo and deepen the stagnation in the Arab-Israeli peace process.
Monday, August 27, 2012
Bryan S. Turner: Rethinking secularism: Religion and modern communication
Religion and modern communication
The following is excerpted from a chapter in The Post-Secular in Question: Religion in Contemporary Society, a joint publication of the Social Science Research Council and New York University Press.—
A new center for free thought opens in Cairo
"On July 10th, the Institution of Doctor Nasr Hamed Abu Zaid for Islamic Studies opened in Cairo. A member of Reset-Doc’s scientific committee, Nasr Abu Zayd (1943-2010), was a prominent Egyptian philosopher who served as a Professor of Literature and Linguistics at Leiden University and held the Ibn Rushd Chair of Islam and Humanism at the University of Humanistics. He is an internationally recognized expert on modern Islamic thought, critically approaching classical and contemporary Islamic discourses. Nasr Abu Zayd received political asylum in the Netherlands in 1995, after several years of severe religious prosecution in Egypt and a formal court decision that led to a condemnation for “apostasy”. Reset-Doc introduced him to the Italian public with several articles, conferences and a book published in 2012, Testo sacro e libertà. The center has been created by his widow, professor Ebtehal Younes, who decided to follow her husband to the Netherlands, after refusing a to accept a forced divorce after Nasr Abu Zayd was declared an “apostate”.
Sunday, August 26, 2012
Saturday, August 25, 2012
Iran draws India closer with talks on Afghanistan
India, Iran and Afghanistan will hold talks on giving greater access to landlocked Afghanistan, a move that could also ease Iran's isolation in the region.
ARTICLE
ARTICLE
Book Reviews: WHAT TO LEARN—OR NOT—FROM EARLY DRAFTS OF HISTORY
Book Reviews CAIRO REVIEW OF GLOBAL AFFAIRS
by Issandr El Amrani
by Issandr El Amrani
The Arab Uprising: The Unfinished Revolutions of the New Middle East. By Marc Lynch. Public Affairs, New York, 2012. 269 pp.
The Invisible Arab: The Promise and Peril of the Arab Revolution. By Marwan Bishara. Nation Books, New York, 2012. 258 pp.
The Arab Awakening: Islam and the New Middle East. By Tariq Ramadan. Allen Lane, London, 2012. 274 pp.
Stephen Walt: Top ten things that would-be foreign policy wonks should study
It's August, which means that students in America (and plenty of other places) are heading off to college for the first time. Some of them are undoubtedly thinking about preparing for careers in international affairs. As a public service to those eager future Secretaries of State (and the parents worrying about their college choices) here's my Top Ten Things that Future International Policy Wonks Should Learn.
See the FULL ARTICLE.
Bahman Baktiari
See the FULL ARTICLE.
Bahman Baktiari
Friday, August 24, 2012
Iran’s Security Forces Arrest 40 Aid Activists
“At least 40 activists and aid workers volunteering in the camps for victims of Iran’s recent earthquakes have been arrested by security and military forces, according to Saham News. The arrests were reportedly made during disputes over the distribution of aid when volunteers attempted to take over a warehouse holding volunteer aid collections. Authorities stressed that all aid is subject to the supervision of security forces. According to an opposition website linked to Mir Hossein Mousavi, “the arrests were carried out by “50 to 60 officials with 10 vans.” POMED
Bahman Baktiari
Bahman Baktiari
LSE Conference on Syria, September 20, 2012.
Inside Syria: 18 Months On
Thursday 20 September 2012
Thursday 20 September 2012
Sheikh Zayed Theatre, New Academic Building, LSE
On 20 September, the Middle East Centre will hold a one-day conference on Syria. Eighteen months after public demonstrations began in the country, the conference, featuring four panels and a keynote address from former Syrian National Council chairman and Université de la Sorbonne Nouvelle Professor Burhan Ghalioun, will explore the dynamics of the key domestic forces influencing the struggle: the regime, the opposition, the economy and the Syrian people.
This conference is generously supported by the Global Uncertainties programme and the University of Westminster.
This conference is free and open to all, however registration is essential. Please use the online registration form.
Conference Programme (subject to change) - download PDF
Commentary: Kurds in the New Middle East | The National Interest
The breakdown of authority in Syria and creation of a Kurdish enclave there has unexpectedly pushed Kurds to the forefront of regional politics—and almost nobody’s happy. See the FULL article.
Thursday, August 23, 2012
Wednesday, August 22, 2012
Why Israel Won’t Attack Iran
By Robert Dreyfuss
The Diplomat
While many believe leaders in Tel Aviv are bluffing, the Jewish state gains a lot by threatening to strike Tehran.
What kind of coercion is it when the guy with the gun says: “Do this or I’ll shoot myself in the head?” Not much at all, unless you believe that Israel is hell bent on inflicting great pain on itself, as Seymour Hersh implied back in 1991, in The Samson Option: Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy. Despite the fact that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Ehud Barak, and a panoply of American backers of Israel have ratcheted up their much-hyped threat to bomb Iran, doing so would explode in Israel’s face. Which is why it won’t happen.
How so? For starters, by attacking Iran – even in the midst of a U.S. election campaign – Israel would run the risk of angering and alienating Washington, its main patron, in a manner likely to forever change the U.S.-Israeli relationship for the worse. Second, with nearly the entire Israeli national security establishment strongly opposed to striking Iran, Netanyahu and Barak would isolate themselves politically, collapse their own government, and perhaps propel a much more dovish coalition into power. Third, striking Iran would trigger devastating counterattacks from Tehran and its allies, including the well-armed Hezbollah movement in Lebanon, leading to hundreds if not thousands of Israel civilian casualties. Fourth, already isolated internationally, Israel would turn itself into a global pariah, a kind of rogue state blamed for the subsequent spike in oil prices, economic carnage, and military conflict in and around the Persian Gulf that could roil the region for a decade or more.
Perhaps most important, nearly all military analysts, in Washington and in Israel itself, believe that even an all-out Israeli attack on Iran would not eliminate its ability to produce a nuclear weapon, Indeed, as Martin Dempsey, the Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, stated last week, “I think that it's a fair characterization to say that they could delay but not destroy Iran's nuclear capabilities.” Worse, as Israel knows, an attack would solidify the power of hawks in Iran’s government.
Not to mention that Iran has no bomb, it isn’t likely to get one for a few years (even if that’s Iran’s intention), and it has no means of delivering a weapon – meaning that the dire threat that Israel says might require a unilateral strike doesn’t exist.
Still, that hasn’t dissuaded Netanyahu and Barak from scaremongering about Iran, nor did it prevent a former Mossad chief, Efraim Halevy, from declaring that Iran should “be very fearful of the next 12 weeks,” i.e., between now and the November Presidential election in the United States.
So, why have Israel’s leaders escalated their rhetoric in recent weeks to a fever pitch? Because they, and their allies – including the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and its spinoff, the Washington Institution for Near East Policy (WINEP), and other, likeminded groups and think tanks – believe that even an outlandish set of threats against Iran can accomplish important objectives for Netanyahu.
What objectives? Let’s consider them in turn.
First, by beating the war drums on Iran since 2009, Netanyahu has succeeded in shifting the world’s focus, including that of the Obama administration, from the Israel-Palestine question to Iran. On taking office, President Obama appointed an experienced, senior U.S. official, former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell, to lead a concerted effort to restart the peace process. That effort is now dead and buried, and when Mitt Romney recently visited Israel, the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians was barely even mentioned.
Second, by threatening to attack Iran, Israel hopes to compel the United States and the European Union to impose ever-stricter sanctions on Iran, even to the point where the least-common-denominator unity among the P5+1 world powers – the United States, China, Russia, Great Britain, France and Germany – breaks apart.
And third, Israel hopes that by injecting Iran into the presidential campaign in the United States it can blackmail the United States – Democrats and Republicans alike – to give Israel what it wants.
Much of this was stated, quite explicitly, in a New York Times op-ed by Dennis Ross, an official at WINEP who, until earlier this year, was Obama’s chief adviser on the Middle East. To forestall an Israeli attack –or, in Ross’s own words, “in order to give Israel's leaders a reason to wait,” – the United States “should ask Israeli leaders if there are military capabilities we could provide them with — like additional bunker-busting bombs, tankers for refueling aircraft and targeting information — that would extend the clock for them” and make “firm commitments” to supply Israel with “weapons, munitions, spare parts, military and diplomatic backing.” In addition, Ross warns, the United States must “signal to both Israel and Iran that we mean what we say about all options being on the table.” All this, according to Ross, “in return for Israel's agreement to postpone any attack until next year.”
Nowhere in his op-ed, or in an interview with Al-Monitor, does Ross suggest that Israel’s rhetoric on Iran is overblown or irresponsible.
But that isn’t true in Israel proper, where opposition leaders, top military and intelligence officials, and even President Shimon Peres are lining up against attacking Iran and, at the same time, slamming Netanyahu and Barak for brandishing the threat of war. Outside of those two hawks, the majority of Israel’s cabinet and virtually all of its top national security officials are on record opposing war with Iran, according to Yediot Aharanot, a conservative Israeli newspaper, which based its reporting, in part, on discussions between U.S. and Israel officials. “Officials in Washington recently named Israel's top security echelon as opponents to a military operation that would exclude the United States. The unnamed U.S. sources said Israeli army chief, military intelligence chief, Air Force commander and Mossad chief objected to a solo Israeli military strike on Iran,” Yediot reported.
Shaul Mofaz, the leader of the opposition Kadima party, flatly accused Netanyahu of scaremongering: “Mr. Prime Minister, you're creating panic,” he said. “You are trying to frighten us and terrify us. And in truth, we are scared: scared by your lack of judgment, scared that you both lead and don’t lead, scare[d] that you are executing a dangerous and irresponsible policy.”
In addition, President Peres – backed by former president, Yitzhak Navon – told an interviewer that Israel should trust President Obama and resist going it alone in attacking Iran. “It's clear to us that we can't do it alone,” said Peres.
Last week, another effort to raise the temperature by Defense Minister Barak backfired. Barak – responding to a report in Haaretz, an Israeli daily – said that a new U.S. intelligence report is “being passed around senior offices” in Washington alleging that Iran is much closer than previously thought to acquiring a nuclear weapon. The original Haaretz report said, “President Barack Obama recently received a new National Intelligence Estimate report on the Iranian nuclear program, which shares Israel's view that Iran has made surprising, significant progress toward military nuclear capability, Western diplomats and Israeli officials have informed Haaretz.” Added Barak, “As far as we know it brings the American assessment much closer to ours. … It makes the Iranian issue even more urgent and (shows it is) less clear and certain that we will know everything in time about their steady progress toward military nuclear capability.”
In Israel, however, Barak was excoriated for speaking out of turn about U.S. intelligence reports that may or may not exist, and anyway U.S. officials shot down the Haaretz report, insisting, “We believe that there is time and space to continue to pursue a diplomatic path, backed by growing international pressure on the Iranian government. We continue to assess that Iran is not on the verge of achieving a nuclear weapon.”
Netanyahu and Barak were slammed in an unusually strong editorial in the New York Times on August 13. “Israeli leaders are again talking about possible military action against Iran. This is, at best, mischievous and, at worst, irresponsible, especially when diplomacy has time to run,” said the Times.
Gary Sick, a professor at Columbia University who served as President Jimmy Carter’s chief adviser on Iran, laid out several reasons why an attack by Israel against Iran would be both catastrophic and counterproductive, and he added: “It is worth remembering that Israel acquires significant leverage from this constant perception of imminent war. By keeping the Iranian nuclear case at the forefront of the world’s media, political leaders everywhere are more likely to pay a price in the form of lost revenues and political sparring with Iran, rather than facing the calamity of an outright war.”
Sadly, the fact is that Israel’s Iran scare might work. President Obama may make additional concessions to Israel, on top of recent tougher sanctions, and his opponent, Mitt Romney, is likely to make promises to Israel that will tie his hands if he is elected in November. In the meantime, neither candidate can be expected to say anything at all about negotiations to create a Palestinian state. And the United States might accelerate its military buildup in the Persian Gulf.
As Amos Yadlin, a hawkish former chief of Israel’s military intelligence service, outlined in an op-ed in the Washington Post, there are several steps that the United States can take right now to calm Israel’s nerves and delay an attack. Among them, he wrote, “Washington should signal its intentions via a heightened U.S. military presence in the Gulf, military exercises with Middle East allies and missile defense deployment in the region.” If not, well, Netanyahu and Barak may decide to unleash hell’s hounds.
Bahman Baktiari
Tuesday, August 21, 2012
Top US envoy: ‘It is important for Turkey to deal with its painful past'
The US ambassador to Turkey, Francis J. Ricciardone, has said that how Turkey deals with incidents of its past will shape how strong a democracy it will have in the future, adding that it is important to deal with the painful periods of the past in a manner not vindictive but open, fair and healthy.
Edward Said
"Few contemporary thinkers have been more revered and reviled than the late Palestinian-American professor Edward Said. But even his most ardent critics can hardly deny that Said was one of the most significant public intellectuals of our time. And while he is probably best remembered for his political activism, it was as a major literary theorist that he produced his most important work."
What Edward Really Said
IFCS
What Edward Really Said
IFCS
Misreading Feminism & Women’s Rights in Tehran: Beyond Chadors, Ninjabis, & Secular Fantasies
It is nearly impossible to read any article about Iranian women and not spend the entire time rolling your eyes. Historically, the Western media has tended to make liberal use of Orientalist and infantilizing depictions of Iranian women as, alternatively, trapped in the harems of their turbaned overseers (a historically pre-1979 trope applied liberally to all Middle Eastern women) or militantly crazed and clad in black “traditional garb” (a post-1979 trope specific to Iranian, and later Islamist, women)
Since 9/11, meanwhile, these depictions have become increasingly politicized within the War on Terror “white men saving brown women from brown men” paradigm (so brilliantly identified by Gayatri Spivak & explored by, among others, Saba Mahmood & Lila Abu Lughod). Despite the increase in rightwing rhetoric calling for war on Iran, however, the charge that Iranian women are mistreated and must be saved (like their Afghan sisters, as NATO and some neo-colonial minded collaborators at Amnesty International would have you believe) has not quite caught on.
See the Full Article AJAM MEDIA COLLECTIVE
Since 9/11, meanwhile, these depictions have become increasingly politicized within the War on Terror “white men saving brown women from brown men” paradigm (so brilliantly identified by Gayatri Spivak & explored by, among others, Saba Mahmood & Lila Abu Lughod). Despite the increase in rightwing rhetoric calling for war on Iran, however, the charge that Iranian women are mistreated and must be saved (like their Afghan sisters, as NATO and some neo-colonial minded collaborators at Amnesty International would have you believe) has not quite caught on.
See the Full Article AJAM MEDIA COLLECTIVE
Monday, August 20, 2012
The Key Water Indicator Portal is online!
UN-Water has created a portal to view maps, tables, and charts on indicators, at either country or global level, as well as additional geographic information. This portal is easy to operate and puts additional details one click away.
Visit the portal today!
Bahman Baktiari
Visit the portal today!
Bahman Baktiari
Shai Feldman: The Israeli debate on attacking Iran is over Shai Feldman
"For all practical purposes this weekend ended the Israeli debate on attacking Iran. What tipped the scales were two developments. The first was the decision of the country's president, Shimon Peres, to make his opposition to a military strike public. The second was an interview given by a former key defense advisor of Defense Minister Ehud Barak, questioning for the first time publically whether his former superior and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are fit to lead Israel in time of war."
THE MIDDLE EAST CHANNEL
Bahman Baktiari
THE MIDDLE EAST CHANNEL
Bahman Baktiari
Aesthetic Politics: Iranian Performance and the Challenge of Modernity
Amir Baradaran, Marry Me to the End of Love. Cite internationale des Artes, Paris, France, 23-30 June 2012. Curated by Feri Daftari.
Bahman Baktiari
Bahman Baktiari
Sunday, August 19, 2012
Saturday, August 18, 2012
German Philosopher Jurgen Habermas issues an urgent call to restore democracy
Jurgen Habermas is worried about the 'mania for privatization' and the widening gap between the many poor and the few super-rich. HAARETZ
UNDP Report: The Global Parliamentary Report
The changing nature of parliamentary representation. The focus of this first Global Parliamentary Report is the evolving relationship between citizens and parliaments. The intention is to analyse how citizens’ expectations are changing, and how parliaments, politicians and parliamentary staff are responding.
Ibn Khaldun, the Father of Sociology
An avid reader, great traveller, experienced politician and extraordinary historian, Ibn Khaldun was one of the greatest and most influential men in the medieval Arab World. AL AHRAM
Bahman Baktiari
Bahman Baktiari
Friday, August 17, 2012
Thursday, August 16, 2012
Film Tackles Capitalism and Identity
"NEW YORK — We all know it would be virtuous to spend more time pondering the implications of globalization and the intricacies of high finance. But these aren’t always the most enticing subjects to study, especially in the languid, fading days of August. For an easy-listening approach to two of the most important themes of our time, you could do worse than devote an evening to “Supercapitalist,” a new financial thriller set in Hong Kong." THE NEW YORK TIMES
Bahman Baktiari
Bahman Baktiari
Wednesday, August 15, 2012
Academic paper by Egypt's new second-in-command offers insight into thinking
"Paper by newly appointed Chief of Staff Sedki Sobhi suggests US should withdraw military forces from Middle East and focus instead on pursuing its strategic goals through socio-economic means." AL AHRAM
Tuesday, August 14, 2012
London Review of Books- Ten Years On: The Nuclear Stalemate with Iran
Ten Years On: The Nuclear Stalemate with Iran
In September 1995, at a conference commemorating the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a senior Iranian arms control adviser, Hassan Mashadi, told reporters that Iran was ‘keeping its nuclear options open’. The country’s tough security environment, the threat it felt from the United States and Israel, were all reasons, he argued, that it should pursue nuclear research. The extent of this research was made clear ten years ago, on 14 August 2002, when an Iranian opposition group revealed full details of Iran’s nuclear activities, precipitating the current crisis. The Mujahedin e Khalq claimed it received the information from contacts ‘inside Iran’; privately, diplomats have told me that ‘everyone knows’ the real source was Israel.
Since then the crisis has bloomed into a grand, global stalemate. Iranian nuclear scientists are blown up on Tehran’s streets – reportedly by Mossad – while Israeli diplomats are killed in India, supposedly at the hands of Iran. Somewhere between the two sides is the P5+1 (the US, Russia, China, the UK, France and Germany), which is locked in a diplomatic battle with Iran that has spent years going nowhere very slowly.
The P5+1 imposes sanctions on Iranian oil; Mahmoud Ahmadinejadboasts that Iran is running more uranium-enriching centrifuges than ever before. Israel hints that it will strike Iran’s nuclear facilities; the Iranians urge them to do their worst. The only things that look like breaking the deadlock are either military strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities or the possibility that sanctions, which are hurting the country, will force it to compromise. Neither option is in itself desirable. Browbeating Iran into a compromise would be a solution of sorts, and infinitely preferable to a military strike. But it would be a short-term one because it fails to address the overarching problem between Iran and the West that Mashadi voiced almost twenty years ago.
The P5+1 imposes sanctions on Iranian oil; Mahmoud Ahmadinejadboasts that Iran is running more uranium-enriching centrifuges than ever before. Israel hints that it will strike Iran’s nuclear facilities; the Iranians urge them to do their worst. The only things that look like breaking the deadlock are either military strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities or the possibility that sanctions, which are hurting the country, will force it to compromise. Neither option is in itself desirable. Browbeating Iran into a compromise would be a solution of sorts, and infinitely preferable to a military strike. But it would be a short-term one because it fails to address the overarching problem between Iran and the West that Mashadi voiced almost twenty years ago.
Mistrust and fear of the West, not unreasonably, permeate Iranian decision-making. It is instructive that while P5+1 diplomats understandably focus each set of negotiations on narrow nuclear issues such as enrichment, Iran constantly seeks to broaden talks out to encompass regional security and even the financial crisis. Such moves are often stalling tactics, but they also show the way the regime sees the nuclear crisis: as one more symptom of the West’s overall refusal to accept the Islamic Republic’s existence.
It is the continuing failure of the international coalition facing Iran to understand this that makes the impasse so dangerous. Netanyahu’s comments on attacking Iran get stronger every day; sooner or later someone will have to live up to their own rhetoric. On the diplomatic track, the most recent P5+1 offer to Iran in Baghdad was so paltry – offering to lift a few peripheral sanctions if Iran agreed to enrich at much lower levels than it is currently doing – that it appears the group is content to pile pressure on Iran through sanctions and see just how high a price it is willing to pay for its continuing intransigence.
It is the continuing failure of the international coalition facing Iran to understand this that makes the impasse so dangerous. Netanyahu’s comments on attacking Iran get stronger every day; sooner or later someone will have to live up to their own rhetoric. On the diplomatic track, the most recent P5+1 offer to Iran in Baghdad was so paltry – offering to lift a few peripheral sanctions if Iran agreed to enrich at much lower levels than it is currently doing – that it appears the group is content to pile pressure on Iran through sanctions and see just how high a price it is willing to pay for its continuing intransigence.
Monday, August 13, 2012
MAJORITY OF ISRAELIS OPPOSE STRIKE ON IRAN
Forty-six percent say that Israel should not attack Tehran’s nuclear plants; support for prime minister drops to 34% from 46% three months ago. THE TIMES OF ISRAEL
Bahman Baktiari
Bahman Baktiari
Sunday, August 12, 2012
Egypt's president sacks top military general in bid for civilian supremacy
President Morsi and Field Marshal Tantawi have been gripped in a power struggle for months. In a surprise move, Morsi fired Tantawi today. The Christian Science Monitor
Bahman Baktiari
Bahman Baktiari
Saturday, August 11, 2012
Friday, August 10, 2012
Can Syria's Christians Survive?
In the land of St. Paul's conversion, ancient Catholic and Orthodox communities are finding themselves on the wrong side of an increasingly sectarian conflict.Wall Street Journal
Bahman Baktiari
Bahman Baktiari
Rawlsian Legislatures: A Modest Proposal
"John Rawls’ A Theory of Justice famously introduced the idea of an “original position,” a hypothetical situation in which citizens would come together behind a “veil of ignorance” to select principles of justice that can regulate their common life. There are different ways of understanding the OP, but one useful way – which Rawls himself favoured later in life – is to imagine that the “contracting parties” in the original position are not the members of society themselves, but rather their representatives." See the FULL ARTICLE
Bahman Baktiari
Bahman Baktiari
European culture is Judeo-Christian-Islamic
Europe's ''Judeo-Christian heritage''
The Fiction That It Always Was
The Fiction That It Always Was
Bahman Baktiari
Thursday, August 9, 2012
Wednesday, August 8, 2012
London 2012 Olympics: Has Russian sports machine broken down?
Russia's sports minister warned of 'disciplinary decisions' in response to a fifth-place overall standing at London 2012. About a fifth of Russians say the Olympics were a 'complete failure' for Russia.
See the Christian Science Monitor
Bahman Baktiari
See the Christian Science Monitor
Bahman Baktiari
A Weak State with a ‘Strong State’ Tradition – The Case of Turkey
By Begum Burak on August 8, 2012 E-International Relations
Since the foundation of the Turkish Republic in 1923, the Turkish state has been characterized by a relatively weak civil society and a ‘strong state tradition’. Many of the founding elites of Turkey, among whom Mustafa Kemal Ataturk had been the leader, were military officers and they preferred to eliminate almost all things belonging to the past which they evaluated as backward and archaic. They closed down the religious brotherhoods and labeled them as a threat to state authority and social unity. They saw the state as a supreme entity and treated society and societal organizations as entities belonging to secondary status.[1]
According to Metin Heper, Turkey has a strong state tradition, according to which state elites and state institutions have a dominant role.[2] By contrast, the non-state units such as civil society organizations and some of the economic actors that do not have their roots in state-led structures have typically been weak and passive players.
The central argument of this article is that, despite the fact that the Turkish state used to have supreme authority over non-state actors – such as civil society associations or trade unions – the legitimacy of the modern Turkish state’s claim to such power status is increasingly being questioned. Here, I refer to the depth of legitimacy of state policies and state discourses by using the term ‘state power’. A state’s economic and military capabilities arguably define how powerful a state is. Beside this, the nature of the relationship between the state and society plays a key role in determining how strong a state is. In short, unless a state is viewed as legitimate by its own citizens, the power of that state inevitably becomes questionable.
The weakness of civil society in Turkey and state elites’ distrust towards non-state actors can be traced back to Ottoman times. With the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the Turkish Republic came into-being, and the Republic inherited some particular state practices and characteristics from its predecessor such as state supremacy over civil organizations, and the predominance of authoritarian characteristics rather than democratic ones in political life.
While some see the emergence of civil society against the strong statist discourse as the ultimate step in the consolidation of democracy in Turkey, the necessary connection between civil society and the state actors through political channels has been widely ignored.[3] The impact of the Ottoman Empire upon the nature of civil society in Turkey is also part of the explanation. As Sinem Gürbey argues:
The Turkish Republic inherited a strong bureaucratic state from the Ottoman Empire… The Ottomans were convinced that the only way to maintain an ethnically, religiously and linguistically heterogeneous empire was through empowering the state apparatus and repressing groups that could potentially challenge their power. The Ottoman preoccupation with concentrating power in the hands of the ruling elite in order to maintain several distinct groups together under a single state, coupled with lack of intermediate bodies, led to the emergence of a center-periphery cleavage along cultural lines.[4]
Not just in Ottoman times, but also the political history of modern Turkey, especially the early Republican era, presents a clear picture of the basic features of state-society relations. It is not hard to argue that the nation-building process in the early Republican years can be explained as an elite project which treated the people as “ignorant masses” who needed the guide of the elites.[5] In parallel to that, the official state ideology, named Kemalism – which Mehmet Altan defined as the “ideology of the barrack”– usually tried to homogenize and standardize the masses within the borders the state elites defined themselves.[6]
This brief overview of the state’s formation and the worldview of the Kemalist state elites reveal an important dimension for analyzing the nature of the Turkish state. Historical tradition is one of the main causes for the state’s priority over civil society in modern Turkey.[7]
On the other hand, it is noteworthy that there is a tradition of demonization of political opposition in Turkey. This tradition has been reproduced through bureaucratic centralization, reinforced by a philosophy of social control espoused by Turkey’s traditional bureaucratic classes. According to this mentality, “the society should be governed; it is the state which will do it, and it is the bureaucrat who will represent the state.”[8]
Until the mid-1980s, Turkey used to be an inward-oriented state that had statist economic policies and weak non-state units. With the end of the military regime in 1983, the Turgut Ozal rule (1983-1993), Turkey began taking steps towards political and economic liberalization. However, despite Turkey’s progress in areas like adopting a free-market economy, state-society relations still plague its development. With the European Union accession process, Turkey has realized a considerable amount of progress in terms of democracy, rule of law and human rights. However, it still has a long way to go.
Turkey today is more democratic and more liberal than in past decades. Turkish civil society is much more vibrant, and the power configuration between the political elites and the state elites is much more balanced. However, it can be argued that Turkey still cannot be defined as a strong state despite having a ‘strong state tradition’.
As argued above, state elites and state institutions remain relatively authoritarian, and state discourses are seen as almost unquestionable, whereas civil society actors are relatively weak. A strong state is one that has robust civilian and political institutions, democratically-driven civil-military relations, the predominance of the rule of law and a democratic political culture. By contrast, a ‘strong state tradition’ refers to a state wherein state mechanisms can easily oppress the non-state units and democratic norms and procedures can easily be ignored.
Why and how is Turkey still defined as a weak state?
First of all, without a consolidated democracy and without the establishment of a strong rule of law, Turkey cannot be viewed as a strong state. Turkey has achieved a considerable degree of progress in terms of rule of law but still it has got a long way to go for a strong rule of law.[9] The main factor that hinders democratic consolidation is the 1982 Constitution, which is the product of military domination.
Secondly, Turkey still bans the rights of its own people (like the right to have an education in one’s mother tongue, and the broadcasting of a state-led TV channel in Kurdish), and sees ethnic and religious diversity as a source of threat. How can we call this state a strong state?
A state stuck between the mosque and the barrack cannot be called a strong state.
—
Begum Burak is a PhD Candidate and a Research Assistant at Fatih University, Istanbul, Turkey. You can reach her pieces and academic articles on http://fatih.academia.edu/BegumBurak and follow her on Twitter at @BurakBegum.
[1] For top-down societal, cultural and institutional changes witnessed during the early years of the Republic, See, Walter F. Weiker, The Modernization of Turkey: From Ataturk to the Present Day (New York and London: Holmes & Meir Publishers, Inc., 1981.
[2] Metin Heper, The State Tradition in Turkey, Eothen Press, 1985
[3] Sinem Gürbey, “Civil Society and Islam in Turkey”, http://www.columbia.edu/cu/polisci/pdf-files/apsa_gurbey.pdf .
[4] Ibid
[5] For such a view, see Erik J. Zürcher, Turkey, A Modern History, I. B. Tauris, 2004
[6] Mehmet Altan, Kent Dindarlığı [City Piety], Timaş, 2010
[7] M. Lütfullah Karaman and B. Aras, “The Crisis of Civil Society in Turkey”,http://www.fatihun.edu.tr/~jesr/TheCrisisofCivilSocietyinTurkey.pdf
[8] Quoted in Karaman & Aras http://www.fatihun.edu.tr/~jesr/TheCrisisofCivilSocietyinTurkey.pdf
[9] For a critical evaluation about Turkish democracy and the rule of law in Turkey, see http://www.ecfr.eu/scorecard/2012/wider/44
Bahman Baktiari
Bahman Baktiari
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