Turkey – Rotten Politics and Promise of Revolution
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By Andre Vltchek
Andre Vltchek in a discussion with Yiğit Günay
October 26, 2015, Istanbul, Turkey
Yiğit Günay in Istanbul
AV: I have worked in more than 150 countries, all over the world. Turkey is definitely one of the most fascinating, and fascinating because it is also one of the most complex of all countries.
YG: Turkey as a country is a very peculiar place. It is a capitalist country that has historically sided with Western imperialism and in the past decade has tried to obtain a certain regional power. Its ambitions have lead to wars because the Turkish state is a member of NATO and it has been involved in the military ground conflicts in Syria and Libya.
How do we describe this peculiarity? Historically, Turkey is a Western ally. But then, with this present AKP (Justice and Development Party) government… the AKP is not only a government, but it is a “project”, an “international project.” What does that mean? It is not like someone pushed some button in Washington and created AKP – no, it was not like that. But eventually, it became a part of an international project. You see, during the Bush era and his “War on Terror” doctrine, the United States was only left with the Israel and Kurds in Northern Iraq, as its regional allies.
Turkey is changing. Secularism and state economy doctrines were never really fully implemented here. The state economy was being altered, dismantled, and after the 1980 coup, replaced with a neo-liberal dogma, with privatization all over Turkey.
YG: Yes, but Turkey was already capitalist. The most profound changes were towards the Islamisation of the country. YG: It is an extremely complicated subject, and we could easily write an entire book on it. But I would say that in Turkey, we see more influence of the Muslim Brotherhood doctrine, than that of Wahhabism. YG: Including on the influence this government, yes. During the so-called Arab Spring, there were many conflicts between Saudi Arabia and Qatar, and on each occasion, Turkey was allying itself with Qatar, not with Saudi Arabia. YG: Yes, exactly. And due to this form of Islamisation, the social context is also changing. YG: I see your point. But it is different here, in Turkey. Historically, in Turkey, there has never been a progressive Islamist movement. The only exception was during the War of Liberation, in 1920. Because during that period, there was a Muslim group in the Aegean part, waging war against the Greeks. They were called “Green Army”, and they were closely allied with the Bolsheviks. Secularism is a part of any progressive movement in Turkey. If you are not secular, you are not really progressive. It is as simple as that here. Apaydin Camp in Turkey where ‘Syrian Oposition’ is trained by the West AV: But here we are actually coming to that “confusing part”. I know many people in Turkey. My history with your country goes back at least some 20 years. Unfortunately, it appears to me that most of the secular people that I know in Turkey are extremely pro-Western, pro-European. Their culture, their philosophic references and preferences, lie proudly in Paris or London, if not in New York. They seem to be directing, even pushing Turkey towards the West. And considering that Turkey is already a capitalist country and a member of NATO, their efforts are making Turkey more and more allied with the Western imperialism. YG: Yes, this is an excellent point, a point that makes it very difficult not to get confused about the whole thing. Let me try to respond to this. First of all, people that we are surveying here in Istanbul are not representing the entire Turkey. Also, the number of atheists in Turkey is huge. AV: How huge? YG: The last estimate was 10%, but I think it is more. But back to the issue that you raised: inside the secular groups, there are also some liberal tendencies that are powerful. The Turkish liberals, like in the rest of the world… they want Turkey to become a part of the European Union, they are pro-NATO and they are supporting privatization… These are the orthodox liberals, and during its first years, they were backing the AKP government… They were like this because they were promoting the Western understanding of “liberalism”, like the “human rights”, “tolerance”, and etcetera… They used to say: “Those Muslims also have rights, etc.” But, Turkey is not France, the Muslims are not immigrants, and the context is absolutely different… Many of the “liberals” were members of the bourgeoisie, some belonging to the elites, to the upper class… But if you look closely at the bigger group of secularists here in Turkey, they are either Alawites (many of them are not religious at all), or socialists, Communists, also the Kurds… Those people are not part of the phenomena that you described; they are not pro-Western. If you talk to them, chances are that some 90% would be strongly against Western imperialism.
AV: Wasn’t the commander of the Turkish air force also imprisoned? YG: He was imprisoned, but he was not really against NATO. AV: Weren’t some imprisoned generals true “Eurasianists”? AV: So we cannot speak about a determinately philosophical or ideological stand? YG: No. And all of those guys were educated at the NATO headquarters, anyway. And let me add this: if the Turkish army intervenes in Turkish politics, it’s with the 100% approval of the United States.
YG: Exactly. There is no possibility of that. And let me add this: the last 3 years, the United States and the Western imperialism are not content with the AKP government. Of course they are working together, of course the West uses them. But it is not content with the AKP. Look at these two main issues: First, the war in Syria. Second, the Gezi protests in Istanbul. The Gezi protests had proven that the government has no legitimacy, as far as one half of the population is concerned. Half of the population thinks that the President, who then was a Prime Minister, is a thief and a murderer.
The second issue – the war in Syria. The AKP was so obsessed with expanding Turkish territory of influence! They were so war mongering, that even the United States could not really control them. I will give you an example: at one point there was a leak from the private meeting at the Prime Minister’s office. There was a current Prime Minister there, who was then a Foreign Minister, Ahmet Davutoğlu, and there were several generals from the army, as well as the chief of intelligence. They were all discussing how to enter Syria, militarily. The chief of intelligence was saying: “I can send 4 guys and they’d shoot few rockets towards Turkey from the Syrian territory… And it would be a good reason for a war”. This was what they had in mind. And the United States could not take such risk, because from their point of view, such action would have to be planned. If you are going to go to Syria with your army, you have to plan it with the United States. So Turkey gained the reputation of a nasty boy… The West was using Turkey to “beat up other children”, but then Turkey went out of control, stopped listening to its handlers. It became too nasty, too aggressive, and too unruly. AV: Is it an umbrella group?
There was a point when the NATO jets began bombing Libya, and Erdoğan made a speech, basically saying: “What the fuck is NATO doing, bombing Libya?” And two days later, Turkey became part of the mission. The Americans told him “Are you stupid? Don’t you see what’s going on?” And he promptly changed his mind. But the main idea behind all this was: The Arab Spring was basically pro-AKP. It was what is called the “regime change”, all over the region. The new regimes were predominantly Islamist, and so the AKP had a chance to gain influence inside them. Adana Turkish Air Force, RAF, USAF base
AV: Autonomy? YG: Yes, autonomy. And Kurds would have autonomy also inside Syria, if Assad would be toppled. So there would be confederations all over, but under direct Turkish influence. YG: Yes, I think this was the major plan. But two things happened: First, the struggle of Syrian people. Nobody expected that, or more precisely, the United States and AKP did not expect that Syrian people would put such determined struggle against the foreign intervention! The second was internal: the Gezi protests! It was like 11 million people on the streets, protesting against the government. Since those protests, the government began cracking inside. It began experiencing serious internal conflicts, because it was losing all the legitimacy. Today, as a project, because, as we determined, the AKP is a project, the project is terminated. The problem is that the West has no real alternatives, no candidates for the Turkish leadership. There is no one who could fill the vacuum, if the AKP goes. The West is kind of sick of Erdoğan, and it would like him to go, but it doesn’t want any radical changes… it’d like to have some coalition between the Islamists and the social democrats, a coalition that would be, once again, pro-Western, pro-privatization, and with more legitimacy… This is what the West is seeking right now, and one day it actually may happen. Which will not be, of course, a really good scenario for the people of Turkey. AV: Do people of Turkey realize that they are being controlled from abroad? YG: Yes.
AV: What about the Gezi uprising? I made a film about it, and I spoke to many people, from all walks of life. But what is your take on it? AV: That’s the same as those protests that brought down General Suharto in Indonesia. YG: But the protests here were actually very ideological, but not organized.
So when Gezi started, on the ground it was impossible for any foreign power to start to control main groups of the people active in this uprising. In Egypt you had those social media activists, youngsters who were educated in Washington, who were really pro-Western, who attended classes organized by the State Department… In Turkey we also have those groups, but they are so marginal, and everybody mocks them. They have really no influence. You had been here, you saw it: it was full of red flags! Hammers and sickles everywhere… It was not totally socialist, of course, but you could not easily control those people from abroad… AV: Did Gezi movement die? Or is it only dormant? AV: Where is Turkey right now economically, socially, even politically? We hear a lot about Kemalism, or about the state economy. In fact the country is very capitalist, and definitely not left wing, as it is siding with the imperialists, spreading its influence all over the region. AV: The contradiction. AV: How come it did not have the capital or the bourgeoisie? We are talking about one of the mightiest empires on earth, before the WWI. AV: So they influenced Turkey also ideologically? YG: No. Actually they did not. The thing is that the Soviet Bolshevik Party – they were also real pragmatists, in a sense that they were very careful about not intimidating the Kemalist government. They did not really support the Communist Party of Turkey, which was actually part of the “Comintern”. They did not really protest against the crackdowns and murder of the Turkish Communist Party members, because they still had to keep a good relationship with the government. And the members of the Communist Party of Turkey understood that. They understood the position of the Soviet Union, and they were not critical of it. So Turkey had some sort of political alliance with the Soviet Union. But after the Second World War, especially because of the Marshall Plan and the Truman Doctrine… the Truman Doctrine and the initial Marshall Plane – it was mainly about Greece and Turkey, at the beginning. That is because these two countries were then the two main bastions of the Cold War against the Soviet Union. From that period, things began to change, step by step, as the distance from the Soviet-style economy increased. And when the neo-liberal era arrived, the changes accelerated. Right now, Turkey is definitely a capitalist country. The state assets in the Turkish economy are tiny. The AKP government had privatized everything, and right now they are busy selling the country’s forests and beaches. Demonstrators in Istanbul.
On paper, the economy of Turkey is growing, but the vast majority of the Turkish people, according to many studies, became impoverished during the AKP years. Turkey was flooded with huge amounts of money coming from the Gulf countries, because of the foreign policy of Ankara. The imperialist countries also invested heavily in Turkey, because you had to, somehow, satisfy the economical needs of the country that was waging wars on their behalf. However now, even the top government officials are talking about the imminent economic crises. The standard of living is going down. AV: Why are people still voting for this government, which so miserably failed on several fronts? Now elections in Turkey are coming; the second round. The AKP is going to win. Perhaps they will not get an outright majority, but they will count on enough votes to retain their power. YS: First: the ideological reasons. They have Islamists backing them. AV: So they are cashing on their religious card? YS: Exactly. Second: the shop owners and the small and middle size business owners – they have huge fear of the economic crises. They want “stability”. And they think that if the government goes, there would be economic crises. Of course it is a paradox. Turkey is not a stable country. We have bombs exploding in the middle of our cities, we have killings, and we have a war going on in the Kurdish cities… AV: What about the Left? Are there any promising leaders and alternatives?
YS: We have that, and we have a Kurdish-influenced political party. Their main agenda is any decent solution to the Kurdish problem. AV: But this is not some pan-Turkish force. YS: No. Of course there are many leftists inside the party, but there are also many Islamists inside the party. AV: There is a great violence sweeping entire country. Who is behind the attacks? AV: But then the state cracks down not only on the Islamists, but also on the left wing leaders. How dangerous is it to be a Communist or a left-wing intellectual these days in Turkey?
YG: Certainly there are negotiations. But in this part of the world, negotiations are not only made around the table. Using force, waging wars is also part of the negotiations and diplomacy. And that is exactly what is going on in Turkey. Here, sometimes, the government attacks, and sometimes the Kurdish movement attacks, too. It comes and goes. It has ups and downs. But right now, because of the position of the government, the negotiation process has weakened a lot. It is very improbable that this government could succeed in obtaining a peace deal that would satisfy the demands of the Kurdish people. YG: Yes and no. Because if you look at Northern Iraq, both Barzani and Talabani, they have excellent relations with the Turkish government. And they have their own conflicts with the PKK, which is the main Kurdish force inside Turkey. Then, the PKK is very powerful in the Syrian areas, waging war against the ISIS. In Northern Iraq, the PKK has its base there, and some influence, too, but it could not be compared with the influence of Barzani or Talabani. So the PKK is mainly strong in Turkey and Syria. YG: Yes, and they are very close to both regional powers: to Turkey and Israel. They have excellent relationships with Israel. AV: And Turkey has, of course, excellent an relationship with Israel, too. When the conflict between two countries took place, over the ship that Israelis attacked, the training of the Israeli military pilots at the air base outside the city of Konya continued.
YG: They cancelled! OK, it does not mean that the AKP knew there would be a massacre on that ship, but the government knew there was a possibility of a massacre, and they did nothing to prevent it. AV: How much is known in Turkey about the ISIL being directly or indirectly trained and armed in Turkey? When I was writing my reports, and also when I was making my documentary film, I got convinced that several Syrian “opposition movements” were actually trained in both Apaydin “refugee camp” near the city of Hatay, and at the Adana air force base. We managed to track the movement of the Syrian anti-government fighters, and we got several testimonies from the people in the area, including the Turkish border guards. Qatari jihadi cadres were also involved in Hatay and its vicinities. Is it something that is discussed in Turkey? YG: Yes, it is discussed a lot. But the thing is that the ISIS militants were never “officially” trained inside Turkey. What happened is: Turkey was supporting the so-called “Free Syrian Army”. And they had especially good relations with Al-Nusra, which is part of al-Qaida, as well as with a few smaller groups. But generally they were supporting the “Free Syrian Army”. Some of those guys who were trained in those camps, when they went back to Syria, they joined ISIS. I don’t think the government gave conscious training to ISIS. But they did not crack down on ISIS. The state looked in the other direction, closed its eyes. And whenever there were clashes and ISIS fighters were wounded, the Turkish ambulances would enter Syria, take them to Turkish hospitals, and then the fighters would return to Syria, and continue waging war. For the militants it is possible and easy to cross the border and enter Turkey. Two or 3 years ago we had written about the ISIL organization inside Turkey. We gave names of top cadres, of the leaders. And we gave details, including the houses that are being utilized by the militants. If we knew the names, there is no way that the state wouldn’t. AV: So now we have a totally new situation in the region. We have Russia, which said “enough”. It came to rescue its Syrian ally. How is the Turkish government reacting? Is it panic, is it outrage or does it call for a confrontation with the Russians? YG: We should always speak of two separate parts: the government of Turkey, and the majority of the Turkish people that hates this government. For the majority of people, it is a good thing what Russia is doing. But it is not because these people are “pro-Russian”. It is because they are opposing the war that is waged by the imperialists inside Syria. They want this war to stop. For the government, it is a horror scenario, because if Assad doesn’t go, Erdoğan goes. Simple as that! So what Russians are doing is terrible for the AKP government. AV: And yet the government is negotiating with both Russia and its closest ally – China. There are discussions about the pipelines and about the so-called New Silk Road, which would include the information super-highway, as well as the high-speed railroad connecting Turkey with the Asia Pacific. Is the government playing it both ways? AV: And yet, China and Russia really represent a tremendous alternative. Entire new international institutions are born, and there is also big flight from dollars to RMBs. These two countries are forming the core of resistance against the Western imperialist block. Is Turkey eyeing this block as an alternative? YG: No. AV: So is its goal still to join the European Union and the West? Taksim Square – police before action. AV: So Turkey is going to stay with the West? YG: Yes. AV: Is it what the Turkish people want, or is it what the elites want? YG: It is what the bourgeoisie wants. AV: Any chance for a revolution? YG: Of course! If one studies history books and conditions that led to revolutions, Turkey satisfies all such conditions. Of course it does not mean that in just a few years we will see a revolution here. But look at the world, and give me names of 5 or 10 countries where the revolution is likely to happen. Definitely one of them is Turkey! [dropcap]J[/dropcap]ust a few days after this discussion, the second round of elections took place in Turkey, and the AKP scored unprecedented victory. I asked Yiğit Günay to comment. He replied: “The election results were somewhat unexpected. Everybody knew that AKP would be the leading party, but not even the AKP leaders had guessed such a high percentage. So, what happened? The parliamentary opposition has managed to resurrect Erdoğan & Co. in the past two years. After the Gezi protests, the AKP was finished. They had absolutely no legitimacy. They were not ruling the country but fighting, and they had to admit the fact that the state was in a deep crisis… But the parliamentary opposition, mainly the social-democratic CHP and the pro-Kurdish liberal democrat HDP dismissed any scenario and endeavors to topple AKP on the streets and channeled the people to the ballot boxes as the only solution. In most of the main topics of debate about the new regime implemented through the AKP, such as Islamization, secularism, relations with the EU, relations with the US, membership in NATO, the Syria policy and so on, these two parties did not fundamentally differ from the AKP’s position, but in many cases adopted their main direction with a slightly more nuanced rhetoric. Returning to your earlier question, though as I’ve said I would not like to use the word “died”, in this sense you could argue that the parliamentary opposition killed the Gezi movement. Once the only legitimate way to change the power was reduced to the ballot box and once the parliamentary opposition did not go aggressively against the main tenets of the AKP regime but shyly legitimized and adopted them, there was no way to weaken the AKP support amongst the people. And, what are the implications for the struggle? First, starting immediately after the first estimated results indicated that AKP was to form a one-party government, many people started to express the need for a more radical struggle. The “election game” has lost its appeal. We’ll see where this goes… But let’s keep in mind one thing: When the Gezi uprising began on June 2013 and approximately 10 million people took to the streets against AKP, the AKP was then in the office with 50% of the votes.” Vltchek Indonesia – The Archipelago of Fear”. Andre is making films for teleSUR and Press TV. After living for many years in Latin America and Oceania, Vltchek presently resides and works in East Asia and the Middle East. He can be reached through his website or his Twitter. Note to Commenters We apologize for this inconvenience. 
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