Insight from Azad Jammu and Kashmir.

In October 2005, an earthquake altered the landscape of Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK), a region administered by Pakistan and claimed by India. As efforts shifted from rescue and relief to long-term reconstruction, it became clear that the earthquake had transformed the social, economic, and political landscapes of AJK, too. For the international community, AJK became an acceptable terrain of engagement because the disaster was “natural.” The initial emergency response was followed by a designated post-disaster reconstruction period that began in 2006 and is slated to end in March 2014.¹ Reconstruction projects funded an array of economic, social-development, and scientific initiatives, and supported an emergent private sector. However, the reconstruction addressed neither the longstanding issues that have brought the region to war repeatedly nor the impact that over seventy years as a disputed region and high-security area has had on the sociopolitical systems and legal regimes under which people in AJK live. Now, at the close of the reconstruction period, the unsustainability of an apolitical peace is becoming visible.

Before 2005, Kashmiri refugees and human-rights activists had lobbied the international community for decades to turn its attention to the human impact of the Kashmir conflict. But international humanitarian organizations (with the exception of Islamic Relief) had avoided becoming directly involved with people who were displaced in AJK, because they considered their forced displacement a political issue. Four years into the War on Terror, however, international organizations saw offering aid to earthquake-affected people as an opportunity to demonstrate their will to care for Muslim victims in a time of crisis, as several aid workers told me. Formal humanitarian organizations, such as the UNHCR, ICRC, Mercy Corps, and Save the Children, arrived along with military-relief missions deployed by Turkey, China, Cuba, and the U.S.²

Within Pakistan, AJK became a place where Pakistani society’s capacity for self-organization and self-care were mobilized to counter images of Pakistan as a place of perpetual institutional disorder or as the object of military interventions. Activists and student volunteers organized charity drives, which brought in donations from across Pakistan and diaspora communities to support small-scale relief initiatives. Also, members of Kashmiri militant groups had declared a temporary stop to their armed activities on the Indian side of the LoC in order to engage in the labor of relief and social welfare work—what they called “humanitarian jihad” (Robinson 2013). Their relief projects were supported by Islamic charities that competed with international aid agencies for philanthropic donations from Muslim communities around the world. Over the years, many of these workers, without renouncing the possibility of return to militant politics, continued to work as social-welfare volunteers and eventually secured employment in local development NGOs.

As foreign aid workers came to live in places like Muzaffarabad, providing them with secure and comfortable living quarters became integral to reconstruction. Private firms repurposed residences as guesthouses—with “international standard” communications and backup power—in sectors of the city targeted for governance-building development.³ After international organizations began downsizing their missions in 2010, this network of luxury accommodations served a domestic clientele in the emergence of a local tourist industry. Pakistani aid volunteers who had first come to AJK after the earthquake organized college trips from Lahore and Karachi, or brought their families on vacation to see the positive results of Pakistani aid to Kashmiri rehabilitation projects. The Pearl Continental became a destination for Pakistani corporate retreats as well as for U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) training workshops, and students traveled to the northern valleys for adventure retreats. In response, the AJK Tourism Department staged cultural exhibitions and paragliding festivals. In fact, promoting tourism became a development goal; with the support of international non-governmental organization (INGO) livelihood grants and training conferences, over a hundred registered guesthouses opened in the Neelum Valley between 2010 and 2013. The media is framing tourism as a priority in stabilizing AJK as a transitionally post-conflict area, including crediting the tourist industry for a protest in Neelum Valley in August of 2013 in which locals objected to the threat that Punjabi militants posed to the ceasefire on the LoC.

What the coverage missed was that the protesters were also marching in support of local (Kashmiri) militants and protesting against Pakistan for its failure to include Kashmiris in negotiations about Kashmir’s future. It also missed an embedded language of rights in people’s demands for a permanent solution to what Kashmiris call the “Kashmir Problem”:⁴ right of self-determination, protections against human rights violations, and the right of forcibly displaced people to return to their homes in Indian Kashmir. In fact, all of these old demands have been a part of new protests that have emerged among displaced-person advocate groups in AJK since 2010. In the words of one young refugee woman who joined a protest in Muzaffarabad, “Until the Kashmir Problem is solved for the Kashmiri people, there will be no lasting peace.” Such protests intensified after January 2013, when LoC violations seemed likely to derail the 2003 Ceasefire Agreement. Indeed, Kashmiris, who have lived for more than three generations between the guns of two opposing national armies, have known for years that the so-called ceasefire is measured best not in the relative paucity of army deaths but in the numbers of continuing civilian casualties.

Tourism promotion has become an explicit policy recommendation for future peacemaking efforts in Kashmir (Chari, Chandran, and Akhtar 2011). But tourism doesn’t make Kashmir safer for Kashmiris. It makes it possible for Pakistanis, especially the urban middle classes, to imagine Kashmir as a place where a longstanding conflict has ended and where demands for justice, reconciliation, and family reunification are already resolved. It makes it possible for members of the international community, be they state representatives or aid workers, to ignore Kashmiri people’s desire to be included in shaping their own political futures by conflating it with their desire for economic development. The recent reemergence of explicitly political and militant activisms should remind us that, in the end, there are no apolitical solutions to political problems.

References Cited

Chari, P.R., D. Suba Chandran, and Shaheen Akhtar. 2011. “Tourism and Peacebuilding in Jammu and Kashmir.” United States Institute for Peace, Special Report 281.

Hofmann, Charles-Antoine and Laura Hudson. September 2009. “Military Responses to Natural Disasters: Last Resort or Inevitable Trend?” In, Humanitarian Exchange Magazine, No. 44.

Robinson, Cabeiri. 2013. “Postscript: And, Humanitarian Jihad.” In Body of Victim, Body of Warrior, Refugee Families and the Making of Kashmiri Jihadists. Berkeley: University of California Press. 237–242.

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Cabeiri Robinson is an Associate Professor of International Studies & South Asian Studies in the University of Washington ‘s Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies.

Insight from Nagano, Japan.

In the summer of 2009, I had the opportunity to  intern for two weeks with the campaign office of Representative Shinohara Takashi, then the proportional representative for Nagano District 1 in Japan’s Lower House. Rep. Shinohara is a graduate of the UW Law School and graciously allows students from the Japan Studies Program to work as summer interns in his Nagano and Tokyo offices. He is a member of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) and a former official in the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries. At the time, the DPJ was the opposition party, although the writing was on the wall for the probable exit of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP).

During the week I was in Nagano, the inevitable Lower House election date had not yet been set, but everyone knew it was coming and campaign activities were fully underway. Japan is a Parliamentary Democracy, which means that the government is structured more like the United Kingdom or Canada, rather than a Presidential system as in the US. The Diet is bicameral, though most power resides with the Lower House. (Again, similar to the UK.) Whichever party controls the Lower House selects the Prime Minister, with elections coming at irregular times within a five year term limit. Japan also uses a Proportional Representation system much different from the US.[1] Constituents cast two votes, one for a candidate and one for a party, with some portions of the seats awarded to parties based on how many votes they received. The LDP had exercised almost unbroken control of Japan since 1952, an electoral run of staggering length. Opposition parties came and went; at present, most non-LDP politicians have coalesced around the DPJ.

Rep. Shinohara faced a unique set of challenges in this election. Some of these I expected going in, but others took me completely by surprise. Campaigns in Japan bear only a superficial resemblance to their US counterparts. Some differences can be written off as “cultural differences,” but most result from the structure of Japanese campaign and finance laws.

Even within the Japanese system though, Rep. Shinohara’s plight was notable. The DPJ draws enough votes in the area and Rep. Shinohara had enough seniority in the party to feel relatively safe as the proportional representative, but there was a noticeable drop in prestige for those that must take the perceived back door into the Diet. His opponent for the electoral seat in Nagano 1 was among the most entrenched Japanese politicians in recent history, leaving an uphill battle for any challenger. This remained true even in a year when the LDP appeared poised, at long last, to fall from power.

Like other campaigns in Japan, Rep. Shinohara didn’t rely on a media presence. Little if any political communication effort goes into TV, radio, or newspaper ads, because of highly restrictive campaign laws. Instead, most Japanese politicians take barnstorming speech tours and trucks equipped with speakers that my friend calls “Shouty Trucks.” Anyone who has been in Japan during election season will recognize the sight of politicians giving speeches at train stations or the sound of Shouty Trucks blasting candidates’ names at painfully loud volumes. I was too early to ride in the Shouty Truck, to my great disappointment, but did spend time handing out fliers at Nagano Station while Rep. Shinohara exhorted commuters from a makeshift podium.

Most of our time in Nagano was spent canvassing door to door. This is where Rep. Shinohara’s particular disadvantages started to appear. His opponent was Kosaka Kenji, the fourth generation of the Kosaka family to hold the seat. In fact, no politician not named Kosaka had ever won in Nagano 1. This is an incumbent advantage almost unimaginable to US voters, as loyalty to the Kosaka family has been passed down since the Meiji Era, in ways both personal and professional. The clan also has significant business interests in construction and media. (I don’t believe that any of this influence was used in illegal or unethical ways per se, but after 100 years, the Kosaka position was almost impregnable.) In addition to explaining his positions and seeking support, the Shinohara campaign would often ask to place signs on people’s property. I was consistently surprised by the number of responses that were some variation of, “I don’t like the LDP, I’m planning on voting for you, but I just can’t support you publicly. What would the neighbors think?”

At that time, the LDP approval ratings were abysmal. Nobody expected them to win the upcoming election, and everybody knew that everybody else would vote for the DPJ. Even then, the perceived social pressure that buoyed Rep. Kosaka, at least superficially, was too much to overcome. Clandestine DPJ support abounded, but few were willing to go public with it. We didn’t even bother with houses clearly attached to the construction industry, knowing the close ties most held with the Kosaka family.

Throughout my internships, Rep. Shinohara explained more of the challenges to me and his constituents. He received little, if any, coverage in the local media. Again, nothing nefarious or libelous, just a quiet neglect. When school children visited the Diet building on their field trips to Tokyo, Kosaka saw to it that the students were only shown his office. School officials acquiesced, because Kosaka allies controlled much of local politics. Rep. Shinohara had a solid base of support within the region, but nothing to compare with many decades of Kosaka prominence. He had run against Rep. Kosaka before, but still trailed far behind in name recognition with no easy way boost his signal.

There are some analogues to US politics, but far more differences. Campaign laws in the US prohibit obnoxious sound trucks (fortunately), but any candidate with money can buy up unlimited media time, billboards, or print ads to get the word out. Certain districts have gone reliably to a single party for decades, but the loyalty in the United States seems much more party- than personality-based. Long tenured politicians have extensive networks of backers that place obstacles in the path of upstarts, but very few families manage to create a multi-generation dynasty.

Finally, the biggest differences lie with Americans themselves. I have lived as part of both a persecuted political minority and an overwhelming majority, and in both cases, the opposition was loud and proud. Indeed, the smaller a political faction, the more insistent it often becomes. Rep. Shinohara would have no trouble hanging signs in this country.

For those wishing for some spoilers, I will skip ahead a few months. I spent a week in Nagano, then a week in Tokyo (stories for another post!), then bequeathed the intern position to other JSIS students. In late summer, Prime Minister Aso finally bowed to the inevitable and called for a Lower House election. The DPJ hammered the LDP at the polls. Most observers predicted the victory, but it was a tidal wave beyond expectation.

Rep. Shinohara rode the anti-LDP sentiment to a comfortable victory in Nagano 1, unseating a Kosaka incumbent for the first time in modern history. The regional polling was so bad for the LDP that Kosaka couldn’t even get on the proportional ballot. In a normal election year, I’m not certain that Rep. Shinohara could have won, despite a disciplined, enthusiastic campaign. In 2009, however, the overall disgust with the LDP after years of scandal and economic blundering  was finally enough to overpower whatever personal loyalty many voters felt for the Kosaka family.

Epilogue: Despite the DPJ’s grand triumph, persistent incompetence, a shotgun approach to untenable campaign promises, and finally the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami doomed them to a single term. In the next Lower House election, the LDP regained control of the government as voters rejected a DPJ now seen as unprepared to run a country. Nevertheless, Rep. Shinohara maintained control of his seat, while Rep. Kosaka joined the Upper House in a proportional seat. Rep. Shinohara has by now largely erased his previous disadvantages (helped, no doubt, by Rep. Kosaka’s jump to the Upper House) and seems fairly entrenched. If he survived the last election, he may prove difficult to unseat without the benefit of a big name from the LDP. Nagano 1 appears to be safely in the DPJ’s hands for the foreseeable future.

Brittain Barber graduated with his MA in Japan Studies in 2008, returning to the States after many years in Kyoto. He has remained in Seattle, working in IT and staying involved with the regional Japanese community. He can also be found working the local music scene, writing about science fiction, and coaching youth soccer.

Insight from Moscow, Russia.

My last day in Moscow was supposed to be a fun tour around the beautiful city by myself, since the entire delegation left the day earlier. I was hoping to finally get some rest and catch a little tourist fever.

The day started off well, as planned. I slept until 9:30 a.m. and skipped breakfast so I could eat my fill at multiple restaurants in Arbat District over lunch. After leaving the hotel, I took the Metro to the Kremlin. Even though it was my second time seeing it, I still found it magnificent. St. Basil’s Cathedral was just as breathtaking as every tourist review said it would be. It was a lot colder than the previous days. Snow was beginning to stick, but everyone there seemed not to care. Maybe that’s because snow is nothing new in Moscow.

Right across the famous Red Square, there is a big department store called “Gum.” It took me nearly two hours to tour that place, an entire hour spent at the grocery section. It was so much fun peeking at the ordinary lives of Russian people. The food court was fantastic even though I think I was ripped off. I ordered one dish, and the bill was 900 rubles or about $30. Are you kidding me? ONE DISH WITH PEPSI WAS GOING TO COST ME $30? I was pretty bummed to pay that much. But, the food was good and I told myself it was better than if I had to pay $30 for a McDonald’s meal in Russia.

After grabbing a quick bite to eat, I left Gum and headed towards Manezhnaya and found myself surrounded by a few dozen anti-war protesters. The protesters were holding a demonstration against Russia’s “illegal” military intervention into Crimea. It was a very short-lived protest, as 50 or so people were detained on the spot. I was among the few people who immediately pulled out their phones and began to take pictures of the protest. It didn’t go as planned, and the Russian police came shouting to not take pictures. One of them tried to knock my phone out of my hand, but failed to do so, and I didn’t take my phone out again.

Despite the brevity of the protest, I was shocked for many reasons, primarily because I had just witnessed a moment of Russian civil society in action that completely changed my perception towards a former Soviet country.  Most of my perceptions were derived from a preconceived notion of an underdeveloped or lagging civil society in a post-Soviet space. I suppose the methods, the size, and the degree of the protest was not like that of the Occupy movements or the ones I have seen and been a part of in Seoul and the United States. Nonetheless, I was able to connect with the people’s cry for peace.

I don’t know how many of you have watched someone being detained in Moscow before, but it’s not a pretty scene. After seeing people’s rights to free speech and gather be crushed, I lost all my appetite to tour. I headed to the airport to catch my 21:15 flight home. What a gloomy Sunday and end to my visit.

My first trip to Moscow yielded only two memorable accounts worthy enough to share on Facebook, but it was a great success because I had a chance to reconfirm why I go through the seemingly meaningless hours and trouble of being in graduate school.  I want to better understand the significance of those cries for peace, rights and more rights.  I’ve heard them in Russia, the U.S. and Seoul.  They are global in nature and express a universal yearning for social change.  This leaves me with one answer: keep going. I’m back in Seoul now, ready to embark on another adventurous semester full of work and sleepless nights. It’s weird coming back home to a bed that doesn’t feel like it’s mine because I can’t remember the last time I had a good night sleep on it.

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Jaisang Sun is an alumnus of the B.A. in International Studies Program. He is currently an MA candidate in the Department of Political Science and International Relations at Seoul National University, where he is also a teaching assistant to Dr. Shin Beom-Shik and Dr. Chun Chae-Sung for an education exchange program sponsored by the Korea Foundation. Jaisang traveled to Moscow as part of a delegation representing the Asia Center at Seoul National University to visit universities in Moscow.

Insight from Istanbul, Turkey.

This post was also posted on Dr. İbikoğlu’s blog.

AKP’s acronym stands for Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, i.e. Justice and Development Party. For years, the leaders of the party preferred using AK Parti. As you might know, “ak” means “white” in Turkish. The obvious reference in “AK Parti” was to cleanliness, transparency and innocence. In essence, the party climbed to power in the wake of many corruption scandals which marginalized mainstream parties such as ANAP and DYP in the 1990s. Fast forward a decade or so, and many AKP leaders, including Recep Tayyip Erdoğan himself, are now facing allegations of corruption through leaked tapes of phone-tapping.

The first wave of these tapes emerged on December 17, 2013, when many high profile figures were taken into custody by the police for interrogation. These figures included the sons of three ministers in the cabinet, an Azeri business tycoon, and the CEO of a state of owned bank. The police had recovered millions of Turkish Liras and foreign currency hidden in some of the apartments.

I might try to provide a full chronological account of what happened since December 17 in a later post, but the government simply identified the allegations of corruption, the leaked tapes, and the police operation as yet another attempt at forcefully removing AKP from power – a coup. This time, the attacking power was neither the “military,” nor the “deep state.” It was the “parallel state.” Erdoğan and other AKP leaders identified the Fethullah Gülen movement (an Islam-inspired movement, also called Cemaat or the Hizmet movement) as the parallel state which allegedly controlled key nodes in the police and judiciary. Cemaat and AKP had cooperated since the latter’s establishment in 2001. For reasons yet to be found out, the cooperation ended in late 2013 and AKP and Cemaat went for each other’s throat. AKP leaders tried to discredit the tapes and police operations by arguing that the “timing was meaningful.” In their argumentation, the prosecutors and the police of the Cemaat accumulated tapes and cases against prominent AKP figures over time to circulate them at the most suitable time when it would hurt the most.

The AKP government reacted swiftly against the police and the prosecutors. Hundreds of police chiefs and officers were removed from office over the following weeks. Eventually those prosecutors who were in charge of the corruption case were reassigned as well. After these removals, there simply was no hope left for a decent investigation, prosecution and trial. Turkish political arena is familiar to instrumental exploitation of the law, but not to such blatant disregard of the law by those in power. I would like to come back to this topic in later posts, but today I want to talk about AKP’s rapid burial under allegations of corruption, despite its legislative strength and executive power, which successfully evades judicial control for the moment. How could AKP sink under such allegations when they appeared most powerful?

The answer lies in two main institutional factors: 1) AKP motto that prioritizes “getting things done” and “providing services”; and 2) Increased personification of AKP under Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

1) Before forming the AKP and becoming the prime minister, Erdoğan had served as the mayor of Istanbul for many years in 1990s. He was renowned for getting Istanbul in order and providing many services which were neglected before him. As the mayor, he fixed the problems with garbage collection and improved public transportation among other issues. It is my belief that Erdoğan approached the governance of Turkey with a similar mindset. Within this frame of mind, Turkey faced important infrastructural deficiencies and Erdoğan would fix these issues. It is not a coincidence that the main item in AKP’s developmental agenda had always been construction: Construction of roads, bridges, houses, etc… Recently, the AKP government has been adamant about building a third bridge over the Bosphorus. Another important (crazy?) project under discussion has been to open a second canal to the west of Istanbul that would mimic the Bosphorus… One of the key new official agencies in this construction oriented framework was TOKİ (Housing Development Administration), which has been operating in almost every urban center and beyond to build new large residential neighborhoods.

I am sure many citizens approve these developmental projects which turned Turkey into one large construction site over the last decade. Here, I do not want to discuss and evaluate the costs and benefits of a developmental agenda that prioritizes construction beyond anything else. However, it is a fact that such an endeavor fosters a colossal construction and real estate market. It also requires readjustment of city plans to accommodate these new roads, bridges, and neighborhoods. It requires destruction of old neighborhoods and relocation of many residents. I think it is at this critical juncture where the seeds of AKP’s burial under allegations of corruption were sown.

In its haste to “develop” Turkey through construction, AKP wanted to “get things done” quickly. Judicial controls, legal requirements, and local assemblies were hurdles in AKP’s path to development and modernization. In AKP’s view, courts were throwing away valuable projects, and legal requirements were causing delays in important projects. I strongly believe that AKP institutionalized extralegal practices over the years to cut corners short. In their bid to “provide better services,” AKP oversaw the crystallization of a collective ethos within its own ranks that sacrificed the law in exchange for rapid progress. We can come up with many examples but I will suffice here with a new case I read in my friend Tuna’s forthcoming article on privatization of Sümerbank factories and lands across the country.

The Sümerbank (a state-owned textile factory) in Malatya, which was situated on 129 thousand square meters, was privatized in 2004. A conglomerate of local firms had bid and bought the factory and its premises. As had been the case for such acts of privatization in industrial zones, the factory was soon demolished and plans for building a shopping mall were underway simultaneously with a zoning change that turned the area into a commercial zone. In exchange for the zone change, a part of the land was given to the Municipality as the site of the new municipal building, (which is now operational,) free of charge! In addition to the shopping mall, which has been a huge success, new plans have been underway to build a private hospital, a five-star Hilton hotel, and a large mosque on the rest of the land.

This is a perfect AKP win-win scenario: i) A formerly inefficient factory was reintroduced into urban space with no cost to the public; ii) A new municipal building was built with almost no cost to the public; iii) With a new hospital, hotel, and mosque, a livelier urban space and economy was promoted with no cost to the public. I will not delve into the topic of lost jobs at the old Sümerbank factory, or the alternative ways in which that land could have been utilized, or the extra income that the dubious privatization could have provided if the factory land were declared as a commercial zone at the outset. Such routes would simply fail to achieve rapid urban development that the AKP leadership adamantly seeks. Here, I am interested in that collective ethos that seriously perceives this particular path of urban development as successful municipal service. In an ideal type AKP privatization of a public asset, the public would be appeased with no-cost urban development, businesses would thrive with favorable land sales or zone-changes, and those happy businesses would grace the public with donations or would renovate public buildings for free. Within this conception, which prioritizes fast-paced construction at the expense of the law, lies the roots of institutionalized corruption that now bogs AKP down. Because, this type of extralegal actions could (and did) easily degenerate. (I call these actions extralegal not because they defy the law, but because they defy a certain sense of right and justice. To be honest, zoning changes and public donations appear legal on paper. However, it is also clear that they are motivated by favoritism.)

2) So far, I have assumed that AKP was motivated by doing good, i.e. “getting things done” and “providing services.” I will not succumb to the assumption of evilness that AKP members have always been corrupt. I just do not believe that large bodies of people happen to be bad. Instead, we have to search for institutional structures that condition them to act in such ways. As I argued, AKP’s particular conception of rapid urban development set the stage for an ethos of extralegal activities. However, how could the entire party (including its almighty pious leader) get involved in corruption? There still seems to be a huge gap between doing business in murky extralegal terrain and outright corruption, especially within a party whose basis of foundation was being clean and transparent. I believe the answer lies within increased personification of AKP under Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. As a consequence, AKP failed to develop necessary institutional intra-party mechanisms to combat and prevent corruption within ranks.

Over the years, AKP increasingly became a one-man party. Especially since the 2011 elections, AKP representatives have been hesitant about making definitive comments on key issues that fall outside the boundaries of their immediate roles. Erdoğan has increasingly become the sole authoritative voice of the party. His recent conflicts with Bülent Arınç, the spokesperson of the cabinet and an important senior member of the AKP movement, portray the rising tensions within AKP over Erdoğan’s authoritarian tendencies.

Erdoğan’s increased control over the party is reminiscent of mid-20th century corporatist regimes around the world, where a single leader had represented the entire constituency through a vertically organized party structure. This single-man rule is naturally very jealous in sharing power. Political advancement within ranks is based on winning the favor of the leader. Then, it is not a coincidence that Erdoğan preferred to appoint a significant number of his old friends (for example, İdris Naim Şahin and Erdoğan Bayraktar) to crucial posts in the cabinet over the years. Erdoğan’s personal trust mattered the most.

I do not believe AKP was destined to follow this corporatist route. As Jenny White (2002) described in her important study, Islamist Mobilization in Turkey: A Study in Vernacular Politics, AKP started out with a very active grasroots organization. This momentum could have formed the basis of a more participatory and accountable party structure that would enable more local participation within the party leadership. However, increased idolization and deification of Erdoğan did not allow the AKP to develop institutions, which would provide natural checks on abuse of authority. Increasingly, local AKP leaders felt accountable only to Erdoğan, but not to their own constituencies. I believe that the lack of institutional checks on local and national AKP leaders enabled the descent from extralegality to corruption.

Erdoğan’s governing style i) that perceived Turkey as one big municipality; ii) that anchored development in rapid urban construction projects at the expense of the law; iii) and that relied on personal networks of trust and friendship resulted in the simple impossibility of personally overseeing the transfers of huge sums of money. Getting public projects done for free eventually degenerated into collecting funds for the party, which degenerated into taking bribes. Simply, this is why democracies rely on judicial control and legal regulations to oversee such expenditures. When the law is overthrown to cut corners short, and alternative disciplinary mechanisms are not employed, corruption ensues. In Turkey, Erdoğan and AKP are now buried under it.

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Arda İbikoğlu is an alumnus of the M.A. in International Studies Program. He also has a Ph.D. in Political Science from the UW and Middle East experts from JSIS served on his doctoral committee. He is an expert in Turkish and Middle East politics and his research focuses on Turkish political prisoners and changing state-society relations in Turkey from the Ottoman Empire to the present. He has published articles and book chapters on this subject, including an article featured in a Special Issue of Studies in Law, Politics, and Society that highlighted the “next generation” of interdisciplinary legal studies. He is currently a postdoctoral researcher at Boğaziçi University in Istanbul.

You can follow Dr. İbikoğlu on Twitter here.

Insight from London, England

The Union Jack seems unique among national flags to truly capture an essential feature of the people it represents. It is in fact three flags stacked on top of each other: the English cross of St. George sits as the undeniable foundation, with the crosses of Saints Patrick and Andrew of Ireland and Scotland, respectively, superimposed. It’s as if when a hurried official came suddenly into some room in Westminster and said, ‘we need a flag to represent the newly created United Kingdom’, someone replied, flummoxed, ‘uhhh…ummm…could we just put them on top of each other?’ It’s the kind of creativity one imagines contributed to the naming of towns and cities up and down the East Coast of the United States: Worcester, New York, New Hampshire, New Haven, New Jersey, Plymouth…‘It’s not worth fussing over’, says the credo, ‘let’s go with what works and get on with it’.

The British are famed for not wanting to make a fuss and it is probably the one national stereotype that actually holds true. Of course, there are a million ways to define Britishness, and many would say it doesn’t exist at all. According to some, you’re either English, Scottish, Welsh or Northern Irish – you may even be Cornish! How could one word describe all these people when their accents are so different? Whatever. For the time being, these nationalities are in it together, whether they like it or not (and chances are they don’t).

But for all the fuss about not being fussy, lots of people around the UK are in a hissy over a great many things at the moment. Most notable are the upcoming referendum for Scottish independence and an in-out referendum on the UK’s membership of the European Union should the Conservative Party win re-election in 2015. If the Scots leave the UK and the UK leaves the EU, what will the Union Jack look like then?

As it turns out, exactly the same. The Scots would still have the Queen as their head of state and the EU has nothing to do with the flag, to everyone’s great relief. But once the cardinal rule of Not Making A Fuss is so completely contravened, how well can the quintessentially makeshift flag represent a country which in its new incarnation will have taken a lot of deliberate, determined effort to remake?

Not very. The 1707 Act of Union – when Scotland became part of the United Kingdom – prompted the creation of the Union Jack. The country was on the up. Ahead of it were over two-hundred years of global imperial dominance unknown to any other power in history. The Roman Empire is a joke compared to what the British achieved. In the 18th and 19th centuries, then, the Union Jack, insofar as it represented the essential qualities of the British people, was a projection of their country’s glory. In cities and ports around the world, the sight of the flag inspired admiration, respect, loathing, and on more than a few occasions it inspired fear. Regardless of the message, what is inarguable is that it mattered.

But if the Scots choose independence and the rest of the UK stumbles belligerently out of the European Union, it will mark a turning point for what the Union Jack represents. Not only will the purportedly least fussy country on the planet show itself to actually be rather high maintenance, it will also be an undeniable marker of decline. Pockets of the UK will be very nice places to visit—‘castles countryside, old churches and more!’ –but, on the whole, the country will matter less and be poorer.

As an American living in the UK and married to a Briton, but still roughly five years away from UK citizenship, it’s debatable whether my opinion matters. All the same, here’s to hoping the Union Jack still matters once I do take the hallowed vow of Not Making a Fuss, whatever the phrase has come to mean by then.

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Jeffrey P. Lupo lives in London and intends to practice law in England and Wales. He graduated from the Jackson School in 2010. Jeffrey is the co-founder of the Jackson School Journal of International Studies.

Insight from Southeast Asia.

While in Vietnam I took a history class on the Vietnam War, taught by Dr. Christoph Giebel and came to a simple idea about America’s poor reaction to losing the War. As a culture we had to reconstruct it in our memories with phallic symbols of American might in films such as Rambo to compensate for our loss. We also bullied the rest of the world into imposing crushing sanctions on a victorious country that did not match normal Cold War sanctions against Communist governments[1].

This isolation has given Vietnam a fend-for-itself mentality that is apparent in how the people seemingly never give up when it comes to economic advancement such as creating little corner shops in front of their houses, which are everywhere, to gain a little extra money. Maybe to compensate for poor living conditions during and after the war, Vietnamese narratives of the War and its aftermath are staunchly nationalistic, classically portraying the beaten French, Japanese, Chinese and American forces as weak cowards. This nationalistic narrative of expelling foreign aggressors[2] has been so deeply embedded that a large plaque summarizing Vietnamese history in a National History museum in Ho Chi Minh City even fails to mention that a French missionary developed their Romanized script (quốc ngữ). The American military, after using more bombs and bullets in Vietnam than all of WWII combined, after poisoning thousands for generations, after leaving a beautiful countryside identical to the landscape of the moon, has been portrayed by Vietnam’s nationalistic narrative as the defeated foreign aggressor.

Though Vietnam carries traces of the war everywhere, when I asked a Vietnamese friend how he felt about me being in his country, he said he did not care about the war. He said that he liked Americans, the language, the culture and the people, and that he only wanted to do what the U.S. military failed to do during the war, make a real personal connection.

Cambodia, because of a complex number of factors that relate to the Vietnam War, has quite a different story from Vietnam.[3] In five years, one fourth of the Cambodian population was killed due to the one time teacher Pol Pot who aimed to kill all intellectuals and artists, teachers, bilingual people and even anyone with glasses. According to his own ideals, Pol Pot should’ve been killed too to reach his agrarian dream of complete equality. He pursued this complete equality, but destroyed all semblance of society.

The past lays heavy in the air in Cambodia, like a scented humid night that continuously draws up faint memories difficult to place. With many ex-Khmer Rouge leaders controlling Cambodia for the past twenty-five years there has been a slower process of recovery than in Vietnam, especially most of the builders and maintainers of society and culture had been killed. Yet, even while I walked through a killing field and found bones sticking out of the ground, I could still see in Angkor a past worth being proud of (that is, if you agree with national narratives that would connect the Angkorian Empire to the now dominant Khmer people group in Cambodia).

Angkor is a wonder in itself. I felt as if I was walking through various mythical tales all at once. In one place I saw the Jungle Book (which was inspired by Angkor). In others I saw Wats that could easily be in the next season of Game of Thrones. Somehow, in Angkor, the heavy weight of Cambodia’s recent past seemed to have been blown away by the small breeze that is a breath of life in the heat of a Cambodian summer. It is frustrating to see such an impressive past in a country torn by war and ran rampant by expats that treat the country like the Wild West we were a part of when playing Cowboys and Indians as children[4]. After leaving Cambodia through the God-awful Thai-Cambodia land crossing, I would look back fondly yet sadly on a country whose countryside reminded me so much of Texas and a people who have every reason to not smile yet were continuously some of the nicest people I have ever met.

After paying for a visa at the Myanmar embassy, I found myself in the nicest airport in Southeast Asia as I traveled to Yangon. There are an uncomfortable number of cars in Yangon and traffic is second only to Bangkok. Unreasonably uncomfortable taxi seats aside, Myanmar stands out from its Southeast Asian neighbors not only for its ability to remain as most uninfluenced by the West, but presumably also most unaffected by U.S. military policies. The U.S. has yet to have any direct military engagement with Myanmar, but due to the U.S.’s paranoid War on Terrorism, Myanmar in the past has been labeled as an Axis of Evil by Condoleezza Rice and George W. Bush, giving Myanmar the same shunned treatment as Vietnam received between 1975 and 1994. U.S. military policies against perceived national enemies damaged Myanmar’s already weak economy and helped to develop a black economy[5].

The Burmese people are unimaginably nice and Yangon was easily the safest city I have ever been to, if I ignored the random gaping sinkholes in the sidewalks. Yangon is a microcosm of Myanmar. Yangon has a decently sized Muslim community (from what I saw, though numbers are never mentioned) and a quickly developing economy (just three years ago there were almost no cars), but both of these characteristics meet at a delicate middle ground where economic hardships and opportunities combined with more political freedom are manifesting themselves in random acts of violence against Muslim communities.

The tallest building in Yangon has a rooftop restaurant: off to one side I could see the inspiring Shwedagon temple and the sprawling metropolis of Yangon. Yet, when I turned to the other side of the restaurant, I saw a city that stops and gives way to a sea of green and infinite blue sky. While Myanmar, like Yangon, holds promises of a bright future, the past effects of U.S. military actions in Southeast Asia leave Myanmar’s future as wide and uncertain as the fields and sky that surround Yangon.

Thailand left me with an odd taste in my mouth. Although Thailand has never been in a major international conflict to the same scale as Cambodia and Vietnam, Thailand has a heavily militarized society. Pictures of the royal family are everywhere. If you say one bad thing about the family you are put in jail. The U.S. used Thailand as an anticommunist example in the Cold War after failing to progress anywhere with Vietnam, Cambodia or Laos. Thailand has even developed a national identity that at times is portrayed in specifically not being communist.[6] The U.S. has had a close relation to Thailand since the Cold War that has helped direct Thailand’s history and identity. Overtly aggressive U.S. military actions in Southeast Asia has even helped to develop a robust military society in Thailand by the sheer force of U.S. presence in the region.

In much of the world there are traces of war and the after effects of military actions. But Southeast Asia is different: the memories of U.S. military polices are heavy in the tropical air, it drips in the sweat that rolls around the smiling mouth of local citizens greeting new American tourist, carrying money not guns. In America we often forget what effects our military has on the world, be it on-the-ground violence as in Vietnam or Cambodia, or in more psychological and cultural military influence as in Thailand and Myanmar.

Although there are traces of U.S. military policies across Southeast Asia there are also traces of the future in the warm way people of various cultures seemingly invite foreigners with open arms. It is hard to tell if their smiles are the forcibly polite smiles our mothers have taught us when entertaining unwanted guests, or if it is genuine. Either way, the lingering effects of war are everywhere. The way to fix the current problems left over from the past are many and disputed. But the first step is the step my Vietnamese friend made in Hue, caring about the past, but not letting it affect his view of Americans today. We all carry requiems of war, but how we use those memories in the present constitute how the future will unfold.

Insight from Srinagar, Jammu & Kashmir.

The following was also posted on Francis Ramoin Flores’ blog on August 21, 2013 where he is chronicling his travels as a Bonderman Fellow.

Insight from Washington D.C., U.S.A.

Guess what I did for my birthday this year? Courtesy of the Jackson School (JSIS) and  the Association of Professional Schools of International Affairs (APSIA), I received an all-expenses paid trip to Washington D.C., an opportunity to participate in a conference on “Diversity in International Affairs,” and a chance to meet some great students and professionals working on fascinating projects around the world.

It was my first time in D.C. and I was a bit worried about navigating my way through a new city, especially since I had an appointment to meet with a JSIS alum at the Chamber of Commerce within an hour after my plane landed. Navigation turned out to be pretty easy—a little thanks to the fact that most U.S. downtowns follow a similar pattern (and some thanks to Google of course). D.C. seemed similar to most American cities on the surface but I know from experience that real differences between cities begin to stand out once you start living in one longer than a few weeks. Cultural differences, especially, are not a monopoly of foreign countries but are very much present within countries as well.

On this trip I got my first dose of East Coast versus West Coast office culture starting from the minute I began debating what would be appropriate to wear. Kelly Voss, from JSIS Career Services, helped by making the difference much easier to understand when she told me, “Cardigans are the blazers of the West Coast!” As one speaker after another at the conference stressed the importance of having more diversity in the workforce I looked around at the audience and smiled. In spite of small differences in dressing, there was an overall uniformity of sorts—the dominating business culture at work, which also extends to other parts of the world partly as a result of colonization and globalization.

 A girl with the same last name as mine (but spelled differently) came up to me and asked if I was from Pakistan. Surprised, I said yes and asked her how she knew. She stated as a matter of fact, “Oh that’s how the Pakistanis usually spell Chaudhary. In Bangladesh we use a ‘w’ instead.” I was just as fascinated by this little tip as I had once been when someone told me that one way to tell if a woman was Indian and not Pakistani was by the design of her shalwar! My years living in South Asia, or studying it, had never provided me with these interesting bits of information. I guess many such distinctions and markers become more relevant when one is outside one’s own country.

 Whenever we meet new people, especially at events like conferences, we end up representing our schools/organizations to some extent. In addition to that, those of us who have grown up abroad tend to be representatives of our respective countries too, whether it be in the way we conduct ourselves–defying or reinforcing stereotypes– or in the form of direct questions people ask about our country’s culture, politics, geography and so on. I always enjoy talking to people about Pakistan and the more I am asked to describe it the more I become aware of how hard it is to explain seemingly simple things, like “what an average meal is like” or “what people do for fun,” simply because often there is so much socio-economic, ethnic, and cultural diversity even within a country that it is not easy to pinpoint an “average.”

Coming back to D.C.—walking around the city I did some typical touristy stuff, I met up with old friends, and I ended up having to wait to cross the road till President Obama’s cavalcade passed by on the way to the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. As people around me took out their phones to make videos, I grumbled to my friend about how I felt like I was back in Pakistan with the road blocked for some VIP. Granted that this was a much quicker and more efficient process but, at the end of the day, it only reminded me that no matter where you go in the world some things never change.

~~~~~

Nabeeha Chaudhary is an M.A. student in the South Asian Studies department in the Jackson School. She grew up in Lahore and Karachi and studied at the University of Karachi for more than two years before transferring to Miami University where she completed her B.A. in English Literature. Her current research interests revolve around Media, Education, and Gender Disparities in South Asia with a focus on Pakistan.

Nabeeha wrote a previous blog post for JSIS Correspondence about being in Karachi to visit friends and family and to collect material for her M.A. project on the representation of women in Pakistani television serials.

Insight from Istanbul, Turkey.

This post was also posted on Dr. İbikoğlu’s blog where he has been contextualizing the Turkish protests.

I have shared some protest graffiti before. This time I will try to translate some other examples of ingenious protest humor. This is gonna be fun!

You shall step on wet bathroom slippers with socks on your feet RTE (Recep Tayyip Erdoğan)

A perfect peaceful curse, don’t you think?

Here is a perfect artwork that plays with the AKP emblem. No commentary needed!

Another piece that symbolizes the #occupygezi’s reliance on twitter. Just perfect!

TEAR GAS

Pepper Dolma

These two images are awesome examples of reappropriating the opponent’s arsenal through disproportionate use of intelligence. The empty cases in these images are empty tear gas cannisters. The first one is used as a lemonade cup with a sliced lemon and a straw. The second one is even better. Tear gas is called “pepper gas” (biber gazı) in Turkish. As you know, Turkey has delicious pepper dolma (biber dolması), i.e. fat green peppers stuffed with rice. Well, there is a stuffed pepper for you!

What helps against tear gas? Vinegar! Lemon!

Unless you lived in Turkey throughout the 1980s and 1990s, you will most likely miss the reference in this one. The actress on the left is Adile Naşit, and the actor on the right is Münir Özkul. They are both veterans of Turkish cinema. I grew up watching their movies. These two scenes are from the same comedy movie Neşeli Günler! (1978 – Happy Days!). This couple, with six kids, have a shop where they sell pickled vegetables and pickle juice. In the opening scenes of the movie, they get into a huge argument about whether the best pickles are made with vinegar or lemon. I really want to congratulate the genious who made the connection between that argument in that movie and tear gas. As you might know, lemon and vinegar are both very helpful in soothing the effects of tear gas! (In case you were wondering, the argument between the couple ends up in a divorce and she leaves the house with three of the kids in a heartbreaking scene. The movie is about how the kids find each other many years later and eventually convince their parents to come together again.)

Erdoğan sitting on a throne of empty tear gas cannisters. It is quite a powerful image. The shape of the throne is another reference to famous TV series, Game of Thrones, based on George R. R. Martin novels.

THE PENGUINS!

If you were wondering how the penguins got involved in the Gezi protests that very quickly enveloped the entire country, here is why. At 1:06 AM, on June 2, at the peak of demonstrations and clashes, CNNTÜRK, a franchise of CNN, was broadcasting a documentary on penguins, whereas CNN International was broadcasting the ongoing events live on the ground. This irony was not lost to the protesters and soon penguins became somewhat of a symbol for #OccupyGezi.

Above is a cartoon mocking CNNTÜRK.

And the penguins were spotted in the protests.
Then the mockery got out of control of course! A video from Bobiler.com

“To Chapul”

On June 2, during the peak hours of protests and clashes, Prime Minister Erdoğan identified the protesters as  “birkaç çapulcu” (a few marauders). Çapulcu almost perfectly translates as marauders: 1) Those forces of the army that harassed and looted settlements on the other side of the border; 2) Looters during public upheavals. This identification was widely perceived as another arrogant remark by Erdoğan and pulled even more people into streets in protest over the following days. Then, as in the case of empty tear gas cannisters, protesters reappropriated “çapulcu” and deployed it as a humorous tool against Erdoğan and the government. For instance check out this wikipedia entry on “chapulling“, or this video below!:

Everyday I’m Chapulling! The next video is in Turkish but you might want to take a look if you need a crash course on this new verb in English:

And finally an international Çapulcu below!

Noam Chomsky

ÇARŞI

Beşiktaş FC fan group Çarşı (together with Fenerbahçe and Galatasaray fans) have been on the front lines of the clashes since the beginning of the protests. Çarşı fans even chased TOMAs (Toplumsal Olaylara Müdahele Aracı – Vehicle of Intervention in Public Events) with a bulldozer they got hold of. They eventually captured a TOMA as well, which they re-named as POMA (Polis Olaylarına Müdahele Aracı – Vehicle of Intervention in Police Events). Below is supposedly the account of the interaction with the police chief on radio when they captured the vehicle:

Chief: Open a hole in the barricades, don’t go in too much!
Toma 7: Understood!
Chief: Now move back, spraying water!
Toma 7: Understood!
Chief: Toma 9, you spray water at the same time too!
Toma 9: ZzZzZz
Chief: Toma 9!
Toma 9: I am Vedat, listening!
Chief: Oh, who is Vedat?
Toma 9: From the open stands, the drummer!
Chief: Toma 7, retreat!
Toma 7: Black!

The final “Black!” of Toma 7 is the beginning of the chant for Beşiktaş with jersey colors black and white. Almost a week after that incident, I came across this picture earlier today:

Left Çarşı activist: Do we have someone who can drive a helicopter?
Right Çarşı activist: If it doesn’t work, we can just drive it on the ground Vedat

Excellent joke about capturing a helicopter this time (while underlining the continuing airborne surveillance of Taksim Square) with a reference to Vedat, the POMA-captor!

The humor of Çarşı fans is also visible in the video below where Beşiktaş FC Çarşı fans call on the police to join the chant. They shout “Red” and the cops they have been fighting shout back “White” – in the colors of the national team. Emphasis on  mutual connections through the national football team is somewhat disarming after all…

The common theme in all of these humorous protests seem to be reappropriation of a tool in the opponent’s arsenal and its redeployment through the use of “disproportionate intelligence”. Let’s conclude with an excellent performance, which mocks Erdoğan’s identification of a protest method – hitting pots and pans together – as “Pots and pans, the same old tune!”:

~~~~~

Arda İbikoğlu is an alumnus of the M.A. in International Studies Program. He also has a Ph.D. in Political Science from the UW and Middle East experts from JSIS served on his doctoral committee. He is an expert in Turkish and Middle East politics and his research focuses on Turkish political prisoners and changing state-society relations in Turkey from the Ottoman Empire to the present. He has published articles and book chapters on this subject, including an article featured in a Special Issue of Studies in Law, Politics, and Society that highlighted the “next generation” of interdisciplinary legal studies. He is currently a postdoctoral researcher at Boğaziçi University in Istanbul.

You can follow Dr. İbikoğlu on Twitter here.

Insight from Istanbul, Turkey.

The following emails from Dr. İbikoğlu were reproduced here with his permission. Please note that they were sent to a friend and so the language is informal.

Dr. Ibikoglu has been posting about the Turkish protests on his blog.

Message 1 (March 31):
Hey, we are all fine. A long explanation would take pages. But, it started as an Occupy Movement couple days ago to protest and prevent government plans to uproot a small park in Taksim Square – Istanbul’s very central entertainment district. The police used tear gas, etc., to dissuade protesters, but more and more people have kept showing up over the past two days.

From what I hear, protesters are mostly people like you and me – not organized at all. Police violence brought more and more people and it completely got out of control last night. Even though just a few TV stations are broadcasting the real extent of the events, people heard about the massively disproportionate use of force online and hit the streets last night. People were on the streets all night. We are talking about thousands of people.

Why? Hard to tell really. The government’s Syria stand has been polarizing, but more importantly two recent events: 1) a new anti-alcohol law that bans selling after 10pm and restricts advertising and consumption in public spaces. 2) the ceremonious beginning of a third bridge on the Bosphorus which was named after Selim the Grim, an Ottoman Sultan known for his massacre of thousands of Anatolian Alevis during his conquest of Egypt back in the 16th century. Both of these (and the plans to change Taksim Square) were begun without any public debate.

I think the real cause is people’s anger in the government which received 50% of the votes in the last elections and now perceives itself above public debate. People supported Erdoğan and his party to overthrow the military’s antidemocratic control over the country. Having done that and having received 50% of the votes, now he sees himself as a Sultan-reincarnate.

I am still quite surprised with seeing so many people on the streets. It is an unlikely coalition out there at the moment. Socialist, Kemalists and whoever is pissed at the government are out there. I really do not think it can last. It would die out if the government comes back to its senses and avoids further violence on peaceful protesters. An economically prospering country and its historical capital out on the streets – really bizarre…

Even though I fail to understand it completely, it is overall pretty awesome. We got rid of the military’s anti-democratic control, and here people are on the streets when the popularly elected government seems to pursue increasingly authoritarian policies. This is gradual reform at its best.

Message 2 (June 1):
There are rumors about Twitter and Facebook shutting down but nothing of the sort happened yet.

It is crazy here. While I am writing this, my street is full with noise – people blowing whistles, hitting pans together in protest.

There are pictures of 40k people crossing the Bosphorus Bridge on foot.

This is all very exciting for public dissent. However, as you can imagine, I have mixed feelings about this. The protests about the park are all right on; the protests about the government’s anti-democratic policies and procedures are all right on. However, the bulk of the masses on the street right now are the supporters of the political movements that I find the most difficult: the Kemalists.

Who are the Kemalists? The supporters of the old regime where a bureaucratic elite (mainly the military and the judiciary) ruled Turkey with an iron fist from WWI. It is the first time a truly popular government took office and undermined these traditional arbiters of power. So some of the people protesting right now are no more true democrats at heart than the ones they are protesting against.

But does the government deserve to be criticized? Hell yeah! They overthrew the old elite but they owe a great deal to them ideologically and they do not see any problems in utilizing the power and coercion networks of the old elite – as seen on the streets today with tear gas and other examples of disproportionate use of police violence.

On a more personal note: Is there ever going to be a political movement/protest that I will feel at home and not over-analyze to oblivion?

Message 3 (June 2):
That Tüfekçi post is great. [Here, Dr. İbikoğlu is referring to a Dr. Zeynep Tüfekçi authored blog post that compares Egypt and Turkey and asks whether there is a social media fueled protest style.] Very accurate observations and analyses. The self-censorship of the media is true and very disturbing. On the other hand, she is also right about the limitations of comparisons to Tahrir. After all, AKP is a truly democratically elected government. It is excessive even to call it authoritarian. Plebiscitarian or majoritarian would be more accurate.

Anyway, as things have changed, I’m now worried about you posting these emails. I’m worried about criticizing the protesters now because it has become so politicized. I would not like to be publicly critical of them now even if there might be things to criticize.

Yesterday and earlier today, Erdoğan talked about the uprisings. He upped his own horribleness. He was very critical of the protesters, called them names (like brigands and marginals), and linked them to CHP (the Kemalist main opposition party). All inaccurate. He is either completely unaware of the extent of the spontaneous nature of the public uprising or he is intentionally misidentifying it to his own electorate who won’t hear about the story from their own media sources because of the media blackout.

But then, I was outside just earlier and many people with Turkish flags were blocking the street, honking, chanting, etc. just as I was about to come back inside, a group about at least 500 people were slowly marching down the street.

I hate the use of the Turkish flag in this context. It is suddenly a nationalist event… so go ahead post my e-mails if you like. I don’t mind being a bit critical of some of the protesters because I am supportive of the cause of protesting too. It highlights many of the divisions here.

Message 4 (June 2):
I have read some accounts of the protests today. There are some quite simplistic ones that identify the conflict as a Muslims vs secular protest. I don’t think you can boil it down to that…

This started as a small protest of the environmental activists but when the disproportionate violence they faced was shared in social media, more people kept rushing in and it escalated into a scale that practically no one foresaw.

But as it stands, I think the composition of the participants differ from place to place. Those people at Taksim, those people who have been clashing with the police at Beşiktaş for the past 24 hours, and those people who were clashing with the police and were dispersed and/or taken into custody only an hour ago at Ankara, are mostly (socialist, environmental, human rights) activists in their 20s and some others who are trying to hijack the protests and turn them into even more violent clashes. However, those people protesting on the Anatolian side of Istanbul, or at other cities (like at my hometown Balıkesir) are somewhat older folks who are more likely to identify themselves as secular nationalists and CHP supporters. Here, we see lots and lots of waving the Turkish flag and singing nationalist marches. As I wrote to you earlier yesterday, I feel a lot closer to those people literally fighting for the ground they are standing on at Taksim and Beşiktaş than the flag-wavers at the Baghdad Street.

Anyway, I think what the Prime Minister Erdoğan is missing (or intentionally avoiding) in his outrageous remarks yesterday, and earlier today, is the composition of this unlikely coalition on the streets that quite literally he himself has forged. All these people are united against his majoritarian/authoritarian rule but he insists calling them as “birkaç çapulcu”, a few marauders.

These spontaneous protests may prove to be the undoing of Erdoğan’s own coalition within which he had successfully incorporated liberal democrats, including influential public intellectuals. Only very recently, he had enlisted the support of influential public intellectuals such as Murat Belge, Mithat Sancar, Baskın Oran and Yılmaz Ensaroğlu to render support for the government’s efforts in forging a peace with the Kurdish movement. I am quite sure, Erdoğan and his party AKP will lose such liberal-democrat support after these protests.

In any case, I think Erdoğan’s resistence to appeasing the protesters and adding more fuel to the fire with increased police brutality is forging a stronger coalition against him and it is possibly weakening his own coalition. These protests may yet prove to be the biggest opponent for a party who ended the military authoritarian rule in Turkey.

** The photo attached to this post has been distributed widely but is attributed to REUTERS/Osman Orsal in this article. **

~~~~~

Arda İbikoğlu is an alumnus of the M.A. in International Studies Program. He also has a Ph.D. in Political Science from the UW and Middle East experts from JSIS served on his doctoral committee. He is an expert in Turkish and Middle East politics and his research focuses on Turkish political prisoners and changing state-society relations in Turkey from the Ottoman Empire to the present. He has published articles and book chapters on this subject, including an article featured in a Special Issue of Studies in Law, Politics, and Society that highlighted the “next generation” of interdisciplinary legal studies. He is currently a postdoctoral researcher at Boğaziçi University in Istanbul.

You can follow Dr. İbikoğlu on Twitter here.