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 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!”:

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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 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. **

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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 Bethlehem, West Bank/State of Palestine.

On the evening of November 29^th, 2012 the Bethlehem streets became increasingly raucous as we continued to watch through the United Nations General Assembly on the upgrade of Palestine’s status from non-member “entity” to non-member “state.” By the time of the third post-vote speech, we couldn’t handle it anymore and took to the streets by car in order to survey the action. Festive, but not overly-so – traffic filled the roads, horns honked, youth hung from the windows with the Palestinian flag or the iconic kuffiyeh flapping in the wind.

Earlier, a very symbolic screening of the UN bid was projected onto the Wall. I heard from one bystander that an Israeli soldier sitting in the watchtower above the crowd opened his window to take a photo at the spectators below – an unheard of interaction. Images of Ramallah’s central square were filmed by all local and international news channels, but circulating reports claimed that a significant portion of the attendees were civilian police or government employees. In Bethlehem, the Palestinian Authority security forces were on the streets primed to restrain potential demonstrations – as usual during politically charged moments – carefully keeping out of sight from Israel’s Wall (and the soldiers stationed in the turrets) that winds through the Northern portions of the city.

Despite being pleased with the symbolic victory, massive international support and receiving deserved attention, the Palestinians I spoke to exuded a restrained excitement conditioned by experience.

Before*

The potential of Palestine becoming a UN non-member observer state, but a state, nonetheless, is eliciting a similar feeling of excitement in the West Bank that local elections produced here in October (on a slightly larger scale, mind you). Both moments pose opportunities for change and a cause for celebration, but are illegitimate representations of Palestinians’ will – a play at politics that undercuts fundamental rights.

Mahmoud Abbas’ pursuit of UN upgrades last year and today, representing both the Palestine Liberation Organization and the PA, deepens a binary Oslo-ization begun in the 1990s. The deeply faulty process towards ‘statehood’ forgoes Palestinian self-determination by dispossessing Palestinian refugees originating from Israel proper (the vast majority of 6.8 million refugees) and Palestinian citizens of Israel (1.5 million). Secondly, pursuing statehood risks further institutionalizing the pseudo-sovereignty that has become the status quo within the West Bank and Gaza Strip – Israel will continue to partition the West Bank into enclaves of PA jurisdiction while extracting resources, transplanting its settler population and perpetuating the structural and naked violence of occupation; as was witnessed last week, the people of Gaza will continue to live under siege and a constant threat of violence.

On the bright side, elevating Palestine to observer state status may provide some benefits. The continuing occupation of what will now be formally recognized by the international community as a state, increases the legal burden on Israel and the moral imperative for international intervention. Palestine based on 1967 borders (excluding the portions expropriated by settlements, Israeli military control, buffer zone in Gaza and the Wall) will have an opportunity to press charges on crimes committed in its (remaining) territory. Media has been abuzz with the enticing option available to the prospective Palestinian state: becoming a member of the International Criminal Court. For the hopeful, it has a ring of accountability to it. Assuming Palestine will be accepted into the ICC (expect heavy resistance from the USA), it will have the potential to submit cases against individuals who have committed international crimes (war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide) within its territory. The chance of acquiring a limited form of justice is a grand feat for an impunity-stricken population (See here for a fuller discussion of the implications of Palestine’s potential membership to the ICC.). Finally, the seemingly limited UN bid may in-fact have the potential for an unforeseen coalescence of political shifts that spur a broader movement capable of achieving rights for all Palestinians.

Can UN non-member status better secure rights for Palestinians? Unlikely and it may compromise them. For example, Israel may use Palestine’s upgrade as a tool for affirming Israeli government-commissioned Levy Report published in June 2012 that claims, counter to international legal opinion, Israel is not occupying East Jerusalem, the West Bank or the Gaza Strip. Palestine may, however, gain some meaningful diplomatic leverage if Abbas secures 130 out of 193 possible votes at 10pm Palestine-time and around 150 are expected to vote in favor of non-member status today.

The morning following a debauched evening (I’ve heard) is filled with faulty memory, misunderstanding and regret. My day after – 138 votes for, 41 abstentions from and 9 votes against, the upgrade to Palestinian statehood – on public transportation, at work and among Palestinians, was a similarly headache-inducing experience. Ironic congratulations of the new ‘State’ of Palestine darted about followed by increasingly stale chuckles as it dawned that 1.) there was very little public understanding of what this so-called upgrade entailed – do Palestinians get PA-issued passports now?, and 2.) the time for an expected retribution from Israel had arrived.

After

On the Friday following Palestine’s UN bid, Israel announced that it intended to build 3,000 settler homes East of occupied Jerusalem – deep into the West Bank. The ‘E1 Plan,’ including military orders securing the territory surrounding the new settlement, will almost completely bisect the West Bank. If implemented, the E1 Plan will further undermine the possibility for sovereignty and physical contiguity of a Palestinian state based on what is left of the 1967 borders. Gaza is already separated from the West Bank and besieged by Israel. A widely held fear is that Israel is implementing a plan to unilaterally induce a Gazan reality as the future for the West Bank: another open-air prison (or two if split horizontally). Two weeks since announcing the settlement, the Israel Land Fund has begun advertising West Bank territory as “part of the battle to settle E1,” at $75,000 per dunam (or $300,000 per acre).

The second major act, viewed as “punishment” tied to the UN bid is a decision by Israel’s Foreign Ministry to confiscate more than $100 million in taxes it collects every month on behalf of the PA until March 2013, at least. The arrangement of tax collection: PA collects funds that it delivers to Israel who redelivers the funds back to the PA, was a mechanism determined by the Oslo Agreements that were meant to expire in 1999 (I recently heard Xavier Abu Eid, a member of the PLO negotiations team, comment that tax collection – delivered to Israel and doled out to the PA – is the last functioning component of the Oslo Agreements.). Over the summer, Israel forwarded the PA $66 million in tax funds after Palestinians protested against the local West Bank Palestinian regime, signaling that Israel desires and even requires the PA’s continued existence and stability – a buffer between itself and the financial and diplomatic costs of its occupation. On December 11^th, the Arab League promised $100 million a month allowance to the PA, which is likely a rebuttal to Israel’s economic scolding.

Expansion into the West Bank and budgetary disruption (the PA has announced that it will soon pay government employees their salaries for the past November) appear to be Israel’s two main actions delivered in response to the statehood bid.

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Despite the seeming normalcy of the continuing status quo, Palestinians are extremely politically active and have not been idle while the PA undermines their representation and Israel continues refusing their rights.

Over the course of the 2000s, Palestinian representatives from around the world have reached a consensus in a call for direct and democratic elections to the Palestinian National Council. The PNC is the electoral body of the PLO who is the sole representative of the Palestinian people, and which has been increasingly displaced by the PA since the Oslo process.

Palestinian youth from the exile community spanning from the UK to Chile to Lebanon to those living in historic Palestine affirmed the call for elections in 2012 and, “the Palestinian parties called for the democratic reform of the PLO through direct PNC elections at several recent national meetings in Cairo, during 2011 and early 2012, under the auspices of the National Reconciliation Committee,” reads the website of the civic registration drive for PNC elections.

Perhaps in response to the PA’s UN bid, momentum is building to revitalize the historic structure of representation as a means to regain control of Palestinians’ destinies.

*The portion of this post immediately following first appeared as “The ‘State’ of Palestine: fallacies at the footsteps to the UN,” on November 29^th, 2012 at my blog: the writing’s on the Wall.

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Thayer is a 2011 alumnus of the Jackson School’s undergraduate program, where he focused on ethnicities and nationalism, and human rights. Since the summer of 2012, Thayer has been living in Palestine and working in the media and legal advocacy fields while maintaining a blog of his writings. Contact him at hastit [at] uw [dot] edu

Insight from Tehran, Iran.

In the news in the past months, scenes of currency riots in Iran have taken hold of international coverage. I visited Iran over the summer and was able to a limited degree witness some of the stress. In some regards, Iran’s economic woes are very real, as I would often hear complaints about skyrocketing food prices. In other regards, Iranians were doing better than when I last visited six years prior. Below, I have described what I had witnessed and a glimpse into the reality of Iranian life.

When I first stepped out of Iran’s newly built airport in the outskirts of Tehran, I noticed an unusual site: a long line of SUVs. Last time I was in Iran, SUVs were definitely around but a pretty rare sight. My uncle began to load our ridiculous load of luggage into the back of his Hyundai Sante Fé. Throughout my time there, my uncle would blast Persian music as the music video would play in the front dashboard of his car. He was not the only family member who purchased a Hyundai Sante Fé; I noticed them often around Tehran. I was told that Iran has a high import tax and I was unofficially quoted 160% of the retail value was the amount of the tariff. This makes purchasing of foreign cars very difficult and what makes a Hyundai, a relatively better priced brand in the United States, a significant purchase in Iran. When I travelled to North Tehran, a richer neighborhood, I saw a surprising number of Mercedes Benz, Lexus, and Porsche vehicles among others. Apparently, Porsche SUVs are a big hit with rich Iranian soccer players. With the risky driving in Iran, I am not sure how they could convince themselves to drive them in traffic.

Outside of the automobile world, high tech items were common. I saw many advanced Android cell phones and iPhones were a common sight. I was asked several times in Iran when the iPhone 5 was going to come out, and much like in the United States, my Windows Phone was looked at with suspicion, “isn’t the iPhone better?” to my personal amusement. Around Tehran, Samsung Galaxy S3 billboards were a very common sight. Also, high definition televisions made by the same brands here in the United States were very common as well. For example, one apartment I went into had a large high definition television with surround sound speakers, and their son had an Xbox 360 and a small high-definition television in his room. This was very similar to a how a typical house in the United States may be set up. Of course, many of the internet capabilities were limited but they got to enjoy the same games that I found at home, albeit copies.

Now, Iranians are obviously under a lot of financial pressure, but the impressions I got were greatly contrasting. I witnessed people complaining about the prices of common items, while the material wealth around them seemed to significantly approve since the last time I was there. I remember one Iranian telling me that “Iranians are tired” and frustrated with the economy. He even equated the poor driving culture to how Iranians are feeling. However, another Iranian I spoke to had a very different analysis. He told me Iranians are used to poor economic times: “we had 8 years of war, a decade of sanctions afterwards [in the 1990s], and now we have some more sanctions… so if chicken is more expensive tomorrow, we just pay more and go along.” Later he made a joke about what he saw as an overreaction by Americans to the 2008 financial crisis: “they are sensitive to it, so they try to inflict on us like we react and care the same… Americans are not used to hardship, we are.” Essentially, he described sanctions as inconsequential. Although one could easily make an argument about Iranians’ special resolve for hard times, it’s hardly inconsequential.

In Tehran, my father went in to exchange U.S. dollars for rials. In Iran, there is an official exchange rate set by the Government that is only used for essential goods; otherwise the dollar-rial exchange rate is set by the black market. The black market is much more commonly used and also more susceptible to fluctuations. At the first exchange location (black market), the dollar was going for 21,750 rials. My dad went down the street to check the price at another currency exchange to find the price set at 21,770 where he made his exchange. On his way back, the price at the initial location went up to 21,800 rials. One week later in Isfahan, my dad exchanged his dollars for 23,050 rials. While we were making that exchange a man walked in to ask for the price, where he exclaimed “it was just 22,000 down the street!” On our last day in Iran, I woke up to “the dollar exploded!” and was informed it became 27,000 rials (this was the day after the Isfahan price). I later found out it “exploded” to 25,000 rials, not 27,000. The 27,000 came from the exchange of $20 bills instead of $100 bills. Yes, in the black market exchange rate lower denominations are worth more (quick tip, if you plan on travelling to Iran soon, bring lots of $1 bills).

With a well-educated youth and influx of high-tech items and material wealth, Iran has lots of potential. There is a misconception in the West about Iran’s economic status as being much more backwards than it really is. Even this quarter in my nuclear non-proliferation class, a few people would compare North Korea and Iran’s economy in regards to sanctions. They are not even close. The youth in Iran and in the West may both be carrying the latest smartphones, but they experience them in completely different environments.

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Shahed Ghoreishi is a International Studies major (International Political Economy track). Currently, he is representing University of Washington students as a Senator in the Associated Students of the University of Washington. Also, he is interning at Senator Maria Cantwell’s Seattle office.

Shahed was born and raised in Seattle’s eastside and is fluent in Persian. He was first inspired to study international relations when he visited Iran in 7th grade. Shahed will graduate in 2013 and hopes to continue his studies in International Studies.

Shahed was in Iran to see family and attend a cousin’s wedding. It was his first visit to Iran since he was 15 and he hoped to gain a more mature perspective on Iran, particularly in light of his education in the Jackson School. His visit also helped to perfect his formal Persian speaking skills.

Shahed posted previously about trust in the Islamic Republic.

Insight from Tehran, Iran.

This summer I traveled to Iran for the purpose of visiting family. It was a particularly amazing experience because it was my first time visiting since I was 15, allowing me to gain a mature perspective and perceive my surroundings with the context of my International Studies classes. I would like to focus on a misunderstood people rather than the commonly described political situation.

Culturally, Iranians are very hospitable. They invite you into their homes, offer endless amounts of food, and attempt to impress their guests. When I visited Iran this past summer, it was no different. Countless offers to visit family and stranger’s homes, constant practicing of Iranian taarof (the act of politely denying offers, which is followed by subsequent reoffering, which over an unnecessary period of time is eventually accepted), and acts of immense trust. No matter where we were in Iran or where we were shopping, the simple act of asking for a price was replied with ghabel nadareh, essentially meaning “for you, it’s free.” After a back and forth of taarof, the shopkeeper, waiter, and taxi driver, or whoever we were talking to, would eventually tell us the price.

This inefficient, but lovely, politeness is only a part of the story of Iranian trust. Once, I mistakenly walked out of a store after a shopkeeper gave me extra change. The shopkeeper had asked whether I would give him the difference but I simply walked out. Surprisingly, the shopkeeper did not care to ask me again as or come out after me as I walked out. (I later came back after finding out to give him the difference.) I even noticed that crossing the street in Iran is a form of trust. As chaotic driving there appears, the people relaxingly cross the street even though a car is speeding towards them. The only conclusion I had was that people must really trust the drivers.

The most extreme example of trust I saw was something that my uncle does. In Iran debit cards are rare. My uncle had one, and was very willing to give his card to fellow business owners that competed with him. My father explained a scenario that he witnessed, where a local shopkeeper came into my uncle’s store to borrow his debit card and repeatedly returned because he kept forgetting my uncle’s pin number. Of course the shopkeeper planned on returning the money soon, but comparing that to the United States, no one usually provides their pin numbers to their best friends let alone their competing business interests. The institutional and societal norms may be very different between the two countries, but I still found this shocking.

The Iranians did not keep this sense of family just for one another. Visitors felt it too. When I was in Isfahan, a visiting German told me that “many people offered me assistance and invited me to their homes, honestly I was very surprised by all the help,” which perfectly exemplified the contrasting impression people have of Iranians in the West versus when they visit in person. Another tourist in Isfahan, this time from Spain, replied to my question about this being her first visit or not, told me “this is my first time, but it definitely won’t be my last!” Although Iranians and Westerners could be natural friends, the political tension becomes intertwined with a negative impression of the people to the detriment of both cultures. Hopefully overtime impressions will change and political tension does not dictate the knowledge of an entire people.

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Shahed Ghoreishi is a International Studies major (International Political Economy track). Currently, he is representing University of Washington students as a Senator in the Associated Students of the University of Washington. Also, he is interning at Senator Maria Cantwell’s Seattle office.

Shahed was born and raised in Seattle’s eastside and is fluent in Persian. He was first inspired to study international relations when he visited Iran in 7th grade. Shahed will graduate in 2013 and hopes to continue his studies in International Studies.

Shahed was in Iran to see family and attend a cousin’s wedding. It was his first visit to Iran since he was 15 and he hoped to gain a more mature perspective on Iran, particularly in light of his education in the Jackson School. His visit also helped to perfect his formal Persian speaking skills.

Insight from Amman, Jordan.

I smiled hesitantly at the petite girl, her arm extended expectantly, offering me a piece of cherry gum. Only her eyes were visible behind voluminous folds of thin black cloth that shielded her entire form, from her toes to the top of her head. She even wore fitted black gloves. The girl had plopped down next to me at a coffee shop I sometimes worked at, despite the copious empty cushions surrounding me. It was hard to tell if she was smiling, but her sweet, musical voice seemed the epitome of cheerfulness.

In this moment I appreciated the special privilege afforded to Western women in the Middle East, basking in the glow Jordanian hospitality in public, unexpectedly, from a woman who would almost certainly never have addressed my male friends.  She barely spoke to me after, busily typing on her laptop, frequently interrupted by her constantly ringing cellphone, blasting Rihanna’s latest single.

I had learned during my first few weeks in Amman, Jordan to stop being surprised by the frequent bursts of garish Western culture nestled comfortably amidst the sea of colorful hijabs, black and white abayas, niqabs and floor-length trench coats that dominated the visual landscape. Those hot-pink stilettos! That popped-collar Ralph Lauren polo! Coral nail polish and This Fall’s asymmetrical haircut! From tiny roadside stands to the many towering, high-end, air-conditioned malls dotting the cityscape, passersby were unceremoniously berated by a steady stream of Western material culture assaulting several senses simultaneously. The way that Jordanian women navigated this maze continuously confounded and impressed me.

My friend Maryam* had over 500 photos on Facebook, though only two of them were actually of her. One pictured her with a school group, neat rows of smiling faces without much detail. The other was a rather coy portrait featuring Maryam in a superbly arranged hijab in a deep burgundy, smiling shyly, the picture of Muslim modesty. She also displays a large number of trending Islamic memes, with Quronic quotes or adages about Ramadan. With the obligation for Islamic modesty met, the rest of the pictures covering her timeline show an assortment of Western style fashion pictures. Sultry blond women lounge on beaches in bathing suits, a brunette with a sweeping side-braid sits on a picturesque rock, the hem of her baby-doll yellow dress a full meter shorted than a Jordanian girl would dare. Maryam had selected as her profile picture a portrait of an angelic, cherub like blonde girl with tumbling Shirley Temple curls.

Maryam’s apparent infatuation with quintessentially Western fashion and internet trends seemed unfitting at first glance of the fully veiled, ostensibly well-behaved Muslim girl. During our first lunch together, however, Mayram quickly revealed that there was plenty of excitement beneath the veneer of proper Islamic etiquette. She had a secret boyfriend of more than a year, and she confided that many of her friends did, too. She had a rebellious streak, to be certain. To the horror of her friends, while watching some friends play basketball one afternoon, in a fit of hysterical giggles, she tore her hijab from her head for a brief second, simultaneously exhilarated by her boldness while quickly re-wrapping her hair. The Golden Rule of proper Jordanian behavior, she informed me, is to never, ever, ever mention taboo topics such as premarital sex or dating. Interestingly, though few would openly discuss it, the university campus was littered with young couples sitting discretely under trees or behind buildings, sitting a little too close and chatting a little too animatedly to plausibly appear as siblings (the only appropriate way that unmarried teenagers would be seen together in public).

Maryam confided that her commitment to education, and waiting to get married, are things her father understands. In this she is luckier than most, and plans to pursue marriage only after finishing her studies in Italian and English. Maryam is thus able to take advantage of the best of both worlds, maintaining her all-important honor and social standing within her family and tribe while still enjoying the guilty pleasure of trends and fashion blogs.

Jordan to me often appeared as a blurry mix between Bedouin traditions, modern pan-Islamism, and imported Western commercialism. In the women I came to know, these seemingly contradictory tendencies were displayed simultaneously, dizzyingly, and comfortably. Maryam was pleased to pick and choose the visual aspects of Western cultures that appealed to her, while willingly keeping in line with the Jordanian, Islamic social ideals and traditions that were expected of her. Was this a country in turmoil, with Western media, fashion and internet sites infiltrating and threatening the very foundations of Jordanian society?

Not at all, I decided. Jordan had long been an oasis of calm in a desert rife with conflict on nearly all sides, with a population of roughly three million Jordanians of Bedouin descent, over two million Palestinians, and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi and increasingly Syrian refugees who had flooded across its borders for half a century. The capital was itself in flux, with entire neighborhoods filling with Iraqis and the annual flood of several million Saudi and Emirati tourists who spend their summers basking in Amman’s relative cool. With the swirling social, political and economic turmoil that undergirds everything in Jordanian society, my two months in Amman gave me a brief glimpse of young women with every confidence in their ability to navigate this seemingly labyrinthine social and cultural landscape. I still have so much to learn.

* Names have been changed

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Lisa Lester graduated in the summer of 2012 with degrees in International Studies (Middle East track) and Spanish. She also studied Arabic for three years outside of her major requirements, studying abroad in Morocco in during the summer of 2011 with a Near Eastern Languages & Civilization program.

Lisa wrote this blog post while spending the summer of 2012 in Amman, Jordan with a CIEE program approved by the UW study abroad office, and funded by a Jackson School FLAS Fellowship. She is currently living in Seattle and plans to attend Medical School in fall 2013.

Insight from Tel Aviv, Israel.

Sitting in the Betty White Café (that’s right!) in Tel Aviv, I have come to the conclusion that Israel is a highly schizophrenic society.  I am a couple of blocks from the beach, where the evening sunsets over the Mediterranean are breathtaking.  And all around me people seem to be enjoying life to the fullest.  They sit in cafés and bars until all hours of the night, sometimes spilling out onto the street in the warm summer nights long after midnight.  The restaurants are full—and they are expensive.  Cultural events are packed.  World recession?  I don’t see it on the streets of downtown Tel Aviv.  At the old Tel Aviv port, now converted into a happening place of shops, shows, and bikinis, traffic jams to get in last until 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning.  This is Barcelona on the shores of the eastern Mediterranean.

Much of the good life is fueled by the extraordinary high-tech boom here—every sort of silly software that you can imagine, along with serious bio-medical products that are changing the world health scene.  Young entrepreneurs drive fancy SUVs and have gorgeous apartments in the city.  Construction is ubiquitous, mostly of fancy office buildings and apartments.

And, yet, there is the other side of Israel that is obvious as I sit in Betty White and read the newspaper.  The government fell apart today over the issue of army service and national service.  Israel has universal conscription that is not so universal.   Most, but not all, Palestinian Israelis are exempt from the draft.  They make up about 20 percent of Israel’s population.  Haredi (Ultra-Orthodox) Jews are another fifth or so of Israeli society, and most of them do not serve either, gaining exemptions for learning Talmud or, in the case of women, for their desire to maintain their modesty.  So about 40 percent of the population avoids service, which does not sit well with many who send their sons and daughters off to risky army service.  A commission appointed by the Prime Minister recommended extending at least national service, if not army service, to Arab and Haredis.  That seemed to point the way to a solution until the Prime Minister realized he might lose his Haredi partners in his governmental coalition.  So he dissolved the commission.  Problem solved.

National service was not the only issue tugging at the seams of the government—and of society.  The protest movement of last summer—tents in the middle of Tel Aviv’s swankiest neighborhood—has returned with a vengeance.  Saturday night, I came to a dead stop two blocks from my apartment as protestors blocked Tel Aviv streets.  Israel vies with the United States for the top spot (or is it bottom spot?) on the list of most unequal industrialized countries.  Clearly, the packed cafés mask a worrisome poverty among those who live outside the high-tech bubble.  The protests do not seem to worry the country’s elite too much yet, but they could become serious.  This is a serious outcry, in a formerly socialist country, against the unfettered effects of neo-liberalism.

And this list of woes does not even include the occupation of the West Bank.  Here, in Tel Aviv, that occupation seems so far away.  But, in reality, it is less than an hour’s drive to the occupied territories.  The sons and daughters of the Tel Aviv elite, along with those of the poorer sectors of society, have to enforce that occupation.  And that enforcement eats away at the fabric of society.  Negotiations with the Palestinians that might bring the occupation to an end do not seem to be on the horizon, despite this week’s visit and exhortations by Hillary Clinton.  A solution, though, seemed to appear this week.  Yet another government commission reported that the occupation never really existed.  Everything that Israel is doing (and has done) in the West Bank are perfectly legal.  Alas, such dubious conclusions do not hide the fact that the sons and daughters have to man checkpoints and round up Palestinians.  No serious solution to that problem seems remotely near.

I guess that Israel lives with the schizophrenia like other societies do.  But here the starkness between the beautiful people of Tel Aviv and the ugliness of the occupation are particularly dramatic.  One can sip iced tea in Betty White while writing on a MacBook Air about state-society relations and momentarily forget about inequality and occupation.  But the truth is that, while the problems Israel faces may be hidden, they are having a corrosive effect on life here.

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Professor Joel S. Migdal is the Robert F. Philip Professor of International Studies in the University of Washington ‘s Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies.