{"id":1236,"date":"2015-01-26T08:17:35","date_gmt":"2015-01-26T08:17:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/?p=1236"},"modified":"2015-01-27T09:31:59","modified_gmt":"2015-01-27T09:31:59","slug":"turkeys-politics-of-fatigue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/?p=1236","title":{"rendered":"Turkey\u2019s Politics of Fatigue"},"content":{"rendered":"

By ELIF SHAFAK*
\nThe New York Times<\/em><\/p>\n

LONDON \u2014 Before a recent interview in Istanbul, I was talking to the journalist about Turkish politics. After about 15 minutes, she looked down and lowered her voice, as though confiding a secret: \u201cIt is so tiring to be Turkish sometimes.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Elif<\/a>
Elif Shafak<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

That mental exhaustion is caused for the most part by politics. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his leading cadres have chosen a divisive strategy, pursuing hostility over compromise and a politics of duality over a culture of coexistence. Even the most trivial or absurd questions can provoke heated debate: \u201cWould laughing in public endanger a Turkish woman\u2019s modesty?\u201d \u201cShould Turkish Airlines female flight attendants be allowed to wear red lipstick, and if not, which color might be permissible?\u201d \u201cShould patriotic citizens consume ayran (a yogurt drink) instead of raki?\u201d \u201cAre all female drivers of red cars voting for the opposition party?\u201d<\/p>\n

The unbearable fatigue is particularly sharp among liberal intellectuals and women. The liberals do not represent huge numbers of Turks, but they are an important measure against which the Justice and Development Party\u2019s political trajectory can be tracked. When the party first came to power in 2002, liberals supported it. A.K.P., the party\u2019s initials in Turkish, was pro-reform and pro-European Union. It was expected to promote civil liberties, a heartening idea after three military takeovers since 1960, each worse than the previous one. But as the party swerved toward authoritarianism, liberals were cast adrift.<\/p>\n

At a New Year\u2019s dinner in Istanbul, I listened to my morose liberal friends: \u201cThere are two ways left for anyone who doesn\u2019t sympathize with the A.K.P. today: Either we are going to become foolishly apolitical, or we\u2019ll get to be bitterly political. And if you want to be neither foolish nor bitter, tough luck!\u201d<\/p>\n

Some liberals have gone silent, but some stand in sharp opposition, while others engage in self-criticism. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t the support for more pluralistic and democratic developments … where we went wrong. It was failing to see that the A.K.P.\u2019s boundaries would turn out to be so narrow,\u201d wrote the Turkish author and sociologist Oya Baydar. \u201cThose who used to say that the A.K.P. was only pretending to be democratic and would eventually replace military despotism with a civilian one … have been proved right.\u201d<\/p>\n

Today, liberals are viewed with scorn by the anti-A.K.P. camp for being too soft and na\u00efve. \u201cIn the end, weren\u2019t they, as were some left-wing intellectuals in the 1950s and 1960s in the Soviet Union, the \u2018useful idiots\u2019 of the A.K.P. and Erdogan?\u201d wrote Ariane Bonzon, a French journalist who covers Turkey and the Middle East.<\/p>\n

Among Turkey\u2019s nonconservative women \u2014 at least half of the 48 percent who did not vote for Mr. Erdogan in the last election \u2014 there is a growing concern about the A.K.P.\u2019s meddling in their private lives. In the past, sexist statements from male politicians were regarded as spontaneous outbursts. Today, they are seen as part of a systematic and sinister ideological campaign to confine women to traditional gender roles. After the minister of health, Mehmet Muezzinoglu, visited the first baby born in 2015, he said, \u201cMothers should not put any career other than motherhood at the center of their lives.\u201d<\/p>\n

The backlash was immediate. Turkish women have heard top government officials weigh in on subjects like abortion, cesarean-section deliveries, contraception and style of dress. \u201cI am fed up with all these sexist comments, constantly telling us women how to live our lives,\u201d Ayse Arman wrote in the newspaper Hurriyet. Protests were organized around the country. When I talked about the need for an independent women\u2019s movement and a new narrative of sisterhood to bridge political divides, some conservative head-scarved women said it would be hard to work with feminists since their interests had been ignored in the past.<\/p>\n

This reaction speaks to one of Turkey\u2019s greatest obstacles: how the past shapes the future. A sense of victimhood plagues society, and there is a constant cycle of retribution that creates new victims.<\/p>\n

After the horrible shootings in Paris at the magazine Charlie Hebdo, and amid a rise in both Islamopobia and anti-Westernism, Turkey could have stood as a unifying voice, a modern, democratic, pluralistic Muslim country with a strong secularist tradition. But that is not the prevailing mood.<\/p>\n

Mr. Erdogan blamed the West for the killings. \u201cAs Muslims we have never taken part in terrorist massacres,\u201d he said. \u201cBehind these lie racism, hate speech and Islamophobia. Games are being played with the Islamic world \u2014 we need to be aware of this.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those who criticize the government are accused of not being patriotic, or worse, as being pawns of Western powers trying to destroy Turkey. The latest victims include Miss Turkey of 2006, Merve Buyuksarac, who was questioned for insulting President Erdogan on her Instagram account; and Sedef Kabas, a journalist and anchorwoman, who was held by the police for tweeting about a cover-up of a government corruption scandal. One of the country\u2019s most popular actors, Tamer Karadagli, said, \u201cArtists, businessmen … we are all scared.\u201d<\/p>\n

The fatigue lingers. The gap between Turkey and the West widens. If as Turks we cannot find a way to embrace the ideals of free society, open debate, pluralistic culture and gender equality, it won\u2019t be just a failure of democracy, it will also be a failure of imagination and will.<\/p>\n

*Elif Shafak is a writer whose books include the novels \u201cThe Architect\u2019s Apprentice\u201d and \u201cThe Forty Rules of Love.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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