The Western Condition - St Antony's College - University of Oxford

The Western Condition: Turkey, the US and the EU in the New Middle East
Accompanying the government’s initiatives during this period was the remarkable atmosphere of
societal openness, pluralism and introspection that these few years of political and economic
reform had ushered in. For the first time, the most traumatic chapters of the country’s modern
history and its hitherto untouchable socio-political taboos – from the founding myths of the
Kemalist nation-building process to the systematic annihilation of Anatolia’s non-Muslim
communities and their heritage; from the existence of the Turkish ‘deep state’ 33 to the causes and
consequences of military coups, and the plight of every group suppressed by the state or
marginalised in society, including the Kurds, Alevis, women, pious Muslims, religious minorities,
atheists and LGBT communities – became the subject of open and candid public discussion,
through books, newspaper articles, television debates, academic research and conferences. 34
During this brief ‘liberal moment’ that lasted until the mid-2000s, Turkey did not only attempt to
fix its broken economy and restructure its political institutions, but also to heal its deep running
social and historical fault lines. We should note that these attempts also triggered a wave of angry
and at times violent nationalist reaction from within the state and society. For example, in 2005 a
conference on Ottoman Armenians, the first to openly challenge official accounts of history, was
postponed when a court ruled it could not be held at the grounds of a public university. When
finally reorganised at a private university, its participants were pelted with eggs by protestors. 35
Much more alarming were the murders of a Roman Catholic priest and three Protestant
missionaries in 2006 and well-known Armenian-Turkish journalist Hrant Dink in 2007, all of
which have been subsequently linked to the Turkish ‘deep state’, though none of the resulting
court cases have so far been able to name the real culprits. 36
At crucial moments, the first AKP government did not yield to such pressures or attempt to obstruct
this process of societal introspection. Even if it did not so much lead the process, the ruling party
often facilitated it by striking a reconciliatory rather than confrontational tone in domestic politics
and carefully managing the frequently clashing expectations of its diverse socio-political constituents.
33 The ‘deep state’ refers to a secret and extra-legal network of security sector actors, judiciary, civilian politicians and
organised crime groups united by a chauvinist view of the state and society, which continues to pose a major
obstacle to the consolidation of democracy and the rule of law in Turkey today. The roots of this ‘state within a
state’ date back to the final decade of the Ottoman Empire, when a semi-secret organisation, known as Teşkilat-ı
Mahsusa (the Special Organisation), was set up under the Committee of Union and Progress government. Founded
on a vaguely defined pan-Turkist and pan-Islamist ideology, the organisation carried out political assassinations and
played a key role in the Armenian genocide of 1915-16. See Taner Akcam, A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and
the Question of Turkish Responsibility, (London: Constable, 2007).
34 This atmosphere of relative openness and the sense of liberation from decades of self-imposed ignorance is
captured in Kerem Öktem’s Angry Nation: Turkey since 1989, (London: Zed Books, 2011)
35 Titled ‘Ottoman Era Armenians During the Collapse of the Empire: Intellectual Responsibility and Democratic
Problems’, the conference was first planned to take place at the Bosphorus University between May 25-27, but was
delayed due to public and political pressures and the last minute judicial intervention. It was finally held at Bilgi
University on 24 September 2005.
36 There is overwhelming evidence to implicate an underground network of ultra-nationalist security sector actors
and their civilian accomplices in organising and carrying out these murders. In 2011, one of these cases, the murder
of Protestant missionaries in Malatya (also known as Zirve Publishing House massacre), was merged with a major
investigation and court case, known as ‘Ergenekon’, into allegations of coup plotting against the AKP government.
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