[A-List] FW: PARLIAMENT SECURES VOTE OF CONFIDENCE FROM THE PEOPLE OF TURKEY

["Sabri Oncu" <soncu@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

This is a response I wrote to a subscriber of the Rad-Green list
who wrote to me personally. I made slight changes to it after I
sent my response to him/her.

Best,

Sabri

++++++++++

>However, Erdogan has now assumed prime ministership.
>What could this mean for the future?

Dear ********,

Let me thank you for your kind words first.

Now, any analysis of mine will be biased by my limited personal
knowledge (I am in the US) and by my politics.

Keeping this in mind, let me proceed to what I think:

Erdogan's victory was expected and it will not make a huge
difference.

>From a distance what I can see, and it seems a sociologist friend
thinks the same way, is that there are roughly three tendencies
in the "ruling" Justice and Development Party or JDP: 1)
Progressive Islamic modernists (May their God be with them!); 2)
Reactionary Fundamentalists and 3) Normalized elements,
representatives of a section of the capitalist class, whose
interests are in line with those of the Military.

This third tendency represents the so-called Anatolian Tigers,
that is, the bourgeoisie of the smaller cities of Anatolia, as
well as the so-called Green Capital (Islamic Capital) of the big
cities such as Istanbul and Konya. Their interests don't align
with the interests of the secular and westernized Istanbul
bourgeoisie, which is one of the three building blocks of the war
party in Turkey, and who have been screwing them for quite some
time, but they are not anti-military and at this instant would
not go against the wishes/orders of the military.

Erdogan not only belongs to this third tendency but also he is
the unchallengeable leader of it. Indeed, although he was not the
Prime Minister, it was not just Gul, the current Prime Minister
until Erdogan replaces him (indeed, Erdogan is in the process of
building the new government, if he is not done yet), who tried to
push the Party to voting yes for the US troops, but both him and
Gul. Now, Erdogan is not only the party leader but also the Prime
Minister and this may give him better ability to maneuver but I
don't think this would make a major difference. Last time,
Erdogan and Gul avoided pushing their party to a groups decision
not because they were against the war but because they did not
want to take the blame on themselves. It was just a strategy to
pull the Military, whose higher ranked members tried to push the
JDP to pass the approval of the US troops for them, to confess
what they really want and, in that, Erdogan and Gul were
succesful. When they let the members of their party vote
independently, some members of the first and second tendencies I
mentioned above voted against, some for truely humanitarian
reasons, some for religous reasons and some because of their
"self-interest".

However, at this point, the real player is not the JDP anymore.
Nor is it the opposition party CHP, some of whose members,
including their leader Baykal, praised the intervention of the
Chief of General Staff Ozkok, as timely and wise.

At this point, there are two major players in this game:

The Military and the "People".

The military (that is, the naked emperor), the Turkish capitalist
class (mainly the Istanbul bourgeoisie centered at TUSIAD or
Turkish Industrialists and Businessmen Association) and their
media are pushing the country into joining the US in its attack
on Iraq. It is not that their interests are perfectly in line
with the interests of the US administration but at this point
teaming up with the US war-mongers is their second-best strategy,
their first being what we have been experiencing for the past two
decades or so around the globe, which was abondened after the
Bush coup of 2001 in the US.

The "People", however vague a concept this is, are the anti-war
party. They are the 94% of the population, some of whom
undoubtedly filled with strong nationalist and religious feelings
but, whoever they are, I have never seen the peoples of Turkey
rise up like this before. From labor and public employee unions
to left political parties, from gays and lesbians to Islamists,
from academics to shoe-shine boys, they are fighting.

Whether Turkey will avert joining this insane attack on Iraq or
not will depend on how well the "People" will play their cards,
not on others including Erdogan.

This is how I see it.

Power to the People!

Sabri