Turkey and the EU: before and after the internship

One of my coworkers this last week said that I should compare my thoughts on Turkish accession to the EU before and after my internship. This coworker said their opinions had really changed over the course of their working here in Ankara and following the situation. So here's the first part of what will be a two part post:

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Going into the internship, my impression has been that Turkey does not really want to be in the EU. Turkey is currently in the tariff zone, allowing for easy access to the European market (Turkey's largest export partner); but they are not constrained by the legal requirements of being an EU member: recognizing Cyprus, constitutional and budget reforms, adopting the Euro, etc.

My feeling going into the internship is that the Turks derive a lot of benefits from the status quo without any of the responsibilities that go along with that. 

What actually confuses me the most though, is why the EU continues with such an imbalanced relationship. It's pretty clear to me that turkey derives benefits from this relationship, but what the EU gets, I don't really know."
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I'm looking forward to revisiting this. Even in the two weeks that I've been living and working here in Ankara, I've revisited some of these original assumptions. So far those revisits haven't upended my original thoughts but added nuance, background, or motivations. Still in the dark about the EU though, hahaha!

I'll come back to this around the first week of August, so I'm looking forward to seeing where I stand in two months or so. 

Experiencing the protests

I'm in my apartment right now listening to them. I live maybe a mile and a half from where the Ankara protests have been centered. I've been advised not to leave the apartment, so I'm inside, but that doesn't mean I'm cut off from the protests.

Typically in Turkey you mark the passage of time with the call to prayer. This week though, at nine pm, it's been the population if Ankara coming onto their balconies banging pots and pans, honking horns, clapping, whistling, singing the national anthem, even. A sign of solidarity that bridges age and class divisions.

And throughout the afternoon I've heard the protests. I can hear chanting, whistling, and I can hear the "pops" of tear gas getting fired. Today there was also a helicopter flying low overhead, circling the area.

To really know what it's been like, please see my Facebook profile where I posted a series of statuses on June 1st about what I was experiencing as over 30,000 people marched on Ankara.  Also, please see my friend and colleague Danielle Cyr's blog post. She was trapped in the protest, and her blog post should be essential reading for everyone.

I'm staying safe, and the embassy is taking good care of our security. But I'm also quite bored stuck in my apartment by myself. As always, I greatly appreciate any thoughts and feedback.
Here's the link to Danielle's blog:

http://daniellelikestowrite.wordpress.com/2013/06/02/ankara-a-traumatic-arrival/



Also some statistics:

-There have been protests in 67 provinces

-There have been over 1000 injured
This includes people shot in the head with tear gas canisters, rubber bullets, and run over by a military water tanker (find the video on YouTube- viewer discretion advised)

-Tens of thousands have been tear gassed by police

-There are at least 2 dead

- about 2000 people have been arrested

Definitely not a Turkish Spring

For anyone who has been remotely following international news the last week, you may have heard ago the protests that have been occurring all over turkey. At the center of the demonstrations are divisions within Turkish society over the role of prime minister Recep Teyyep Erdoğan.

Turkey as a modern state was founded on a principle of almost radical public secularism enforced by the judiciary and the military. Erdoğan has changed the game. He is a rough and tumble urban politician whose base of support are Muslims. And while 99.6% of turkey are Muslims, politicized Islamism has never played a big role in Turkish politics.

Erdoğan has changed the rules of the game in three ways: he has curbed the army and brought it under civilian oversight (in the past, the army has engaged in coups when it felt secularism was being threatened); he has led turkey in a decade of booming economic prosperity (in the last decade Turkey's economy has tripled, with plans to triple it again in time for the republic's centenary in 2023 which would make it the tenth largest economy in the world); and he has become to be seen as an incredibly strong public figure.

This last feature is what most disturbs most people on the streets of turkey. Erdoğan is engaging in a show of force, reminiscent of his earlier days. He is not the typically aristocratic politician, and he has shown flashes of an inferiority complex. This is an outgrowth of the same.

What are the consequences of the demonstrations?

Turkey will not undergo a "Turkish Spring."  At question is not the validity of the Turkish political system. It is a question of Erdoğan. He is currently engaged (along with his economic growth plans) in an attempt to replace the current constitution put in place by a military junta. Under the proposed constitution, the president would be more in the mold of an American president with much more political power.

In his push for the withdrawal of secularism, the "growth above all else" approach to development, and the strengthening of the executive at the expense of traditional powers like the judiciary and the military, Erdoğan has over reached.

Erdoğan will not be swept from power, I don't even think he will lose his position as prime minister in the next elections. However, there will be real consequences of these crackdowns.

1) the proposed constitution will not pass
2) İstanbul will not be awarded the 2020 Olympic Games
3) FDI to turkey will take a hit

All of these are massive personal blows. The Olympics were to be Turkey's coming out party as it approached its centenary and entry as the newest BRICs country.  They will not be awarded to İstanbul. The constitution will be rejected, and this will be a rejection of Erdoğan and his executive style. Finally the growth that Turkey is planning on (an effective 900% expansion of the economy over two decades) is currently about at the limits of what Turkish input can achieve. It requires foreign investment, and I believe foreign corporations will look at state security forces indiscriminately tear gassing, hosing, and (horrifically) running over protestors with water tankers, and these corporations will need to be convinced to come to Turkey.

This is the long term impact of the Taksim protests. Erdoğan will leave office eventually, but the foreign perception of Turkey as a homogeneous Eden of investment has been exposed. Turkey has experienced internal divisions over government's role vis à vis religion before, but now large swaths of the population have challenged the government on it.

The short

The next decade will be expansionary for Turkey but not as smooth as it looked last week, even.

Last day of summer

Today Is the last day of summer (I slept in till 8:30 today and I miss it already). Tomorrow I start working at the embassy here in Ankara, and I couldn't be more excited! I'm starting to get to know my surroundings better, and I'm getting used to everything that comes with living on your own in a foreign country.  I spent the day today trying to figure out where everything is (moderately successful), and tonight, hopefully I'm getting wifi installed.

But I've out together a compare and contrast of Bursa and Ankara for laughs.

Ankara good: high visibility
Ankara bad: tap water has high levels of lead and other heavy metals

Bursa good: tap water is spring water
Bursa bad: the Turks call it cloudy. It's smog.

I thought that this might make a few people laugh. Ad I don't worry about the water too much. Five liters costs about 80 US cents!

But I think that's all for now. Happy Memorial Day, and wish me luck!

In Ankara!

I write as I sit in the bus terminal in Ankara waiting for my friend Matt to pick me up. I start my internship at the US embassy on Tuesday, and I'm very excited, but before then, I need to find an apartment haha!

All this caps off a week that has been my first real break for quite some time, if by break I mean crash course in refreshing/relearning my Turkish! It was very nice to spend that week in Bursa (Alaşar köy) with my host family from the CLS program last year. The Memiş's are incredibly hospitable, and I'm very thankful to have friends like them. 

Before I go, I also want to wish Jenny good luck as she leaves for her internship in Thailand today  you should check out her (video?) blog too (link at bottom). I plan on trying to keep a post or two every week, so send me an email complaint if I don't.
Finally, prediction: Dortmund wins tomorrow 2-1 AET.


Jenny's Thailand blog:
http://www.landofsmilesthailand.blogspot.com/

I didn't think I'd be back in Turkey so soon, but I'm glad I am!  Just to recap, I'm here in 2013 as an Intern at the US Embassy in Ankara, though I'm writing from Bursa where I've been the last week. I plan on really restarting the blog soon, but in the meantime,  something to think about:

"Political perception... is a matter of date.  If you want to judge anything written by a foreigner about a country, you need to know when the writer first went there... So often the first encounter is formative.  Emotionally and implicitly,... it remains the standard by which all subsequent developments are judged."

-Timothy Garton Ashe

Coming home

I’ve been back for about 3 weeks now, and it really feels like the start of the new year.  After coming home from Bursa, I had a week at home and then moved into UIC.  We just finished our first week of classes, and it’s with this perspective that I’m really able to reflect on what’s happened this summer.

I spent the summer studying the language and culture of a country very different from anything I’ve experienced.  But it really wasn’t all that different.  Once you get past the colored lens of cultural details, there are certain aspects of the human condition that are universal. 

I lived with a family that was gracious and hospitable; and that was patient and more than willing to invite me into their home and into their family.  I spoke with my host father about grandiose topics such as the role that religious tolerance plays in society, and we talked about John Deere tractors and Michelin tires.

Like most Americans, I hadn’t ever given much thought to Turkey as a country or a culture.  But it was an incredible experience.  If one is curious, interested in religion, society, politics, history, art, architecture, food, or all of the above, and if one is open to new experiences, I cannot recommend traveling to Turkey enough.  In eight weeks, even if I might not have an understanding of thousands of years of context, I certainly gained an insight and an appreciation for the country, culture, and people. 

Turkey is in such a unique position geographically, culturally, socially, and economically.  It is a middle ground between what are seen as incompatible opposites.  It is 98% Muslim, yet denies Islam a place in public life.  It is socially tied to Europe, but it looks to the East for its cultural identity.  It borders the European Union; and it borders Syria, Iran, and Iraq.  And it interacts with the European Union, the Arab League, and Israel, but it isn’t a member of any of these.  It looks to the past to create a sense of nation, but was founded on notions of rejecting backwardness for modernity. 

Really, there is more to Turkey than I could ever put into a blog post, and every day, it seems I can pick out some new nuance that I hadn’t noticed or paid close enough attention to before.  It was an incredible opportunity that pushed me to find new limits of what I have experienced in my life; a new continent, new country, new culture with its own history, new language, new religion, new normal. 

While I might return to the blog and post something in it, I think that this was a pretty fair wrap up of what I’m feeling.  There’s just so much more that I could say, but I will leave it at this.  Turkey has taken me to places – physical and not – and left me breathless, but thankfully not speechless.