Belief in Democracy 4/8

Foto: Sargasso achtergrond wereldbol

Views of people from Turkey and Holland on statements made by Newsweek journalist Fareed Zakaria, Turkish president Abdullah Gül and prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in the Dutch VPRO documentary ‘Turkije – Het Dilemma van de Democratie’: ‘Turkey – the dilemma of democracy’ that will broadcast on 8th of October. Daily at Sargasso from October 5th until October 12th, at 13.00h (Amsterdam time, 14.00h Istanbul time). This blogging project is part of the Dutch democracy week WijZijnDeBaas (WeAreTheBoss): the Dutch contribution to the International Week for Democracy. More information here.

Democracy can spread around the world, but it has to be a process of organic development from within societies. You have to be modernizing the country (video)

Fareed Zakaria,
Newsweek journalist



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Emre Kizilkaya | The Istanbulian
turkish journalist, Hürriyet newspaper, blogger.

“Democracy is the system that the highest possible amount of people joining the decision-making process. It is not a modern concept, thus it is not about modernizing the country. If you consider the Islamic world, you can easily see that it was more democratic during 7th-9th century than it is today. We can suggest that Classical Athens was more democratic even more than United States, where today reached the point of electing a President by a minority vote and practising a foreign policy which is overwhelmingly unpopular. Either imported or locally produced, the spread of today’s democracy is an illusion, because its main pillars are considered as those of American democracy, which is not a democracy anymore”.

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Erkan Saka | Erkan’s field diary
blogger, thesis on Turkish journalism and the European Union, Ph.D candidate Anthropology at Rice University and instructor at the Public Relations Department of Istanbul Bilgi University.

“Democracy can never be a completed project. In relation to change, there have to be frequent tunings to the democratic system. Some of the European countries have the oldest and most mature democracies, yet there are rising forces of extreme right etc and there is the growing number of Muslims which seem to be a different sort of minority (or the weakening of welfare state system which causes new problems for the lower classes) and these old and mature systems are struggling with these new social/economic and cultural developments.

In Turkish case, our democracy is not even much mature yet. And although I understand the secularist reaction against AKP’s rise, the problem is that the secular forces have long given up building the democratic system. Early Republican practices are admirable to a large extent but for decades Turkish state had been regressing from democratic aspects of the nation building. Turkey’s human rights record is just one of the signs of this regression. Current Republicanist tendency has no wish for more democratization. As the elite educated, Westernist sections of society lose interest in democratization, Turkey’s way of democratic growth turns into unexpected routes.

But this tendency seems to have contradictory assumptions. “organic development from within societies” may challenge “you have to be modernizing the country”. In cases of no development from below, the state can intervene from above in behalf of the democratic development. Turkish Republic did that to a certain extent in early years. I believe there cannot be a priori judgements here. The social and political context will deliberate which way to go and the best is a mixture of both (the below and the above)”.

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Haluk Direskeneli | Energy Newsletter Turkey
blogger, energy expert.

“That is related with the average education level of the voters as I explained in my comment in part 3/8“.

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Beatrice Vanni | Arabisto and Turkey & My Foreign Perspectives
blogger, lives in Turkey, and helps people gain visibility for their work and attract more clients through high-quality writing, editing and project development.

“Democracy will mean something different in each country based on its culture, values, major religions, education, ethnicity and economy combined. Each country should be given the opportunity to develop their idea of democracy which is right for their people and not dictated by the stalwarts of democracy.
What is democracy in the west cannot necessarily be the same model for the east or elsewhere in the world. It is a process and all countries must go through the development of democracy that is right for them to come out the other end with a strong democratic society. At present, democracy in America is not the same as democracy in Europe; thus, we see a continuous development of democracy in Turkey as well, although it has been quite free for over 80 years.
I have lived in Turkey on and off since 1982 and in Istanbul since 1998. I have always felt very safe traveling and living in Turkey and free to do what I wish to do and participate in the community. Of course, it is paramount that individuals respect the morés of the country they live in, but I have never felt impeded in any way due to their style of democracy or the majority religion”.

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Christine Quirk | Quirk Global Strategies
blogger, expert in political campaign and communications, worked, traveled or studied in more than 50 countries around the world.

“One of my favorite phases used by post-Soviet dictators who resist democratization is that democracy is not an apple that one buys at the store. Alas, it’s true. Each country takes its own path toward democratization and it’s impossible to impose democracy from abroad.
However, too often dictators use this as an excuse to implement “managed democracy” (as in Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan or Russia). There are, however, certain accepted and unavoidable characteristics of a democracy. You don’t get to pick and choose which ones you implement and use “local mentality” as an excuse”.

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Michael van der Galiën | The Gazette
blogger, frequent visitor of Turkey with interest in the politics and culture of the country, published columns in the Turkish Daily News and is correspondent in the Netherlands for Pajamas Media.

“Completely correct and: yes they are, just like Christianity and Democracy are compatible. In the West, especially in Western Europe, we often forget that when the Ottomam Empire was successful and tolerant, our ancestors were killing those who held other beliefs than they (did). They are compatible, the question is who’ll win the battle for the soul or interpretation of Islam: fundamentalists or enlightened Muslims?”.

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Hans A.H.C. de Wit | Internations Musings: Istanbul, Florence, Athens, Yerevan and Dubai | blogger, international communication manager, lives in Turkey, cross cultural specialist.

“Absolutely, But as long as there is no national debate, or civil society activities, Turkey will not modernize. Lack of NGO’s in Turkey means also that ruling parties can act with a minority mandate. Turkey must modernize its constitution. From there more activities and pressure groups can act from within Turkish society”.

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Joost Lagendijk | GroenLinks
Member of the European Parliament: Group of the Greens/European Free Alliance, Chairman Delegation of the EU-Turkey Joint Parliamentary Committee.

‘Agree with the two misconceptions of Zakaria. If applied to the current situation now in Turkey and the neighbour countries of the EU in Northern Africa and the Middle East it will lead to the following conclusion. The modernisation and democratisation that have been happening for a few years in Turkey are caused by the internal economical and sociological developments in Turkey itself. Through the prospect of joining the EU, Europa can support this process and even stimulate it. Many countries in the region are closely watching the developments in Turkey. How does a previously islamist like the AKP develop itself and how does the establishment and Europe react to that? Because of the big differences between Turkey and countries like Marocco and Egypt, Turkey can never be a model that can be copied that easy in those countries. But Turkey is a important example for parties and movements in countries that want to head in the same direction. They also would like to participate in the political proces, being political inspired by Islam and most import, develop a real democracy. If Europe could help a bit in this proces, it should hold back.’

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Yusuf Altuntas | milligorusnederland.nl
Director Milli Görüs

‘Europe lives under the illusion and arrogance that they can export democracy in “no time”, particulary to less developed countries. America is even very ambitious because they abuse their power and invade countries for opportunistic reasons whilst stating “we’ll bring you democracy!” Now we know better and Iraq became a country of tiranny and civil war! In my opinion that wasn’t the meaning of democracy? Europe shouldn’t follow America’s example, but dare to set their own strategy. They can do that by giving support and facilitate in countries that need it. Now the Netherlands hope to help in Afghanistan with rebuilding the country, but the troops are fighting a war. Why?’

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Altin | Altin.nl
dutch-turkish rapper

“I am not in favor of imposing democracy in other countries. If you look at Iraq and Afghanistan you see that this is hardly working and it will take a long time. War, chaos and disunion is constantly setting the agenda. People have little or no faith in politics. People don/t agree with each other and each party wants to move in its own direction. I agree with Fareed that a country needs to be build up in several areas, or modernized so the people can see the benefits of it. However if you look at this region you it hasn’t got any better. After a while people will not pay any attention to the message “we are going to bring democracy” when they don’t see any improvements. People want stability, security, food, shelter and jobs etcetera. Who or what can provide that, they will follow”.

The views of Lagendijk, Altuntas and Altin were translated from Dutch, the text in Dutch is published on the website of VPRO Tegenlicht.

Reacties (19)

#1 Hans

There is a big misunderstanding about how democracy works in the USA and Europe with its different systems. Next to that the USA wants to impose democracy on developing countries, with military intrusion. While Europe, or let me say the EU tries to help with economical and social help. What the Turkey can expect of the EU is: political, social and economical support. Not interference. The fallacy that Europe is following the USA or that that the democracies in Europe and the USA are comparable, is flawed: in the USA the winner takes it all – only the UK comes close, but they have still a head off state, the Queen.

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#2 William (TL)

The billion dollar question here: what is meant by ‘modernizing’?

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#3 Carlos

Exactly ‘modernizing’ is a bit of a hollow term.

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#4 Paul

What Zakaria advocates is democracy without elections, or with limited elections, in conjunction with administration by western powers (“modernisation”). The misleadingly named ‘neoconservative’ position defines democracy in terms of the degree to which the resultant society resembles the US of the UK. It is no longer seen purely in terms of political process.

To achieve their goal they must, in some cases, diverge from democratic orthodoxy. For instance, to get a pro-Israel government in the Gaza strip, you would need 100% fraudulent elections, and massive political repression. Zakaria will never advocate that openly, but that is the logic of his position. William de Bruijn, and his colleagues at the VPRO, gave Zakaria a platform, but refuse to examine the logic of his position in relation to their own country, or their own ‘white’ politics. (There is much racist thinking associated with the Week of Democracy).

The issue is this: if it is acceptable to diverge from democratic orthodoxy, in countries with brown-skinned or black inhabitants, then why not here in the Netherlands and Europe? Why should we accept that xenophobic populists like Rita Verdonk and Geert Wilders use elections to create a xenophobic white-nationalist state? Why not simply ban their parties, or exclude them from elections, as the western powers do in Kosovo and Bosnia?

If it is acceptable that the administration ignores the wishes of the population, and has a separate ‘modernisation’ agenda, then why not ignore the wishes of the ethnic-Dutch majority in the Netherlands, and pursue a mass immigration programme aimed at transforming the country? Why not ‘modernise’ the archaic Dutch national identity (based the 16th and 17th centuries) and simply ignore the historical obsessions of the majority?

Those are the type of issues which William de Bruijn and his colleagues have evaded. I think their ‘journalism’ is shabby and biased, all the more so because the makers of the programme were paid extra (ultimately by the Dutch government) to present a pro-democracy position.

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#5 pipo

@4: I see what you are saying, but i think (hope?) that “ethnic-Dutch majority in the Netherlands” is not (yet) fully behind our famous xenophobic populists.

Although the alleged “problems” of the Netherlands have been increasingly become equated with problems of immigration in the public debate, i think the majority still understands that building a good country consists of more than keeping out foreigners (and might actually involve inviting some in).

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#6 tess

Wij zijn de baas … over wie, van wat en dan?

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#7 William de Bruijn (TL)

In ‘Al Queda and what it means to be modern’, John Gray has postulated that ’thinking of modernity as a universal condition is a hindrance to understanding the present’. He regards radical islamism not as a reaction to modernity, but as integral part of it. In other words: what if ‘we’ are postmodern and ’they’ are neomodern? Where does that leave Zakária’s convictions?

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#8 Hans

Interesting to see here a comment by someone of Milli Görüs. Established by Erbakan, a notorious anti-democrat, who’s first intentions was establishing an Islamtic state in Turkey. Milli Görüs is in Germany under intens scrutinity. And they are well known about their corrupt activities.

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#9 jurgen

Holland is not a democracy. And Islam can never be moderate within a democratic country with an islamic majority.

Holand is not a democracy because the government just gave away important responsibilities to the undemocratic european union against the wishes of their people.

Turkey only has a moderate islam in its cities and this only because of fear for the army. once it is a real democracy nobody will be able to stop political fundamentalistic islam in Turkey.

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#10 Hakan

Turkey will never be a member of the western European countries. Maybe member of the EU. But it will always be 1 step behind the top countries. When Turkey is a member, then is the United States of Europe (USE) complete. Like the change in 1991 when the EC become the EU. Turkey is member since 1995 of the old EC (the Custum Union). Thus do the math..

Turkey will get richer. Absolutly. They have the potential. Like the 5 asian tigers and other examples. They will even be richer than most of the 1st world countries. But Turkey never will change to a Christian land. Thus it will never be at the other side off the table.

Hakan

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#11 Api

Als ik Zakaria zo hoor praten over de islamisten, namelijk dat ze een kans moeten krijgen en dat ze heus wel binnen de grondwettelijke kaders van de Turkse Republiek zullen blijven dan moet ik steeds denken: waar heb ik dat eerder gehoord? Het antwoord is: in het Duitsland van de jaren dertig. Toen dachten sommige goedgelovigen ook dat het wel los zou lopen met die Hitler. De toekomst zal het uitwijzen of Turkije met de AK-partij het paard van Troje heeft binnengehaald. Zeker in dat verband lijkt het me onverstandig om Turkije lid te laten worden van de Europese Unie.

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#12 Frans van H.

Bang voor Eropa.
Is bang zijn om over grenzen te kijken.
Is bang zijn om de vrede te bevorderen.
Is bang zijn om handel en dus welvaart makkelijker te maken.
Is bang zijn om arbeidskracht doordacht in te zetten.
Is bang zijn om de inflatie (geldontwaarding) binnen de perken te houden.
Is bang zijn om jonge turkse handen bejaarden in het oude Europa te laten verzorgen.
Is bang zijn om mensenrechten te bevorderen.
Is bang zijn om een dam op te werpen tegen de geweddadige tak van de politieke islam.

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#13 Steeph

@Api and @Frans van H.: Please, use English for these reactions.
For this discussion we have participants from Turkey who will not be able to read the Dutch comments.

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#14 Erol Altin / teacher social learnings

Just like in the religion you can’t force someone or a country to change into a democratic system. A society is build on the shoulders of individuals as on the shoulders of groups. So you have to confince these parts of the society to bring a democratic system. I think islam and democracy are made for each other. Otherwise there will not be a freedom to live. In a real democratic system the indivuduals or the people are FREE, they are suppose to be so. Just like the person is free to believe what he or she wants to believe. Only free minds can be of youse to a civil society. Imposing by yousing will only lead to escalation of the situation.

So I agree with Zakaria. But I have to notice the fact that when people are pleased with their lives, then they will accept the way of gouverment. I think the Turkish people has seen enough turkish politicans that said “we will make it better” but when they were elected they forgot the back bone of the democracy = the people. This gouverment of Turkey is actually lissening to the needs of the people. If the people have elected them, the people when the time comes will bring them down.
Politicans must listen to the people (individual human beings)….

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#15 Tjibbe

Noone can deny that the AKP have actually been the ones who, after Atatürk, finally continued to modernise Turkey, started to align the country to European practices and pursued political and economic reforms. It is just a little awkward that this successful government only had a mandate of 34% of the votes, so to European standards it could not be considered democratic. The AKP’s success is at least partly due to the fact that they did not have a coalition ‘partner’, so they could much more decisive than if they would have had a coalition partner. So the final bitter notion is that Turkey would almost certainly be worse off, at least economically, if it had had a more democratic parliamentary system. So I just wanted to illustrate here that, for Turkey to reach a fully fledged parliamentary democracy, which is the next step to be taken by Turkey (to lower the 10% threshold), it may be necessary to take small steps in order to reach your destination

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#16 Tjibbe

I am a moderate supporter of the AKP government so far, as they have performed a way better than alle previous post-Atatürk governments in Turkey before. But some of the aspects of AKP are worrisome in my opinion. The candidate member of AKP in Kayseri, who was supposed to be a modern man with a western orientation, was asked about secularism. He said he could not be a secularist because it would mean he could not pray anymore. This means two things: the first is that this man does not know what secularism is about, and the second is that he has the opinion that people calling themselves secularists are non-believers, or at least worse than him.
Furthermore Zakaria did pay too little attention to the position of women under the AKP. about the crucial headscarf issue he just remarks that ‘people wear different clothes all over Europe’, which is a ridiculous remark! In my opinion the headscarf is a symbol of oppression of women. Besides this, in the tegenlicht-program I saw many male AKP-politicians, but not a single woman…

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#17 Hans

@Tjibbe.
Not only in the AKP but in the Turkish politics at large women are almost not represented, in contrary with Turkish business life.

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#18 Paul

I see that Hans complains on his blog, because the municipality of Bodrum wants all shop names to be in Turkish. Perhaps he has forgotten that the city of Rotterdam tried to ban the speaking of all non-Dutch languages on the street, and that the Netherlands minister of integration wanted a national ban on speaking all foreign languages in public. Perhaps he has forgotten that many Dutch schools and colleges ban the speaking of foreign languages.

I wonder if Hans speaks Turkish at home, and if he reads only Turkish newspapers, and watches only Turkish TV? Turkish immigrants in the Netherlands are expected to totally assimilate into Dutch society – all immigrants here are expected to do that. But when the Dutch themselves emigrate, they refuse to integrate into their new homeland…

In Rotterdam and other cities, they are experimenting with ‘mentors’ – conservative Dutch people who go to the homes of immigrants, to check if they are assimilating. So perhaps some of the readers of this blog, in Turkey, can act as a mentor for Hans, and go to his home. For instance, to check for foreign newspapers, and to ask him to sing the Turkish national anthem. And check what he is doing on the evening of 5 December, in case he secretly celebrates Sinterklaas.

People who are blind to the faults of their own country, are not the best to judge the faults of other countries. And that goes for William de Bruijn and his colleagues, who describe the disadvantages of democracy in Turkey, but ignore its disadvantages in the Netherlands.

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#19 Hans

@Paul,
I don’t complain on my blog.
I am an expat, speaking, understanding 6 languages and I don’t need a guide in Turkey to move around and I do read Turkish newspapers.
Rest is private.

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