I occasionally watch LBO from the archives. Because sometimes I get some useful information such as a link to a talk by Tariq Ali or some article Ian posts that may be relevant to my research, and sometimes I just want to hear a few friendly voices such as Michael Pollak. Otherwise, I have no interest in your American debates nor do I give a shit to you or Hitch. It was just the subject of your post that made me click on the url of your post. And, because of a previous encounter, I expected ahead of time that your post would be full of racist crap. You did not surprise me at all. You are too predictable.
>Now, I'm not one to look down upon critiques of the Turkish
state,
>primarily its military, but Hitch's timing seems, um,
non-coincidental.
Good start so far. To my surprise, as if you are trying to look like a decent person, you critize the Turkish state. I am more critical of the Turkish state than you are and, more than that, I am actively fighting against it.
Thereafter you start your usual racist crap:
> During the bombing of Serbia, I asked him how he could
> support Turkish pilots who were taking a breather from
slaughtering
> Kurds to pound Serbs, given that Turkey's ethnic cleansing was
far
> worse than Milosevic's. He muttered something about the
European
> Union having a say, and that the important thing was to "get
the
> job done." Now, ho ho, out comes the laundry list of Turkish
crimes.
What Turkish crimes are you talking about? Or what does Turkey's ethnic cleansing mean? These are historically empty categories. I am Turkish and I have commited no crimes. Nor Turkey did any ethnic cleansing. The rulers of Turkey did. Below is a post to PSN by a young Turkish man by the name of Emrah Goker, from which maybe you will learn some about what decency means, although I have serious doubts about it.
Sabri Oncu
++++++++++++
As a socialist and a citizen of Turkey, I do not think that the government deserves a peace prize.
Those of us who prefer using "citizens of Turkey" (or "Turkiyeli", literally meaning "from Turkey") to "Turks" for referring to the peoples of our country have already been warning polities inside and outside of Turkey that it's too early to celebrate.
...
After 1915, one should also mention the violent repression of Kurdish insurgents in 1920s, in 1938-9 in Tunceli, between the 1971 military intervention and 1977 in various Kurdish provinces, and after 1993 as part of the Army's aggressive counterguerrilla campaign... These episodes include violent tactics like assassination, village-burning, systematic torture (almost bureaucratized under the 23-year-old "state of emergency" regime in southeastern Turkey), prompt executions, planting bombs, rape, starvation, deportation (of Kurdish villagers to Western provinces), paramilitary mobilization, etc.
There is also the CIA-funded fascist-paramilitary assault on the Turkish left between 1976-1980, of which the security establishment of Turkey was an important player. The episode left over 5000 citizens dead, many more wounded and crippled, and opened the way for the September 12, 1980 military coup d'etat. The aftermath of the coup, of course, is another story of violence and repression.
Then to be listed is the 1995 Gazi neighborhood massacres in Istanbul, where the police killed (civilian snipers shot at the heads of the protesters) 18 unarmed Kurdish Alevis in an urban riot caused when fascist vigilantes (from Nationalist Action Party) opened submachine-gun fire on a local coffee shop and killed an elderly person.
There are many other smaller-scale events where justice was not served. The point is, in none of these horrible episodes, the agent/mediator of violence was something called "Turkey". "Turkey commits..." is a journalistic phrase and does not explain anything sociologically. This sort of journalistic discourse tends also to reproduce nationalistic chauvinism - very common in my country.
So, for example, the agents involved in the 1915 genocide (certain military and civilian elements of the Ottoman authority), in the 1938-9 military campaign (the Kemalist Party-State) or in the post-1993 atrocities against Kurdish groups (principally the Army, aided by elements of the Ministry of Interior Affairs) cannot be boiled down to an ahistorical category of "Turkey". Moreover, especially since the 1980 coup, the many coalition governments never had a smooth, unproblematic relationship with the Army.
...
And in relation to the rejection of the resolution by the parliament, the ruling neoislamist JDP is a brand-new player - there are progressive Islamic-modernist elements within it, there are conservative, reactionary elements (some of which are radically anti-Army), there are also "normalized" elements whose interests totally ally with those of the Army. The antiwar movement in Turkey has been putting immense pressure on the JDP MPs. It turned out that 97 out of 251 of them voted against the resolution. Some of these dissenters simply cannot accept the fact that as Muslim politicians who believe in justice, they have to OK the annihilation of another Muslim population.
Yes, most of the same MPs, for example, would agree with the Army's dominating position and deny Ottoman responsibility for the 1915 atrocities. Yet a good number of them openly criticize the influence of militarism on contemporary Turkish politics. They have endorsed a number of pro-minority rights measures with respect to the Kurdish issue. Yes, JDP is a procapitalist, center-right party, but it's not "Turkey", it's definitely not the "Army".
The Nobel Peace Prize cannot of course go to the JDP leadership, because they were trying to brainwash the party cadres into supporting the war. 97 MPs dissented because the party did not dictate a group decision on its MPs during these brainwashing sessions. Some dissenters were influenced by their political-Islamist constituencies, some listened to rival capital interests (those who oppose the pro-war Istanbul bourgeoisie), some just hated what US imperialism represents or had other moral reasons, etc.
And there isn't an immensely strong national antiwar coalition whose leadership deserves a prize, because the popular-democratic antiwar mobilization was quite heterogeneous, none of the groups involved holds a monopoly.
...
Since Monday, the ruling class began threatening the citizens of Turkey with a looming "economic crisis", which would be caused by the lack of US funds promised in the case of full cooperation. The Turkish corporate media spins that "the people will pay the price" of not supporting the war as the government raises the taxes, inflates the prices, etc. to "avoid crisis". As if the war aid was going to be distributed among the people, we are told that "moral sentiments about Iraqis are likely to make us poorer"...
...
Peoples of Turkey do not want their sons to invade Northern Iraq, kill and die there for the US war machine. Surely, most of them are still Turkish nationalists, vote for right-wing parties, etc. Most of them do not have a memory of 1915, not even of 1980, even though a lot of them have lived through the latter episode. And the overwhelming majority of them belong to the increasing numbers of the working class.
They are neither the "state", nor the "government" nor are they "Turkey".
Emrah Goker Department of Sociology Columbia University
(www.peace-initiative-turkey.net)