Maybe it's a good idea to look into who was behind the demo before getting too excited about it. In addition to the Kemalist Thought Association, the (far right) Nationalist Movement Party, the Workers Party (which, despite its name that may confuse some, actually shares a lot of the National Movement Party's politics), and other usual suspects were involved, according to Sabri's report.
That said, even Western wire agencies' dispatches contained enough clues in this case: the Turkish military, known for its coups (which fact was mentioned in the Reuters dispatch that Ulhas posted here), is telling the prime minister NOT to seek presidency.
On 4/15/07, Lenin's Tomb <leninstombblog at googlemail.com> wrote:
> Doug wrote:
>
> > And I'll bet that a lot of those 300,000 wouldn't prefer such a
> > dictatorship either - they're just afraid of Islamists.
>
> I think that's outlandish nonsense. The Islamists in Turkey aren't
> actually threatening anyone: the army are, however. At the moment,
> they are actively repressing Turkey's Kurdish minority and threatening
> to invade northern Iraq to extend the campaign. In concert with the
> EU and America, they have also launched a wave of recent kidnappings
> across Europe. Somehow I doubt that their main concern is the
> preservation of the Republic.
Leftists to the left of social democrats in Turkey have much more to fear from the military and ultra-nationalists than from the AKP, that's for sure, though the AKP has little to recommend itself to anti-liberal and anti-imperialist leftists.
What's really at stake in the rally was not defense of secularism (which in Turkey goes a lot further than a mere separation of church and state _even under the AKP_) but assertion of right-wing nationalism. The troubled process of EU membership application, external pressures concerning how to reassess national history*, and so on have been among the triggers of it. Turkey getting played with and practically jilted by the EU could have theoretically provided an opening for left-wing criticism of the politico-economic program of the AKP (probably the most EU-oriented party in Turkey), but the balance of forces being what it is in Turkey, it appears that, in practice, the EU problem mainly benefited the Right waxing patriotic to regain the lost nationalist grounds.
* Not only is it a crime in France to deny the Nazi Holocaust but France has also made it a crime to deny the genocide of Armenians, thanks to the clueless Socialist Party, even though, regarding the latter, there can be a legitimate debate whether the term "genocide" should apply (see <http://archives.econ.utah.edu/archives/pen-l/2007w11/msg00126.htm> for an explanation). It would have been much better if discussion had been allowed to proceed in Turkey minus Western pressures conducive to ultra-nationalist reaction. But that was not to be.
On 4/15/07, Chris Doss <lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Well, are most people in Turkey actually against
> "actively repressing Turkey's Kurdish minority and
> threatening to invade northern Iraq to extend the
> campaign"?
>
> Why don't we just look at some polls of Turkish
> opinion instead of drawing sketchy inferences?
I doubt that the Kurds or the Armenians are greatly popular among the non-Kurdish and non-Armenian Turks (though I hope I'm wrong about my impressions), but after the Armenian-Turkish journalist Hrant Dink's assassination by ultra-nationalists, there was a big march in his memory, too, so I think that there is a sizable constituency willing to buck the fearsome ultra-nationalists, revisit the history of Turkey and the Ottoman Empire, and seek new relations with the Armenians, and probably the same people who were outraged by the Dink murder are also willing to be open-minded toward the Kurds.
As for the AKP itself, it has apparently retained the level of support that it received in the 2002 elections (whose results are at <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_general_election%2C_2002#Total_votes_and_seats_for_each_party>), still far more popular than ultra-nationalists, according to polls. Despite the big pro-military rally on the 14th, a much larger number of Turks value democracy, new openings for the Kurds and the Armenians, etc. that are associated with the AKP, limited as they are by the "deep state," it seems.
<http://www.angus-reid.com/polls/index.cfm/fuseaction/viewItem/itemID/15221> Angus Reid Global Monitor : Polls & Research Governing AKP Expected to Dominate in Turkey March 30, 2007
(Angus Reid Global Monitor) - Many Turkish adults would back the country's most powerful political party in the next parliamentary election, according to a poll by ANAR. 35 per cent of respondents would vote for the Justice and Development Party (AKP) in this year's legislative ballot.
The Republican People's Party (CHP) is a distant second with 11.6 per cent, followed by the National Action Party (MHP) with 6.1 per cent, the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party (DTP) with 5.3 per cent, and the Youth Party (GP) with 5.2 per cent.
Support is lower for the True Path Party (DYP), the Felicity Party (SP), the Motherland Party (ANAP) and the Democratic Left Party (DSP). Turkish political organizations require at least 10 per cent of the vote to win seats in the Great National Assembly.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Polling Data
What party would you support in the next parliamentary election?
Justice and Development Party (AKP) 35.0%
Republican People's Party (CHP) 11.6%
National Action Party (MHP) 6.1%
Democratic Society Party (DTP) 5.3%
Youth Party (GP) 5.2%
True Path Party (DYP) 4.1%
Felicity Party (SP) 1.6%
Motherland Party (ANAP) 1.4%
Democratic Left Party (DSP) 0.7%
Undecided 17.9%
None 7.8%
Source: ANAR Methodology: Interviews with 2,648 Turk adults, conducted in 12 cities in March 2007. No margin of error was provided.
On 4/15/07, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
> because we're all so simple and provincial.
To the simple, provincial, and anti-intellectual, who are like potatoes in a sack, you can sell a lot of things as long as the corporate media (to which leftists seem as susceptible as centrists and rightists) play up the politics of fear, from fear of Serbs and Russians to fear of Muslims (coherence be damned). :-> At present, the word "secularism" often works like the opium of liberals and leftists (many of whom seem to embrace the word with vengeance, especially now that transition to socialism* has gotten formally or informally dropped from the political agenda of the Left in much of the world), and there are people out there who are ready to take advantage of the opium-induced state of low functioning.
* When socialism (albeit, alas, state socialism) was still on the agenda, socialists tried various approaches to the question of religion (in their sometimes sincere, sometimes opportunistic efforts to come up with a viable "Eastern Strategy"), _all_ of which are now denounced by such former socialists as Fred Halliday. But perhaps it may be worth listening to old socialists once in a while: "The early Bolsheviks tried to establish just such an alliance: faced with the blocking of the proletarian revolution in Europe after 1917, they turned to the anti-imperialist and sometimes Islamic forces then active in Asia" and "Even in the years after 1945, Soviet strategists sought to find a 'national democratic' content in Islam, interpreting its stress on equality, charity, sharing of property and, not least, struggle, that is, jihad, as early forms of communism. While some Soviet orientalists portrayed the Prophet Muhammad as the agent of commercial capitalism, other Marxist writers, notably the French specialist Maxime Rodinson, drew a more positive portrait. . . " (Fred Halliday, "The Jihadism of Fools," Winter 2007, <http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/?article=732&print=1>). Halliday, et al. want to say that such approaches NEVER make sense any time, anywhere, but a more balanced assessment is that some of them help sometimes in some places, depending on social, cultural, and political circumstances, and are certainly more sophisticated than Atheism Über Alles. -- Yoshie