Overestimating Turkish discontent

IN RESPONSE to "A new stage in the Turkish Spring": While I appreciate SocialistWorker.org drawing attention to the political upheaval currently shaking Turkey, which is indeed significant and worth discussing, there were far too many mistakes in this article to let it pass.

To begin, the author claims "only a handful of small towns were left untouched by popular resistance." Sadly, this was not the case. The vast majority of rural Turkey was left entirely untouched by the resistance. Indeed, even vast swathes of Istanbul were relatively unfazed.

At the time, I was living at the epicenter of the protests, and there were few experiences in my life more surreal than passing by massive barricades built by protesters and nearly every inch of every wall covered in gloriously defiant graffiti on my way to work, only to find life and circumstances just a few kilometers away almost entirely unchanged. The social divisions run deep in Turkey, and this was nowhere more evident than in the differing experiences of the past summer here.

The author also claims repeatedly that "the movement didn't achieve its most immediate aim of protecting the park." This, too, is incorrect. The park is still there. Granted, the government didn't admit defeat, but a court order halting the destruction process that had actually been issued at the very beginning of the protests "miraculously" came to light about a month later. Even with all the protesters gone, the park remains, and there has been no discussion of plans to destroy it.

A more disputable, but nevertheless dubious, claim is that "the tinderbox left behind from last spring and summer's struggles has been reignited." Of course, there have been protests in response to the corruption scandal, but they do not remotely approach the scale of the Gezi protests. They retain the same socially marginal character of protests before Gezi broke out, which is to say they are mostly confined to various left and anti-government opposition groups.

Such protests were quite common long before Gezi. What was distinctive about Gezi was that it managed to break out from these confines to attract a broader swathe of society (though, unfortunately, by no means the all-embracing movement implied by this article).

Indeed, in many ways, Turkey is back to its pre-Gezi mode. Before Gezi, the politically conscious, left-inclined, but relatively unorganized segments--which is to say those not directly part of the more battle-hardened left--of Istanbul (and presumably other urban areas, but I cannot speak to those) were dominated by a sense of resignation in the face of overwhelming police repression.

The Gezi protests broke that for a time, but it has returned with a force. The protests now are but theater, with small groups of protesters turning out to be dutifully hit with high-pressure water hoses, eventually giving way to handfuls of more adventurous dissidents who shoot off fireworks at the cops before going home.

Thus, my broader response to this piece is that is simply too early to say the corruption scandal has reignited the flames of discontent. It may very well do so, but we aren't there yet. And even if it does eventually set off another explosion, there will remain massive obstacles to a truly mass movement, in the form of class divisions and the country's enduring secular/religious divide (now championed primarily by the religious side, unlike recent decades).

This is to say nothing of the Kurdish issue, which is a massive factor that absolutely cannot be set aside in any analysis like the one being presented in this article. The Kurdish political movement is all too aware that for them there is likely very little good that will come if these protests do increase in scope, as the vast majority of the country (and yes, even the bulk of the people who supported the Gezi protests) retain a deep nationalist character that is opposed to any genuine Kurdish liberation. It will do no one any good to pretend that a progressive result will come of the fall of the current administration.

The more likely conclusion would be a coalition between the Republican People's Party and the Nationalist Movement Party. The former has shown no signs of willingness to truly engage the Kurdish movement, while the latter is as hostile as always. There are no easy answers to this predicament and we gain nothing by ignoring it. That doesn't, mean, of course, that we shouldn't support any potential social movement against the government, but we must recognize reality for what it is.
James, Istanbul, Turkey