Freedom at Issue

The Struggle for Turkey's Identity: A Dark Turn?

The number of people arrested in Turkey in connection with the activities of the violent, ultranationalist group Ergenekon has risen to over 150, of whom 95 have been charged with conducting and planning acts of terror designed to destabilize the populist ruling party and trigger a secular, military takeover. Ergenekon allegedly draws its membership from the traditional, conservative elite: the police, the military, and the urban aristocracy. The opposition of these groups to the ruling Justice and Development Party, or AKP, is well-known: it stems from the weakening of their power and their fears that the AKP will do away with Turkey’s vaunted secularism.

The government claims that members of Ergenekon were responsible for two acts of terror in 2006: a grenade attack against the newspaper Cumhuriyet, and the assassination of a judge. It also claims to have found two arms caches, one in June 2007 and another earlier this month near Ankara. The 2007 cache was located in the basement of a retired Turkish army officer and contained grenades which allegedly matched those used in Cumhuriyet attack. The prosecutor’s case regarding the current arrests is that Ergenekon was planning further acts of terror and assassination, including the targeting of Prime Minister Recap Erdogan and Nobel-Prize winning author – and convicted critic of the Turkish government – Orhan Pamuk. The alleged purpose of the attacks was to trigger chaos and a collapse in public confidence in the current government, after which the army would intervene to save Turkey from itself.

While Ergenekon’s existence is real, the validity of the charges is widely questioned: many feel that the case is a political maneuver by the AKP against its most vocal and powerful opponents. Many of those so far imprisoned have not been charged, and no evidence has been shown against them, although ten people were released over the weekend. Long pretrial detentions, long trials, and dubious support for the constitutional principal of presumed innocence are areas where Turkey’s legal system has long been in desperate need of improvement. The use of the courts as a political tool is an old story in Turkey, although in general opposition secularists are considered to maintain strong influence. Indeed, the most recent row was started last year by the military establishment, whose leadership publically asked the Constitutional Court to rule that the AKP was actively undermining the state’s constitutional secularism. The AK party’s roots are clearly religious, as it maintains the leadership structure of three parties dissolved on similar grounds, but the court fell one vote short of the number required to dissolve the AKP. While the AKP tried – and failed – to remove a few restrictions on public expressions of religiosity, its policies have focused largely on the economy and pro-EU reforms. Although the party lost much of its public funding, it felt that the ruling was a decisive victory against the military. Now, some say that the AKP is pursuing its advantage in the courts to undemocratically undermine its opponents even further.

Tension between the military and elected government is nothing new in Turkey, which underwent military coups in 1960, 1971, 1980 and 1997. The most recent coup, achieved via published threat instead of direct action, deposed Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan, who led the AKP’s three predecessor parties. The military has also pressured the constitutional court into dissolving 24 parties over the past 50 years, including all of Erbakan’s. However, the military has been extensively defanged in recent years, and in 2007 failed to deliver on a public and thinly veiled threat to remove president Abdullah Gul – banned many times for his Islamist views – if he were elected. The military has had its executive powers removed and been subjected to greater government oversight, something it fears will result in the armed forces becoming more religious. Although the AK party surely intended to protect itself against the military with these reforms, many were also made at the behest of the European Union, which has explicit standards for democratic control of the armed forces.

Support among elites for a coup seems extreme on the face of things; Turkey is a partly-free democracy with free and fair elections that cares about its international image, making a political solution preferable. However, the primary opposition party– the Republican People’s Party, or CHP – is not seen as credible. Its leader has clung to power for almost two decades, and although deeply unpopular within the party, he cannot be unseated under rules he himself has written. New parties that entered parliament for the first time in 2007 do not represent promising alternatives for democratic, non-Kurdish secularists. Of course, while the need to expand political pluralism is clear, conservative dissatisfaction with CHP is no excuse for murdering a judge, attacking a newspaper with grenades, or stockpiling arms.

Elites’ open discontent with the AKP is a constant in Turkey’s recent history. This polarization makes the version of the Ergenekon story in which Gul is taking revenge on those who criticized him a compelling one. On the other, the wealthy and military classes have publically allied against the democratically elected government. Faced with the AKP’s populism and the opposition party’s perceived fecklessness, they may be willing to take drastic steps to have another constitutional “reform” handed down by men in uniform. In the end, a real commitment to judicial independence and respect for democratic government may force Turkey to accept a loosening of its rigorous secular laws, while improving overall tolerance and pluralism. In the meantime, the endless battle between political parties and Ataturk’s secular guardians continues in its politicized, polarizing course.

Photo credit: Flickr user serdar

The Dragon's Surprisingly Ambivalent Reform

Thirty years ago, land reforms in China launched the country’s economic rise, initiating a process that enriched urban dwellers at the expense of the rural peasantry. Nowadays China is one of the most unequal countries in the world, and urban-rural divides are at the core of many institutional bottlenecks that hinder the attainment of broad, equitable progress. In fact, land issues encapsulate one of modern China’s major contradictions: while the market is now king in most economic spheres, land is still collectively owned and its usage heavily restricted by the state. Urban land can be traded with very long leases that are, in practical terms, as good as outright ownership (manifold state abuses such as forced dislocation aside), whereas rural land is still owned by village committees that rent small plots to peasants on 30-year leases. Land cannot be mortgaged and selling usage rights or building can be legally problematic. As peasants cannot own land or use it as collateral, credit is all but impossible to obtain and little incentive exists to improve the lots, let alone consolidate them. This creates productive inefficiencies and jeopardizes China’s food security.

Furthermore, the village collective-state-corporation alliance makes the system prone to corruption and clientelism. Illegal, and often violent, land seizures by local officials and developers remain endemic. In numerous instances, farmland is seized for urban expansion and industrialization without sufficient compensation given to farmers, while local officials siphon off profits further fueling resentment. Thus, according to the East Asia Forum “illegal land requisitions take place in the order of tens of thousands a year,” causing an increasing number of peasant protests. In other instances and despite technically being illegal, plot sizes are reallocated among villagers based on family size, even in cases where leases have not expired. Divorced and widowed women are especially vulnerable to these practices.

Because land issues encompass so many of China’s major economic, social, political, institutional and environmental challenges, land reform is urgent. Thus, the Communist Party’s announcement of land reform attracted much media coverage. The reform hinges on two major features: first, to allow peasants to engage in unrestricted trade, purchase, and sale of land-use contracts within regulated markets; and second, to extend those contracts to up to 70 years. Combined with other measures, this is intended to increase income in the countryside. However, the reform is much more modest than the celebrated ‘breakthrough’  language accompanying the agreement implies. The basic principle of ownership will remain unchanged. Village committees, controlled by party  cadres, will still own the land and direct its usage rights. Further, the transfer of usage rights is already allowed legally (with some limitations) and has become a common practice in recent years.

After the initial media hype, quiet enveloped the reforms, suggesting hints of discord within the top echelons of the Communist Party. Opponents of the reform had argued that moving closer to land ownership would solidify Western capitalism and thus undermine the party’s authority, while proponents had stressed that improved property rights could improve rural-urban income disparities, appease social unrest, and stem the waves of peasants migrating to the cities.

But even if the party could agree on enhanced  land rights, this would only be a first step. As the Countries at the Crossroads report stated in 2007, those rights would need to be protected by a more independent legal system that can combat governmental corruption and hold police accountable when they use excessive force. Without a reformed legal system, after all, the principles of stability and predictability that the reform hopes to encourage will not develop. Further, village elections – the only level where Chinese citizens can directly vote for their representatives – would need to be more competitive and less influenced by the Communist Party’s control to secure a fair distribution of the land. Reforming the legal system and improving governmental transparency would not only appease 800 million Chinese farmers, but would help this potentially transformative reform move from word to deed.

Photo Credit: Flickr user rentonr