Protest, Gloom, Geopolitics

I happened upon a little demonstration in front of Galatasarayı High School on İstiklal Caddesi a few days ago, I think just before news started coming in that the Islamic State’s advance into Kobani had floundered. There were maybe a hundred people gathered around a core group that sat on the ground wearing Human Rights Organization vests and passed around a bullhorn to speakers. ON one side were about 50 police with a crowd control armored vehicle mounted with a water cannon—a common sight in that spot. What I found more remarkable that what the speakers, including a CHP parliamentarian, were saying was the presence of clumpy line of youngish men in leather jackets, many with beards, who gathered across the street and glowered at the demonstrators. I didn’t see any weapons but a couple did have walkie-talkies. This reminded my a bit of Iran 2009: if you have regular police there what do you need plainclothes thugs for plausible deniability when they attack? I stood to one side (I was waiting for a friend to finish up and the gym so had a bit of time to kill) and nothing happened; the demonstrators dispersed quietly after a while and then the thugs followed suit.

The friend I met that night, an Iranian polyglot who first fled to Turkey in 2009 for political reasons, and another friend, an American who has lived here since 2004, both seem thoroughly sick of living here. I’ve always though of Istanbul as a place I could live long-term but these friends are among the most integrated of expats I’ve met here–both married Turkish women and speak the language well and work outside the expat bubble—are both are constantly complaining about the constant struggle with bureaucracy and even more so with petty cheating and short-term thinking—e.g. the greengrocer one buys from regularly always trying to slip him one rotten tomato to add extra weight to the package even if it means: it’s like prison, rape or be raped, the American told me half-seriously. His landlord is constantly trying to screw them over, raise rent, etc. instead of being happy that he found a good quiet couple in a not-so-good neighborhood. In Jenny White’s new book she mentions surveys including this one from OECD that Turks have extremely low levels of interpersonal trust. As far as bureaucracy, the Iranian friend has had enormous trouble with things like getting a bank account and credit card and residency despite working in IT for a big Turkish company and marrying a citizen.

Both friends are planning to move out of Turkey ASAP.

Despite all the editorials from the US and UK blasting Erdoğan for passively watching as Kobani was attacked, I’m fairly sympathetic to them not wanting to actually invade across the Syrian border. It was never really clear what they were expected to do once they had cleared the Islamic State out of the area and I think it certainly makes sense for Turkey to keep a trump card in reserve. IS could definitely start launching suicide attacks in Istanbul and ruin the country’s tourist economy—I suspect they have been hesitant to do anything beyond recruiting in Turkey because Turkey appears to still be on the fence and IS doesn’t want to provoke them further. I’m also sympathetic to the Turks’ demand that the US devote more resources to overthrowing Assad or at least preventing him from concentrating his forces on bombing other Syrian rebelgroups now that the US focus on IS has freed up resources for him. The CIA itself reports that the US has a miserable track when it comes to achieving its goals by arming rebels and it is unclear what, beside a continuation of the profitable (I don’t agree with a lot that Scahill says in that linked interview, but certainly IS is very good business for Lockhead et al) Forever War, the US sees as an actual end goal in Syria. After a glimmer with the ouster of Maliki in Iraq that the US would back those who governed inclusively rather than just anyone who helps them find and kill enemies, it seems like the US is just going back to the same old failed policies that helped the Taliban rise from the dead in Afghanistan by helping a still-brutally-sectartian government in Iraq. As long as the Free Syrian Army kills those it claims are IS, I suspect the US will turn a blind eye to whatever other nastiness it does. My point is, by insisting on tying the overthrow of Assad to anti-IS policy, it seems to me like Turkey is at least thinking more than one step ahead, unlike the US.

That said, I think that all the little stories about the Turkish military intentionally but inconsistently inhibiting the transit of Kurdish fighters across their border, letting some YPG and PYD fighters die waiting to cross, preventing PKK fighters from crossing into Syria while sending some non-combatants back there, show stupidity in sticking to old failed ways on Turkey’s part. Not at least stepping back to allow Kurds to go in and defend Kobani hurt the peace process with the PKK (which of course many in Turkey’s military and state are happy to see undermined) and led the bloody protests in the region. And anyway, why not let the PKK go into Syria with their weapons and die fighting IS instead of attacking Turkish gendarmerie posts? Turkey got very lucky that, despite gloomy predictions from everyone I talked to as recently as a week ago, Kobani did not fall, that US airstrikes seem to be enough help for them to push back IS. Kurds in Turkey would certainly have blamed and retaliated against the state if the city had fallen.