Behind the Crisis in Turkey
Sherman, Aleph V.
Democracy hinges on political decentralization BEHIND THE CRISIS IN TURKEY By A. V. Sherman Ankara A few years ago enthusiasm for Turkey as the one country in the North Atlantic Treaty...
...the Government is the butt of every joke heard in the bars where journalists congregate...
...But the gradual decline in real wages has cut into the living standards of state employes, while incomes from private pursuits have usually managed to keep abreast of inflation...
...A great deal has been written, for example, about the Press Laws, and there is indeed little that can be said in their defense...
...Moreover, these laws are brought to bear, as often as not, upon responsible independent and opposition journalists and newspapers...
...Government ownership of industry, shipping, banking and wholesale trade, and strict control over private economic activities were a logical extension of Ottoman centralism, applied to a postwar Turkish scene in which economic development had become significant...
...But the leaders of the party were themselves of an older generation that had been brought up under the Ottoman regime...
...The corollary of such a social structure was government monopoly of political activity, which was an appendage of state power and not a source of political decision...
...In the 1957 elections, Ankara (which, like Washington, D. C., is little more than a government and military headquarters town ) voted for the opposition...
...For it was after that date that Turkey integrated itself into the democratic world by its resistance to postwar Soviet expansionism...
...A faction known as the yailaci group now has the allegiance of one-third of the party members in the Assembly and has stood up to the Premier on several major issues...
...In the universities and among the intellectuals generally, the attitude toward the Government is no less outspokenly antagonistic...
...Until a few years ago, most educated young Turks took it for granted that they would go into government or military service...
...At the same time, it sought fresh aid from the U.S...
...The result was a curious amalgam: socialist ideas, Keynesian theories divorced from their context, a conviction that "will-power" can achieve social miracles, and a belief that prudence stems from either a conspiracy to keep the country backward or a combination of cowardice and selfishness...
...While many of these projects were intrinsically valuable, they were uncoordinated and were begun without regard for available resources...
...Though the Army has been educated to keep out of politics, its officer corps makes no secret of its considerable personal sympathy for Ismet Inonu, the opposition leader...
...Even if the Menderes Government is overthrown at the next election, or is ousted by the more progressive wing of the Democratic party, the main contradictions of Turkish life will remain...
...Yet, for observers who escaped this violent love affair the most remarkable facts are the amazing degree to which democracy has struck roots in a country with a tradition of oriental despotism, and the successful resistance to the Government's attempts to vitiate democracy...
...Though it will be a long time before a real bourgeoisie, with its own ideas and representatives, emerges, even the present limited changes are leaving their mark on the developing climate in Turkey...
...As a result...
...shortages in raw materials and spare parts, red tape and other bureaucratic controls slowed down the economic machine...
...Democracy hinges on political decentralization BEHIND THE CRISIS IN TURKEY By A. V. Sherman Ankara A few years ago enthusiasm for Turkey as the one country in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization that was free of neutralism and anti-Americanism led Western observers to exaggerate its democratic and economic achievements...
...Economic activity was the monopoly of the religious minorities, effectively preventing the growth of a Turkish bourgeoisie which might have developed political aspirations...
...Many of them had been members of the People's party (Bayar had once been Premier under that party...
...but it reasserted itself even more strongly after 1945...
...The officers are particularly suspicious of the Government's dictatorial tendencies, and of its conciliatory attitude to what the opposition calls religious reaction...
...The answer seems to lie in the basic internal contradictions of Kem-alism, which emerged from a revolution against Ottoman society, but which, like many post-revolutionary regimes, incorporated and even intensified many of its predecessor's characteristics...
...This faith in democracy wavered a little during the heyday of the Hitler-Mussolini Axis...
...Unlike totalitarian movements of the left and the right, the Democratic party has no powerful party machine through which it can control those forces...
...The dismemberment of the Empire following World War I, the loss of the outer provinces, the improvement of communications and the establishment of a party-state made the ruling bureaucracy more powerful than ever...
...They have succeeded in winning a certain amount of votes, but they have also antagonized wide sections of the public who adhere to the rationalistic ideas of Kemal Ataturk...
...These forces actually operate the organs of coercion and sympathize with the opposition People's party...
...Lately, however, opposition inside the party, encouraged by public opinion, has been growing...
...It is difficult to find people who will defend the Government...
...The extreme measures of price and financial controls only exacerbated the economic situation...
...There is a growing realization among the intellectuals, especially of the younger generation, that over-centralization is partly responsible for the present situation...
...The U. S., unwilling to continue to support so hopelessly unbalanced an economy and aware that the opposition is no less pro-NATO than the Government, insisted upon economic reform...
...The election laws and other attempts to hobble the opposition, particularly by restricting public meetings, have failed to achieve their object...
...to jettison Menderes, if necessary, to save the party...
...Though people usually preface their comments with the remark, "Please don't quote me," they do not shy away from talking...
...The Democratic party promised to accelerate long-range development at the same time that it raised the living standards of the peasantry, which constitutes 75 per cent of the population...
...It has gone far enough to antagonize significant segments of public opinion, without going so far as to quell opposition...
...But the Democratic leadership had little to do with creating this mood and provided no facilities for peaceful revolution...
...The vast majority of educated people continued to be employed by the State in military, administrative, educational or economic functions...
...New money had to be created to finance the projects, resulting in galloping inflation, exhaustion of foreign currency reserves, the massive accumulation of foreign debts and the drying-up of credit sources...
...Nevertheless, the press has not been deterred by severe financial penalties, imprisonment of writers and editors, interference with advertising, and the knowledge that the Government is actively devising fresh measures of control...
...The Democratic party was swept into power in 1950 on the crest of a wave of popular feeling, compounded of resentment of the dictatorship now grown stale and desire for a change...
...Then it resorted to heavy-handed measures of price control and a "fight against speculators...
...They soon relapsed into the old pattern...
...The monopoly was exercised through the People's party...
...All educational and technical innovations were introduced by the State...
...The results have been extensively documented: Large-scale construction of roads, factories and dams was undertaken, machinery was imported, loans and price-supports were extended to farmers...
...The Government's concessions to religious obscurantism and anti-modernism in the villages and small towns have, in fact, boomeranged...
...It has now become de rigueur for a journalist to be anti-Government...
...The Ottoman Empire was characterized by extreme centralization...
...Though the Government has accepted reforms proposed by the Organization for European Economic Cooperation, and American and German funds have begun to pour into the country, the economy is still tied up in knots...
...Few days pass without frontpage reports, complete with photographs, of visits by opposition leaders to provincial towns and of their enthusiastic reception...
...All important matters were dealt with by the Sultan's immediate entourage, and every effort was made to prevent the emergence of autonomous power centers, both geographical and sociological...
...These developments, in turn, give rise to two questions: (1) Why has the Democratic party, which came to power on a platform of democratization and the dismantling of statism, begun to destroy many of the liberties granted during the last years of the preceding regime...
...The governmental bureaucracy itself is frankly hostile...
...officials who have to do so make only half-hearted Attempts...
...At first, the Government tried to deny the existence of any financial crisis...
...Premier Adnan Menderes has said: "What does it matter what the intellectuals of Istanbul think, so long as the peasantry is with us...
...The Government's occasional use of the security police for political purposes, encouragement of informers, partisan abuse of appointments, and promotion and dismissal in universities and public institutions, have antagonized more people than they have won over or cowed...
...But the Press Laws, by their very nature, do not remedy these defects...
...Now disillusioned Western writers vie with each other in painting black pictures of Turkey's authoritarianism, persecution, muddle and waste...
...many of the rest were dependent on the State's good will...
...This faith in democracy was the real driving force behind the reforms which began in the late 1940s and made possible the Democratic party victory in 1950...
...young people are beginning to take greater interest in private enterprise and the professions...
...A People's party government in control of the huge, centralized economic-political machine would face the same problems as the present Government, and might be tempted to follow the same path...
...which had been providing liberal support all along), on the ground that America could not afford to allow its staunchest ally to collapse...
...Interest has been aroused in creating stronger municipal governments to reduce dependence on the central Government...
...The independent papers, which enthusiastically supported the Democratic party in 1950, have been thoroughly antagonized...
...It is true that the Turkish press, with a few honorable exceptions, is scurrilous and irresponsible...
...If Turkish democracy is to be stabilized, political and economic power will have to be diffused further...
...The urge for democracy was itself an integral part of Kemalist ideology, whose goal was a democratic, secular, modern state...
...In short, the Government did much more than rule, it virtually owned the country...
...Up to a few years ago, Premier Menderes and President Celal Bayar, strong man of the Democratic party, ruled the party and its Parliamentary contingent with a strong hand...
...Kemalism intensified these characteristics...
...Like many underdeveloped countries, Turkey borrowed capital, techniques and ideas from abroad...
...Many of its journalists are underpaid and underedu-cated, and they confuse violence with forcefulness...
...The Government dares not arrest the opposition leaders or impose an outright dictatorship, which would be vulnerable to a coup by the Army, the police or the bureaucracy...
...The Menderes Government now faces a dilemma...
...2) Why have the Turks resisted these tendencies so much more effectively than most other Mideast nations...
...But in a country like Turkey, where the political weight of the educated classes is out of all proportion to their numbers, it does matter...
...Extreme cases are the prosecution of editors and newspapers for reprinting articles from the American press which were unfavorable to the Government, or for printing speeches by opposition deputies...
...The opposition, bolstered by groups that have split from the Democratic party since 1955, already has the support of a majority of the electorate and will probably win the 1961 elections...
...Lively discussion has also centered o,n such institutions as consumer cooperatives and more independent public economic corporations...
...This effective resistance to the regime's dictatorial tendencies shows that there are enough Turks ready to face imprisonment and economic retaliation to give roots to Turkish democracy...
...President Bayar has more than once been forced to act to keep the party together, and it is believed that he would be willing...
Vol. 42 • February 1959 • No. 6
