Sick Man of Europe: Next Generation (was Michael's question)

[SOncu]

Friends,

Let me tell you that it is impossible for mortals like me to keep pace with 
the discussions on PEN-L. I was thinking about responding to Michael's 
original question but when I looked at the archives, I saw that you had 
already produced a ton of e-mails on the subject. I apologize for responding 
so late but here you go.

Let me start with what Andrew said:

" The United States, India, Israel, Turkey, and Mexico were able to
remain both open societies and independent. Each of these successful
nations embraced capitalism, albeit to different extents."

Independent maybe, at least for some time, but Turkey, that is, the Turkish 
Republic (TR), has never been an open society and this remains true even 
today. From 1923 until the beginning of the Cold War, TR had been under a one 
party rule. The founding leader of the party, Mustafa Kemal, a former Ottoman 
General, was also the national chief and the concept of a national chief 
still plays an important role in the current day Turkish politics. 

Mustafa Kemal went to such extremes as accepting as his last name Ataturk 
(the father of Turks), given to them by the National Assembly a few years of 
the founding of TR.  One of the recent debates I had witnessed a while ago 
among some Turkish socialists was on whether Kemal was the Lenin or Stalin of 
Turkey. While Marxist-Leninist were arguing that he was more like a Stalin , 
Kemalist-socialists, which is a contradiction in terms in my view, were 
arguing that he was the Lenin of Turkey. Coincidentally, these 
Kemalists-socialist happen to be Maoists as well and I don't think they have 
any objection to the concept of a "national chief".  Some others consider 
Kemal a benevolent dictator, and maybe he was, but benevolent or not, 
dictators repress people and kill some whether they like it or not. In 
another e-mail Michael said: "... I am sure that if I were committed to the 
success of the revolution, I would have had to do nasty deeds that would have 
made me shudder." Mustafa Kemal was comitted to the succes of "his" 
revolution and did nasty deeds that probably made him shudder later. 

The Turkish "revolution" of 1919-1922 had broken out in a poor economy, in 
the Sick Man of Europe, which had not had the ability to confront the 
imperialism powers head on. Clandestine operations had been doing great 
damage to the society.  Less committed citizens had been bribed already.  
Misinformation had confused people, creating factional divisions.  Further, 
the society had been divided among different ethnic groups and these 
ethnic-national-religous differences had been under manipulation by the Great 
Powers of the time. At the time the Hundred Years Peace, as Polanyi calls it, 
had already been over and the imperialists of the time had no reason to see 
the Ottoman Empire intact and decided that it was time to dismember her.  

The Turkish "revolution" of 1919-1922 was an anti-imperialist independence 
struggle against the Great Powers of the time. And the Kemalists (although 
Kemalism remained undefined until the Great Depression of 1929-32 and there 
still is much confusion about it) won this struggle. From there followed the 
Turkish Republic, which was founded in 1923. Kemalists were off-springs of 
theYoung Turks and hence Kemalists' original intention was same as that of 
the Young Turks, with whom they had coexisted for a while until the 
anihilation of their ancestors (guess by whom): To save the Ottoman Empire 
and install capitalism there from above. Their original intention was by no 
means to bring the Empire to an end and build a republic. But as an old 
fellow once said, "the many individual wills active in history for the most 
part produce results quite other than those inteded - often quite the 
opposite."  

One thing remained the same though: the urge to install capitalism into the 
pre-capitalist Turkey from above, in some sense, in a manner similar to 
upgrading your operating system from Windows NT to Windows 2000. Upgrading 
from Windows NT to Windows 2000 was such a night-mare for me that I can 
imagine the difficulties the Kemalists had to go through to some extent. By 
the way, I strongly recommed that you let an IT specialist do the Windows 
upgrade for you, if you are not an IT expert yourself.

This installation of capitalism into the pre-capitalist Turkey is what is 
known as the Kemalist revolution. Some argue that the Kemalist "revolution" 
was a bourgeois (unbelievable, I spelled it right this time) democratic 
revolution. I disagree. There was nothing democratic about it. It was a " 
revolution" from above and its main objective was to create a national 
capitalist class by any means appropriate, including totalitarianism, so that 
Turkey can find herself a place under the sun, that is, among the first class 
capitalist nations of the world.  Although Turkey failed to achieve this 
objective, and in these days she is back to being the Sick Man of Europe once 
again, the regime in Turkey remains totalitarian to this day.

Please keep in mind my friends that the above is an attempt of a 
mathematician who wanted to provide you with a brief historical account of 
the development of a non-communist (indeed, anti-communist) totalitarian 
regime based on his limited knowledge of history. Hence, there may be some 
historical errors in it. "An Economic and Social History of the Ottoman 
Empire" edited by Halil Inalcik and Donald Quataert is a good source to look 
at for a more reliable historical account of the era. Several books of Feroz 
Ahmad, particularly "From Young Turks to Kemalism" (this is my translation 
from turkish so the actual english name may be different) may also be useful.

Going back to Andrew's assertion, we see that Turkey is not one of those 
nations who were able to remain both open societies and independent. Turkey 
is hardly an open society. Whether Turkey is succesful or not depends on what 
Andrew means by that, though by any economic standard the Turkish economy is 
beyond redemption and even in the National Security Council of Turkey 
(Turkish Military), that is, at the commanding hights of my country, the 
possibility of a "social explosion" has been the main topic for the past few 
months. 

As for independence, I am not sure whether we can call ourselves independent 
either: Turkey has been a toy of the US imperialism since the beginning of 
the Cold War. With the Truman doctrine and the Marshall Plan, we had embraced 
USA as our saviour and since then have been a satelite of the US in the 
region. The US and British planes that bomb Iraq almost daily in these days 
are stationed in Turkey and as recently as a few days ago, following the foot 
steps of her master, Turkey sent only a mid-level delegation to the UN 
Racisim Conference in Durban.

Anyway! I don't think there is any proof of that communism (with a small c) 
is not inherently totalitarian in what I wrote in the above but hey! 

Let me finish by saying that capitalism is like a restaurant that operates on 
a "First Come - First Served" basis. A further complication is that the first 
comers have no intention to leave their tables. 

Best,
Sabri Oncu