MY LIFE AND THOUGHTS

Last week I got an email from my father, who was working on a letter to the editors of the New York Times about their editorial, “Democracy’s Close Call in Turkey.”  He had written a 250-word draft, but letters are supposed to be only 150 words… and who did he ask to help him reduce the word count?  Me, his graphomaniac daughter!  This was a wonderful change for me, since usually I am the one sending enormous files to my long-suffering editors. 

First I read the editorial, which was about the Turkish Constitutional Court’s ruling last week not to ban the Islamist AKP party—an event reported in a sane and balanced fashion by the LA Times.  The New York Times, on the other hand, described the court case as “the culmination of an epic battle” between a “powerful coterie of judges and generals” and the “broadly popular” Erdoğan, who apparently isn’t actually an Islamist, because his “supporters say that his past as a political Islamist is firmly behind him.”  That was the news coverage.  In the editorial, they got to express their genius even more freely:

The court ruling is a victory for Turkey, for democracy and for the politics of moderation in the volatile Near and Middle East. That makes it a victory for the United States as well.

Had it gone the other way, Turkey’s chances of joining the European Union would have been demolished and the clearly expressed will of Turkish voters outrageously thwarted.

Seriously, you would think the US and the EU were sitting in some castle with Gandalf the wizard, tightly gripping their oaken staffs in anticipation of the verdict, viz., a narrow victory in the “epic battle” of good versus eeevil.  (In their news story, the NYT actually quoted the approval of some dude from the EU parliament: “‘There is a great sense of relief among the Europeans,’ said Joost Lagendijk.”)  As for thwarting the clearly expressed will of the Turkish voters, well, the AKP was reelected with 47% of the vote.  George W. was reelected with 50.7%, and you don’t hear anyone complaining that the House Judiciary Committee is imperiling world democracy by moving to impeach Bush.

Anyway, it’s not like I looove military elites and think they should be able to ban political parties whenever they feel like it… but I also don’t think it’s a travesty of democracy for the Constitutional Court to evaluate the constitutionality of a political party that undermines the separation of church and state. 

Furthermore, my personal feeling is that the political climate in Turkey has really deteriorated under the AKP.  I vividly remember the last time I was in Ankara, when I was sitting on some steps in Kızılay, eating a sandwich, and a police officer came up to me and mumbled something incomprehensible.  I smiled politely and hoped he would go away, but he didn’t.  So I was like, “Excuse me?”  Then he said, very distinctly: “Cover your shoulders, you’re in a public place.”  It’s not like I was gadding about in some hot-pink hoochie getup, either—I was wearing a really old, ankle-length summer dress.  I was going to tell him how he was making Atatürk roll in his grave, but he was carrying a big stick so I just put on my jacket.

In short, I agreed with most of my father’s letter, which was about how Erdoğan is a worse threat to Turkish democracy than the Constitutional Court.  I did however cut the following sentence:

The Times once again fails to see that prime minister Erdoğan of Turkey is no democrat, but a rising petty Putin who continues to fool both the Times and the unsuspecting masses in Turkey. 

Afterwards, my father said the only thing he was “a little sad” to lose in the 150-word letter was the “‘petty Putin’ analogy”—so, I thought I would at least share it with my readers.  I am also sharing the more general thoughts and feelings I experienced during the editorial process, because the Times did not run the actual letter. 

“Petty Putin”	Vladimir Putin

Those readers with an interest in my father’s opinions, however, may consult another, less controversial letter he wrote to the Times in 2006, inviting the (broadly popular) George W. to etch his name in the annals of human ingenuity by creating in New Orleans a “22^nd-century flood control system… which would be the envy even of the Dutch.”

But OK, this is the last I’m writing about politics for a while.

Tags: clothes, current events, graphomania, politics, religion, Turkey

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 13th, 2008 at 3:37 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.