Tribal Turkey
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was much criticized at home when, on the occasion of his recent visit to France, he brought with him an order for 36 aircraft to a value of $1.5 billion for Airbus in Toulouse to overcome French resistance to Turkey’s membership of the EU. Robert Ellis, a British journalist based in Denmark, is wondering what Mr Erdogan will have with him in the goodies bag when he visits Denmark later this year. Could the visit mean decorating 100,000 Turkish government offices with posh Bang & Olufsen hi-fi systems?
According to optimists, he may not have to do so. "If Turkey is not European, what other country can be?" exclaimed a lady bigwig from Brussels, sipping her wine at a fancy restaurant by the Bosporus about a month ago. The trouble is, Turkey is not exactly what the enthusiastic visitor sees by the beautiful Bosporus.
Admitting Turkey into the EU will mean admitting a perfectly European country together with several other countries ranging from "less European" to "much less European," and even to "tribally Middle Eastern." Turkey is like a special offer: buy one, get five others free!
A recent incident in eastern Turkey and its aftermath were in sharp contrast with what Turkey’s leaders claim Turkey to be.
Mustafa Bayram is the leader of a 100,000-strong Kurdish tribe in Van, an impoverished province bordering Iran. The man is a former lawmaker with quite an impressive crime record: murder, drug smuggling and many more. On July 7, Mr Bayram’s son, Hamit, was arrested by the police while he was trying to sell to drug enforcement agents, disguised as dealers, 40 kilograms of pure heroin. What happened afterwards has, once again, unveiled another face of Turkey, a face quite different than what one sees by the Bosporus.
While the younger Mr Bayram was being held under temporary custody at a traffic police station, some 30 heavily-armed men from the "tribe" showed up, and, according to the official account, after a fight but no shooting, managed to make off with leader’s son. The son has been on the "wanted list" ever since.
But according to an anonymous e-mail message, presumably from one of the police officers on duty that night, the armed group fired on police officers and wounded eight of them; all of whom are now secretly undergoing treatment at a hospital in Van. The wounded officers have been offered money to keep silent. "Instead of investigating how such an incident could have taken place, our police chiefs have launched a probe to find out who leaked the story," the e-mail says. "This is the horrible face of a triangle of money, drugs and politics."
According to this account, after the arrest, the elder Mr Bayram storms into the office of the police chief and swears at him using unmentionable language. How dare anyone arrest his son? He then rings up the Interior Minister and the Education Minister, both of them Kurds (the latter an MP from Van), and threatens them. Both ministers admitted to having talked to Mr Bayram over the ‘phone, but said they refused his request for assistance.
After wide media coverage of the incident the "state" had to arrest Mr Bayram, the father, but released him shortly afterwards on a small bail of $20,000. But there is more.
Social Democrats in the opposition — The Republican People’s Party (CHP) — sent a delegation to Van to investigate the "Bayram Affair," and, subsequently, filed a parliamentary motion for a wider probe. This angered one of the tribal leaders.
"Take off your hands from Mr Bayram, or you’ll regret it," Mikail Ilcin told a press conference in Van in a manner reminiscent of a "capo di tutti i capi." Mr Ilcin, a member of Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AK Party), warned Deniz Baykal, leader of the CHP, never to humiliate Mr Bayram. "Or you’ll suffer the consequences. This is a warning," Mr Ilcin said.
Mr Ilcin is an eccentric Kurd. Before the Iraq war, he sent letters to Mr Erdogan, President Ahmet Necdet Sezer and to Hilmi Ozkok, head of the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK), asking for support for a Kurdish state in Iraq. He argued that if Turkey was to fight the Iraqi Kurds, it should not send land forces but bomb the Kurds with its fighter jets.
"That way, at least, the Kurds in Iraq and the Kurds in the Turkish army would not have to fight each other," he reasoned. "I think something like the one in Halabja would be much nicer." Well, it’s hard to believe Mr Ilcin has perfectly balanced thinking. You don’t always come across a Kurdish patriot who advocates a massacre of Kurds by chemical weapons to avoid fighting between Turkish and Iraqi Kurds.
No matter what weird ideas Mr Ilcin may have, the way he got into the picture in Van says much about "the other Turkey."
The incident in Van is no surprise to anyone with knowledge of Turkish affairs. What’s surprising is that it somehow surfaced. Most tribal affairs are open secrets in eastern and southeastern Turkey. One knows they happen without actually seeing them happen.
Perhaps the lady bigwig from Brussels should next visit Van, or any one of the provinces in Turkey’s eastern-half, to see "if Turkey is not European, what other country can be."
