The Depths of Ignorance About Turkey

An AK Parti advertisement


Welcome to June, everyone.

The election is looming large here in Turkey: flags are flying over all the streets in Istanbul, giant posters of the Ataturk-posed Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan decorate buildings here and there and the smaller parties clamoring for a larger part of the minority jostle for name recognition advertisement space along the city streets. The election's on June 12, and the New York Times decided it would be a good time to feature an article on the election, which ended up being an article about Erdoğan, who is more than likely to take an even bigger majority (though one of my coworkers cited a recent poll saying the CHP, Erdoğan's rivals, was leading 34% to 32%, a poll I have a hard time believing).

This article has me incensed, not just because it's a complete misrepresentation - he's "arrogant and populist to detractors"? Everyone I know who doesn't like him thinks he's turning the country into another "populist" Iran; " "Justice and Development Party, known by its Turkish acronym AK"? No one in Turkey would ever call the AK Parti by "AK." But my real grief about this article is that this misinformation is the only thing many Americans will ever read or learn about Turkey all year long.

I encourage you to look at the journalist who wrote the article, Anthony Shadid's profile page on the New York Times website. Not to detract from his qualifications as a journalist - his activities in Lybia are truly amazing and commendable - but it's obvious why he would subconsciously write such a one-sided representation.

I did a research in university that showed that news media constantly under represent Turkey in the American media (I actually still have that research, which you can read here). In one study, only 2.7% of participants had "higher degrees of familiarity with the country," and many other studies indicate that Turkey is generally not talked about in America. It is rare that an article about Turkey will capture the headlines - in the past there might be something about the headscarf ban, which has since been lifted in Universities and ending many foreign journalists' interest in the country. This article is some of the only publicity Turkey's ever going to get in America, and it's terribly disappointing.

Erdoğan knows how uninterested the Western media is in his country, and the brilliant politician uses that to his advantage; I'm sure that in addition to the religious value of lifting the headscarf ban Erdoğan knew it would distance him from the Western media even further. The most egregious instance of how he and the AK Parti have taken advantage of Western blindness is how he threw many leftist journalists in jail at the same time China was arresting foreign reporters (that's when my blog got censored). The news didn't even notice Turkey in its fervor about China. As my favorite Turkish English-language blogger has been pointing out over the last couple of days, the government's controls on the Internet have been tightening lately, and their excuse is to limit pornography consumption. Sound familiar? Remember what China said to justify its ban on Google? You should read this blog post if you want a different take on the AK Parti.

This is particularly scary for my Turkish friends because the AK Parti seems to want to amend the constitution in order to solidify its control - after the 12 of September special election a constitutional amendment granted Erdoğan an immense power boost. My friends are afraid that the country will be turned irreversibly theocratic.

Which brings me to another failing of the New York Times article by Mr. Shadid. He claims that the opposition to Erdoğan believes him to be "arrogant and populist," while stating that the "deeply pious" man's latest speech was "short on religious fare" (perhaps he knew he was being watched). In reality Erdoğan's agenda is deeply religious and it is those who sympathize with that message (the "migrants and downtrodden" that Shadid writes about) who vote in throngs for him. Those who have lived here longer than I have told me that the country has gotten much more religious throughout his leadership, that here in Bahçeşehir it used to be frowned upon to wear a headscarf in public while it's now commonplace. I've also heard that the AK Parti pays women to cover their heads in order to make the country appear more religious than it really is. Many of my friends complain that the AK Parti uses religion and fear to manipulate Turks into voting for them - I haven't met a Turk who didn't share that opinion with me when the opportunity came up, except one in America.

We have to realize that the ruling party in Turkey has been tricking us, and our Western media has been falling for it for 10 years. Erdoğan is indeed a visionary, but not in the way we think.

Look for a short-form version of this post in the New York Times letters to the editor.

Enjoy your June.