Turkish Views on Greek Riots: Is There Anything to Envy?

The riots, which shook Athens and a number of other Greek cities last week, understandably attracted considerable attention by Turkish media. Detailed reports appeared on several newspapers, and columnists attempted to explain the events and link them to developments in Turkey. In the past, Turkish media interest in such news originating from Greece would have had a sardonic side. Images of looting, lawlessness and state collapse would have enjoyed disproportionate coverage by these media which considered Greece a "not so European" country and resented the alleged "preferential" treatment, which allowed it to join the European Economic Community, while Turkey's application has not met with fruition for decades. Nowadays, such reactions may be limited to the fringe nationalist press. However, increasing interaction and communication between the two societies has led to investigation of the reasons of the riots in comparison with trends within the Turkish youth.

Some columnists saw these riots as evidence of the politicisation of the Greek youth. The government's hesitance to use violence against the rioters was also perceived as evidence of the endurance of democratic values in the country. Had such events taken place in Turkey, they argued, the police would have been given a "blank check" to deal with the issue. If things did not cool down immediately, declaring a state of emergency and bringing the army to the streets would be all natural. Public sensitivity for the death of a youngster by a police officer was juxtaposed to the more than twenty such incidents in Turkey during the last two years which failed to provoke any public reaction. In the words of the chief editor of Taraf Ahmet Altan:

I must say that that I envy the Greeks. They show a really serious reaction against state suppression of the youth, they try to prevent that the state raises its arm against the youth with big demonstrations. After all these events, it would not easy for a police officer to point a gun at a youngster. Then I thought that such sensitivity does not exist among us [Turks]. We do not mind the killing of thousands of young people in war....While we were leaving them to mountains, trenches, military bases; the number of youngsters killed in police departments was also rising. We did not react to these deaths. No civil demonstrations were made.... None even thought about it. For us, our children were for some reason not worth as much as the children of the Greeks.

This sympathetic look towards the events can be understood within the Turkish political context. Turkish political culture has been so deferential to the state, that any incidents of civil disobedience would be extremely rare or meet the opposition of the public opinion. This is not to say that there were no incidents of civil disobedience in Turkey. The youth movement was particularly active throughout the 1960s and 1970s under adverse conditions much like its Greek counterpart. 1974 is the key year where the paths of the two countries diverge. Greece's defeat in the 1974 Cyprus war brought about the collapse of the Greek junta, the dismantling of the Greek "deep state" and the consolidation of democracy. The Greek left succeeded in dominating ideological discourse. In the case of Turkey, the Cyprus victory had the opposite effect. It led to the reinforcement of the tutelary role of the military in Turkish politics and society. While civil unrest and a considerable influence of the left on the marketplace of ideas continued throughout the 1970s, the military coup of 12 September 1980 dealt a lethal blow against the Turkish left. Scores of leftist intellectuals and activists were tortured and imprisoned, and the political party system was carefully engineered, so the left would be contained. The imposition of a 10 percent electoral threshold was instrumental in that respect. Since the 1980 coup the Turkish left has not been able to claim a significant role in Turkish politics. Turkey's major opposition party, the Republican People's Party (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi-CHP) which had addressed some of the leftist political issues in the 1960s and 1970s, returned under the leadership of Deniz Baykal to its nationalist, statist and bureaucratic roots. The absence of the Turkish left has led many commentators to look for inspiration in the recent Greek riots, which often meant overlooking the fundamentally antisocial character of these events.

The recent riots have not emerged in a social vacuum. They reflect a deteriorating crisis in almost every respect of the Greek public sphere. A political system characterised by populism, nepotism, mediocrity and clientelism is matched by an archaic education system which fails to equip its students with knowledge necessary to thrive professionally and compete internationally. It also reflects an increasingly conservative society, spoiled by populist politicians, which has repeatedly rewarded those who refuse to address the country's real and serious problems but prefer to appeal to the short-term interests of their electoral clientele. As inertia thrives, a part of the country's youth has adopted a violent anarchist subculture, a by-product of Greece's intellectual fermentation in the 1970s. These anarchist groups have enjoyed overt support or tolerance by a large number of the media and elite. Despite their small size and by means of violence these groups have succeeded in stalling most serious reform efforts concerning education. Moreover, they have instilled a subculture of populism, cynicism and anomie into a considerable part of Greece's youth. The tragic event of 6 December was the straw which broke the camel's back and brought the country's chronic problems to the surface.

Turkey may still face serious obstacles to its democratic consolidation. A civil-military bureaucratic establishment, which continues its struggle to maintain a tutelary grip over democratic politics and society, serious shortcomings in human rights protection and a looming divide between the secularist and the conservative part of the society are serious problems raising questions about the future of Turkish. Yet the same country is able to maintain and promote excellence in its educational system and present successes at the higher education level, which Greece would envy. While more "civil disobedience" might indeed help Turkey's path towards a fully democratic political system, Greece's "hooded revolutionaries" would make no good guides in that respect.

(Published on Athens News on 19 December 2008)