Turkish Surprise

Below is a very well written article by Claire Berlinski at The American http://www.american.com/archive/2008/july-07-08/turkish-surprise

Turkish Surprise

By Claire Berlinski Friday, August 8, 2008

Filed under: World Watch

An unexpected court decision has allayed Turkey’s political crisis. But how will the ruling party respond?

ISTANBUL—Last week, Turkey’s Constitutional Court achieved what many here, including me, thought impossible. Since March, when the chief prosecutor launched a case to ban the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) for undermining Turkish secularism, Turkey appeared to be possessed by a collective national will to achieve total political self-immolation. The Court’s verdict stopped the juggernaut, leaving the country rubbing its eyes in wonderment and gratitude.

Many had expected the deliberations to go on all summer, prolonging and exacerbating the general state of hysteria. Almost everyone expected the AKP to be closed. Instead, ruling with merciful swiftness and emerging visibly exhausted from their deliberations, the judges came down narrowly—by one vote less than the required majority—against closing the party. Ten of the eleven judges agreed with the prosecutor, however, that the AKP had become a “focal point of activities against secularism.” As a chastisement, they ruled to deprive the AKP of some of its state funding from the state treasury coffers.

While this was largely a symbolic measure—the AKP is awash in money from its wealthy business supporters—it signified the Court’s agreement with the prosecutor’s general sentiments, if not his legal arguments. The decision was meant to be interpreted, in the words of the chief justice, as a “very stern warning.” There is much speculation that the narrow verdict was stitched up in advance to make the message as clear as possible: Turkey is a democracy, not a banana republic, and this court is not in the business of removing elected governments. But don’t push us, you idiots. You may have won the last election with 47 percent of the vote, but that doesn’t mean you get to shove your headscarves down the throats of the other 53 percent.

Turkey has been paralyzed by a power struggle between republican secularists (or crypto-fascists, depending on where you stand) and Muslim conservatives (or crypto-fundamentalists, again depending on where you stand).

Almost every commentator in Turkey, of every political persuasion, has applauded the Court’s verdict as a deliverance. This kind of widespread consensus is visible in Turkey roughly as often as Haley’s Comet. The fact that there is something in the ruling for everyone to like has prompted many observers to reach for the word “Solomonic.” One columnist, Mehmet Ali Birand, declared the verdict so reasonable as to be profoundly un-Turkish. “For the first time,” he wrote, “we did not act like Turks. We found the logical and the sensible way.”

The conventional wisdom is correct. This was the best of all possible verdicts. The Court delivered a condign message, richly deserved, to a prime minister who seemed to have forgotten that he was reelected, not coronated. It indicated that if AKP leaders do want to impose a crypto-fundamentalist agenda by stealth, they will face an uphill battle. And it told those leaders in no uncertain terms that if they enjoy being in power—which clearly they do—they had best start acting like the liberal moderates they claim to be.

But the Court also demonstrated its understanding of the Reality Principle. The gravamen of the prosecutor’s complaint was the AKP’s attempt to lift a 1989 prohibition on headscarves in Turkish universities. Banning a popular, democratically-elected party on such flimsy grounds would have given rise to dangerous instability. Although concerns about the AKP’s commitment to secularism are hardly spurious, the prosecutor’s case was a legal embarrassment and everyone knew it. The brief was called the “Google case,” as it seemed the prosecutor had collected his evidence from a Google search under the term “scary things the AKP is rumored to have done.” For recognizing that the closure of the party on these grounds would have plunged the country into the political and economic abyss, the Court deserves—and has received—a warm round of applause and the gratitude of the Turkish nation.

This is not, however, the end of the story. For months, Turkey has been paralyzed by the case and by the power struggle it represents between republican secularists (or crypto-fascists, depending on where you stand) and Muslim conservatives (or crypto-fundamentalists, again depending on where you stand). The verdict will hardly cause the two sides warmly to embrace each other. The markets were severely spooked by the prospect of the AKP’s closure, and while they reacted to the verdict with euphoria, Turkey’s essential instability has been exposed and investors are not apt to forget it. The country’s bid for membership in the European Union has stalled, and it remains awash in rumors of coups and conspiracies.

Prior to the announcement of the verdict, the atmosphere of polarization, suspicion, and paranoia in Turkey was such that only a week ago I told an American radio host that I could see no way forward. I was wrong. There is now a way forward.

Still, this ruling was only the necessary and not the sufficient condition for Turkey to achieve some kind of long-term equipoise. It should never have come to this point in the first place. A decision that rightly belonged to the electorate was made by eleven unelected judges. That this happened at all is a sign of the profound weakness in Turkey’s political and legal institutions.

The drama of the closure case has for months crowded out any possibility of discussing Turkey’s incoherent constitution or its laws on party closures. The problems that gave rise to this state of affairs—including an irresponsible press, the absence of credible opposition parties, and a political culture that makes autocrats out of politicians—remain untouched by the court’s ruling. (As for autocratic politicians, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is by no means an anomaly, but rather perfectly typical.) Moreover, despite the AKP’s reputation for shrewd economic management, the Turkish economy is far less stable than commonly believed: it is indebted, riven with corruption, and largely operating off the record, meaning that the supposed economic miracle over which the AKP has presided is based on statistics that have little to do with reality.

Two scenarios—one optimistic, one pessimistic—may now be envisioned. In the first, a chastened AKP sets to work immediately on an accelerated liberal reform agenda, having realized that if it wishes to stay in power, it must avoid frightening anyone. This is perfectly possible. Erdoğan is not stupid; he has a long history of learning from his mistakes. Deputy Prime Minister Cemil Çiçek has just announced that the party will not immediately try again to end the headscarf ban. This is a good sign. A cabinet reshuffle is expected soon, and if the new cabinet is stacked with members from the AKP’s moderate wing, this would be another encouraging sign, as would the selection of moderate candidates for municipal posts in the local elections to be held next March.

But the pessimistic scenario may also easily be imagined. Having survived yet another assassination attempt, the AKP may now conclude that it is bulletproof. It is possible that party leaders will spend a few months making reassuring noises, then start working to ensure there will be no more disagreeable challenges to their authority. In this scenario, they will make a priority of changing the makeup of the Constitutional Court and expanding their control over the bureaucracy. The AKP’s enemies will in turn go berserk and begin agitating for another closure case or a coup. The evidence for this scenario is the past year: after winning reelection with an increased parliamentary majority in June 2007, the AKP clearly concluded, “They can’t touch us now. To hell with them.”

The Constitutional Court has done everything a court can do for a country. Now it’s up to Turkey’s politicians. Let’s hope they have been inspired by the Court’s decency.

Claire Berlinski is a writer living in Istanbul. Her latest book, “There is No Alternative: Why Margaret Thatcher Matters,” will be published in September by Basic Books.

How to reach out to attention-deficit consumers that live a time-deficit life?

I remember that growing up in Turkey I used to enjoy watching TV commercials, recording the best ones and talking about them with my friends. Especially American commercials were the coolest; such as Coke and Levis 501 commercials. I don’t remember when the last time I saw a great commercial on TV and I know that people today don’t watch commercials; they hear them in the background. And most of us click away from ads online. So, how to reach out to attention-deficit consumers that live a time-deficit life?

In his article, “Attention-Deficit Advertising” on Business Week, Burt Helm presented several creative ways in which companies leverage social networking and texting phenomena to reach out to their target audiences. For example, during the Final Four weekend of the NCAA Basketball Tournament, the Chicago-based mobile ad firm Vibes Media displayed viewers' text messages on screens above and next to the stage. As fans text messaged to folks in their networks, prominent AT&T (T) or Coca-Cola (KO) logos appeared on the top of the messages. Helm writes some 5,000 people sent in 11,000 messages, according to Vibes. The same firm has been offering bar goers in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, and Atlanta the platform to send text messages to the TV screens at their local watering holes. Again the same concept here, text messages on the screen appear along with Bud Lights ads. Helm examines in his article how “Converse (NKE) created an application on Facebook that allows people to sign up friends to play an online basketball game.” According to Converse, this application now has more than 40,000 people to add to its database of potential customers.

Also noteworthy that Google now is threatened by the ever-growing number of people googling on their wireless devices. “The real threat to Google” by Ben Kunz on Business Week, indicates that Google “must cope with less space to place ads.” Simply because “Google makes money selling ad inventory. And its ad inventory is diminished on a cell phone.”

Here is the message to companies targeting consumers: “If you can’t reach me on my cell, you are not catching me. And don’t you ever dare to cold call me. Get creative.”

It is not what you say, it's what people hear

“It’s not what you say, it’s what people hear,” said Frank Luntz, a Republican strategist and the author of Words That Work. Dr. Luntz is one of the strategic communications practitioners that I have begun to admire in recent years.

Hillary Clinton has been perceived as a highly advanced new generation robot that functions with a massive network motherboard. Her PR entourage involves big names like Mark Penn, the CEO of Burson-Marsteller that is the biggest PR firm in the world—not to mention her husband whose charm continues to receive mind-blowing attention.

However, despite all this help, the machine behind her knows quite well that we humans don’t vote for robots. In their efforts to re-package Senator Clinton, her aides have been seeking ways to humanize her. One such effort required that rather than using words to convince the public that she has authentic emotions, she should display her feelings at a diner in New Hampshire. This strategic effort helped her gain much support from independents who had lied to pollsters that their votes would go to Barak.

Her demonstration of emotions also helped her receive votes from women who pitied her. Thus, she came on top of Barack and Edwards in the New Hampshire primary. A close friend of mine is a top agent in her campaign so for the sake of our friendship I am going to leave Hillary alone, especially since this is my first blog entry.

Individuals and groups also strategically select silence as a tool of communications when their official and/or unofficial supporters speak on their behalf. It is quiet effective because third party validators amplify your messages by talking about you in the information environment and it is a great way for you to inform your target audience that you have support without saying you have support.

Following the first official Turkish military incursion into Iraq on December 16, 2007 to topple Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) terrorists based in northern Iraq, I began a research to track the PKK messaging. Within the international media landscape, there has been only one statement made by the PKK since the initial Turkish attacks on December 16. Reuters reported that on December 16, PKK official Ferman Garzan stated that the Turkish aerial bombardment had not killed or wounded any guerrillas but had claimed the lives of two villagers. This could very well mean that the PKK’s aim is to have the Iraqi Kurdish officials and locals take on the messaging in order to implicitly symbolize the fact that Kurds in northern Iraq and PKK have the same message and speak with a unified voice. Because, Talabani, Barzani and their cronies were the ones throwing statements at the media.

Then, on January 8, AFP reported that PKK apologized for a deadly car bomb attack in Diyarbakir, Turkey's main Kurdish city on January 03, blaming it on militants acting on their own. That was the fist time PKK apologized in its bloody past since 1984. This is part of PKK’s campaign to win the hearts and minds of the ethnic Kurdish citizens in Turkey by humanizing itself with an apology. The timing of the apology is crucial because it was reported at the same time Turkish President Gul was visiting Bush at the White House.

When listening to Barzani and Talabani carefully enough, one can see that their allegiance is with PKK. The whole world is listening to them now more than ever before so they have to communicate their thoughts more clearly about PKK. They should also know that they are doomed to failure if they continue to support the terrorist group. Perhaps they don’t care any more about governorship, statehood and struggle for the Kurdish cause due to the billions of dollars they’ve generated since 2003.