Levels of intellectual responsibility

This piece on “Erdogan’s Willing Enablers” prompts me to put down a few thoughts on the role that various members of the Turkish media and intelligentsia have played in enabling the steady deterioration of the political climate in Turkey over the last decade. What stands out with these intellectuals is that, even if they were not in all cases liberal in outlook, they all claimed to espouse values consistent with Western democracy: respect for human rights, civil liberties, and the rule of law.   

I don’t want to go over the entire saga of how leading Turkish intellectuals continually misrepresented what was happening over this period and bought into the Gulenist narrative, while overlooking the accumulating repression of media freedoms and violations of the rule of law. I have written about this at length in relation to the infamous Sledgehammer case: see here, especially pp. 23-27. See also Erik Meyersson’s good piece on the flip flops that many of these intellectuals underwent during the previous year as the Erdogan-Gulen war heated up.

Instead I want to make a distinction between three groups, with varying degrees of responsibility.

First there were those who continued to lend support, and thereby legitimize, the Erdogan-Gulen alliance long after it became clear that it was unlikely to produce anything that looked like democracy. There were many indicators of what was to come, but the clearest signals came from the massive sham trials mounted by the alliance against opponents of various kinds (the military, nationalists, secularists, journalists) after 2007. Even if they registered some procedural complaints about what was going on, these individuals persisted in painting for their domestic and foreign audiences a bright portrait of democratization and enhancement in human rights. For the most part, they did so until the Gezi protests of the Summer of 2013, when the Erdogan government’s intolerance of dissent became too hard to ignore even for TV audiences around the world. Anyone who had been paying attention to the Ergenekon, Balyoz, OdaTV, KCK, and sundry other trials should have long known that this was a regime capable of severe repression. I would put Cengiz Candar, Hasan Cemal, Murat Belge, Ali Bayramoglu, Yavuz Baydar, and Sahin Alpay in this category.

Many of these individuals now say they had expressed their opposition to procedural irregularities and other problems with the mass trials. Nevertheless, it is clear that they utterly failed in their journalistic responsibility of drawing the evident conclusions from the sheer scale of these violations.     

In the second category are those who bear considerably greater responsibility in that they played an active part in, or vociferously defended, the transgressions that allowed Erdogan to solidify his political control. Members of this group produced an endless stream of disinformation and distortions aimed against the defendants in the regime’s trials. Ahmet Altan and Yasemin Congar published in Taraf many of the fabricated documents that would form the basis of mass political trials. Nazli Ilicak, Etyen Mahcupyan, Ekrem Dumanli and other editorialists in Zaman and other Gulenist outlets produced column after column trying to explain away (or denying) the forgeries that were coming to light. Their stated justification was that they were promoting the civilianization of the regime and the end of military tutelage. In reality, they served as the instruments of the authoritarian regime in construction.      

Third, and most egregious of all, are people like Mehmet Baransu, Emre Uslu, and Onder Aytac whose responsibility borders on the criminal. All these individuals were well connected with the Gulenist police (Uslu and Aytac are former police officers), and they peddled whatever was passed on to them. It was Baransu who produced the bogus Sledgehammer documents and many other similar forgeries. Uslu and Aytac came up with countless false allegations, no doubt supplied by their police contacts. It is very hard to believe that these individuals are not aware of their role in peddling fabrications.   

This three-fold classification is not as airtight as I would like it to be. There are names that I have difficulty classifying. Most prominently, Alper Gormus falls somewhere in between groups 1 and 2. He worked hard to demonstrate the veracity of Sledgehammer documents, but he was not as utterly misleading as the names in group 2.   

These three groups are occasionally lumped together, but they are best kept separate. Those in the first group were guilty mainly of bad political judgment. They should have known that Erdogan and his then-allies the Gulenists were up to no good. Members of the second group were guilty of more than bad political judgment: they also showed bad faith. Finally, those in the third group – well, their responsibility borders on the criminal as I have said.

To use a crude analogy, the first group provided comfort to the criminals, the second covered up their crimes, and the third provided the murder weapon.

So much for the intelligentsia with a Western outlook. I haven’t said anything about the Islamist columnists. Nor have I mentioned the role played by American and European foreign policy wonks and Middle East specialists. Both subjects would require a lot more space, and frankly I don’t have the patience for it at the moment.  

Comments

[Bugra Bakan]

Thank you for sharing these thoughts, fully agreed. Turkish intellectuals who legitimized the AKP regime will share the hall of shame in the dark pages of the history books with RTE and those close to him. BTW, I find myself consistently referring to your study on the economic performance of this administration...so, keep them coming :)

[penny]

I enjoyed reading your article,very nice post!

[ErolYayboke]

Excellent post. I do hope you find the time/patience to discuss "the role played by American and European foreign policy wonks and Middle East specialists." Over the years (particularly pre-Gezi when, as you point out, the tides of international opinion started to shift) I found the Economist's coverage particularly egregious but there are obviously many more.

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