When the Turkish Grand Assembly rejected the joint resolution which would allow U.S. troops in the country and send Turkish troops to Northern Iraq two weeks ago, antiwar groups all around the world cheered and applauded the recognition of the will of the citizens by their most senior representative body. However, being more able (than most of the U.S. and European spectators) to decode the complex dynamics of the political field in Turkey, antiwar activists from within immediately recommended caution along with rightful joy and hope.

After two weeks, by March 15, it turned out that we were right–Turkey’s minority of warmongers, the local arm of the imperial troops, quickly initiated an offensive campaign of lies, intimidation, mud-throwing, red-baiting and doublespeak to counter the glimpse of democracy and accountability in our country.

What happened? And what is at stake at the moment within Turkey, for the popular-democratic struggle against the war?

The local mercenaries who line up to support the U.S. “war without end” and who now publicly declare their readiness to endorse the killing of Iraqi and Turkish Kurds during a possible conflict in Northern Iraq are not all in complete unison in terms of their interests and agendas.

Capital
The first group within the enlisted company is made up of Turkey’s leading capitalists and financial speculators, mobilized by the country’s most powerful class organization, the Turkish Association of Industrialists and Businessmen (TUSIAD). By March 3, the Turkish corporate leadership was already threatening the country with another economic crisis unless the promised U.S. war aid arrived. Business analysts and brokers prophesized that this “disturbing” development of the rejection of the war resolution would quickly create one of those mystical “market uncertainties” and demanded that the state has to resume a strong pro-war position to “relieve the markets” and pump up the volume of speculation.

Media
Simultaneously, the second battalion, the Turkish corporate media cartel, whose ruling ranks have organic ties to TUSIAD, joined the campaign to ridicule and undermine the decision of the Grand Assembly. Columnists of leading dailies and TV journalists blamed the MPs of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) for “working against our national interests” and declared that this was not a time to be sentimental about the killing of “Arabs”.

Turkey, for these khaki-wearing journalists, had to join with the “winning camp”, and also had to settle in Northern Iraq to defend Iraqi Turcomans (“our Turkish brothers”) and to prevent the foundation of an autonomous Kurdish state (“by any means necessary”).

During the week of March 3 the citizens of Turkey were told that “the price of opposition to the war will be paid out of the people’s pockets”, as if the promised war aid would have been distributed among the poor majority of the country. This continuing, outrageous blend of anti-Kurdish and anti-Arabic racism, nationalist populism and blindness to the antiwar will of the citizens both promotes the interests of TUSIAD and helps the two or three media monopolies dig their trenches deeper, maintaining their control over the journalistic field.

Government
The third group’s support for the U.S. military plans is most complicated, not necessarily sharing (but also trying hard not to conflict with) the agendas of the first two. The ruling AKP is a neo-Islamist party, or, by their own words, a “conservative democratic movement” led by Sunni elites who, before they cut their ties and moved to the center, had been politicized within the tradition of the more confrontational Islamist movement led by Necmettin Erbakan. The party leadership’s (the bulk of the cabinet) uncompromising support was already being harshly criticized by its various provincial organizations, quite a few of its MPs, and mayors before the vote on the resolution. Yet few observers predicted that the antiwar opposition within AKP was so strong that it would lead to a voting down of the resolution. After the “disturbing” development, the leadership is still working to convince its MPs, some of which had already declared that they will vote for the resolution this time.

During the week of March 10, Tayyip Erdogan, AKP’s leader, was elected to the parliament after the repeated elections in the province of Siirt, became the new Prime Minister, and formed a new government (leaving a few dissenting ministers out). His hold on the party was already strong, so it is not likely that this will end the conflicts within AKP. The antiwar pressure from the party’s Sunni grassroots (including all elements from progressive ones to the most reactionary) is considerable; however, the public intimidation and smearing of AKP dissenters by the corporate media, and the pressures coming from TUSIAD which cries about “alienating the IMF”, can prove stronger.

There will be a vote of confidence for the new Erdogan government next week, and only then will AKP leadership attempt to introduce the second resolution. We are still hoping that enough AKP MPs will keep true to their religious beliefs and moral integrity.

Army
The fourth and final group, the Turkish Armed Forces, represents the military might of the local imperial troops. It is one of the most powerful standing armies of the region. It also runs a number of very successful and financially strong businesses in several manufacturing and service industries. The Army’s “realistic” position with respect to cooperating with the Pentagon and negotiating U.S. military demands was clear before the voting: The Army supported “peace in the region”, did not want to “cause pain in Iraq”, but the war was “inevitable”, and as an ally, Turkey had to “cooperate and had to have a firm military presence in Northern Iraq”.

After the rejection of the resolution, until March 5, the media, the government and business circles pressed the Army to take a public position, to “show the people the right path”, to “relieve the markets”. The head of the Army General Staff, Hilmi Ozkok, complied on March 5, and in a very carefully worded and unusually logical statement, repeated the Army’s support for the war resolution, pointing at the necessity of voting for a second one. “National interests” were of utmost importance, they had to be defended by all means. Ozkok summarily urged citizens to be “calm” and clarified, politically, where the local imperial troops should stand.

The impact of this intervention was remarkable. Within days, business circles were “thankful” to the Army for “relieving the markets”. The media applauded how the soldiers are “respectful” of parliamentary processes and how they also knew what was to the best interest of the country. The AKP leadership found more legitimacy to force the party organization to vote for the upcoming second resolution. Even the strongly antiwar opposition party, the “social democratic” Republican People’s Party (CHP), as if their and the Army’s positions were not conflicting, spoke highly of the way General Ozkok brought “order and discipline” to the “troops”.

Whither Democracy?
The local imperial troops try to stand on two shaky prowar arguments which emerge out of these groups’ rhetoric:

Ironically, the constitutional powers of the Turkish Grand Assembly are already being undermined, even if the resolution remains rejected. More and more Turkish soldiers and military equipment are transferred across the Turkish-Iraqi border every day.

The government has no control over the operations of the Army, and it certainly has no idea about the Army’s more concrete military agenda in the coming weeks. The Army, ignoring parliamentary procedures, has been negotiating with the Pentagon on its own, largely remaining unaccountable to the citizenry.

Moreover, siding with the Army about the war (and getting even much greedier and explicitly racist), the mainstream media continues to bully the parliament, trying to pit the people (whose “real interests” are surely represented by the warmongers) against MPs opposing the war (who can only be “traitors”).

The two positions of the imperial troops mentioned above can be dismissed by the antiwar movement in the political arena. First, the recurring social-economic crises in Turkey, and the following IMF interventions, which only facilitated the continuation of the crisis regime, have rendered millions of Turkey’s citizens powerless, unemployed, poor and dispossessed.

Crisis management only helped the economic interests of today’s prowar minority, who want to run “business as usual” by complying with U.S. demands. A popular movement in Turkey for peace and justice is capable of defending and representing the antiwar majority’s undermined economic interests.

Second, wreaking military havoc in Northern Iraq against Kurdish groups to manipulate the region’s political processes can only alienate the disenfranchised Kurdish citizens of Turkey further, reproduce discriminatory practices against them, postpone a possible process of democratic reintegration, and thus prevent the just realization of democratic rights for all citizens of the country. This is what is actually against Turkey’s national interests.

Within the current polarized state of the political field in Turkey, citizens, whose interests against the war can be lastingly articulated by a progressive politics of redistribution and recognition, stand firmly opposed to the intimidation of the imperial troops, who threaten the already-shaky foundations of democracy in our country.

We shall continue to struggle for the Republic of Turkey we want to live in. In that Turkey, there is a place for all the peoples of the world. There is a place for dignity, freedom, and solidarity.

There is no place there for warmongers.

Emrah Göker is a graduate student at Columbia University. He is also a member of the NYC-based antiwar group Peace Initiative/Turkey. His opinions are not necessarily those of Peace Initiative/Turkey. He can be reached at peaceinitiativeturkey@hotmail.com.