Don't Call it a Turkish Spring

[cbayer]

http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/politics/7159/don_t_call_it_a_turkish_spring/

June 23, 2013

The protests are not about a park, or a prime minister—they're about who Turks think they are. And it's not as simple as religion v. secularism.

By HAROON MOGHUL
RD Senior Correspondent Haroon Moghul is a Fellow both at the Center on National Security at Fordham Law and with the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding. Haroon is completing his doctorate at Columbia University and is the author of The Order of Light (Penguin, 2006). He's been a guest on CNN, BBC, The History Channel, NPR, Russia Today and al-Jazeera.


Ataturk flies over the protests, but the story behind Taksim square is about democracy, not any one legacy.
Haroon Moghul

If you drive north towards Istanbul's Huqqa lounge you’ll pass Dolmabahce Palace on your right. Inferiority complexes coincide with interminable fiscal crises. Built to proclaim the Ottoman Empire’s European identity, the Palace instead accomplished the Empire’s bankruptcy—leading to its disappearance some decades later. It was buried by the most famous man to die in that palace, Kemal Ataturk.

Then there’s Huqqa, which, I'll argue, imagines a Turkey in which he didn’t happen, or at least one in which the most caustic aspects of his legacy have been erased.

You’ve probably read a lot about the Turkish protests. But they’re not about trees, not about a park, not about a shopping mall, not even about the current Prime Minister and resident bull in the china shop, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, but about stories. Who Turks think they are, how far back they trace their history, what they make of Ottomans and Ataturks, and what that means for their future.

Ataturk marshaled the last Ottoman armies to hold off Greek and Italian invasions, but it’s what he did next that created modern Turkey, and the crisis of identity that is at the heart of the recent protests. For Ataturk, a Turkish Republic was not enough. 1923. Year Zero, or a fresh start, depending on your take. New dress. New calendar. New mode of government.

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