Fréderike Geerdink - independent journalist

Gül the centre of Turkish attention

29/08/2007/0 Comments/in Other /by fgeerdink

Many Turks suspect the just appointed Turkish president Gül of having a hidden agenda. Gül’s task is now to prove he is not an Islamist.

Finally Abdullah Gül is Turkey’s new president. Secular Turks resisted, the Turkish army threatened and manipulated, but to no avail. Yesterday president Gül made his first speech to parliament. So what can the army do now? They will not just lean back now that what they didn’t want has happened, namely Abdullah Gül being the eleventh president of Turkey? Well no, maybe they won’t lean back. Over the coming months they will be closely watching the president’s moves from the wings.

Is that all? Yes. Over the last few months, the Turkish army has done more. Last Monday, they posted a strongly worded text on their website, in which they stated that the centre of evil was threatening the secular, democratic state of Turkey. In April they wrote something similar and threatened to defend secular Turkey. But the AK Parti of Prime Minister Erdogan stood firm. They were forced to announce early elections, and in the end these elections made their position stronger. Had the party not been so full of self confidence, they wouldn’t have chosen Gül to be their presidential candidate. Then they would have chosen an outsider, a compromise figure, as some opposition parties have suggested lately. But the AK Parti refused to be manipulated. The army made threats, but it knows that Turkey has become too much of a democracy for it to act on them. The generals have, in short, contributed to their own marginalisation.

The last few months have been months of fear. Months when people expressed their fear that soon women in Turkey would have to dress like their sisters in Iran and that alcohol would be prohibited. When the fear of ‘Iranian situations’ seemed to be as big as fear of the European Union, in which Turkey would, according to some people, lose its identity and independence. Fear, fear, fear.

Gül also mentioned the word in his speech to parliament. We should not fear, he said. Not for the freedoms of democracy, not for differences. All the differences that are heard in a democracy, are not a weakness, but a strength. And, he said: have faith in the democratic system.

That’s the only thing the Turks can do. They have spoken out over the last few months. In AK Parti gatherings, in pro-Atatürk marches, on noisy, sometimes busy sometimes quiet election campaign demonstrations, and they spoke out on 22 July, during the parliamentary elections. The outcome is that AK Parti now has the majority in parliament and that they can choose the president, who will no longer be aligned to any party. The party says is doesn’t want to transform Turkey into an Islamic state, but wants to take it forward, faithful to secularism and to Atatürk. The next five years are the ultimate test. That’s democracy, exactly the form of state the army says it defends. The Turks have to accept it. And so does the army.

A heavy vehicle

29/08/2007/0 Comments/in Other /by fgeerdink

“So”, asked a colleague in Holland yesterday after Gül was elected president, “what’s the army going to do now?” “Well, not too much”, I replied. “What can they do?” “But”, said my colleague, “they are powerful aren’t they?” Yes, but now you could also say: they were powerful. These last few months the army itself has effectively contributed to making itself less powerful, writing warnings on the army website that they felt secularism was in danger and that they would protect the secular republic. But they didn’t act on it, and even more important: the Turks were not impressed. The army warnings may have led to AK Parti having to withdraw Gül’s earlier candidacy and organise early general elections, but in the end that only made AK Parti stronger. Of the people who cast a vote, almost half voted for AK Parti. So now what can the army do if they say they protect democracy? They can’t do anything. Democracy has spoken.
At that moment a car drove by my window. Five guys in it, and the car sounded like it would never get to where it was going. “Sorry,” I said to my colleague on the phone, “a heavy noisy vehicle is passing, I can’t hear you properly”. “Ah, tanks!”, was her quick reply. A joke, of course. I laughed, but at the same time thought: so thát’s how some people see Turkey. As if the army can take over any minute.

A strong woman

27/08/2007/0 Comments/in Other /by fgeerdink

Of course, in the end it’s Abdullah Gül who’s going to be the next president of Turkey and not his wife Hayrünnisa. But the country is talking about her. About her headscarf, to be more precise. It’s a religious one, tight around the head, no hair to be seen – a political scarf, many Turks call it. For an article in the Dutch daily De Pers I asked numerous people for their opinion about the scarf. One woman said: “Till now, we had First Ladies who just stood next to their husbands as decoration. Hayrünnisa is different. She complained to the Court for Human Rights about the headscarf ban at universities in Turkey. She’s strong and I like that in a woman.”

Me too, so I decided to find out more about the First Lady-to-be. She married Abdullah in 1980, when she was only 15 years old – he was 30 at the time. When she got married, she stopped going to school. In 1998 she wanted to take an Arabic course at Ankara Bilkent University, and was refused because of her headscarf. The complaint at the European Court never lead anywhere: she withdrew it when her husband became Minister of Foreign Affairs in 2004.
And now I’m left in confusion. Is this a strong woman? I don’t know. I hope she is. Maybe she grew strong by standing next to her career-making husband from the age of 15. One day, I want to interview Hayrünnisa and ask her everything.