Bananas The past month had been quite bumpy for politics in Turkey, more precisely, the time since the corruption scandal broke out on 17th December. In fact, to call the affairs as politics is a misnomer, since the news were either about a civilian coup against the government, or a cover up of corruption and bribery committed by several ministers, their sons, head of a national bank, and their dealings with a young entrepreneur from Iran (or Azerbaijan). The plot thickened throughout this time and a covert war of disinformation, that is, secretly recorded conversations, shuffling of thousands of civil servants, heavy accusations, fist fights in the parliament and quarrels out in public went ahead, leaving the whole population as a spectator in one of the severest internal score setting involving the Islamist government and its former Sunni partner, with the opposition parties jumping in on the action a bit like vultures. Every so often, R.T.Erdogan cried out that Turkey is no banana republic and that the Turkish State is alive and well, strong as ever with its institutions and, indeed, with its democratically elected government. Thus, him and his cronies repeatedly say, the public should be the judge of affairs in the next elections (rightly, because the government have left no impartial justice system intact.) In a country where the black soccer players are greeted with bananas during the games, one would expect the prime minister and his allies to be of the same ilk when it comes to racism. Their take on the term banana republic apparently refers to African countries, because they know that the original bearers of the term in South America are far more democratically governed than Turkey today. Turkish Republic, as of this time, is indeed a banana with a one-man show, R.T.E. calling all the shots with utmost compliance of cabinet ministers and representatives. One suspects that the ruling elite take their cues from the Gulf States or Saudis, where wealth and political power are condensed in the hands of the big man, the boss (as contractors call R.T.E. today,) in a smooth alliance reigning over all public assets and investments. (This model even shows itself in the physical planning of cities, especially Istanbul, as though the city itself is rising from an empty desert with a nomadic history, and obviously, rich Arab citizens and rulers are the prime buyers of real estate in Turkey.) In this banana republic of Turkey, the boss, cabinet ministers, a close circle of representatives and party apparatchiks, favored contractors, Sunni-religious entrepreneurial types, mayors of major cities, and authorities on Sunni-Islamic faith seem to be in a close-knit network, a kind of extended family to distribute public assets and riches. This is the true meaning of the term banana republic and it does not refer to skin color. And plus, bananas are also grown in southern Anatolia, albeit not exported. Meanwhile, we the public are left aside as mere spectators, condemned to a mass media that is sharply divided between supporters and opposition, two sides that consider all disinformation a fair game, all surveillance tools reliable and all news fit to print. Among all the dust, the majority of citizens have lost their ability to be astonished by every sign that refer to the banana republic: it appears normal to shuffle judges and intimidate prosecutors hard on the case, normal for police to disobey arrest warrants, normal for thousands of civil servants to be exiled to different cities, normal for government ministers to pick up the phone and talk of kickbacks, normal for sons and daughters of AKP rulers to be tapped and recorded and normal for wiretapping every possible political actor from whichever side. All these are normalized through mass media, either compliant with the AKP or in opposition, just as severe internet censoring is normalized. We are left with watching a game, unsure of how to intervene in the dirty tricks, almost helpless. We can all wave good-bye, bananas in hand, to players in the game (no offence intended to primates.) The Pope, 26 January 2014
Posted on: Sun, 26 Jan 2014 15:36:17 +0000
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