Sunday, August 25, 2013

The al-Nahda Party will not leave power until the last second, not the last minute...political Islam had entered the countdown period

al-Nahda Party leader Rashid al-Ghannushi
Dr. Alaya Alani is Professor of Contemporary History at Manouba University in Tunisia.  The interviews below were conducted by al-Sabah News on August 22, and 23, 2013.



لا تزال حلول الخروج من الأزمة الرا تعيشها البلاد غير واضحة المعالم.

فمازالت حركة النهضة متمسكة بعلي العريض كرئيس للحكومة وفقا للقانون المنظم للسلط العمومية، رغم أنها منفتحة على بقية 
الحلول التي تهدف إلى التوافق والخروج من الأزمة .

هذا ورفضت المعارضة مواصلة الحوار الوطني إلى حين حلّ الحكومة الحالية وتشكيل حكومة كفاءات وطنية مستقلة.

كما عملت هيئة الوساطة على بحث الحلول الممكنة وتقريب وجهات النظر ووضع مقترحات جديدة في طاولة الحوار، مع الإشارة أنّ عضو هيئة الوساطة مختار اليحياوي أفاد أمس "الصباح نيوز" أنّ الهيئة قدمت جملة من المقترحات وردت في تقريرها الأول الذي تلقى نسخة منه كلّ من رئيسي الحكومة والجمهورية.
 في هذا السياق كان للـ"الصباح نيوز" لقاء مع علية العلاني الخبير في الجماعات الإسلامية الذي أكّد أنّ "النهضة ستخرج من الحكومة في آخر ثانية لا في آخر دقيقة"

وأشار العلاني إلى تعدد مبادرات الوساطة للخروج من الأزمة الحالية وتوضح الصورة بعد عدة لقاءات في الداخل والخارج، مضيفا : "لقد كانت الحرب الإعلامية على أشدها بين مطالب برحيل الحكومة ومطالب بتوسيعها...لكن الأهم هو أن الترويكا، ما عدا المؤتمر، بدأت تفكرا جديا في قبول حكومة كفاءات مستقلة مثل موقف عبد اللطيف المكي وزير الصحة وموقف بعض قيادات التكتل. وهو ما يجعلنا نقول أن عمر هذه الحكومة لا يتجاوز أياما معدودات".

لا حل غير حل الحكومة
واعتبر علية العلاني أنّ كل السيناريوات التي طرحها راشد الغنوشي من توسيع للحكومة إلى الخروج منها  بعد 23 أكتوبر القادم لم تجد صدى لها إلا لدى بعض الوساطات والمنظمات القريبة من حركة النهضة مثل وساطة عبد الرزاق الكيلاني واتحاد الفلاحين، أما الوساطات الأخرى والغالبية العظمى من الأحزاب والمنظمات الوطنية مثل اتحاد الشغل واتحاد الصناعة والتجارة ورابطة حقوق الانسان والهيئة الوطنية للمحامين إلخ، فهي ترى في حكومة كفاءات مستقلة الحد الأدنى الذي لا يمكن التنازل دونه، وقد أدرك ذلك القيادي النهضوي وزير الصحة المكي، عندما صرح بإمكانية قبول هذا المقترح، ويرى العلاني ان : "الغنوشي المفاوض الرئيسي باسم حركة النهضة لن يقدم موافقته على مقترح حكومة غير متحزبة إلا في آخر ثانية لا في آخر دقيقة كما تقول العبارة الفرنسية.

A la dernière seconde et non à la dernière minute وسيضطر لذلك لأن الخيارات التي أمامه محدودة جدا، ولعل الغنوشي يريد ضمانات مقابل خروج حزبه من الحكومة.... وأعتقد أن تلبية الضمانات ممكنة إذا لم تتعارض مع برنامج الحكومة الجديدة القائم على معالجة الملفين الأمني والاقتصادي وإعادة النظر في التسميات بالإدارة، وما عدا ذلك يمكن التوافق حول بعض الضمانات الممكن تقديمها. إن خروج النهضة من الحكومة سيُحسب لها لا عليها وسيُمَكّنها من إمكانية المشاركة مستقبلا في حكومة ما بعد الانتخابات ولو بنسق أقل".

 الحكومة القادمة 
وإجابة عن سؤالنا حول تركيبة الحكومة القادمة، فقال العلاني انها لن  تتجاوز 20 وزيرا بما فيهم كتاب الدولة لا يترشح اعضاؤها  للانتخابات المقبلة، ولا بد أن يكونوا مستقلّين فعلا لا شكلا، ومن ذوي الكفاءة في اختصاصاتهم. وبخصوص شخصية رئيس الحكومة فالنهضة حريصة على أن لا يكون معاديا لها، لكن الأهم أن يعطي المجلس التأسيسي تفويضا كاملا للحكومة للاشتغال على الملفات الثلاث الكبرى المذكورة أعلاه(الأمن والاقتصاد وحياد الإدارة) دون أن تضطر إلى مراجعة المجلس إلا في الحالات الاستثنائية التي تهدد البلاد والتي يُعَرّفها القانون. وينحصر نشاط المجلس التأسيسي في إتمام الدستور وما يتفرع عنه من لجان وفي إدخال بعض التحويرات على القانون المنظم للسلط العمومية.

مطلع الاسبوع القادم 
أمّا بالنسبة للإعلان عن هذه الحكومة، فبين أنّ عديد المؤشرات تدل على أن الإعلان عن حكومة كفاءات مستقلة لن يتجاوز مطلع الأسبوع القادم، مضيفا : "أعتقد أن هذا الموقف ستغنم منه أطراف رئيسية ثلاث وهي: الاتحاد من أجل تونس وحركة النهضة والجبهة الشعبية وهي القوى التي ستتحكم في اللعبة السياسية مستقبلا، مع الإشارة إلى أن حركة النهضة ستفقد موقعها كحزب أغلبي في الانتخابات القادمة، وهو أمر مفهوم في ظل التحولات الإقليمية وخاصة إثر ما حدث في مصر ويصعب أن تتجاوز حركة النهضة عتبة الخمسة عشر بالمائة في انتخابات 2014 المتوقعة لأن تيار الإسلام السياسي دخل منذ هذه الصائفة مرحلة العد التنازلي، وهي مرحلة ستطول نسبيا".

وقال :" لا بد على حركة النهضة أن تتهيأ لذلك بإدخال تحويرات عميقة في برامجها ورجالاتها وتحالفاتها لكي تتفادى السيناريو الكارثي. وأعتقد أن دخولها ولو بشكل جزئي في حكومة ما بعد الانتخابات سيخلق توازنا ضروريا بين أجنحة السلطة وربما يُسهّل عليها مراجعة أفكارها في اتجاه أكثر ترشيدا وأكثر عقلنة".

كما اعتبر أنه من المستحسن أن تحافظ حكومة ما بعد الانتخابات، مهما كان لونها، على استقلالية وحيادية الوزارات التالية: الخارجية والداخلية والعدل والدفاع  والشؤون الدينية وذلك لمدة عشر سنوات أي لمدة عهدتين رئاسيتين حتى تترسخ الثقافة الديمقراطية داخل المجتمع، وأضاف : "يمكن للمجلس التأسيسي أن يصدر توصية في تحييد هذه الوزارات الخمسة طيلة الفترة المذكورة أو يقع تضمينها في ميثاق وطني تمضي عليه كل الأطراف أو جُلّها".                                                                                                                              
نشر هذا التصريح بعد إعلان حركة النهضة عن قول مبادرة الاتحاد ورفض حل الحكومة
الصباح نيوز 23 أوت 
2013
الصباح نيوز تسأل الخبير علية العلاني حول حظوظ نجاح حول الحكومة القادمة
هل تعتقد أن التفاوض بين المعارضة سينجح في ظل عدم حل الحكومة الحالية؟

أعتقد أن بداية أي حوار أو أي تفاوض بين النهضة والمعارضة لا يمكن أن يتم قبل استقالة هذه الحكومة التي يمكن أن تستمر في مهمتها كحكومة تصريف أعمال لأن عدم الحل لا يبعث رسالة طمأنة لأن المطلوب اليوم هو الإسراع في تشكيل الحكومة الذي لا يستغرق أكثر من أسبوع ما دامت ستكون  حكومة كفاءات مستقلة محدودة العدد لا تترشح للانتخابات القادمة

أعتقد أن من واجب حركة النهضة أن تقدر دقة الظرف وتبحث عن مخارج للاقتراب من حلفاء الأمس لأنها إن واصلت في سياستها الحالية فستخسر الكثير الكثير ولا معنى إطلاقا لتفاوض في ظل بقاء هذه الحكومة

لا شك أن داخل حركة النهضة عقلاء عليهم أن لا يتركوا الحركة تستمر في أخطائها الحالية لأن التفاوض بهذا الشكل مضيعة للوقت وتغذية لمناخ التوتر القائم.

Friday, August 23, 2013

Putting the cart before the horse: the need for a new international policy in Syria

Victims of Syrian chemical attacks
The United States and the international community have put the cart before the horse.  Rather than limiting their military policy to trying to help the Syrian Free Army defeat Bashar al-Asad's Ba'thist regime, they should follow a different policy.  What should that policy be and how might it help bring about a negotiated end to the civil war in Syria?

The strategy followed by anti-Syrian forces in the international community has obviously been ineffective.   The Syrian army still holds the upper hand and horrific human rights abuses continue to be perpetrated by the Asad regime.  On the rebel side, anti-democratic and anti-Western radicals, such as the Jabhat al-Nusra, Ahrar al-Sham (Levant), and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Sham (Levant)
 has assumed an ever more prominent position among opposition forces.

Two days ago, reports emerged from the eastern suburbs of Damascus that as many as 1500 people, many of them non-combatants, women and children, may have been killed and many more wounded,  The Syrian army attacks were a prelude to a ground offensive against areas sympathetic to rebel forces.   While chemical weapons experts cannot ascertain with certainty what type of chemical weapons were used, some airborne agents, perhaps industrial chemicals, were dropped on a number of Damascus suburbs to the east of the city..

As the Asad regime ups the ante in its struggle with rebel forces, including using chemical weapons, the Obama administration's credibility continues to suffer in the Middle East.  After Presditn Obama asserted that the use of chemical weapons would constitue a "red line" for US policy towards the Syrian conflict, we now have had at least 2 attacks which seem almost certianly to have involved some type of chemical weapons which have been largely being ignored by the US and the international community.  What should be done?

First, the US, UN, EU and concerned states in the Middle East and elsewhere should begin a concerted publicity offensive to draw attention to the details of the Asad regime's use of chemical weapons.  This campaign should be designed in part to put Syria's main backer and military enabler, Russia, on the defensive as it continues to thwart the will of the international community in bringing the civil war in Syria to an end.

Second, the US should engage in a coordinated and massive attack using cruise missiles to destroy the runways of all major Syrian airforce bases.  Missile and drone strikes should be used to destroy as many helicopter gunships as possible.  The Syrian army is vastly over stretched in terms of manpower and cannot afford to lose large number of casualities.  Thus, by default, the army has resorted to air strikes, surface to surface missile attacks, and tank and artillery bombardment as its weapons of choice.

Third, missile strikes should also be directed at communications towers and intelligence headquarters throughout the country.  These attacks will send a message to the most thuggist elements of the Asad regime that they will continue to be exposed to attacks should they continue to pursue the brutal policies that have made the Syrian conflict the bloodiest in the Middle East.

Many US policy-makers and analysts wring their hands and cry out that the United States cannot afford to become involved in a protracted conflict in Syria.  Since when do missile attacks (such as those Israel recently used against rocket convoys purportedly headeed for Hizballah forces in Lebanon) constitute "protracted involvement"?

The attacks suggested here would send a message to the Asad regime that a military victory will not be possible and that, if it continues to refuse to go to the negotiating table, it will need to deploy large numbers of its forces and sustain massive casualties by continuing its current military policy.

In sum, US and international policy should be less focused on a rebel victory than degrading the Syrian army's military capabilities to the point where the Asad regime is forced to the negotiating table.  After a peaceful solution to the civil war has been put in place, even if that involves some de facto political division of the current Syrian state, e.g., Alawite and Kurdish dominated areas, then attention can be turned to radical forces such as Jabhat al-Nusra, the Ahrar al-Sham and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Sham.

Continued words of support followed by inaction makes only the US and its European allies, as well as the UN, look like paper tigers.  Such inaction only encourages the Asad regime to engage in more horrific attacks such as occurred this week in the east Damascus suburbs. 

Once the Syrian military's capacities to attack rebel forces via air are degraded, the Asad regime will realize that a military victory is not within its reach.  Civilian casualties will immediately decline. At that point, Asad will be forced to engage in serious negotiations with the Syrian opposition and the power of the radical will be undercut.  The US and the international community only contribute to more deaths of innocent civilians, enabling the Asad regime to remain in power, and strengthening radical forces by not exercising the military options suggested here.

Thursday, August 22, 2013

Egyptian Armed Forces, Inc.: the Middle East's New Janissary Corps

Egyptian officers inspect food produced by the military

The story of the Janissary Corps is well known.  Young boys, first taken as war booty in central Anatolia and later from Christian families in the Balkans, were trained to become an elite fighting force fiercely loyal to the Ottoman Sultan.  What can the the rise and fall of the Janissary Corps tell us about the Egyptian military and what is the relevance of its history to the current crisis in Egypt?

The Janissary (yeniceri or "new soldier") Corps, established by Sultan Orhan in 1383, was responsible for many of the Ottoman Empire's major victories in the 15th and 16th centuries, conquering Byzantium, North Africa and then the Balkan Peninsula extending into Hungary.

As the European Industrial Revolution led to new developments in weapons technology and the Ottoman advances into Europe ground to a halt, the Janissaries, an infantry unit, became largely militarily redundant.  Increasingly, members of the Janissaries converted their military status into high level positions in the Ottoman bureaucracy.  Paintings from the 17th and 18th centuries show wealthy rotund Janissaries, now thoroughly detached from their original military mission.

The power of the Janissaries was such that they prevented successive sultans from modernizing the Ottoman military.  Often they allied with the Shaykh ul-Islam to depose sultans who failed submit to their demands not to introduce new armaments and training by European military advisers.  The Jannissaris became increasingly corrupt - in effect, a state within a state.  Janissaries not only received high salaries and were exempt from taxation, but they developed partnerships with prominent merchants further enriching themsleves.

Finally, in the early 19th century, Sultan Mahmud II was able to convince the religious clergy that the Janissaries constituted a serious threat to the continued viability of the Ottoman Empire, soon to become known as the "Sick Man of Europe."  In 1826, Mahmud announced, in an attempt to provoke the Janissaries, that he was reforming the Ottoman army.  When they mutinied, he had them destroyed and their property confiscated.  The Tanzimat or Reforms of the 1830s were subsequently implemented, but by then it was already too late for the Ottoman Empire to prevent its subordination to Europe.

The Egyptian military parallels the Janissary Corps.  It should really not be referred to as an army but rather as a military force that functions more as a large multi-national corporation.  The Egyptian military entered Egyptian economic affairs with land reform in 1952.  However, real economic control began in 1956 when the government nationalized properties and businesses owned by the Jewish, Greek, Armenian and Italian minorities.  It justified the seizure of minority businesses on the basis that the invasion of Egypt by Great Britain, France and Israel in October 1956, after Egypt nationalized the Suez Canal, put these groups' national loyalty in doubt.

Between 1961 and 1964, the regime of Jamal 'Abd al-Nasir (Gamal Abdel Nasser) nationalized all large domestic banks and industry, creating a huge public sector.  When Egypt experienced serious economic problems following the June 1967 Arab-Israeli War, as Suez Canal cities were evacuated and Egypt lost revenues now that Israel forces occupied the entire Sinai Peninsula, pressure mounted to invigorate the stodgy and inefficient public sector.

After the October 1973 War, President Anwar al-Sadat, one of the Free Officers who had overthrown King Farouk in July 1952, announced his new "Open-Door" Policy (al-Infitah) with great fanfare.  From afar, it appeared as if Egypt was in the process of liberalizing its economy and opening it up to market forces.  Quite the opposite occurred.  Foreign investors were allowed to partner with Egyptian officials and businessmen closely allied with the state.  The effect was that the public sector grew rather than contracted.  

Of course, the main beneficiaries in 1956 and after were military officers, many still closely tied to the Free Officers Movement of 1952, and their attendant civilian political elite.  Many public sector firms used raw materials that were ostensibly designated for public consumption, e.g., cotton fabric, wheat flour, sugar,and so on, to develop and spin off family firms that appropriated much raw materials that was intended to produce subsidized goods for consumption by the less fortunate of society.

The plot thickened after the Camp David Accords of 1978.  As a reward for signing a peace treaty with Israel and to help offset its isolation in the Arab world, Egypt became a large recipient of US foreign aid, the second largest after Israel.  Most of the aid, whether for military (the bulk of the aid) or civilian use, required Egypt to use it to purchase American manufactured goods.

Once Egypt signed a peace treaty with Israeli in 1979 and decided to reduce the size of its army, it established the National Services Products Corporation (NSPC) which was intended to allow now  retired army officers to develop business and financial enterprises that were exempt from most Egyptian commercial laws.  As a result, many officers, who feared that the peace treaty with Israel would undermine their wealth and power, found new opportunities to expand their control over the Egyptian economy.

In 1991, Columbia political scientist Timothy Mitchell wrote an excellent article,  "America's Egypt," which was prescient of the myriad problems to come as a result of US aid to Egypt.  Mitchell demonstrated the manner in which US aid distorted Egypt's economic development.  For example, Egypt was required to use agricultural aid to purchase expensive tractors and farm machinery from the Allis-Chalmbers and Caterpillar corporations which were expensive to purchase and maintain and of little benefit to most Egyptian farmers whose tilled small plots of land.

As most of US aid went to the military, its economic fortunes blossomed still further.  Many high ranking military officers became much more interested in their economic bottom lines than Egypt's military preparedness, paralleling a transformation of the Janissary Corps centuries earlier.  US military aid not only tied Egypt's military to American arms manufacturers, but even led to co-production of the M1A1 tank production.  Already in 1993, a  GAO Report raised questions about significant cost overruns and questioned the program's military efficacy.

"Queen" pasta produced by the military
But the military has branched out significantly since the 1990s.  It now produces pasta, canned foods,  mineral water, butane gas cylinders, plastic table covers, as well providing gasoline station services through its "Wataniya" company. It purchases and sells  real estate for the state, and offers domestic cleaning services via its company known as "Queen".

It also rents cabins at the resort of Sidi Karir along the Mediterranean, It is heavily involved in the Egyptian livestock industry, including managing slaughterhouses.  The military owns restaurants and soccer fields and many officers possess large land holdings (despite the Nasir regime implementing land reform in the 1950s limiting the size of agricultural holdings). 

The military also uses conscripts as cheap labor on its farms where they are forced to tend to livestock and collect eggs and other agricultural products.  In the notorious "Military Factory 99" in the city of Helwan to the south of Cairo, workers went on strike and beat the military officer running the factory after some of their colleagues died in 2010 when they were asked to test butane gas cylinders, which they had been trained to handle, that exploded.

Meanwhile, the US military is frustrated that the Egyptian army continues to want to purchase what it considers unnecessary weapons systems, such as US Apache attack helicopters.  Efforts to have the Egyptian military improve border security, increasingly important now that a low-level insurgency is underway in the Sinai Peninsula, and the military's failure to establish a meaningful counter-terrorism and counterinsurgency program, are seen as serious failures in developing Egypt's military preparedness.  Egypt has promised to develop a logistics and mechanical support network for its armed forces but has yet to do so.  Flying time for its pilots is so low that Egypt has the worst record of any country in the world with a F-16 based air force.

Not only is much US taxpayer money going to enrich current and retired military officers while promoting massive government corruption, but this comes at a time when the Egyptian economy faces a dire future.  Although Egypt's military brass and their families live in upscale Cairene suburbs and gated communities far from the grinding poverty of Cairo's slums, Egypt's GDP growth has stagnated over the past 3 years.  The touristy industry has collapsed and foreign investment is drying up.  The IMF is not about to offer the military junta the large $4.8 billion loan requested by the ousted Morsi government as Egypt's foreign currency reserves hover at dangerously low levels.

Like the Janissaries, the Egyptian military has created a state within a state where the emphasis is less on national military preparedness than on lining the pockets of the officer corps and the corrupt political elite that cooperates with it.  Does US support for the Egyptian armed forces, which a number of American analysts have referred to as a "Realist" strategy, constitute the "only option" available to the US?

What will happen once the military has disbanded the Muslim Brotherhood and forced it underground?  Will that make Egypt's huge youth population - both the large, highly educated would-be middle class sector and the poor workers and peasants - any happier when they still are unemployed?  Will those who work in the tourist industry - over 12% of Egypt's labor force - be any happier with no work and little hope for the future?  Will Egyptian businessmen not part of Egypt's  military industrial complex be any happier as foreign investment dries up and the Egyptian pound loses even more value?  Will the military itself be any happier now that it will have to tow the political line of its Saudi and Gulf benefactors, with the EU and soon the US cutting off aid?

Egyptians are as politically savvy as any other people.  They know that the reason it's prohibited to speak publicly about the military's industrial, commercial and financial holdings and the fact that the military's budget is secret is due to corruption and the lack of civic commitment by any meaningful sector of the military.

There will be no Sultan Mahmud to appear as a deus ex machina to rescue Egypt from its corrupt and profligate military.  The appropriate metaphor here would be the establishment of a civilian and democratic government that will curtail the military and place it under civilian control, as the AKP has done in Turkey (although frequently, unfortunately, flouting the rule of law in the process),

The so-called "Realists" who argue that, in the Middle East,  tous ca change, tous c'est le meme chose, are the same people people who advocated support for authoritarian regimes ruled by the Shah of Iran, the Turkish generals, Husni Mubarak, Zine al-Din Bin Ali, Ali Abdallah Salih, and even once he agreed to end his nuclear weapons program in 2004, Muammar al-Qaddafi.  These regimes are all now part of the dustbin of history just like the Janissaries.

In my next post, I will argue why dictatorships can no longer prevail in the Middle East.  I will contend that US support for them neither promotes stability nor American national interests, and thus should no longer be refered to as a policy of "Realism."

Monday, August 19, 2013

The politics of poverty relief targets poor Kurds in Turkey



Guest contributor, Gokce Baykal, a doctoral candidate in the Rutgers University Department of Political Science,  New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA, and an adjunct faculty member at New York University’s Department of Politics, is currently writing her dissertation, “Giving Money to the Poor: The Political Payoffs of Allocating Conditional Cash Transfers in Turkey: Making Clients or Citizens?” She has conducted in-depth interviews with Roma and Kurdish people in Tekirdag and Diyarbakir who benefit from poverty alleviation programs.

We have been waiting in a line since 6 a.m. to get our cocuk parasi (child money). I have no idea about the amount of money I will get or the amount of time I will have to wait. Tell Erdogan (Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan) to fix this situation. You ask what  poverty is.  I’ll tell you. Poverty is waiting, waiting all your life,” said Ruken, 25, who has 4 children, forcing a smile on her face.

Ruken is one of the hundreds of poor Kurdish women who waited in front of Surici Post Office in  Diyarbakir, one of the eastern province of Turkey, to benefit from Sartli Nakit Transferi (Conditional Cash Transfers or CCTs).  In exchange for meeting certain requirements, such as sending their children to school, paying monthly visits to health centers, the government makes regular payments to needy families. Between 2002-2006, the CCT program was under World Bank’s Social Risk Mitigation Project funded through World Bank loans. Then, after March 2006, upon receiving a lot of support, positive evaluations, the AKP (Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi-Justice and Development Party) government decided to continue with the program. Since the World Bank loan period ended, the government has begun to fund the program through Social Solidarity Fund (SYDTF)budget. Whereas the number of population targeted around 1 million in the original document, after the government has initiated payments through state funds, as of March 2009, approximately 3 million people benefit from the Program.[i]

This enormous increase coincided with the sharp differences in the geographical distribution of these payments. The CCTs are distributed disproportionately in the eastern provinces, especially Turkey’s southeastern and eastern Anatolian regions, where the majority of population is Kurdish.  Figure 1 shows the allocation of CCTs according to regions between 2003-2009.
Fig. 1: The Allocation of Conditional Cash Transfers According to Regions (2003-2009 March)
Source: www.sosyalyardimlar.gov.tr  (Graph created by the author)


This disproportionate nature of the allocation of CCTs can be explained by the deteriorating economic conditions in Turkey’s Kurdish regions which are characterized by rising poverty and high unemployment rates. Indeed, according to a World Bank report, 39% percent of Turkey’s citizens who live on an income of a little over $2.00 per day are located in southeastern Anatolia.[2]

However, other regions suffer from poverty rates just as high as those with a majority Kurdish population.   According to Turkey’s State Planning Institution,  the poverty rate for the west Black Sea region (47.4%) is close to that of northeast Anatolia (%50.2), which is populated primarily by Kurds.   

Along with CCTs, the amount of social assistance allocated to Kurdish regions has significantly increased under AKP rule.  During the last local elections in 2009, one Kurdish city, Tunceli, made news headline.  Many newspapers published pictures of officials from the Tunceli Governor’s Office distributing new refrigerators, washing machines, desktop computers and furniture in poor neighborhoods. This phenomenon is not something new. Indeed ruling AKP government has been long accused by opposition parties and the media of using state funds to win votes.


The country’s Supreme Election Board (Yuksek Secim Kurulu-YSK) filed a criminal complaint against the AKP and foundations that give handouts to electorates to attract their votes. Following the election day, many Kurdish women who benefited from these programs remember receiving an SMS message from Prime Minister Erdogan thanking them for supporting AKP. 


The caricature roughly translates as follows:
LEFT: You will vote in this cabin. Hope it reminds you something.
RIGHT: ?!

Indeed, the AKP’s popularity among poor Kurdish women, especially that of its leader, Prime Minister Erdogan, is much higher compared to Kurdish men. One local volunteer working in the Gunisigi Store, a local government association, which donates second hand clothing to the needy, shared the observations she had during the elections. “If a woman wants to vote for AKP party, they want to cast their vote alone, I mean without their husband’s knowledge.  Many of them do so.” 

Various poverty alleviation programs targeting the poor, such as microcredits and diverse “development” projects conducted by public-private cooperation, have grown at a rapid pace in the Kurdish majority regions. However, according to local NGOs and research “think tanks” working in the region, this “development” rhetoric and its practices transform the region, specifically the city of Diyarbakir into proje mezarligi (project cemetery). Cities like Diyarbakir, and other Kurdish towns, have been turned into a laboratory, where poor Kurdish people become the objects of social experiments embedded in the state’s mushrooming poverty relief programs in the region.  Actually, none of these social assistance programs addresses the root causes of poverty.  Rather they reduce poverty to simple economic terms, purposely ignoring the historical and political origins of the problem.   

The “poverty as an economic problem” discourse has contributed to the formulation of temporary solutions and that poverty can only be solved through economic means such as economic growth, job creation and through various “development” projects.  Attempting to treat endemic poverty through temporary solutions has a great potential to open the door to all sorts of political manipulation because it fails to meaningfully empower the people who these policies are supposed to help.

Because of the rise in the number of poverty relief programs, the AKP has enjoyed a gradual increase of support among the Kurds. According to survey conducted by KONDA, 47% of those who voted for Kurdish Party DEHAP in 2002 elections changed their voting preference to the AKP in the next general elections in 2007.[3]  Beyond the AKP’s uneven distribution of social assistance programs and mushrooming Islamic charity foundations, political reforms towards Kurds, which have been designated as the Kurdish Opening (Kürt Açılımı), and backed by negotiations for European Union membership, may also explain the party’s shift.  

This proposed reformist approach for reducing tension between the Turkish government and Turkey’s Kurdish population includes allowing Kurdish language classes to be taught in schools, Kurdish language to be used in the broadcast media, and a partial amnesty for many members of the PKK (Partiya Karkeren Kurdistan/Kurdistan Workers Party) who have surrendered and pledged to no longer take up arms against the state.  Some of these compromises by the AKP led government have even led to the opening of the first state-run Kurdish language TV channel, TRT 6.

However, this reform process came to a halt with the recent renewal of conflict between the Turkish military and PKK, which has resulted in a growing number of casualties on both sides, the arrest of Kurdish local mayors and journalists, trade unionists, human right defenders, and also of university students accused of being members of the KCK (Koma Civakên Kurdistan-Union of Communities in Kurdistan)[4]. At the beginning of October 2011 the number of those detained since April 2009 had reached 7,748 Kurds, of whom 3,895 suspects were placed in pre-trial detention.[5]

With political reforms now stagnating, and the Kurdish regions experiencing increased repression, public and/or charity funded social assistance programs targeting the poor have slowed or grown at an uneven pace.  Ethnic minorities and/or poor people are often treated as homogenous entities, with the state ignoring their internal social stratification and cultural differentiation which in turn leads to different political responses among these groups to these programs.

If we take local political and social processes and different identities such as religion into account, the politics of poverty can be more clearly understood.  Within the Kurdish community, each group experiences social welfare programs differently.   These programs have certainly had the most significant impact on the meaning of citizenship for the poor.

Interviews I conducted within two poor neighborhoods, Huzurevleri and Fatihpasa in Diyarbakir, both of which have large concentration of urban poor, confirm the uneven distribution of resources within the poorest sectors of  Kurdish society. The AKP receives most of its votes from the Huzurevleri district in Diyarbakir, where the party’s headquarters is located, and therefore this support seems to facilitate people’ access to material benefits distributed by the government.

In this district, it is common to hear comments like, “I love Erdogan like my father,” or “He is the father of the poor,” or, “By the way, he looks like my beloved uncle.” Remziye, like Ruken, who has seen some benefit from the state’s social assistance programs, confirms the government’s construction of welfare clientelism by saying, “I can’t deny the assistance AKP provides. Indeed I’m proud of being Kurdish but we can’t betray Erdogan.” She added without any hesitation “He is a devout Muslim and according to our religion, helping the poor is a good deed. God bless him!”

Remziye’s very sincere statements, and Ruken’s understanding of poverty, remind me of Auyero’s description of poor people’s experiences waiting in the welfare office as a site of “intense sociability amidst pervasive uncertainty”.  This vertical exchange between the poor and the state “persuades the destitute of the need to be patient, thus conveying the implicit state request to become compliant clients.”[6]

The “haunting specter of clientelism” argument is nothing new in Turkish politics. Especially during elections, news coverage has always been dominated by the accusations against political parties - especially governing party - allocating favors such as coal, food packages, clothing and appliances to poor people in exchange for support.

The AKP’s practices of providing social assistance targeting Turkey’s Kurdish minority reinforce and reproduce the caricature of the poor, which portrays them as naïve and easily pleased by those who provide material benefits.  It also underscores the ruling elites’ efforts to creating its own sociopolitical base and voting bloc among the Kurds which sets “good” Kurds vs. “bad” Kurds, where the former is pictured as poor devout Muslims, and more importantly decent and “loyal” citizens.

[1] Esenyel, Caner. 2010. The Cases on Implementation of Conditional Cash Transfers from Turkey and the World (Turkiye’de ve Dunyada Sartli Nakit Transferi Uygulamalari), Unpublished Social Assistance Expertise Thesis, submitted to General Directorate of Social Assistance and Solidarity, Ankara.
[2] World Bank. 2003. Turkey: Poverty and Coping After Crises. Report No. 24185. http://www.wds.worldbank.org/servlet/WDSContentServer/IW3P/IB/2003/08/20/000160016_20030820130639/Rendered/PDF/241850TR0SR.pdf  accessed on October 23, 2012.
[3] KONDA. 2007. Survey of Political Trends, Istanbul: Konda, reported in Yoruk, Erdem. 2012. “Welfare Provision as Political Containment: The Politics of Social Assistance and the Kurdish Conflict in Turkey,” Politics and Society, 40 (4):523.
[4] There are many rumors on what the KCK means. Cengiz Candar, who is a journalist working on Kurdish issue for at least three decades define the KCK as an “executive organ within which the parties and organizations, including the PKK and others that are associated with the PKK in other regions populated by Kurds (Iraq, Syria, Iran) are coordinated. It is found within  the democratic confederationalism principle of Abdullah Öcalan by re-organizing the PKK. The concept of democratic confederationalism developed by Öcalan is suggested both as an alternative to nation-state and as a model for the solution to problems in the Middle East.” http://bianet.org/bianet/siyaset/131077-iki-bucuk-yildir-gundemdeki-kck-nedir accessed on February 28, 2013.
[6] Auyero, Javier. 2011.“Patients of the State. An Ethnographic Account of Poor People's Waiting", Latin American Research Review, (46:1):5-29.