Environmentalism in Turkey

Between Democracy and Development?

Fikret Adaman, Murat Arsel

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351939461
• Subtopic: Political Economy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Bringing together a mixture of theoretical discussion, political analyses and illustrative case studies, this volume provides the first comprehensive scholarly analysis of the tension between environmental protection and economic development in Turkey. Through its dual focus on democratization and modernization, this book also makes an important contribution to the literature on politics in contemporary Turkey. It identifies and analyses the forces underwriting the growth of environmental social movements, investigates the impacts these movements have on development and modernization, and above all, evaluates the role played by environmental movements in the democratization process of Turkey.

Part I
Modernization, Development, and Democratization

Chapter 1
Reflexive Developmentalism? Toward an Environmental Critique of Modernization

Murat Arsel

Introduction

Reflecting on the anti-trust case against Microsoft Corporation’s popular Windows operating system, Bruno Latour exclaims that ‘we are no longer in the modern world’ (Latour, 2003, p. 37). He argues that the technological complexities behind this case were so overwhelming that ‘even the computer, that absolute icon of control and calculation, cannot be defined impartially in front of judges without generating fistfights in the courtroom’ (ibid.). It is clear that, for Latour, modernity stands for ‘control and calculation’. Why are control and calculation central to the idea of modernity? Because through calculation modern subjects can understand the risks that surround them and take the necessary actions to neutralize—that is, exercise control over—them. In other words, the dream of the modern subject is the achievement of complete control of her surroundings.

An emerging body of literature has begun to question the possibility of total control by launching a critique that emanates from the interface between nature and technology. Widely known as ‘reflexive modernization’, this increasingly popular theoretical framework has been developed by a number of critical sociologists, most importantly Ulrich Beck and Anthony Giddens. Reflexive modernization theory interrogates, among other things, the social, economic, cultural and political repercussions of the inescapably complex and intractable problems involved in the relationship between nature and (advanced) technology, which manifest themselves as ‘risks’. Prominent examples of these risks are the controversy over Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE), and its human variant Creutzfeldt-Jacob Disease (CJD), and the post-Chernobyl debate on nuclear technologies.

Latour argues that the term ‘reflexivity’ does not imply that people living in contemporary (or post-industrial) societies are more ‘aware’ or ‘conscious’ of risks than those in earlier periods. Rather, ‘reflexivity’ refers to the awareness, the growing realization that comes out of what Beck refers to as an ‘anthropological shock’ in the context of the Chernobyl disaster (1987), of the spatial and temporal ever-presence and intractability of risks. However, the argument is not that modern individuals lead more dangerous lives. In fact, there exists incontrovertible statistical evidence to demonstrate that, overall, human beings live longer and healthier lives today than in any other period in history. A long-term analysis of the United Nations’ Human Development Index would suggest that this is true even for the developing world. The new meaning of risk, therefore, arises because ‘control and calculation’ have fallen short and, what is more, have taken an unpredictable path and created risks that are radically different from risks of previous, industrial societies. Thus reflexivity refers to a new era, that of ‘second modernization’, where we reach ‘a heightened awareness that mastery is impossible and that control over actions is now seen as a complete modernist fiction. In second modernity, we become conscious that consciousness does not mean full control’ (Latour, 2003, p. 36).

This chapter aims to engage with these debates from the unique geographical, socio-economic, political, and cultural standpoint of Turkey. The central question can simply be stated as this: To what extent is Turkey subject to a similar transformation of what it means to be ‘modern’? The aim in answering this question is not so much to provide a catalogue of changes and problems as to identify cleavages in both the rapidly changing political economic landscape of Turkey and the increasingly influential European environmental social theory.

The evidence presented in subsequent chapters makes it patently clear that from the challenge of reigning in the impact of corporate interests on economic and environmental policy-making to concerns over nuclear energy and biotechnology, the burgeoning environmental movement in Turkey closely resembles its (Western) European counterpart, and could be considered as the harbinger of ‘second modernization’ in Turkey. Yet, what is also clear from the evidence is that unlike their European counterparts, neither the state nor the civil society in Turkey has fully completed the process of ‘first modernization’ as evidenced from the absence of transparent and efficient bureaucratic networks, consistent and fair application of legal procedures, a healthy public sphere, and the presence of a fully developed and pervasive (capitalist) economic system. This volume also provides ample evidence of the societal awareness of the incompleteness of ‘first modernization’. Yet, the environmental movement in Turkey does not amount to a ‘post-developmental’ call (see e.g. Rahnema and Bawtree, 1996) to abandon modernization nor does it advocate the retreat of the state from active policymaking in the service of the national goal of ‘catching up’ with the West.

If modernity is indeed going under a major transformation in Europe, an examination of Turkey within the European fold would not only help explain the salience of the environmental movement in Turkey but also sharpen the debate as it pertains to ‘core’ European nations. The Chernobyl disaster is illustrative in this context. Turkey and Germany are roughly equidistant to the Ukraine. While it is a truism that ‘pollution knows no boundaries’, its political economic impact is unlikely to be the same in different nation states. From a spatial perspective, it is important to understand how, for example, the same radioactive pollution has changed the relationship between the state and civil society in Germany and Turkey. What are the differences in societal responses, how can we account for them, and what is their significance?

The transformations in Western Europe identified by Beck and Latour are not cosmetic changes—they go to the heart of the European model of political economy. This ongoing reconceptualization of modernity inevitably gives rise a problematization of its key institutional complexes, capitalism, industrialism, administrative and military power (Giddens, 1990). Given that Turkey has been persistently building a similar modern system, it would be necessary to assess whether ‘second modernization’ is manifesting itself similarly at the geographical (and, arguably, cultural) boundaries of Europe. If not, does that mean there exist more than one form of capitalism and modernity? What are the implications of such a multiplicity of forms? While this chapter cannot expect to answer such complex questions, locating the environmental critique of modernization in Turkey within European social theory would be an expedient starting point.

The chapter proceeds with a synoptic treatment of modernization policies in Turkey. It then turns to reflexive, or second, modernization, discussing its major contours, especially as they relate to environmental politics within the context of the literatures on ‘risk society’ and ‘ecological modernization’. The final section discusses the implications of balancing the need to press forward with first modernization politics (e.g. to raise its per capita income to European norms) with the environmental implications of second modernization (e.g. the abolition of plans for nuclear energy in favor of genuinely renewable alternatives) on environmental politics in Turkey.

Modernization as Ideology

The long and convoluted history of Turkish (and Ottoman) engagement with Europe has resulted in a complex, and often contradictory, understanding of the continent and its significance for and relationship with modern Turkey. Nevertheless, as Lewis argues, Westernization had become accepted as an inescapable reality long before the formal abolition of the Ottoman Empire. ‘The destruction of the old order had been too thorough for any restoration to be possible, for better or for worse, only one path lay before Turkey, that of modernization and Westernization’ (2001, p. 128). As Meeker (2002) argues, this process of Westernization continued almost seamlessly from the Ottoman period into the modern republic, with Mustafa Kemal reforming, rather than entirely replacing, the Ottoman machinery to further the goal that has motivated all Ottoman and Turkish policy-makers since Mahmud II.

For Ottoman and Turkish policy-makers, the operationalization of modernization into actual policy and politics involved the use of a number of seemingly contradictory tropes. The key challenge was to maintain an ongoing comparison with Europe without entirely renouncing the defining characteristics of the Ottoman ümmet (community) and, later, the Turkish millet (nation). A complete negation would have amounted not only to admission of total defeat but would also remove the legitimacy of the governing elite who promised to recreate a glorious past in a new modern context. Thus, through an implicit differentiation between (Turkish) nature and culture, the abstract concept of ‘civilization’ came to explain all manners of ills under the Ottoman system and Westernization became a civilizational movement. For example, Ottoman intellectual Abdullah Cevdet argued in 1913 that ‘[t]here is no second civilization … Civilization means European civilization, and it must be imported with both its roses and its thorns’ (quoted in Akman, 2004, p. 40). Similarly, Mustafa Kemal himself declared shortly after founding the modern Turkish republic ‘[C]ountries vary, but civilization is one, and for a nation to progress it must take part in this single civilization’ (quoted in Lewis, 2001, p. 292).

For Şerif Mardin (1962) the Ottoman elite and their Kemalist successors conducted Westernization measures not for the sake of being Western, but rather to protect the strength of their state. He claims the idea of ‘the priority of the state’ motivated the nineteenth-century Ottoman officials and intellectuals to adopt enlightened despotic methods borrowed from Europe. They were uniformly concerned with the idea of saving the state, rather than promoting democracy. Similarly, he argues, Ottoman soldiers organized the national liberation war against the imperial powers in order to preserve the state. That is why Mardin suggests the state as an institution was carried undisturbed from the Ottomans to the Turkish republic:

The constitutionalist Young Ottomans (1865-76) had publicized the idea of representation as the means of saving the empire from disintegration; their eulogies of freedom were directly connected with their patriotism … The final step … was the implementation by the single party in power between 1924 and 1950 of ideas—adumbrated in the Turkish constitution of 1924—that stayed in tune with the earlier ideology of devlet (state) but radicalized it by bringing into play [the] conception of the ‘general will’. This enabled the founders of the Turkish Republic to promote an authoritarian theory

(Mardin, 1997, p. 69).

Thus, acting in the name of society at large, the elites aimed to modernize the decaying remnants of the ancien régime by grafting the defining characteristics of European civilization onto the new nation. In broad terms, Kemalist modernizers understood these characteristics through two essentially Comtian notions (see e.g. Cowen and Shenton, 1996): order and progress. While the two are intrinsically linked, each required different strategies and policies in practice. In many ways, the achievement of order was the more straightforward of the two, involving two key steps. The first was the definition of societal characteristics that not only followed on closely from European models but also enabled rapid progress. Hence came many key Kemalist principles that have lost little of their significance over time for the Turkish republic, such as secularism (laicism) and unitary national identity. The second step involved the foundation not only of a ‘civilized’ legal system but the institution, or recreation, of a strong state machinery capable of uncompromising enforcement.

During this process, the Republican elite placed religion under the strict supervision and control of the state in an effort to achieve political secularism (Berkes, 1964). They discarded the symbols and institutions of Muslim rule such as the caliphate, religious orders, lodges, tombs and religious schools. A new legal system, based on Swiss, French and Italian laws, replaced shariat. The ruling elite officially declared the Republic secular in the constitution of 1937. They complemented these reforms with others such as switching from Arabic to Latin script, expunging Arabic and Persian vocabulary from Turkish, importing French and German terms in their place. They also banned Islamic attires, changed the official weekly holiday from Friday to Sunday, and adopted the Gregorian calendar to synchronize Turkish timekeeping with Europe. During this period, major Kurdish and religious uprisings, for example the Sheikh Said uprising in 1925 and the Dersim revolt in 1938, were forcefully suppressed and hundreds were executed for opposing the regime.

The achievement of progress beyond mainly cosmetic changes held in place by the heavy hand of the state, however, was no easy task. For the Kemalist modernizers, the European achievement of progress was predicated upon the application of modern science and technology to economic processes, as manifested by their advanced industrial economies. Thus, economic development, especially of the type that necessitated the subjugation of nature in the name of national progress, became the cornerstone of modernization policies in Turkey. Rapid economic growth would not only create development, working as the engine of progress, but also support the new social and political order. Unlike order, which had proved somewhat amenable to forceful (re)creation, the establishment of the right kind of economic system proved to be an extremely difficult endeavor.

Modernization as Economic Praxis

Therefore, the idea of development came to dominate Turkish political life like no other. This is not to suggest that the precise political economic configuration of development policies remained outside the political sphere. As Eralp (1990) demonstrates, developmental politics have been central to political discourse in Turkey. Rather, from the Cadre Movement of the 1930s (Türkeş, 1998) to the National Salvation Party of the 1970s (Mardin, 1991), the developmental debate has never moved from ‘development alternatives’ to ‘alternatives to development’. This is why the history of developmental politics contains no proto-post-developmentalist proposals in the vein of Gandhi’s hind swaraj (Parel, 1997) or Nyrere’s ujaama (Rist, 2002).

This history has been fraught with indeterminacy and dramatic policy shifts. Although they accepted Kemalism as the official ideology of the Turkish Republic in 1935, state officials did not publish any texts defining and articulating its features. This indeterminacy of Kemalist ideology has allowed it to remain alive in changing political contexts over the last eighty years (Zürcher, 1998). Since his death, Mustafa Kemal’s ideology has been the major legitimating symbol for almost any Turkish political movement, even those with radically different aims.

Through the post-independence economic policies of Mustafa Kemal, Turkey embarked upon a path of national capitalist development under the tutelage of the state and the military-civilian bureaucracy. Although conventional thinking suggests that Republican leaders were wont to heavily intervene in the economy, not only to strengthen the nation against foreign intervention but also ultimately to further the well-being of the people (Waldner, 1999), recent research has shown that at first a relatively laissez-faire approach was taken during early interwar years (Zürcher, 1998). Whenever interventions took place, such as the creation of the sugar cooperatives during the 1920s and 1930s (Alexander, 2002), they were intended to create markets rather than to manipulate them.

Similarly, the interwar years were marked by concentrated efforts by the state to develop infrastructure, establish banks, regulate commerce and bring key facilities, such as seaports and roads as well as extractive industries, under state regulation. These efforts were accompanied by major concessions to private capital through special laws passed by the parliament. However, a combination of structural factors (e.g. emigration of the entrepreneurial class made up of Jews, Greeks and Armenians) and international dynamics (most importantly the Great Depression), resulted in lackluster economic performance, particularly in terms of industrialization.

The year 1950 is a turning point in Turkish political economy for two significant reasons. First, it marks the transition to multiparty politics. In these elections, despite all expectations, the party established by Mustafa Kemal, Republican People’s Party, lost to the Democrat Party. This change of leadership is significant not only because it marked the maturing of Turkish democracy. It also meant that the nation’s power base shifted from the largely urban and educated Republican People’s Party supporters to the Democrat’s constituency in underdeveloped rural towns and villages. Secondly, with the beginning of the Democrat Party rule, development strategy became one of the major arenas in political debate (Eralp, 1990).

For Keyder (1987), post-war Turkish economic history is best analyzed in two stages, each characterized by a different economic development strategy. Import substituting industrialization (ISI) became the official development strategy following the military coup in 1960 and the establishment of a new civilian government and the State Planning Organization in 1961. This period also marked the preparation of the first five-year plan. ISI helped create a stronger industrial base and diversity the economy considerably. Traditional traits of the ISI strate...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Maps, Figures, and Tables
• List of Contributors
• Preface
• Introduction
• PART I: MODERNIZATION, DEVELOPMENT, AND DEMOCRATIZATION
• PART II: MAIN PLAYERS
• PART III: ISSUE AREAS AND CASE STUDIES
• Conclusion Development and Democratization in an Era of Environmental Crisis
• Index