Turkish warlords as bourgeois or bureaucrats ?

Submitted by Ianus (Poland), Dec 22, 2012 at 17:12

Mozere wrote :

> Although the struggle in Turkey at face seems to be religious vs secularism,in reality it is the struggle of bourgeoisie vs bureaucracy.Whereas the French bourgeoisie stormed the Bastille and freed the prisoners of feudals, in Turkey the Bastille (Silivri prison) is being stuffed with mandarins of the republic.<

I see that you don't limit yourself to peddling second-hand Turkish propaganda trinkets but also actively exploit Marxist analysis to decorate these trinkets with. Now remaining within the framework of the Marxist class struggle theory, let me ask two things.

First, if the struggle is between Mahometan bourgoisie and Mahometan bureaucracy (everybody is Mahometan in Turkey, aren't they?), then what role the oppressed and economically disenfranchised Mahometan working class is playing in it ?

Second, where in this class warfare is the army positioned which is responsible for the economic disenfranchisement of the working class after 1980 and is working hand in hand with the Mahometan bourgeoisie to expand its terrestial military-business empire ?

It is clear that your comparison of Turkey with the pre-1789 France is flawed as in the France of Louis XVI there existed no brass monster like in Ghazi Kemal's or Imam Erdogan's Turkey.

If you need some help with the second question, then take a look at an interesting paper "A political economy analysis of the Turkish military's split personality: The patriarchal master or crony capitalist?" by Fırat Demir. Let me paraphrase or quote some of his most arresting observations.

The Turkish military is almost completely free from any civilian control over its budget which constitutes some 15 % of all budget allocations. In fact it is an econonomy within an economy. As what is more important , through various foundations and stooge organisations, especially the Armed Forces Trust and Pension Fund (OYAK) or the Foundation for Strengthening the Turkish Armed Forces , it has has dominated vast segments of Turkish economy - insurance, investment banking, automotive, petroleum, iron-steel, and cement industries, tourism, food marketing, etc... It benefits from several unique and generous subsidies from the state, including tax exemptions and various legal protections. OYAK has had shares in fifty companies (46 of which were majority stakes). Many of these subsidiary companies of OYAK are affiliated (or jointly-owned) with domestic and international corporations including French car giant Renault, tyre company Goodyear, AXA, DuPont, Mobil, Shell, Koç, Sabancı, etc. It enjoys regional and national monopolistic and oligopolistic market power. Until recently it owned a major bank (Oyak Bank) of its own, and at the end of 2008 its portfolio management company was ranked 2nd in net sales (and 8th in total assets and number of active accounts) among all brokerage firms. The business performance of OYAK with annual real profits growing more than 100% at times during the 1980s and 90s. Net profits of OYAK steadily increased from around $76 million in 1988 to as high as $1.9 billion in 2007...The special privileges provided at the expense of the public and private sector ... helped secure such gains.

"The presence of such a large hybrid military-business holding helps shield the military from the negative effects of economic downturns while the rest of the society has no such safety net.

OYAK frequently used its special status as a military owned company to gather public support for its participation in some privatization programs. The military has got access to classified economic decisions (directly through National Security Council or indirectly through its own institutional means) that may have direct effects on OYAK‟s operations in the market. An interesting question is to what extent the military with its own OYAK bank and a brokerage firm profited from the 2001 40% devaluation of Turkish lira?

"Another sign of the economic (and political) importance of the military in the market is that it is a common practice to hire retired high ranking military officers with no past business experience (or economics knowledge) as advisors or members of boards of directors of private firms. In a widely publicized case during the banking crisis of 1999 (when six banks failed due to high level of fraud) it was revealed that most of the failed banks had several high ranking military officers in their boards of directors."

What does it say in Marxist terms which you used to advertise your dubious point ? Demir puts it as follows :

"Given its active participation in the market through its (protected) direct and indirect business dealings, and given its use of political muscle to increase its members economic well-being at the expense of the rest of the society, and given its willingness to link to the domestic and international capital without any regard to the political or strategic sensitivities or nationalistic rhetoric it often raises in the domestic political arena, the Turkish military has become a part of the capitalist class (albeit a neo-mercantilist one) and it should be treated as such."

It contradicts your assertion that "The most likely outcome will be the domination of capitalists over the blinkered nationalists" as the capitalist in fact wears the uniform of a nationalist Turkish general who uses nationalistic platitudes the same way Islamist platitudes are used by his AKP business partners.

>10 years hence I can see Turkey as a secular state just as it is now.<

As to me I can see in 10 years' time Ataturk's mausoleum as the last secular place in Turkey ... if by 2022 it is not turned into a public latrine or a smouldering ruin by Turkish wahhabis or al-Qaeda people the same way Ataturk turned churches into latrines or smouldering ruins.

> The alternative being a state without an income from industry and tourism which nobody wants,even the deeply religious.<

Why be so pessimistic? Saudi tourists and Moslems on their way to or from Mecca and Medina via Turkey will be a much better substitute in the eyes of Allah for those nasty giaours that besmirch and threaten the "holy Islamic" soil of Turkey, won't they?

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