It is so hard to even start talking about the Turkish-Armenian conflict; so, I am just going to talk about my personal take on it.

As a Turk living in the US, it saddens me to see people from other countries recognize my country and Armenia only through our conflict. They do not know much about each of the countries but they know that we have been in conflict since the early times of this century.However, what saddens me most is to actually see these two countries with such similar history and culture to be in conflict and closely observe my generation grow up not recognizing our commonalities. Today, I read an article from Dr. Stepan Grigoryan, the chairman of the board of the Analytical Centre on Globalization and Regional Cooperation in Yerevan, who in his article pointed out that people are closer to each other than their governments. He claims that people of both countries want reconciliation and end of the conflict; however, political realities do not represent this view.

Armenia and Turkey are so similar to each other, our histories are so intertwined that it is amazing to see this conflict persist this long. We don’t need to put much effort into confirming this hypothesis, just search Wikipedia for Armenian Cuisine. Almost 90% of Turkish cuisine and Armenian cuisine overlaps. Or look at our habits, the games we play, etc. Thousands of things I cannot even count. Even the way we raise new generations is similar. The only difference is Turkish side finds Armenian side in fault and Armenian side claims Turks are to blame. In the mean time, generations are growing up, not knowing each other, not realizing the past is out there to hunt their future, and only learning how to perpetuate this fight where there are only losers!

I do realize this writing sounds like a pep talk and does not seem to contain any substantive facts. Yes, I do know there are complicated things involved, yes I do know it is hard to reconcile when both parties had lost so many people, and yes I do know there were dramatic events the survivors of which still cannot let go (from both sides). However, I do also know if people were to hold on to these complexities and never reconcile, today there would not be a Vietnam with strong relations with the US, there would not be an Austria, who faught againts Britain and France in the World War I, with close relations to them now, or there would not be a Latin America, which had to faught for its independence, trading with Portugal or Spain now.

My point is I think it is time for the people of Turkey and Armenia to get to know each other and to demand reconciliation from bottom up, not top down. We, as neighbors, do need to strengthen each other, not weaken!

One of the natural human instincts, when one meets a new person, is to place that person in a little box in their minds to be able to identify to where they belong in this complicated world. Although, this is a helpful shortcut in simplying life and being able to identify with whom you would get along well, it is very limited in its ability to capture something real about the other person. Once you identify the “right box” in your mind for someone it takes a lot of effort and counter argument to change their mental location, even though sometimes that is necessary.  One of these short cuts we use to mentally place people is their econo-political view. Thanks to Chris Blattman’s blog I learned about this new ideological test which positions you on a cartesian coordinate system with social and economic ideological extremes on the axes.

They also placed some of the world known leaders on this compass (below).

I am not going to write where I ended up on the compass (though it was close to reality); however, no matter how we use these categorizations we need to keep in mind that these are very rough drawing of people’s outer contours…

Presidential Candidate Obama continues to take a clear stance against Turkey and side with the Armenian allegations. In a letter to ANCA Chairman Ken Hachikian, Sen. Obama wrote “I share your view that the United States must recognize the events of 1915 to 1923, carried out by the Ottoman Empire, as genocide. . . We must recognize this tragic reality. The Bush Administration’s refusal to do so is inexcusable, and I will continue to speak out in an effort to move the Administration to change its position.”
http://www.anca.org/press_releases/press_releases.php?prid=1513

In July 2006, Obama had also written to Secretary of State Rice and opposed the decision to recall Ambassador Evans from his post to Armenia after he used the term genocide. (http://www.anca.org/press_releases/press_releases.php?prid=1513

EVREN TOK - The Constitutional Court’s decision to annul the changes regarding the headscarf ban in the universities has fostered discussions focused not only on the issues regarding the endangered Turkish democracy, but also indirectly we discuss the dilemma and the paradox of the secular nation-state and its institutions - this time not only the Military, but also the Judiciary mechanism, aiming at revitalizing the contradictions of the Turkish modernity. As some scholars point out a judicial revolution, the historical articulation and embeddedness of the institutions as the agents of this revolution need to be explored to imagine and envision a possibility of ‘change’. Today, the root of the problem in Turkish democracy and modernity project is the inertia and resistance of the institutional structure to change and transform, despite the political will.Even more paradoxically, the relation between the politics and the public policies is no longer defined by the society; instead, state institutions define this relation with a strong secular tone. In a well functioning democracy, politics-public policy interaction is mediated by a variety of societal actors such as civil society organizations, NGOs, trade unions, etc who are sensitive to the concerns of the public. While it is correctly pointed out by many scholars in the Turkish media that ‘bringing the public back in’ type of solutions are the only viable ones and the Constitution as we knew is no longer able to respond to societal impulses, a re-evaluation and re-appraisal of the ways in which state institutions curtail the relation between the politics and the public is urgently needed.Turkey’s Embedded InstitutionsParadoxically, the institutions of modern Turkey have been continuing to harness democracy and political stability, not to mention the possible medium and long run impacts on the economic and financial realms. As scholars of historical institutionalism indicate, institutions are integrated and embedded into the social and political configurations of a country. This situation might have adverse effects as well. As in the case of Turkey, the institutions might misuse their relative autonomy and disembed themselves from the very social and political structure. As Thelen and Streeck indicate, ‘an institutional logic in each society leads each institution to coalesce into a complex social configuration’ because they are embedded in a culture in which its logic is symbolically grounded, materially constrained and politically defended.While institutional sphere retains a degree of autonomy from the society’s idiosyncratic customs, traditions, corporate structures, it is the complementarity and connectivity of the social, legal, cultural and economic institutions that secures systemic cohesion. Therefore, what is at stake today in Turkey is not only limited to lifting the headscarf ban in the universities, instead the current institutional deadlock is a manifestation of a broader social and political trauma. Moreover, this trauma is a symptom of the ongoing detachment and disembedding of certain state institutions from the social, political and cultural fabric, which would sooner or later result in the loss of legitimacy from the public’s point of view and leading to increasing social tensions and paralysis as experienced recently.Path Dependent or Path Altering Change?There is no doubt that ‘bringing the public back in’ is a precondition to reembed the institutions into the social configuration, however, this is a necessary, but not a sufficient condition. ‘Bringing the public back in’ approach would acquire meaning and impact only if a transparent and neutral venue to amalgamate different voices, concerns and interests is established. As scholars of institutionalism would predict, without recognizing the concerns of both governmental and non-governmental actors, without providing an accountable ground and a means to communicate, without a dialogical interaction, it is almost impossible to go beyond a ‘path-dependent’ alternative. In the case of Turkey, path-dependent alternative unfortunately involves minor, adaptive change, reproducing and preserving the revanchist attitudes and interests of certain actors and institutions at the expense of democracy.Path-altering change, however, is still possible and vital for the sake of attaining systemic cohesion, which would include a transparent and sustainable interaction between institutions and politics. Embeddedness of institutions, thus, would mean that politics and institutions mutually constitute each other within a social configuration and none of them could be subsumed under the other. Hence, sustaining, recognizing and benefiting from the complementarity and connectivity of the social, legal, cultural and economic institutions is extremely vital along with efforts to ‘bring the public back in’ through elections. In other words, the social concerns and voices should bridge the relation between public policies and the politics, rather than the state institutions who have delinked themselves from the social fabric.

Evren Tok: Carleton University, School of Public Policy PhD. Candidate

Turkey and the World Bank signed a new loan agreement for the land management systems modernization on the 9th of June. This is a much needed development for Turkey’s outdated land management systems.

In the press release  the authorities talk about Turkish land management system being as one of the most effective in the region but I guess when we look at our neighbors we realize the bar is not that high… I hope with this new development, Turkey will adapt the GIS (Global Information Systems) geospatial technology as well. It is great to have all the land records in digital forms and be able to reach them easily; however, we should also start to think about the digital data display in multiple dimensions.
21st century requires us to think differently about data storage and display. Regardless, however, I am very happy to see that we are taking the initial steps of a better land management system which is hopefully also going to trigger better record keeping and more transparency of land ownership.