Weird Turkey

"Turkish affairs" are always entertaining, but sometimes they can be unnervingly entertaining. The Crescent and Star increasingly borders on various degrees of schizophrenia, paranoia, otherness and polarization.

Sadly, Turkey looks lost in a tiring soul-search; it looks like an enigma that still chases its lost identity 85 years on. But its demographic and cultural zigzags never cease to amaze; its social contrasts never fade.

"Weird Turkey" can pop up anytime: while you read newspapers, stroll down the road, talk to strangers, talk to friends, listen to the politicians, listen to missionaries of this or that faith, or even when you lock yourself at home but suddenly get a call reminding you of where you live. This was "Turkey" in the last couple of weeks:

1. In Turkey, there isn’t torture but people may die under torture: When the 29-year-old Engin Çeber who was arrested for distributing a leftist newspaper died in detention, Istanbul police launched an investigation and proudly announced that the deceased had not been tortured. A few days later, Justice Minister Mehmet Ali Şahin publicly apologized to Mr Çeber’s relatives for the torture that had killed their son. Most recently, a full forensic report confirmed he had died under torture.

But will any authority investigate why the initial police report firmly stated that Mr Çeber had not been tortured? Will anyone tell us what action will be taken against the officials who denied torture in Mr Çeber’s case? Or will those police officers continue to "protect our security?" And by the way, will anyone explain if distributing a leftist newspaper is a reason to be arrested in EU-candidate Turkey?

2. Tayyip Erdoğan is a reformist, his good friend Silvio is an "advocate" of Turkey: Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s "good friend Silvio" was in Turkey last week. Apart from being Mr Erdogan’s good friend, Silvio is also Italy’s prime minister. And yes, that’s the man who described President-elect Barack Obama as "tanned" and boasts of himself as an "advocate" of Turkey.

No doubt, the Italian impolitic has an interesting sense of humor. But assuming he was not "joking" when he commented on Turkish politics, Silvio Berlusconi thinks that (a) his good friend Tayyip is a true reformist, and (b) Turkey’s secular system has been strengthened under Mr Erdoğan’s rule.

I am confident that Silvio "Silviocchio" Berlusconi’s love affair with Turkey has nothing to do with the love affair his dear friend Tayyip has for Italian-made military helicopters and other weapons systems. But talking about Italian-made weapons systems and Silvio "the advocate of Turkey" Berlusconi, allows me to remind him of the growing disquiet in the corridors of security offices in Ankara about a suspected systematic delivery of Italian-made arms to the PKK.

3. Our orphans are well looked after as long as a duchess does not mingle: Former Duchess of York, Sarah Ferguson, and her TV crew secretly filmed orphans in special care houses in Turkey (and Romania) and exposed the horrifying conditions in which the children were being kept.

According to Nimet Çubukcu, the minister whose portfolio includes orphan care, the images were part of a premeditated campaign to smear Turkey’s image and block its EU accession. But what about Romania? Were the unpleasant images of Romanian child care houses part of a premeditated campaign to oust Romania from the EU?

Ms Çubukcu need not worry. The Crescent and Star produces more than enough material on a daily basis to smear its own image. The minister can always look at a randomly chosen opinion poll that would tell her what percentage of the EU populace thinks Turkey is a decent democracy that deserves full membership.

According to Ali Babacan, Turkey's foreign minister, the poor orphans whose images appeared on a British TV station were not upset by the conditions they had to endure, but by the methods they were filmed. I bet they were! By the same logic, we can always think that Mr Çeber was not upset by the torture he had to undergo, but that his soul was terribly upset by the news coverage of his torture.

4. Barack Obama is a Kurdish villager - by soul: Residents of a Kurdish village in eastern Turkey sacrificed 44 sheep to celebrate the election of Barack Obama as America’s 44th president. What an original thoughtfulness: 44 sheep for the 44th president of the United States of America! The surviving sheep in the village must have prayed and thanked God that the United States does not have a history of six centuries and has not had 156 presidents.

Meanwhile, the placards the villagers held out during the celebrations read "You are a real hero" and "You are one of us." Perhaps someone in the White House should remind President-elect Obama that he is now Kurdish, in addition to Hawaian, Kenyan, Indonesian, American, French, German, Italian, Greek, Cypriot, Arabic, Jewish, Armenian and probably Nepalese and Peruvian too.

5. Mr Erdoğan’s government has improved gender equality - to ranking 123rd !: The prime minister has often been praised, in addition to his liberal reformism, for his commitment to gender equality. The seal of approval for the Turkish men whose wives habitually marry at child age, must not let their hair be seen by others, and are almost always housewives, came in the form of a World Economic Forum, or WEU, report. The WEU’s Global Gender Gap study put Turkey into the 123rd place among 130 countries.