Author Thomas Friedman: Either an idiot or…

Oh Turkey, you amuse me

In this his second letter from Istanbul, New York Times columnist and author Thomas Friedman attempts to paint Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan as a radical, Turkey as an undemocratic Chavezista hotbed and the flotilla incident as something other than what most of the rest of humanity considered it. Before beginning this dispassionate analysis, some warnings. Pretty much everything Friedman writes has the gravity and depth of the weekend grocery store coupon inserts. Consider yourself embarrassed. Or read Matt Taibbi for more:

…along comes Thomas Friedman, porn-stached resident of a positively obscene 11,400 square foot suburban Maryland mega-monstro-mansion and husband to the heir of one of the largest shopping-mall chains in the world, reinventing himself as an oracle of anti-consumerist conservationism.

It’s the same inanity, except not ecologically but politically. I find him to be false, misleading, racist, offensive and elitist. Again.

Friedman thinks it’s a clever gimmick to write a letter to his readers from Istanbul, which is the famous city in Turkey that is not the country’s capital. Ignoring the geographic wrongness of a political analysis ascribed to a country’s economic center, Friedman, who rarely ever knows where he is and what’s more does not understand the interpenetration of a) economics with politics and b) his backside with his head, offers up reasons to “wonder” about Turkey, part of his propagandistic and arrogant attempt to smear Turkey. This all-out push to demonize Turkey is in part a reaction to not wanting to engage with the siege of Gaza, and producing straw men to try and burn in place of the actual issues affecting and linking people across the world.

The Turks wanted to get into the European Union and were rebuffed, but I’m not sure Turkish businessmen even care today. The EU feels dead next to Turkey, which last year was right behind India and China among the fastest-growing economies in the world — just under 7 percent — and was the fastest-growing economy in Europe.

So Turkey’s a rising power. Why Friedman’s feeling up the EU, or how he know it feels dead, I don’t (want to) know, but there you have it. Friedman here describes Turkey as the “fastest-growing economy in Europe,” which is funny, because later he actually wonders whether Turkey will go Western or Islamic. (There is not a sentence concerning how Europe treats its Muslims, or Geert Wilders, or why the EU has rebuffed Turkey, all of which are interpenetrated.) Being European is not enough to also be Western, and to be Western depends on agreeing with one of one Western nation’s many perspectives and pundits.

All you have to do is stand in the Istanbul airport and look at the departures board for Turkish Airlines, which flies to cities half of which I cannot even pronounce, to appreciate what a pulsating economic center this has become for Central Asia.

That’s all you have to do. Don’t even leave the airport. This is Friedman’s faux humility, which is separate from his actual stupidity, though the two travel together, like the man and his moustache. Friedman’s trying to say, “See, Reader, I travel to all these exotic places, and I don’t get them, just like you don’t, but I will explain them to you anyway because I feel entitled to, even though that makes no sense and my facial hair makes me look Turkish” (Fill in the blank time: Thomas Friedman, who considers himself an expert on the Middle East and has a Master’s degree [M.Phil.] in Middle East Studies, “cannot even pronounce” these cities’ names because he is an ____________).

I met Turkish businessmen who were running hotel chains in Moscow, banks in Bosnia and Greece, road-building projects in Iraq and huge trading operations with Iran and Syria. In 1980, Turkey’s total exports were worth $3 billion. In 2008, they were $132 billion. There are now 250 industrial zones throughout Anatolia. Turkey’s cellphone users have gone from virtually none in the 1990s to 64 million in 2008.

So far, he is making us like Turkey, if that is you like economic powers. Then he’ll make Turkey into a dictatorship on the order of Russia, Venezuela and Iran, and you are supposed to ignore the fact that his article offers nothing except subjective nonsense and racist crap instead of argument.

Turkey has massive economic interests in Iran and Syria. Nothing about Islamism, no businessmen talking about culture and religion, but something about making money and markets and expanding opportunities (Subcontext: Many Western markets recently crashed hardcore. Where else are businessmen going to go?). Many of Turkey’s big businessmen are AK Party supporters. Nevertheless, this fact will quickly drop off the face of the flat world Friedman believes he lives on (one plus to a flat world is, geometrically speaking, we could theoretically never walk into Thomas Friedman again).

So Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan sees himself as the leader of a rising economic powerhouse of 70 million people who is entitled to play an independent geopolitical role — hence his U.N. vote against sanctioning Iran. But how Turkey rises really matters — and Erdogan definitely has some troubling Hugo Chávez-Vladimir Putin tendencies.

There are so many things wrong with this, my head hurts. Is either Russia or Venezuela a dynamic center of business? They are both dependent on petrochemicals and other natural resources; they are rentier states. Why then Erdogan represents something of Chavez or Putin, I don’t know — except that apparently Erdogan is either a Muslim like Putin, or a socialist like Chaves. (Thomas Friedman is an ___________). Note also that he says “who is entitled,” not “which is entitled”; even though it is Turkey that Erdogan represents, Friedman is trying very unsubtly to argue that Erdogan doesn’t represent Turkey, and Turkey’s policies are the policies of an Anatolian Chavez. Because the thing he fears most is democracy — actual mandates. (He is also afraid of English).

Watch how this shady so-called expert twists words to create the impression of argument; he regularly passes off false as true under the veneer of alleged analysis: Erdogan “sees himself as the leader of a rising economic powerhouse.” Does Barack Obama also “see himself as the President of the United States”? What kind of racist rhetoric is this? Erdogan is the elected Prime Minister of the country. Therefore, he is its leader. I could see myself as the leader of Turkey, but I would be delusional. Erdogan does not need to see himself as the leader of Turkey to be the leader of Turkey. Maybe it’s because he’s a “radical”; but Friedman believes it’s okay to invade a country to change people’s minds, a point so at odds with the fundamentally democratic foundation and philosophy of American society so as to plausibly welcome the resurrection of Joe McCarthy.

Further, Erdogan “sees himself as entitled to play an independent geopolitical role…” Entitled. This language would not be out of place coming from the mouth of Winston Churchill, champion of freedom except for the South Asians like me who are over 1/6th of humanity: “That Gandhi, he sees himself as the leader of India, and thinks himself entitled to play a role in the world.” Brown folks getting uppity. Watch out for those Negroes. Think that just because they can vote, they’re our equals. (For those who actually know Turkish politics, the white-and-black divide is meaningful.)

Democracy for us, and only for you if we approve, and we must always approve. “How Turkey rises” — read: we are Turkey’s parents, and need to raise Turkey right. Friedman’s very language communicates his racism, which comes through in every other article this purported college graduate writes on any region of the world. Gut check: Every member state of the U.N. has a part to play. Of course sovereign nations are entitled to independent voices. So why insinuate that Turkey’s politics constitute anything but a natural human and collective right?

Let us, for a moment, refer to a dictionary:

Etymology: Middle English, from Anglo-French entitler, from Late Latin intitulare, from Latin in- + titulus title
Date: 14th century
1 : to give a title to : designate
2 : to furnish with proper grounds for seeking or claiming something

Then, this gem:

I’ve never visited a democracy where more people whom I interviewed asked me not to quote them by name for fear of retribution by Erdogan’s circle — in the form of lawsuits, tax investigations or being shut out of government contracts. The media here is rampantly self-censored.

That’s amazing. This admission from a man whose only reference to Istanbul in this letter is to the airport, where he may have been mistaken for a male ______________, dubiously interviewing other men in the bathroom, or getting chatty at the baggage claim. Has Friedman in the meantime ever interviewed the many people across the world who agreed with Turkey’s responses over the past few weeks, to various global issues, and agreed with them for vastly different reasons? And I’m sure governments in Western nations regularly give lucrative contracts to their critics. Keep the previous paragraph fresh in your mind, as unpleasant a request as that is. Here it is again:

I’ve never visited a democracy where more people whom I interviewed asked me not to quote them by name for fear of retribution by Erdogan’s circle — in the form of lawsuits, tax investigations or being shut out of government contracts. The media here is rampantly self-censored.

For this reason:

Only two weeks before the Gaza flotilla incident, a leading poll showed Mr. Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party, known as the AKP, trailing his main opposition — the secularist Republican People’s Party — for the first time since the AKP came to office in 2002.

Dear Reader, in which country of “rampant … self-censor[ship]” — in which other faux democracy, as is his point (Friedman accuses without accusing, his cowardly way of coming to a conclusion without any evidence in his luggage), would you find independent polling? (Because if the polling is not independent, why would his point matter?) Who did this poll? How did Erdogan know about it? Was it published in any newspapers? Isn’t pointing out the popularity of the opposition the most unlikely printed act to make it to a paper in a faux democracy? If people are so afraid of speaking out against Erdogan, why would they support the opposition? And if they do support the opposition, would they vote for it? If they did, would it succeed? Why would Erdogan be afraid of the CHP, the Republican People’s Party, if they were not also able to freely campaign?

I can think of other democracies where people are denied rights, such as the right to wear a headscarf or the right to marry a person of their choice, irregardless of gender. I can think of democracies that deny people the right to face their accusers, see the evidence against them or be tried impartially. I can think of democracies that racially profile, ban the use of languages, etc. This doesn’t mean anything when it comes to the larger point, namely that Turkey is “not” a democracy. No democracy is perfect. Perfect governance is the provenance of fascism.

And to the accusation that the media rampantly self-censors: Fethullah Gulen’s followers control some of the largest Turkish newspapers, and he himself opposed the Turkish response to Israel’s actions on the Mavi Marmara, as well as the mission of the Mavi Marmara itself. Turkey’s main opposition party, the CHP, is led by a Kurdish Alevi. In one week in Turkey, I was certain I was in a democracy. It’s obvious to anyone paying any attention to the people and world they are immediately surrounded by.

Again: “I’ve never visited a democracy where more people whom I interviewed” — well, who did he interview? Seeing as he cannot pronounce — as he himself admitted — the names of Turkic cities in Central Asia, I wonder how many Turkish people the smug and self-satisfied, narrow-minded, world-traveling, first-class Friedman actually interviewed, and how egregiously he self-selected and cherry-picked to suit his bias? He never once mentions in his entire article that the overwhelming majority of the world’s opinion was sympathetic to Turkey and against the siege of Gaza.

Obviously, he would not interview common people, everyday folks, because he is deeply uninterested in democracy when it does not suit him or his shameless arguments (how does a known warmonger get off accusing others of radicalism and intemperance? Considering the size of his audience, he cannot escape blame for the fiasco that was the Iraq War). Many Irishmen reacted like many Turks after the killings of the activists on the Mavi Marmara. Strangely, I do not see a “Letter from Dublin”. Because, frankly, dear reader, if you are not like him, he does not give a #*@%.

Lastly:

There is an inner struggle over that identity, between those who would like to see Turkey more aligned with the Islamic world and values and those who want it to remain more secular, Western and pluralistic.

This is the most vile, offensive and plainly inaccurate line ever. First, to the notion that one cannot be Islamic and pluralistic — shove it. Millions of pious Muslims have fought for democracy. They marched in favor of Mousavi, and were beaten and even killed. They were arrested and detained. They didn’t call it the Green Movement for nothing. They are suffering now in Egypt, in Tunisia, in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. They are harassed in China, show-trialed and railroaded in Malaysia and demonized in Algeria. They were slaughtered for their right to independence, by the tens of thousands, in Bosnia, and disappeared over decades in the Soviet Union. Muslims bleed, and have bled, for noble ideals and great causes. There is no monopoly on democracy, not for atheists, secularists, Muslims, Jews, Christians, Hindus, etc.

An even better example? AKP. Turkey’s drive to join the EU, to give Kurds the rights they deserve (not that they “see themselves entitled to”) and to limit the role of the military — all these are the product of a conservative democratic government which includes, but is not limited to, pious Muslims. Pious Muslims who want to join the EU, who abolished the death penalty and who have sought out partnerships with Western states, alliances and institutions. This is par for Friedman’s course. Friedman often nakedly misrepresents the facts of any given situation, this from the same columnist who — based on nonsensical claims and arguments he was, frankly, either too spiteful or stupid to parse — supported the War on Iraq which is itself a primary reason Turkey has changed its foreign policy. Oh, and the economics of the region, which, well, he forgot to mention after that annoyingly enthusiastic numbers-dropping paragraph often his signature.

And as to this accusation:

Erdogan has evolved from just railing against Israel’s attacks on Hamas in Gaza to spouting conspiracy theories — like the insane notion that Israel is backing the P.K.K. terrorists — as a way of consolidating his political base among conservative Muslims in Turkey and abroad.

1) Israel’s attacks on Hamas or the siege of Gaza’s people?

2) You, Thomas Friedman. Judith Miller at The New York Times. Bin Laden and Saddam. Prague. Dick Cheney. A war. Hundreds of thousands dead. Hundreds of billions spent. Obama is a Muslim. He’s a socialist. These are all in reference to “insane … conspiracy theories,” which have enjoyed airing in prominent places for months or even years. Let me quote Taibbi in this regard:

My initial answer to that is that Friedman’s language choices over the years have been highly revealing: When a man who thinks you need to break a vase to get the water out of it starts arguing that you need to invade a country in order to change the minds of its people, you might want to start paying attention to how his approach to the vase problem worked out.Thomas Friedman is not a president, a pope, a general on the field of battle or any other kind of man of action. He doesn’t actually do anything apart from talk about s–t in a newspaper. So in my mind it’s highly relevant if his manner of speaking is f–ked.

As to questions of the PKK and Israel, those theories were first aired, to the best of my knowledge, by members of the “secular military establishment,” and not by Erdogan. But if the battle is between secularists and Islamists, perhaps we should support the former, even in their absurd opinions?

Turkey is full of energy and hormones, and is trying to figure out its new identity.

Why is Bernard Cohn silent when you most need him? From out of the vile 19th century to the mid-1950’s. No longer is the Oriental a child, either wondrous in innocence and in need of our protection, or savage in malevolence and in need of our discipline (and in both cases, caricatured to non-human absurdity), but now the Oriental is a hormone-addled teenager, not quite an adult, not yet ready to deal with the responsibilities of adulthood. So punish the teenager in private, because after all he has feelings:

Is there anything the US can do? My advice: Avoid a public confrontation that Erdogan can exploit to build more support, draw US redlines in private and let Turkish democrats take the lead.

Soon Turkey will be driving a car on its own, and then be ready to vote, and some years later, Turkey will be able to buy alcohol with confidence when we ask it for its ID card, which anyway we will be issuing. (In 2075, Turkey will be able to rent a car.) This is the most useless foreign policy advice ever given such prominent placement. Draw US redlines “in private”; what are those redlines? He assumes they are obvious. “Let Turkish Democrats take the lead”. In other words, “let the elected government of the country take charge.” Wow, Thomas Friedman, that’s so incredibly perceptive of you. Will you be my friend on Facebook? Can you sign my copy of your overpriced, underthought crap book?

Friedman is unendingly offensive, even to his American audience, whom he apparently thinks are as stupid as he is (we are supposed to register surprise when Friedman discovers something interesting, such as: ‘I am in fact in my colon,’ no doubt inspiring another massacre of trees: ‘Hot, Dark and Constipated’):

Americans have tended to look at Turkey as a bridge or a base — either a cultural bridge that connects the West and the Muslim world, or as our base (Incirlik Air Base) that serves as the main US supply hub for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Turks see themselves differently.

Amazing! Turks do not see themselves as instruments for the realization of our priorities. Certainly, we will need Friedman to write more such thunderingly incisive and unparalleled letters, from Damascus, Bamako, Dhaka, Bandar Seri Begawan and other such cities, to find out if other colored people and non-Judeo-Christian Westerners-who-agree-with-me also in fact see themselves primarily in terms of themselves. Aren’t we glad we have the Times to help us understand this hot, flat and crowded world?

The secular and moderate Muslim forces in Turkey are alarmed; the moderate Arab regimes are alarmed; the Americans are alarmed. The fight for Turkey’s soul is about to be joined in a much more vigorous way.

) “Secular and moderate Muslim forces” – who exactly are they? Secular is moderate, of course, and Erdogan is not secular, even though he has been with his party a primary supporter of joining the ostensibly secular EU and meeting its membership criteria. I vote in American elections, and support the Constitutional separation of Church and State (as, of course, all Americans endorse and support their Constitution). I am by that logic a secularist. These simple taglines are made for bumper stickers, not reasoning and discussion.

2) “The moderate Arab regimes” would be the undemocratic ones who beat, torture, stifle and imprison their populations. Iran apparently is not “moderate,” even though it’s not terribly different from Egypt or Saudi Arabia (it’s actually, I would argue, more democratic than either of them, even though it’s not really run accountably or popularly). But Iran supports terrorism. And Osama bin Laden was from the French Riviera. And Ayman al-Zawahiri was from Teheran. (Note to Friedman, who may exuberantly cite this: I am overcome by sarcasm.)

3) Americans do not need to be qualified as “moderate”. Apparently, all Americans are moderate. Maybe we are.

4) “Vigorous” must refer to the expenditure of energy. Just not brain energy.

In the words of Matt Taibbi, “I almost died laughing.” In the words of Nietzsche, “Mill is a blockhead.” We should do a reality show inside Thomas Friedman’s head.

(Photo: Center for Strategic and International Studies)

Haroon Moghul was Director of Public Relations at the Islamic Center at New York University (NYU) from 2007-2009. Currently, he is Executive Director of The Maydan Institute, a communications and consulting company devoted to improving relationships and increasing understanding between Muslims and the West.