The established and the outsiders
by
ELISABETH ÖZDALGA
Why such an over-abundance of flags? Why so much anger and fanatical hostility in the speeches?

One cannot fail to notice the present disquieting drama being acted out in Turkey.
Imagine a stage, which for years has been occupied by a certain type of people. They occupy important posts within the state bureaucracy, represent Europeanized urban manners, share a common educational background and basic values concerning the state and the nation. They are secularized, put great trust in the sciences, particularly positivist science, and see themselves as the leading modernizers of their country. They represent an institutionally and ideologically tight group, which owes its power and prestige to the fact that they are able to claim a monopoly over what is defined as modernization and a civilized way of life. They are the Established.

Then imagine other groups entering the stage from various sides. These are people coming from the villages, smaller urban centers, and the less well-off suburbs of the big cities. They have a different lifestyle, pay more attention to indigenous cultural traditions and religious practices, dress differently (head-covering has been especially conspicuous) and represent different values. But they are not as well attuned to each other and lack the compact consensus of the already existing group.

These newcomers want to share the stage with “the old families.” They work hard with high social ambitions, and claim to be as good patriots and modernizers as the old ones. But instead of opening their ranks, freely mixing and interacting with the new elements, the old guard develops an ideology which describes the newcomers as unworthy of such integration. They are portrayed as being in all respects deficient: as ignorant, uncivilized, dishonest, reactionary (for example, aiming at a Turkey patterned on Iran). Renowned columnists in major Istanbul dailies do not even mind depicting them as vulgar and filthy. It is especially their “religious fanaticism” (a distortion of what normally would be regarded as piety) that is singled out as a characteristic disqualifying them for certain positions, especially within the military, the state bureaucracy, the universities, and now, latest, for the presidency. The newcomers are thereby in various ways being stigmatized. They represent the Outsiders.

The idea of the Established and the Outsiders is a theory used in sociological community studies. The classical example is represented by the relation between two neighboring residential districts, where those who have lived in the area for a longer time and during this period have managed to develop strong community networks, come to dominate over the late-comers. All kinds of slander, gossiping and defamation are used in order to keep the newcomers, the Outsiders, at a distance; in order to preserve the existing status and prestige of the Established. That the attached stigmas are, in fact, imagined and/or invented has been demonstrated by empirical fieldwork studies.

The concepts of the Established and the Outsiders can also be used in larger macro contexts and, as suggested here, have much to tell also about the dynamics in present day Turkish society. Seen in that perspective, the conflicts we are witnessing affect certain very sensitive and deep-going power interests. When referring to major power interests I do not primarily have economic and/or class interests in mind, but conflicts based on status group interests, which by no means are less imperative and fundamental than those based on material or economic interests. To loose a longstanding, and allegedly natural status position, and the esteem that goes with it, is like being confronted with the end of the world. It hurts and causes intense anxiety.

The secular Established in Turkey is a textbook case of a well-established status group, in this case fighting tooth and nail in order to hold on to its power positions, even to the price of sacrificing its country’s economic interests and hard-won democratic institutions. The observed tension and anxiety in those circles should be seen in the light of the fact that their power today is seriously challenged by modernization itself.

What is being described here is a tug-of-war that has been going on for many years. The reason that the conflict has reached such an acute stage right now is the fact that an “Outsider” has proved eligible to the highest position in the state hierarchy, i.e. what amounts to nothing less than the most elevated position in the value hierarchy of the Established. The challenge is enormous. It is even unthinkable!

A critical reading of the slogans resounding during the large demonstrations in Ankara, Istanbul, Manisa, and Çanakkale during the last weeks, like “secularism in jeopardy” (”Laiklik elden gidiyor”), suggests that it is not the secular republic as much as the power and prestige of the secular Established itself that is under threat.

In this perspective it is especially paradoxical to notice the great role played by women in these street manifestations against the sitting AKP government. Paradoxical, because in their daily practices, women are those who should know best what it is like to be classified and treated as an Outsider.

The Established versus the Outsiders: an old guard defending its status position against what it regards as alien and threatening social groups. They are aliens - and therefore the flags, and threatening -- therefore the hostility.


08.05.2007

ELISABETH ÖZDALGA