Justin Sullivan: (laughs) It was a strange time. We started coming back to America for the first time in 2003, which is just the beginning of the Iraq War. And everywhere there was kind of flags. And I watched it dwindle, and dwindle, and dwindle, and dwindle down to where there is no flags now.

I first came to America in 1975 as a kid. I hitchhiked around America for three four months, just having weird adventures and sleeping out, just wandering around America. And it was a strange time. It was the time after the end of Nixon, after Vietnam, and the early Carter time. And there’s a lot of music from that time, which is very kind of burned out. Everything is burned out, bleached out. It’s like autumn. I love this time of the year when everything is kind of burned out. And I remember America just felt burned out. And now it feels like, again, only much more burned out.

S.K.: That’s all you want to say about it?

Justin Sullivan: Oh, oh, as to why we’re not killing each other… You don’t have to answer that question. (smiles)

But I wrote that song called Bloodsports. You know the chorus says, “I am not at war.” And it wasn’t written about Iraq really. It was written about Bradford. It was written the day after the 7/7 bombings is London. It was impossible not to look at the other people in the street, and go, “What do they think?” You know what I mean?

Some people vote for the British National Party (BNP). It’s a fascist party in Britain. It’s not very strong, but some people vote for it. So, if you’re a second generation Pakistani kid, you probably look at all the white people and ask, “Does he vote BNP?” And there is that moment, you know, when the communities kind of [diverge]. And there was a moment in “I am not at war” to kind of quarrel in myself as much as anything else. For two or three days after 7/7, we’re always kind of going [suspicious of one another].

S.K.: You?

Justin Sullivan: Yeah, even me. Even me.

S.K.: Even you.

Justin Sullivan: Even me, even me.

S.K.: You means, “even you,” yeah.

Justin Sullivan: Even me, going past some guy on the street with a long beard, and obviously he is a very religious Muslim. And I’m thinking, “Is he?” You know, “Does he sympathize with the bombings?”

S.K.: I wouldn’t expect that from Justin Sullivan.

Justin Sullivan: Yeah? I’m just the same as anyone else… Just like he might look at me and say, “Is he a racist bastard? Does he vote for the BNP?”

S.K.: If it’s a small party, probably not. But then again, probably so…

Justin Sullivan: Yeah, who knows… And there is that moment when communities are suspicious of each other. And most people just get on with life.

[VIEW THE VIDEO]

S.K.: Well… you already answered my next question. The question was, “I know you like to go to places that you haven’t been before. How did you like Turkey?” And…

Justin Sullivan: … I’m fascinated by Turkey. I like Turkey. It’s very beautiful.

S.K.: Beautiful?

Justin Sullivan: It’s a very beautiful country.

S.K.: Do you think that Turkey’s candidacy to EU membership is important in the sense that it is a predominantly Muslim country?

Justin Sullivan: I don’t know. You’ve got your own version of Islam. It’s very Turkish…

S.K.: Meaning?

Justin Sullivan: Islam can adapt – which is why it’s a moderately successful cult. Like the biggest Islamic country in the world is Indonesia. They’ve got their own version of Islam, which is kind of…

S.K.: … but isn’t it the same for every religion?

Justin Sullivan: Yeah. And you know, such and such in Turkey… How many Turks actually quite like drinking beer? Quite a lot. It’s quite deep in the culture. And there is parts of Turkish culture which is much older than Islam. Rather like in Iran. Zoroastrianism. I don’t know what the figures are [for Turkey].

S.K.: Like 30% I would say is religious.

Justin Sullivan: That’s less than in America. What parts of the population want to be a part of the E.U.? What are the figures?

S.K.: Since 1997, Turkey changed a lot, because in the past, Muslims were against the E.U. With Erdoğan – the prime minister that you so like – things have changed. After being subjected to different sorts of discriminations by the military-imposed ideology, Muslims switched their positions. Before 1997, they wanted freedoms only for themselves. But after then, the paradigm shift made them think and say that they should come up with a more embracing, a more encompassing idea of freedom – just so everyone [including themselves] can benefit from it.

Justin Sullivan: Could it be a more embracing vision of Turkey as well?

S.K.: Yeah. Because, Kurds have supported Erdoğan, since the freedoms meant more freedoms for Kurds. More non-Muslims have supported Erdoğan. Although they account only to 1% of the population, that’s still important. And intellectuals have supported Erdoğan. That’s also a group which is very few in number, but they are highly effective, since they publish books, op-ed articles, and so on… So that constitutes a realignment in Turkish politics.

The opponents of Erdoğan also support Westernization. But they want to Westernize only in terms of their lifestyles. They don’t want to Westernize politically. They don’t want political liberalism. Their idea of the West is more like the West in the Interwar Period. Yet between the two world wars, it was a fascist Europe.

Justin Sullivan: There is traditional Islam. And then there’s the new fundamentalist Islam, which is quite different. Then there’s the Western influence. Then there’s the army… Erdoğan has played very very cleverly. He is “very” clever. It is quite interesting to watch the army be outfoxed basically. Maybe that’s why he is so popular…

S.K.: Such an interesting conversation, thank you very much…

[From that point on, we're just talking as we pack...]

S.K.: By the way, on our way to here, I asked as to what would happen if Justin, in his next visit to Turkey, sang Arm Yourselves and Run in Kurdish!

Justin Sullivan: (laughs) Interesting to find out! But I don’t think I’ll try it…

S.K.: You don’t want to risk it?

Justin Sullivan: It’s not that. There are certain times to play “punk-rocker” – like to make things happen, just to put a stick in the wasp’s nest. There are good times to do that. And as I get older, I don’t really find as much fun in putting sticks in wasps’ nests. I put a lot of sticks in wasps’ nests in my life. And sometimes I still do it. But mostly I don’t.

S.K.: After the age of 40? Same thing?

Justin Sullivan: Might be. I am 53 now, you know…

Justin Sullivan: Yeah…

S.K.: However, it’s also true that NMA songs influenced and intrigued a lot of people throughout the years, including myself. For example, I did not know the true story behind Waco before I wondered about what you were referring to in the song You Weren’t There. I then watched two documentaries on the issue, and the things I got to learn dramatically changed the way I looked at the incident. Don’t you think that this is also an important impact – because I’m sure there are a lot of other people who have been intrigued by similar songs, and are touched by what they found out in the afterwards?

Justin Sullivan: What can I say? (laughs) Maybe it’s true… I don’t sit down and write a song, going “Oh, this is really gonna change the way people feel about the world.” I don’t think that.

S.K.: That not the inclination. That’s not why you write the songs. But there’s such an effect…

Justin Sullivan: (dismissively) Okay, good…

S.K.: To you, that’s like a secondary effect then.

Justin Sullivan: (short pause) I guess…

S.K.: But that’s not what makes you write songs, because you just want to express as an artist, rather than trying to change the world.

Justin Sullivan: I hate making records, but I like writings songs, and I like playing songs live. I think music’s made of moments. When the guitarist does that, at the same time the drummer does that, and the singer sings those words, and your whole body goes, “Yes!” [But] Why? I mean, it’s weird, isn’t it? It’s abstract.
I had a weird thing the other night in San Francisco. We started [the gig], and I wasn’t really in the mood. I have to say I was tired, I was very unfocused, and the first song was a bit of a mess, to be honest. And when we go half way through the second song, one of those moments happened. I don’t know why, at a certain moment that we all played, just the chord changed, and there was that, and Michael did that, and it was one of those moments which was like perfect. Perfect! Perfect! Like the heaven opens, and some beam from God [descends] like that. And then I was there. And then suddenly I was in the gig. And the gig was a good gig after that. But I think music is made of moments.

When you’re growing up, [for example,] they tell you that the world is quite like this. But you find out quite quickly it’s not… So all through your life, you’re going like, “What is the truth?”, “What is the world made of?”, “What is life all about?”

I don’t spend everyday thinking about it, but [I do] every now and again. And then you hear a piece of music. And there is a moment in the music where you go, “That! That’s what it’s all about!” And it’s completely abstract. You can’t explain why. Wonderful! Magic!

[VIEW THE VIDEO]

S.K.: What you just said made me remember a passage I read in one of Ayn Rand’s books. It was saying that we don’t know anything about the psycho-epistemology of music – meaning that we don’t know what it is in sounds that makes us feel different things that we didn’t know were present inside of us.

Justin Sullivan: Sure.

S.K.: Secondly, you said, “I don’t write all the time.” But think about us. For example, this is the first time you’re talking to me, this is the first time you’re seeing me. But I watched lots of videos of you. From Impurity on, I have been listening to your songs, and we [as human beings] know phenomena with the parts of them that we come to contact with. So that’s the part of Justin Sullivan that I came to contact with, and that’s my idea of Justin Sullivan. So, it’s natural for us to think that you’re always like this.

Justin Sullivan: Yes, of course.

“[Obama is] an intellectual. That’s really weird for Americans…”

S.K.: In a U.S. gig a couple of years ago, before you started playing You Weren’t There, you told the audience about your experience of watching Fox News for the first time. Did you get to watch any more of Fox News while here in America this time around? If so, any progress on their part?

Justin Sullivan: (laughs) Fascinating! I think it’s amazing that America, given the presence of Fox News, short jokes, and all these things, voted in the last election voted for a f**king intellectual. The fact that he is black or half-African is not a big deal. It’s nothing. The point is that he’s an intellectual. That’s really weird for Americans… There is this huge anti-intellectualism in America.

S.K.: But it wasn’t always like that in the United States.

Justin Sullivan: I don’t know…

S.K.: You have James Madison on the other hand?

Justin Sullivan: Yeah. Long time ago, though… Since the Second World War, it’s pretty much not a huge tally of intellectuals out there… Not really… He’s a f**king university professor! This is a man who thinks a lot, and he is obviously very intelligent than all the rest of it.

S.K.: (laughs) That’s why I told you [before the interview] that I would drive this bus for free – to have this conversation going on for hours… It’s incredible!

Okay… [Next...] we occasionally hear of you doing things like handing out anti-war leaflets at Bradford city square or picketing with striking miners. Is that true?

Justin Sullivan: Yeah… I do that every now and again… I have to keep my hand in.

S.K.: To what extent do you feel a need to and actually do take your political views out on the street?

Justin Sullivan: I like to do it every now and again. [But] it’s not because I think that my presence is gonna make any f**king difference at all. It’s for the sake of my own soul.

S.K.: Like it would be a sin of omission?

Justin Sullivan: Yeah… [But] I don’t do it very often. I just do it sometimes – in a kind of random way. There is a million causes in the world. It’s a little bit like one of these beggars on the street. I don’t give to every beggar. I don’t give to no beggars. I occasionally give to a beggar – for no apparent reason. It’s random. Everything’s random. Nature’s completely random.

I used to be a busker… I used to play guitar on the street. When people come towards you, you never knew who would give you money. Some people did, and some people didn’t. Random.

I used to hitchhike. The car comes towards you. You look at the driver. Man-woman, black-white, old-young, rich-poor… You never know who will stop. Some people stop, and some people don’t. It’s really random.

Serdar Kaya: Prime minister?

Justin Sullivan: [Recep Tayyip] Erdoğan is an interesting guy.

S.K.: I can’t say I hate him.

Justin Sullivan: I can see why you wouldn’t. He’s a very interesting guy. At one night, I was up in the mountains in the northeast, near the border with Georgia and Armenia. We were sitting there watching television one night together with this guy, and I was talking about Erdoğan. We didn’t really speak English, and I didn’t speak Turkish, so I said [turns his thumb up and down], “Good man? Bad man? Good? Good?” And he went [turns his thumb up], “Very good! Very good!” Then the call to prayer went out across the village. It was the night time prayer, and I said, “Are you going?” And he went pffff….

S.K.: But he was still supporting Erdoğan…

Justin Sullivan: Exactly. He had no interest in religion, but he thought that Erdoğan was a good guy. Interesting… Erdoğan is kind of a street fighter, ain’t he?

S.K.: This is going really good, so I’m afraid we’re not going to be able to go through all of my questions. Because, I already have two [new] questions at this point: (1) What makes you interested in Erdoğan?, and (2) What makes you want to go to northeast Turkey? That’s very rare. You didn’t have any gigs there, right?

Justin Sullivan: I’ll tell you why. We had a gig in Istanbul, and then I had no special reason to go home. An the rest of the band went home. And you know the band Mor ve Ötesi? We’re friends with them. We were playing in an old place near Izmir, a seaside resort. So I went down there, and spent two days on the beach with them. It was lovely. But then I thought, “Well, I’m gonna see some Turkey!” But it was July. So all the sea is gonna be full of people on holiday, and the middle of Turkey, which is really interesting, is too f**king hot! And I had a guide book, and it said “northeast mountains!” Nobody goes there; cool in the summer; nobody speaks English… So that’s perfect for me!

S.K.: Did you go on your own?

Justin Sullivan: Yeah…

S.K.: Whoa!

Justin Sullivan: But it was interesting.

S.K.: I know you’re an interesting person. That’s why I wanted to interview you, but this is…

Justin Sullivan: Have you ever been to a place called Ani?

S.K.: Ani?

Justin Sullivan: Have you heard about Ani?

S.K.: No.

Justin Sullivan: The most amazing place I’ve ever been. Anywhere in the world, really, almost…

S.K.: In what city is it at?

Justin Sullivan: Ani is very near Kars.

S.K.: Oh my… I’ve never been to Kars.

Justin Sullivan: Okay, so… At the east of Kars, very near the Armenian border. And this was closed for a long time because of that thing between Armenia and Turkey. But there was an old city called Ani, which was the capital of Armenia [probably] in seventh, eighth, ninth century? And they built this amazing city. And then Genghis Khan smashed it on his way through. And then they had some more earthquakes. And then, most importantly, the trade routes changed. So this city became abandoned in 12th, 13th century. And there it is… Most of it is just rocks – rubble. But some of it, it’s kind of a big cathedral, and some are huge buildings from the eighth and ninth century. You can see Mount Ararat [from Ani] in a distance. It’s kind of on the grassy plains. And it sort of sits there, and nobody knows… I was there in July. I was there for seven hours, just looking… Just amazing… In seven hours, I saw ten Turkish family tourists. No Western tourists or nothing else… No one knows it’s there… [But] they will…

S.K.: Whoa! I’m amazed.

Justin Sullivan: You must really go there, it’s really interesting.

S.K.: I will. [...and I did, two weeks later!]

“Fascist Governments, in the End, Always Fail”

S.K.: In your songs, you talk a great deal about issues such as war, immigration, the environment, and justice or injustice. There are lots of references to natural and man-made phenomena as well – as in the city, the lights, or the hills. And we just talked about these… What makes you eventually come around and tell stories about these topics?

Justin Sullivan: It’s what I do…

S.K.: It’s just the way you are?

Justin Sullivan: It’s just what I do… The world’s interesting…

S.K.: And more specifically, do you think your strong sense of justice or injustice is influenced by your religious upbringing?

Justin Sullivan: No, I think it’s influenced by growing up in the sixties in a kind of liberal family. The sixties was an amazing time. I was a kid in the sixties. I wasn’t part of the hippie. I was too young. But my older brothers and sisters were kind of like that. But there is more the atmosphere of the time was very kind of “We’re gonna make the world better!” It’s the kind of natural phenomenon to have growth, and decadence, and then war; and then rebirth, decadence, war… We’re well into the decadence phase now. But the sixties was the rebirth after the Second World War. I picked up this atmosphere as a child. The world was gonna get better… But then it changed. In the seventies and eighties, and particularly in the eighties, that was over. It’s very over now – [that is] the sense of hope in the future… I think it must be terrible to be eighteen now.

S.K.: But, when you look at people, there are certain times when people are more inclined to do something or feel something about these issues, but then it fades away like in the cycle you talked about. But it didn’t fade away for you.

Justin Sullivan: Oh, I don’t know… I don’t know… I think I’m not the same. People think of me this way, because I wrote some songs about justice when I was young. I’m perhaps not the same. I’m not this great political warrior that sometimes people think I am.

S.K.: I heard you say things like, after the age of 40, you felt different.

Justin Sullivan: Yeah… I see everything in the world now according to nature’s laws. I have a religious upbringing. But now I’m basically a pagan.

S.K.: Like nature and God are the same thing…

Justin Sullivan: Nature and God are the same thing. Rule #1 of nature is constant change. Anything that is not changing is dead – which is why, in a strange way, capitalism is a kind of natural phenomenon. Because, it works according to laws of summer and winters. But, you know we had a big bubble, and it burst. That’s very natural. What’s not natural is the politicians and the financial people that were telling us three or four years ago that this will go on forever. After summer you can have more summer, and then you can have summer, and then you can have summer… And that now we’ve abolished winter, we’ve changed rules… There’s not gonna be a winter, there’s just gonna be summer. That was the unnatural part.

S.K.: The way you put it makes me think of John Maynard Keynes. Like you change the way business cycle works, and try to always make it summer.

Justin Sullivan: Yeah. It’s nonsense… It’s nonsense… The business cycle is like every other f**king cycle. It has summers and winters. The interesting thing about the current crash is that ordinary people are not out on the streets screaming, shouting. Ordinary people go, “Oh, we had a good summer, and now here comes winter…”

S.K.: But what do you expect? They’re not the ones who control the economy.

Justin Sullivan: That’s true. But nobody controls the economy…

S.K.: But maybe some people have more impact on the economy than the others.

Justin Sullivan: It’s debatable whether anybody controls the economy. Now there are some greedy f**kers who know how to play the economy. OK, that’s always true. Perhaps, the most interesting thing about the crash is that if you could’ve said to me a year ago that we’ll be in the situation we are in now. This is the most unlikely thing to me – that we would’ve given them all the money they wanted. The foxes killed all the chickens, and now you just give them more chickens…

S.K.: Because they’re too big to fail?

Justin Sullivan: But they’re not too big to fail… It just means that the next crash will be bigger.

S.K.: That’s another way to put it, and yes, it’s a legitimate perspective…

Justin Sullivan: You know I was a socialist when I was a kid. I was a communist, very left wing. The problem with socialism was not that it didn’t deliver economically. It didn’t, but that’s not the point. The problem with it is that it tried to freeze a moment. “This is the way the society is, and it will remain like this…” Nothing is more unnatural – which is why fascist governments, in the end, always fail; which is why democracy “sort of” works. Or there is a series of revolutions; that’s very natural too… As for the idea that you can create a perfect society and maintain it in the same rigid way; it’s very unnatural…

S.K.: It’s not gonna be as perfect as we thought it was after the passage of time is involved…

Justin Sullivan: Exactly. That’s right.

S.K.: If I may insert a question here [in regard to the song "Today is a Good Day"], how did it occur to you? Like were you watching the news, and saw the two big financial companies go down, … and bam! Today is a Good Day! Is that how it happened?

Justin Sullivan: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

S.K.: And you just wrote that song?

Justin Sullivan: Yeah.

S.K.: Whoa!… I thought you were gonna say something like, “Not exactly, but close…” Was it exactly like that?

Justin Sullivan: I write words all the time. The way we write is that we have a cupboard called “musical ideas.” And into that cupboard goes guitar riffs, drum beats, bits of bass line, bits of jamming, pool sequence, melodies… Chunk in the cupboard… Bits… They’re just bits, they’re not songs.

And in the other cupboard goes all the things I write all the time. And then, we have to stop, because I never write on the road… Because, we’re always tired… And writing songs requires even more focus than gigs. In order to write songs, you have to be really focused. So then we stop, we pull out all the musical ideas; and all the lyrical ideas, I just say, ‘That goes…, oh… there! That’s a good line, I’ll have that. And the chorus are there, that’s great. That works with that.” You just make it work… That’s the process of making an album. We wrote the whole of Today is a Good Day in three weeks – around last October. Except for Arm Yourselves and Run, which belongs in the time that it talks about, the early nineties in Yugoslavia, I wrote it then but never finished it. So I went back, and finished it for this album. Ocean Rising, obviously, is from my solo album; and the last song, North Star, which is written about our manager who died. You know the story… So everything else is written in October.

I interviewed Justin Sullivan of New Model Army right before the band’s Vancouver show at The Rickshaw on October 8th, 2009. The interview took place inside the band’s tour bus, since the vehicle seemed to be the only quiet place around. Within the 45-minute interview, Sullivan talked about a wide range of issues, including but not limited to (1) the way the band writes music, (2) the relations between the West and the Muslims in the post-9/11 world, (3) the Ani Ruins in Kars, (4) the Turkish political culture, and (5) Turkey in general. Furthermore, he once again amazed me with his humility – visible not only in his words but also in his manners in general.

Serdar Kaya: Let’s get started… You once said in an interview, June 18th, 2001…

Justin Sullivan: … oh, never quote me, I always forget, but go on, what did I say?

S.K.: Let me try… “If you’re prepared to follow a band who do not belong to any musical category, and are largely ignored by the media, then you already have an independent mind.” Do you deny that?

Justin Sullivan: No, I probably said something like that.

S.K.: OK. This is actually quite flattering for us fans, but how would you compare the American and the European audiences in that sense? Because, it is very common to direct negative comments to the American audience in that regard. I remember Scott Ian of Anthrax being really pissed off on that very same issue some years ago. He was talking about how Europeans would buy an album just because its cover looked cool, meaning they are more likely to want to explore.

Justin Sullivan: I don’t know if that’s true. I don’t think there’s a huge difference between people. There’s something in American culture which is a bit homogenized. People always ask what I think our audience is [like]. And I talk to other singers, and they always talk about “the audience” – singular. And I never really think of it like that. I think that it doesn’t really matter if there’s 50 people in a club or 100.000 people. To me, they are all individuals, and they have all got different reasons for wanting be there, and we’ve got different needs from the music, and they’ve all got different things they like about the music, and they’ve all got very different lives. I never generalize about audiences.

I know that, to some people, the words that I have written over the years are kind of like something they follow really closely. I also know there’s people in parts of the world, where people don’t speak English, they love the band, they don’t understand a word I’m singing. They love the band. They love the feeling and the music. And they don’t understand a word. That’s fine by me too…

S.K.: I would accept that for myself. Because, when I’m in a concert, I don’t usually react to the music the way people around me do. I just don’t like to jump and do stuff like that. I just pay attention to the music, and try to feel it inside of me.

Justin Sullivan: I judge what’s going on in a gig not by how much people clap, or how much noise they make, how much they dance, it’s just the look in the eye. You know, people have dead eyes or alive eyes. If we play a gig, and at the end, half the people still have dead eyes, then we failed. To me that’s a failure.

S.K.: I don’t think that happens a lot to New Model Army.

Justin Sullivan: Not often.

“There is a Process You Go Through When You Lose an Empire”

S.K.: I heard you more than once talking about how storytelling is one of the oldest human activities. But communication is a two-way process, and communicating through music makes it all the more complicated. Because, the story you are trying to tell or the feeling you’re trying to convey in a song can very well be perceived in different ways by the people who listen to it. For example, the song ‘Higher Wall’ is probably about immigration, but especially its concluding sentences always remind me of the nationalist/secularist official ideology of Turkey, and how it tries to constrain the behavior of the country’s citizens. Do you think that happens a lot? Do people receive your messages in their own subjective ways – even being aware of the fact that they are bending the original meaning?

Justin Sullivan: Yeah, it’s kind of why I said in the beginning that everybody’s view is subjective. I mean “everybody.” And when I write something, as soon as it’s released it’s public property, and people can take from it whatever they like. That’s the nature of all art. As soon as it’s out there, it’s public property. People can take from it, read into it, hear it, take the story whatever way they like…

S.K.: Did you experience a lot of people talking to you about NMA songs only to make you realize that they put totally different meanings to the songs than what you had in mind when writing them?

Justin Sullivan: Yeah, possibly. But that’s kind of all right for me, I don’t really…

S.K.: … care what people make of it?

Justin Sullivan: I don’t assume the right to control what people make of it. Do I care what they make of it? Well, I suppose so, but… It’s interesting what you said about Turkey though… I suppose that every country is always a result of its own history, and Turkey is still very conscious of 1918-1920. Because, it’s not very long ago. But gradually, that will fade, and the Turkish people will become more confident in the idea of Turkey. Think of what happened in 1918-1920… All these foreign powers are waiting to take bits of Turkey. So there is this part of Turkish national identity which is basically paranoid, and I think this will lessen as the years go by…

S.K.: It is…

Justin Sullivan: It is lessening?

S.K.: Yes.

Justin Sullivan: And the Turks are more confident in Turkey?

S.K.: I wouldn’t say “Turks.” I wouldn’t generalize. But a portion of the population is raising different kinds of questions.

Justin Sullivan: Yeah, I’ve seen a complete change in the 30 years we’ve been playing in Germany. The young people we were playing to in the 1980s would adopt British culture, or Irish folk culture, or South American folk culture; but anything except German folk culture. Because, they were terrified of German folk culture – since the German folk culture had been co-opted by Hitler, and the Nazi, the fascist thing. But now, we’re far enough away from the Second World War, for instance; far enough away from Hitler. We’re two three generations away from both. Young people in Germany are no longer scared about German culture – which is a good thing. If you have a kind of paranoia built into your history and stuff, this eventually subsides.

S.K.: I subscribe to that view actually, the historical process is a primary determinant.

Justin Sullivan: Yes, it is a historical process. Interestingly, Turkey lost an empire, and there is a process you go through when you lose an empire. Now Britain is kind of the same thing. It’s going through that process. And America, it’s just gonna start, shortly…

S.K.: I was just about to say that!

Justin Sullivan: It’s a natural process. You know everybody had an empire at one point. F**king Lithuania had an empire, you know. Armenia had an empire. Everybody has had empires; and they lose them; and then they go though a process of reevaluating.

S.K.: In Turkey, the nationalist idea is to gain it back, but let’s not go there, because it’s gonna take a lot of time…

“Turkey is Endlessly Fascinating to me…”

Justin Sullivan: Turkey is endlessly fascinating to me…

S.K.: Fascinating?

Justin Sullivan: Fascinating country!

S.K.: In what way?

Justin Sullivan: One, history; and two, geography… There you are sitting “there”… So Turks are forever going, “Are we in Europe? Are we in Middle East? Are we in Europe? Are we in Middle East? Are we in Europe? Are we…,” and they write endless books about it. Of course, the truth is, you’re both! And it’s a land of contradictions, [but] every land is a land of contradictions.

S.K.: I really like the way you approach the politics of the country, but people just don’t want to say what you say, as in we’re both. Maybe so, in a lot of ways…

Justin Sullivan: Yeah, both…

S.K.: But when the West says, “You’re not Western,” even those who do not really feel Western feel offended.

Justin Sullivan: Yeah, you’re too quick to take offense, don’t worry about it. When I was in Turkey last year, I spent a bit of time in Istanbul. I was with lots of rock ‘n roll, liberal, Westernized people. But I wanted to meet some other people. I have a friend in my home city Bradford. She is very religious. She is very Muslim. She had said, “Oh you must meet my friend, this guy in Istanbul.” I met him for dinner. We had a very interesting dinner. He said, “Of course, Istanbul is a European city, and of course, Europe has no problem with Istanbul being in Europe. But Europe does not want to border with Syria.” It’s an interesting way of looking at it.

As the Turkish people move further away from the status quo, the pro-Kemalist minority sinks deeper into the state of fear that they and their forefathers have lived in since 1922. Therefore, whenever an elected non-Kemalist party decides to act like the legitimate power it is and intends to introduce some of the measures that the Turkish people have voted for, Kemalists tend to react once again in desperation, and call the Turkish Armed Forces ‘to duty,’ which is to safeguard the Kemalist principles – needless to say, at the expense of democracy.
Despite the militarist authoritarianism they involve, Kemalist concerns are not unfounded. Because, it is true that, on a wide variety of policy issues, large segments of the Turkish society position themselves in a manner which is irreconcilable with the state ideology. However, these people have for so long been questioning why their opinions are not as valid as the next man’s. At that point, Kemalists argue that the educational level of the Turkish people is very low, and that the ‘public’ would endanger the fundamental values of the Republic if given the right to choose for themselves. “For the time being,” Kemalists argue, “Turkey’s unique conditions make it impossible for the regime to allow a free market of ideas.” The only cure to the disease that Kemalists keep talking about is therefore to keep waiting until the majority of the Turkish people are educated enough to understand how Kemalism is best for them.
The Kemalist argument is invalid for two reasons.
First, many of the opponents of the Turkish official ideology are, in fact, respected journalists, intellectuals and academicians, whom certain ultranationalist Kemalist groups frequently label as traitors. It is not uncommon for such intellectuals to also be subject to threats of violence, or to face charges and convictions. Very recently, Atilla Yayla, a political science professor at Gazi University at Ankara, and one of the most prominent proponents of freedom of thought and expression in Turkey, was temporarily dismissed from his academic post right after certain newspapers proclaimed him a traitor to the country on the grounds that he referred to Turkey’s ‘Great Leader Kemal Ataturk’ as ‘this man.’ Acting upon the controversy, the Public Prosecutor pressed charges on Yayla, and he was eventually convicted for pointing out in his speech that the one-party era (1925-1945) of the Turkish Republic was less progressive than the period that followed. Yayla now teaches at a university in the United Kingdom – sharing a similar fate to that of the Nobel-laureate novelist Orhan Pamuk, who also opted for a self-imposed exile, and left Turkey to teach comparative literature at Columbia University.
Secondly, the Turkish official ideology is not composed of complex social, cultural, political or economic doctrines at all. In other words, a high level of education is not necessary to understand its implications. Kemalism finds expression in six principles formulated by the Party-State during the late 1920s and the early 1930s. These principles correspond to either the imposition of certain Western cultural standards, such as the Western dress code, or to typical examples of collectivism and social solidarity that were very popular in the (then) corporatist Europe.
In all, the real question Turkey faces today is not whether the Turkish people will one day be educated enough to understand and conform to the principles of Kemalism. The real question is, instead, what the Kemalists will do about those who refuse to accept Kemalism as a guide for their social, cultural and political lives. To put it in another way; when faced with an even more conscious majority of opponents in the future, will hard-line Kemalists be ready to accept the fact that their ideology is disputable like any other, and that not every one has to agree with it – or will they opt for another coup to overthrow their political opponents and to intimidate the Turkish people?
This is a question of democracy and militarist authoritarianism. In more simple terms, this is a question of what they will do to us when the time comes. Because, it will be up to the Kemalists to decide which one it is going to be – since they are the ones in possession of brute power. And given their track record, there is not much room even for wishful thinking.

After the coup of 1980, Turkey was governed by a military administration for three years, during which the junta restructured the country’s political system. The most important outcome of this process was probably the Constitution of 1982, the most militaristic fundamental document of law in the history of the Turkish Republic. The new constitution was enacted by a popular plebiscite, which the junta conducted with quasi-transparent envelopes.

The next and final phase of the process was the restoration of ‘democracy,’ which, according to the junta, was a synonym of ‘elections.’

General Elections of 1983

The military administration led by general Kenan Evren designed a two-party political system, where two military-friendly parties would superficially represent the country’s left- and right-wing ideologies. The party on the right, Nationalist Democracy Party (MDP), was in the leadership of the retired general Turgut Sunalp, and the party on the left, the Populist Party (HP), was led by Necdet Calp, a bureaucrat.

Stealing the elections was not going to be a big deal, since the pre-coup era political parties were to remain banned throughout the pseudo-democratic process (as well as in the years to come), and new applications were to be rejected. The military, however, made one exception for Turgut Özal, the US-educated former deputy prime minister who also served in the military administration as a civilian state minister responsible of the economy.

Özal was fully aware of the intentions of the junta, as well as the reason why they allowed him to form a party. He later on said he knew all along that the soldiers believed he wouldn’t be able to get even a paltry 10% of the vote. His Motherland Party (ANAP) was simply the junta’s proof of democracy, or a ‘garnish on the menu,’ as Özal put it.

As the months passed by, and the election date drew closer, however, the military leaders realized that they made a big mistake. Because, the general public increasingly sided with the ‘civilian’ Özal, and not with the arrogant Sunalp, who continuously and unintentionally ridiculed himself as he talked to the press. In a last effort to impact the outcome, coup leader Evren addressed the public two days before the election, and strongly implied that they should vote for Sunalp, and not for Özal. But in the end, to everyone’s surprise, Özal scored a major victory by winning 45% of all votes. Sunalp came as the third with only 23%.

The people had refused to do as the coup leader told them.

How the Turkish History Repeated Itself in 2007

Shortly after coming to power in 2002, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) introduced somewhat revolutionary reforms “ranging from improved civil liberties and human rights to enhanced civilian control of the military,” as the European Commission stated in its 2004 Regular Report on Turkey. The reforms altogether constituted a major deviation from the country’s Kemalist political tradition. The ban on the Kurdish language was lifted; certain restrictions on the right of non-violent expression of opinion were abolished; military representatives in the Board of High Education (which oversees the universities) and the Superior Board of Radio and Television (which oversees the mass audiovisual media) were removed; the principle of the primacy of international human rights conventions over domestic law was adopted; the authority of military courts were restricted so as not to try civilians for offences related to criticizing the military; and the National Security Council was brought under stronger civilian control.

The legal reforms were brought about in an effort to adapt the Turkish political system to that of the EU. Reducing the military influence and control, and thus protecting civil liberties was therefore the paramount issue all along.

Once deprived of some of the political powers it long enjoyed, the military obviously had every reason to try and reverse the process. Unwilling to remain in the barracks, the military “continue[d] to exercise influence through a series of informal channels” despite the newly-enacted legal restrictions, the European Commission’s 2004 Regular Report on Turkey also acknowledged. Moreover, the retired army members established a number of non-governmental organizations, started registering thousands of people, and, in some cases, organized ceremonies where they pledged to kill traitors. This neo-nationalist (ulusalcı) network also engaged in grassroots efforts in order to influence the public opinion against the EU and the AKP.

The implicit efforts of the military and the explicit efforts of the neo-nationalists reflected on the political arena throughout the first half of 2007.

March 2007: An internal memorandum of the military that indexed Turkish journalists as either pro- or anti-military leaked to the press. Three weeks later, a 2000-page alleged memoir of the retired naval forces commander that revealed detailed coup plans of some generals also leaked to the press.

April 2007: Hundreds of thousands of people gathered in Ankara in a public demonstration organized by the pro-military neo-nationalist networks to protest the AKP and the prospective presidential candidacy of an AKP member (April 14th). Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan announced the presidential candidacy of Abdullah Gül, the country’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and former Prime Minister (April 24th). The Turkish Armed Forces issued an ultimatum on its official web site, harshly criticizing the AKP, also implying the threat of an actual coup (April 27th). The neo-nationalist network organized the second leg of its anti-AKP demonstration in İstanbul (April 29th).
May 2007: Introducing an unprecedented requirement, the Constitutional Court declared the first round of presidential elections unconstitutional, creating a strong impression that it made an arbitrary decision (May 1st). The Prime Minister announced early general elections (May 2nd). The neo-nationalist network organized a third demonstration, this time in the city of İzmir (May 13th).

June 2007: Evidence linked some of the neo-nationalist groups to recent high-profile murders and attempted bombings.

As of July 2007, it was highly visible that Turkey once again entered a pre-election calm where the state/military indicated the general public to vote against a certain political party. The demonstrations, which, according to the anti-AKP groups, attracted two to three million people in each of the three major cities strengthened the view that there would be a visible increase in the votes for the Republican People’s Party (CHP), which represented the state’s official ideology.

It did not happen.

46% of the popular vote went to the AKP, indicating a sharp increase from 34% in 2002.

The people, once again, disagreed with the generals.

The Ungrateful Nation

The dichotomy between the state and the people has always been a major phenomenon in the republican-era Turkish politics. It is not a rare case for the members of the so-called republican elite to accuse the general public with illiteracy, bigotry or shortsightedness. İsmet İnönü, the second president of Turkey, is reported to have reacted to the humiliating loss he suffered in the general elections by saying, ‘Ungrateful Nation!’ – (nankör millet). This was in 1950, the year which the Turkish people finally had the chance to bring about the electoral downfall of the state-party. The die-hard republican elite still call it ‘the counter-revolution.’
After 57 years, the ‘elite reaction’ to the will of the people remains pretty much the same. After the general elections of 2007, Onur Öymen, the deputy head of the Republican People’s Party, claimed that the election results were ‘irrational.’ Erdal Atabek, a columnist in the Kemalist Cumhuriyet Daily asked, ‘What percent of the voters are really able to use their minds?’ Finally, Özgür Çakmak, who unsuccessfully ran for MP within the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) ranks said, ‘I have travelled the whole world, but never came across such a characterless people.’

Despite all the arrogance, sensible voices are getting increasingly more common in Turkey. Professor Murat Belge, who has published a large volume of articles about the influence of the state-inflicted militarism on the Turkish people, wrote in the left-wing Radikal Daily: ‘Whenever it had the chance to make a ‘choice,’ this society always made the right one: In 1950, in 1973, in 1983, and now.’ But, more importantly, he also quoted Abraham Lincoln: ‘You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.’

The Turkish Parliament adopted eight legislative packages between February 2002 and July 2004, introducing somewhat revolutionary changes to the country’s political system. As the European Commission’s 2004 progress report on Turkey stated, these changes ranged from “improved civil liberties and human rights to enhanced civilian control of the military.” The changes were so wide in scope that the European Commission, in response, recommended the EU to start accession negotiations with Turkey.

Preceded by a number of other positive developments, this long-awaited decision of the European Commission was warmly welcomed in Turkey. The majority of the Turkish people came to believe that things were finally getting on track in the country. The subsequent events, however, proved otherwise.

Despite bringing about Turkey’s most comprehensive democratization reform in its history, the conservative (yet progressive) Justice and Development Party (JDP) was subjected to heavy criticism by the state institutions due to the presidential candidacy of Abdullah Gül, the country’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, and former Prime Minister. Although an accomplished diplomat known for his moderate views, Gül became a persona non grata since his wife wore the Muslim headscarf, which, according to the Kemalist elite, is a symbol of political Islam and thus incompatible with the country’s secularist character.

The first reaction to Gül’s candidacy came from the Turkish military in the form of a harsh warning, which implied a threat of intervention. After a short while, Kemalist circles organized new legs of huge demonstrations to protest a prospective JDP-elected president. These demonstrations were, from one viewpoint, a reflection of widespread concerns about secularism, which is the foremost defining characteristic of the Turkish regime. But from another, they were examples of mass mobilization to produce a political cul-de-sac in the country’s path of democratization.

Democracy-Coated Militarism?

In their academic article “Democratization and the Danger of War,” Edward Mansfield and Jack Snyder argue that developments such as “social change, institutional weakness, and threatened interests tend to produce a political impasse along the route toward democracy.” Under the above ‘threatened interests’ context, Mansfield and Snyder demonstrate how, in the periods of democratization, “threatened elite groups have an overwhelming incentive to mobilize allies among the mass of people … using whatever special resources they still retain.” The following (edited) excerpts from the article clearly explain the recent phenomena in Turkish politics:

• Elites mobilize mass support to neutralize mass threats.
• By mass mobilization, elites aim to maintain their ability to use the control of traditional political institutions to shape the political agenda and to structure the terms of political bargains.
• The elite mobilization of mass groups takes place in a highly competitive setting.
• When autocratic states start to democratize, many of the interests threatened by democratization are military in nature.
• A nearly universal element in these ideological appeals is nationalism, which has the advantage of positing a community of interest that unites elites and masses.

It is a well-established fact that, in the last couple of years, retired members of the Turkish Armed Forces tend to associate themselves with the concept of kuvva-i milliye, the legendary militia forces that fought the Turkish War of Independence in the early 1920s. Pro-kuvva ex-soldiers have founded a network of NGOs, employed grassroots efforts nationwide, and registered a large number of members. Some of the new-member-ceremonies that leaked to the media included pledges to kill traitors, since the new kuvva movement intended to not only influence public opinion but also fight the enemy within. The main agenda of this new neo-nationalist (ulusalcı) network includes: opposition to Turkey’s EU membership for sovereignty reasons, opposition to privatization and foreign investments, and glorification of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk as a national hero.

This new-born neo-nationalist movement was highly influential in the recent mass mobilization efforts in Turkey – strongly implying that the supposedly democratic reactions against the elected JDP government can very well have a hidden agenda. At this point, it should not be overlooked that the reforms introduced by the JDP in order to bring the Turkish political system into line with the Copenhagen Criteria not only entailed an “enhanced civilian control of the military” but also constituted the biggest deviation from the Kemalist political tradition in the country’s history. Since the Turkish Armed Forces considers protecting the Kemalist political tradition one of its major raisons d’être, it is highly questionable as to whether it will acquiesce to the consequences of democratization in Turkey. A careful reading of the secularist demonstrations can help with the answer to this question.

On the face of things, the huge demonstrations seemed to be merely secularist in character, yet a strongly nationalist, pro-military and anti-EU discourse was also equally existent. Furthermore, it is very hard not to notice that the main organizer of the rallies, the Association of Atatürkist Thinking, is headed by a retired general who allegedly planned a coup when in office in 2004. In all, the recent developments in Turkey deserve to be examined also under the ‘democratization’ context with a special focus on the ‘mass mobilization’ phenomenon that Mansfield and Snyder point out. As the European Commission acknowledged in its 2004 progress report, “the Armed Forces in Turkey [still] continue to exercise influence through a series of informal channels,” and the analyses that ignore this fact and base their results on inadequate information are doomed to be misleading.

The current U.S. foreign policy focuses on the states that sponsor terrorism, and aims to replace dictatorial regimes with democratic ones – on the assumption that the latter will bring new societal and political values which will not only moderate strong anti-American sentiments but also make America safer. In that sense, the region that poses imminent security risks and requires immediate attention in the world is the Middle East. Therefore, democratization of the Middle East surfaces as one of the biggest concerns of the current U.S. administration.

The question of whether the dictatorial regimes in the Middle East really plan to attack the United States or have ties to anti-American terrorist groups has yet to be answered. But even if new evidence unveils such ties, the democracy-based arguments of the current U.S. administration will still lack a sound rationale. Because, as far as international security problems are concerned, democracy can hardly ever be a cure to the sickness.

Democracy cannot be a Tool of Conflict Resolution

Issues related to international security stem from a conflict of interests – rather than the nature of the regime that prevails. States, almost always, aim to follow policies that serve their best interests, and unlike domestic politics, democracy has not yet been an effectual instrument in breaking deadlocks on an international level. Northern Ireland, for example, is a chronic problem between two democracies, but democracy alone has not been sufficient to resolve the conflict.

Under a domestic politics context, there is no reason why democracy should necessarily produce results that are in line with the interests of another nation. Because, adoption of democracy does not silence popular views or policy choices – including those which the majority of the voters deem necessary for their subjective ends. Moreover, globalization works against the modernist idea that the role of religion will fade away in societies as well as in individual lives; and as different nations re-embrace their cultural and religious identities, countries in the Middle East will naturally be more sensitive in their problems with Israel. Democratization is not capable of reversing such trends and developments in a society.

Besides, it is highly questionable as to whether it is possible to export democracy, since democracy does not prevail by democratic institutions but by a democratic mindset that is absorbed by the society in generations.

Nonproliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction

The current U.S. foreign policy understands democratization also as a tool of nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction – and this is yet another issue where the role of democracy is exaggerated.

Although it is true that democracy rejects the militarist worldview that favors proliferation by all means possible, it is nevertheless not sufficient solely by itself to ensure peace. This is mainly because democracy is (unfortunately) still an instrument of domestic politics. In other words, democracy, for the most part, determines only domestic issues related to rights and public participation, however, proves ineffective in international relations. Iraq War, for example, was started in the name of freedoms by a coalition of countries whose populations vastly opposed it.

If democracy is restricted to domestic affairs and does not really apply to international security issues, then the nature of the domestic regime is irrelevant when judging who should have the right to possess weapons of mass destruction, and who should not. All countries have certain interests, and all wars start for pragmatist reasons. It is apparently not in the best interests of the United States (or any other state) to have enemies with WMD. However, nonproliferation through preemptive strikes, in that matter, is merely another form of pursuing interests by force, and has nothing to do with democratization whatsoever.

Alternative Policy Implications

Samuel Huntington argues that the world is moving away from political ideology-based bipolarization after the collapse of the USSR, and that, in the 21st century, culture and civilizations will determine the nature of alliances. During the Cold War Era, NATO served as a treaty organization against the expansionist threat of communism, which is now a thing of the past. If weapons of mass destruction are the biggest present threat against humanity, then NATO should be replaced by a similar treaty organization which would accept countries that possess nuclear technology (not nuclear weapons) as members. Abiding by the organizational codes of inspection, the countries which form this alliance must register all of their nuclear research facilities and storage. The treaty organization can, in the end, easily identify any country that does not wish to become a member and to comply with organizational codes.

The ideas of the scholars and political analysts who offer (or reject) a multilateral, international solution have, of course, not been tested – simply because this is a fairly new issue, and it is not possible to scientifically explain phenomena that have yet to occur. The implications of the Cold War Era, however, may be an exception. Because, we know it for a fact that the Cold War Era did not heat up, and this is at least partially due to the existence of the NATO. If a coalition of the willing decided to preemptively attack the Soviet Republic on the basis that it had nuclear weapons (instead of forming an international alliance), that would not prevent nuclear war. It would evangelize it.