[LINK] A Turkish politics uchronia

At a recent conference in Brussels, Turkish Defense Minister Vecdi Gönül caused a stir when he said that the expulsion of the Greeks and Armenians from Anatolia after the Fiorst World War--of course following the Armenian genocide--were acts that, though difficult, were essential steps in Turkey's evolution as a modern society. What sort of Turkey, he asked, would there have been if so many Greeks and Armenians, at least 20 and possibly as much as 25% of the country's population, had stayed put?

Academics such as Soli Özel, Ferhat Kentel, Baskın Oran and Ayhan Aktar stress that if the minorities had not been expelled, Turkey would be a different place in terms of the Kurdish question, the economy and secularism.

Aktar says there were two nations that eradicated their own bourgeoisie, the Russians in the 1917 revolution and the Turks, first by killing them and second by exchanging them. "This means that during the 1923-1934 period the bourgeoisie was liquidated. It was not possible to reach the export level of the Ottomans until 1928. Then there was the 1929 crisis, which introduced statism to Turkey," he says.

According to Kentel, statism created the bureaucracy and the new capitalist segment supported by it got richer but, because they didn’t know how to invest, they fed off of the resources of the state. This attitude brought all kinds of evils: corruption, a tolerance for mafia-style business and the legitimization of all types of immoral trade rules.

Oran stressed that the ability to invest, produce, export and find markets totally disappeared in 1915 and 1923. In an article published in the Agos newsweekly and the Radikal daily this week, industrialization was set back by at least 50 years. Özel argued that, after losing its minorities, Turkey had to spend 60 years creating sufficient human capital. Ergil notes that the locals in Anatolia asked state officials to bring back some of the minorities because it was not possible to find professionals and artisans, such as stove makers, mechanics and construction experts.

According to many academics, Turkey would also be a better place culturally, too. In his article Oran cited some examples and asked his readers to imagine what Turkey would look like if the cultural developments spurred on by minorities had not be ceased. "Anatolia before it was cleansed was a very civilized place. In Harput alone there were 92 schools, and there was a theater there a year before Atatürk was born. The Sasuryan brothers introduced photography in 1890,” he points out. Özel agrees, adding that if the Greeks and Armenians were still living in Turkey, Anatolia would not be a place of tensions.

Academics also say some of Turkey’s other problems would be different. For example, since there would be different cultures, tolerance would be learned naturally and secularism would not be a problem for Turkey. Ergil argues that Turkey would definitely be a pluralistic country. He also recalls that before the forced emigration of the Armenians, no one was talking about extreme poverty in eastern Anatolia.

They all also agree that the Kurdish question would be different. Kentel says there would be many languages spoken and that this would help the development of tolerance for different cultures. Aktar underlines that Turkey cannot have a population exchange or force Kurds to emigrate but, at the same time, it is not able to develop a culture of cohabitation. "If even only 5 percent of the population was composed of minorities, Turkey would have a culture of cohabitation and the Kurdish question would be at a different level."

[BRIEF NOTE] Good bye to the Yugo

The lineage of the humble Yugo subcompact automobile has come to an end

[T]he last Yugo, once the pride of communist Yugoslavia's automobile industry, will roll off its Serbian production line today in the central town of Kragujevac.

It will be missed here--but probably not in America.

Soon after it hit the U.S. markets in 1986, selling for just $3,990 (U.S.), the boxy Yugo was derided by American car magazines "as barely qualifying as a car" and "an assembled bag of nuts and bolts."

U.S. owners complained of frequent engine failures and transmission problems--with the manual gear sticks sometimes detaching and ending up in their drivers' hands--in addition to passenger doors and trim parts going AWOL.

When the U.S. Insurance Institute for Highway Safety conducted crash tests of 23 compacts in 1986, the car with the worst results was the Yugo, with $2,197 worth of damage in slow speed crashes against a flat barrier.

Still, more than 100,000 Yugo GVs--standing for Great Value--were sold in the U.S. before Yugo America, the company that imported it, went bankrupt and Washington imposed economic sanctions on Belgrade for fomenting ethnic wars in the Balkans in 1992.

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Alan Cowell at The New York Times links the Yugo to other Soviet-bloc automobiles, like Czechoslovakia's Skoda, the Soviet Lada, and East Germany's Trabant, as a cherished status symbol, if one that was ultimately inferior to its western European counterparts. The replacement of the Yugo model with other cars is notable mainly for its lateness, although the technology may survive in one form or another--one news source suggests that the Democratic Republic of Congo might take up the torch.