earthquake diplomacy, earthquake politics
It seemed a bit graceless to launch into aloof political analysis too soon (and I've been too busy to write much this week anyway) but I did want to take up the topic of the political ramifications of earthquake relief, partly because some of the speculation swirling around the possible fallout of the Pakistan quake recalls the example of Turkey.
The first echo comes in questions about whether or not there might be a peace dividend resulting from cross-border relief efforts, as Pakistan has accepted some help from India and Israel (although the latter must channel its funds through a third party). But there's also been frosty exchanges about whether or not Indian troops crossed the LoC, and quite a bit of prideful nationalist posturing in addition to the mutual offers of aid. Nearly every damned newspaper article I've read has mentioned the Turkish-Greek example, so here we go.
The rapprochment between Turkey and Greece in the aftermath of the 1999 Izmit quake is the strongest example of this particular dynamic--so much so that the label "earthquake diplomacy" was coined to describe it. For most of the twentieth century, the two were enemies nearly as bitter as India and Pakistan have been, with a similar legacy of mutual violence. (The Turkish-Greek population exchange under the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne was the first example of internationally-sanctioned forced migration/ethnic cleansing on the basis of religion--a precursor of sorts to Partition, though far less bloody as it came after the end of the fighting.) Greece and Turkey have been at odds about Cyrpus--the Mediterranean's Kashmir--since the 1970s, and in 1996 they nearly went to war over a few rocks in the Aegean. In early 1999, another spat between the two took place when the Greek embassy in Nairobi provided shelter to PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan, infuriating Turkey.
But in 2005, Greece is one of the strongest supporters of Turkey's bid for EU membership, the Greek Prime Minister served as a witness at the wedding of Turkish Prime Minister's daughter last year, and an unprecedented degree of cultural and personal exchange--especially among young people--is taking place. It's not all the result of an earthquake--the EU is a major factor, as is the general process of political opening in Turkey I've written so much about--but the quake was a catalyst. Some thawing in relations had already begun to take place in by August 1999, when the Turkish city of Izmit was flattened (and İstanbul badly shaken) by a massive earthquake. Greece immediately offered aid and dispatched rescue teams, and dropped its prior opposition to a major EU economic assistance package for Turkey. Then a month later, a smaller, but still lethal, earthquake struck Athens--and Turkey rapidly responded in kind. The media--particularly television--played an absolutely crucial role in the massive, popular outpouring of mutual sympathy, as people in each country watched citizens of the other pulling children out of the rubble of collapsed buildings and treating injured victims. It's very hard to convey how dramatic the change in attitudes was; the Greek Foreign Minister at the time referred to it as "an amazing climate" of solidarity and diplomatic opening. The eventual warming of relations may have taken place anyway, but the impact of the earthquakes was the kind of dramatic, completely unpredicable shift that plays havoc with the ability of international relations theorists to make sense of the world.
The second important link with the current situation in Pakistan was the domestic political impact of the quake. The Turkish government was slow and ineffective to respond--and because of the presence of television cameras, its failures became blindingly clear to the public. The response was in some ways comparable to the astonishment in the US about the Bush administration's inept response to Katrina---but in Turkey, it had serious political fallout (I'm not holding out much hope for that at home, alas). Not only was faith in the government and the traditional coalition of governing Kemalist-military elites shaken, but the response of civil society organization--including those associated with the Islamist parties and social movement--put the state to shame. The combination of fury at the role political corruption had played in allowing developers to build shoddy, death-trap structures, and the admiration for the response of private and religious groups were influential in the subsequent electoral victories for opposition parties, and the eventual rise of the "moderate Islamist" AKP. In Pakistan, the concern is that some not-so-moderate Islamist groups will step into the breach--and that already seems to be happening. On the other hand, the Izmit quake also had a galvanizing effect on civil society in general and fostered more open critique of the government, and that effect too seems to be evident in the article that sepoy cites in this post.
The astonishing series of natural disasters over the last year (tsunami, hurricanes, quakes) is a reminder that although the disasters may be "natural," they occur in a political context; the questions of who suffers, and what relief their suffering finds, are embedded in thoroughly human structures of social, political, and economic difference. Poor, black people are left to drown in New Orleans; tens of thousands die in a quake in Kashmir that would kill tens or hundreds in California. Insofar as we can't prevent the natural events themselves, much of what makes them "disasters" is within our reach to change.
As an odd little postscript--it strikes me as strange, but I think the Arabic (and Urdu) term for earthquake--zalzala--is such a lovely, graceful word, for such a devastating thing.
The first echo comes in questions about whether or not there might be a peace dividend resulting from cross-border relief efforts, as Pakistan has accepted some help from India and Israel (although the latter must channel its funds through a third party). But there's also been frosty exchanges about whether or not Indian troops crossed the LoC, and quite a bit of prideful nationalist posturing in addition to the mutual offers of aid. Nearly every damned newspaper article I've read has mentioned the Turkish-Greek example, so here we go.
The rapprochment between Turkey and Greece in the aftermath of the 1999 Izmit quake is the strongest example of this particular dynamic--so much so that the label "earthquake diplomacy" was coined to describe it. For most of the twentieth century, the two were enemies nearly as bitter as India and Pakistan have been, with a similar legacy of mutual violence. (The Turkish-Greek population exchange under the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne was the first example of internationally-sanctioned forced migration/ethnic cleansing on the basis of religion--a precursor of sorts to Partition, though far less bloody as it came after the end of the fighting.) Greece and Turkey have been at odds about Cyrpus--the Mediterranean's Kashmir--since the 1970s, and in 1996 they nearly went to war over a few rocks in the Aegean. In early 1999, another spat between the two took place when the Greek embassy in Nairobi provided shelter to PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan, infuriating Turkey.
But in 2005, Greece is one of the strongest supporters of Turkey's bid for EU membership, the Greek Prime Minister served as a witness at the wedding of Turkish Prime Minister's daughter last year, and an unprecedented degree of cultural and personal exchange--especially among young people--is taking place. It's not all the result of an earthquake--the EU is a major factor, as is the general process of political opening in Turkey I've written so much about--but the quake was a catalyst. Some thawing in relations had already begun to take place in by August 1999, when the Turkish city of Izmit was flattened (and İstanbul badly shaken) by a massive earthquake. Greece immediately offered aid and dispatched rescue teams, and dropped its prior opposition to a major EU economic assistance package for Turkey. Then a month later, a smaller, but still lethal, earthquake struck Athens--and Turkey rapidly responded in kind. The media--particularly television--played an absolutely crucial role in the massive, popular outpouring of mutual sympathy, as people in each country watched citizens of the other pulling children out of the rubble of collapsed buildings and treating injured victims. It's very hard to convey how dramatic the change in attitudes was; the Greek Foreign Minister at the time referred to it as "an amazing climate" of solidarity and diplomatic opening. The eventual warming of relations may have taken place anyway, but the impact of the earthquakes was the kind of dramatic, completely unpredicable shift that plays havoc with the ability of international relations theorists to make sense of the world.
The second important link with the current situation in Pakistan was the domestic political impact of the quake. The Turkish government was slow and ineffective to respond--and because of the presence of television cameras, its failures became blindingly clear to the public. The response was in some ways comparable to the astonishment in the US about the Bush administration's inept response to Katrina---but in Turkey, it had serious political fallout (I'm not holding out much hope for that at home, alas). Not only was faith in the government and the traditional coalition of governing Kemalist-military elites shaken, but the response of civil society organization--including those associated with the Islamist parties and social movement--put the state to shame. The combination of fury at the role political corruption had played in allowing developers to build shoddy, death-trap structures, and the admiration for the response of private and religious groups were influential in the subsequent electoral victories for opposition parties, and the eventual rise of the "moderate Islamist" AKP. In Pakistan, the concern is that some not-so-moderate Islamist groups will step into the breach--and that already seems to be happening. On the other hand, the Izmit quake also had a galvanizing effect on civil society in general and fostered more open critique of the government, and that effect too seems to be evident in the article that sepoy cites in this post.
The astonishing series of natural disasters over the last year (tsunami, hurricanes, quakes) is a reminder that although the disasters may be "natural," they occur in a political context; the questions of who suffers, and what relief their suffering finds, are embedded in thoroughly human structures of social, political, and economic difference. Poor, black people are left to drown in New Orleans; tens of thousands die in a quake in Kashmir that would kill tens or hundreds in California. Insofar as we can't prevent the natural events themselves, much of what makes them "disasters" is within our reach to change.
As an odd little postscript--it strikes me as strange, but I think the Arabic (and Urdu) term for earthquake--zalzala--is such a lovely, graceful word, for such a devastating thing.
posted by kitabet at 11:37 AM
2 Comments:
ah! and that's just how it feels: the ground pulling itself out from beneath your feet. now i find that it exists in turkish too (albeit as an archaic term no one uses anymore): zelzele. The modern standard turkish is deprem, which sounds to me like the name of a heavily-marketed prescription drug. not at all sufficient to capture the nature of the thing it describes.
this is utterly irrelevant, but are you by any chance doing ottoman history at berkeley? coz you seem familiar slightly...
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