The Turkish Enigma

I live in Istanbul and for obvious reasons have been receiving e-mails and phone calls in the past few days asking what, exactly, is going on in Turkey. The answer is that I’m not sure. This is the only honest answer any journalist can give, unless she has managed to place a listening device in the meeting rooms of the Turkish Cabinet. It’s not, however, the answer all are giving. The events surrounding the bloodletting on the Mavi Marmara have prompted more media coverage, here and abroad, than any news event I can recently recall. Much of it is speculative and polemical nonsense. Journalists proclaim, over and over, that this has become a media war, which would seem to put them in an impressive position on the front lines, though in fact, should the worst come to pass and result in an outright Turkish-Israeli naval war—not impossible to imagine—journalists will, as usual, make no military decisions and will constitute only a tiny fraction of the dead. The media are certainly playing a role in this conflict, but in the end the power is, as it always has been, with those who control the militaries—and they’re saying little.



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