Iran And Turkey: Faces Of Change
By Farooque Chowdhury
17 July, 2013
Countercurrents.org
Despite a lot of dissimilarities between Iran and Turkey the two countries are now facing an emerging broad similarity. With visible signs an approach to change is steadily emerging in these two societies.
Fear and hope, both prevail in the societies. The aura of fear is dwindling while the hope is turning bold and is patiently waiting for further appropriate moments. The two countries have already experienced massive expression of public dissension.
Turkey witnessed bright face of mass demonstrations, by tens of thousands, and courageous silent protests, by hundreds in towns and cities, against the rule of Erdogan, a politician with an archaic Ottoman heart and a temporary modern posture.
Iran saw, weeks ago, bright smiling faces of young females and males flooding streets in celebration of making a mark. The old-style monotonous, drab faces were less visible. New, clean, sharp faces came to public view widely. Their joyful faces, their appearance, their motion bore signs of defiance and yearning for a democratic space.
The ruling elites in both the countries are facing public opposition, which the elites perceive as a threat to the status quo, now appearing shaky, they have imposed. The public dissention is not only to the ruling elites' political arrangements and the imposed status quo, but also to the way of life and culture the elites impose on respective broader society, and to the ideology these elites use in their ruling machine. Wide sections of peoples in these two countries are opposed to the whole spectrum of the ruling elites' ideological position.
Progressive authors and teachers, and citizens with scientific world outlook had to go through prison and persecution in Iran . Many of those tales of pain and humiliation are unknown to the broader world. Literature on the labor in Iran presents the condition labor faces and the size of space, a pitiful little, labor can claim there. Employees, white and blue collar, know the little extent to which they can move to claim a just share in wellbeing.
Is a new Sultanate in the offing?
In Turkey , the elites with Muslim Brotherhood background are trying to impose their ideology on the entire population. Still there is an atmosphere of fear. Still fresh is the memory of the killing of poets, authors, intellectuals, workers: 35 in a single incident, in the Madimak Hotel in July 2, 1993. Still fresh is the memory of Hrant Dink, the journalist shot and killed on January 19, 2007.
Erdogan regularly criticizes media. Journalists are regularly haunted in the society. The Gezi-Taksim protest period has seen victimization of more than one hundred photographers. Mainstream media is almost under complete government control. The government limits freedom of expression. Erdogan now plans to preside over a presidency with a new constitution which will empower him with more authority.
Business community and conservative-liberals, a nice community that makes money through easy and nice deals, and forces against military intervention once supported Erdogan as he came to power in 2002. The Turkish ruler, whose path is charted by the IMF, and who is fundamentally an originalist, sticks to his root – a sectarian, conservative, supremacist ideology.
But humanity and environment don't accept supremacist ideology as the ideology doesn't tolerate any other “thing” – no other class, no other class interest, no other concept, no other race, and no other and none. It's arrogance only, a fascist, Nazi attitude. One Turkish journalist said: “[T]his is Turkey where it appears increasingly that the field is being taken over by primitives.”
The ban on red lipstick for the Turkish Airlines hostesses, and efforts to put them into more modest garb, etc. are a few tactical moves to divert public attention from more pressing problems in the society. Erdogan likes a “religious youth” in Turkey . Murat IV, one of the most brutal of Ottoman sultans, is one of the heroes to today's Turkish elites.
Murat IV banned alcohol, tobacco and coffee, roamed the streets at night in disguise to catch the persons defying his ban to have them executed. “But, […] Bilkent University 's Halil Inalcik, the world-renowned Ottoman historian, indicates in his seminal work The Ottoman Empire : The Classical Age, 1300-1600 , Murat IV – like many Ottoman sultans – was himself a habitual drinker, and his bans ultimately failed.” (Hürriyet Daily News) History tells: coffee shops and tea stalls are among those places, where ideas are exchanged, people interact and dissect a regime. And, history is marked by rulers despising and banning coffee shops.
David L. Phillips, director of the Peace-building and Rights Program at Columbia University 's Institute for the Study of Human Rights, provides a “picture” of the economy in Turkey :
Now, the slowing down economy is finding disappearance of wealth although once it experienced a classic credit boom. The ruling party's economic policies are under question for fueling inflation. Growing debt burden will compel the consumers to tighten their belts. However, a group has benefited from a $400 billion public works program that includes large infrastructure projects such as a $10 billion airport for Istanbul and a $3 billion bridge across the Bosphorus. In 2012, $4.7 billion was spent on construction projects in Istanbul alone. (“Why Are Turks So Angry?”, June 11, 2013, World Policy Institute)
The economy's slow down speed is not good for Erdogan and co.
Mustafa Sonmez provides further information:
Construction became the sector that left its mark during the ruling AKP regime. The steep interest rate climate that large capital owners lending to the government benefited from amid the heavy transaction implemented in 2001 and 2002 with the help of the IMF ended as well.
As the AKP rule attached the Building Land Office, which controls the public lands, to the Housing Development Administration of Turkey (TOKI), which is directly under the authority of prime minister the enrichment era began in the construction sector. The TOKI model uses public lands as a kind of capital without spending from the budget. Small contractors, known as AKP partisans, big industrialists from the past and financers started to feed from the construction sector.
The building permits show the explosion in the sector. The permits were for 36 million square meters in 2002. It rose to 171 million square meters in 2010. The total area of the buildings for which construction permission was granted over the past decade exceeded 1 billion square meters.
Today, as the private sector makes two thirds of Turkey 's foreign debt around $340 billion, the companies active in construction and real estate sectors are the biggest debtors among private sector's debtors. (“Construction surges after public lands opened during ruling AKP rule”, HDN)
With this tilt, the economy is now facing further problem.
The decision of the US Federal Reserve to end its asset purchases in 2014 has affected the Turkish economy (Günes Kömürcüler, “'Turkish economy at high risk, but not due to Gezi protests'”, HDN, June 24, 2013)
A relationship is there. On June 22, 2013, MIT economist Daron Acemoglu said: “In Turkey , it is nearly impossible to make big business projects without having close relations with the political figures.” (ibid.)
This relation or connection needs other tools in the fields of idea and culture. A faction of the propertied class finds conservative and non-scientific ideas suitable to win over a section of the masses, and this section forms the ruling elite's constituency.
Suitably, as happens in cases of many other ruling elites, a section of the Turkish ruling elites discard science. Citing ScienceInsider magazine (July 5) a section of the Turkish media reported: The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TÜBITAK) has rejected a funding application for a summer workshop on quantitative evolutionary biology, arguing that "evolution is a controversial subject". It had halted the printing of books that dealt with evolution. The state council had caused major uproar when a cover story in one of its publications was pulled down as it focused on Charles Darwin's evolution theory.
The Turkish rulers' stand against science is evident. Probably the ruling elites with sectarian ideas have some other grand strategy as they are aware that discarding of science doesn't help governing clique that benefits from public spending.
So, the elites need denial of basic human rights and imposition of limits on freedom of expression as human rights and freedom of expression help expose and oppose deals made in the interest of the elites. The ruling elites, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, systematically restrict freedom of expression in media and civil society.
David in the article mentioned above provides further facts:
Article 8 of the Anti-Terror Act is used to suppress dissent while Article 301 of the Penal Code makes it a crime to “denigrate Turkishness.” Regressive legislation limiting freedom of expression and marginalizing political opposition is not repelled. Dissenting opinions are silenced via criminal prosecutions. Since May 31, the government is arresting journalists and rounding up students who used Twitter to mobilize demonstrations. An estimated 15,000 websites have been blocked in Turkey ; some of these are pro-Kurdish or other political content. Judicial proceedings are also being used to eliminate political opponents. Since 2007, more than 500 journalists and military officers have been arrested and accused of plotting a coup against the AKP government. More than 300 individuals linked to the probe are still in jail, but no one has been convicted. Thousands of Kurds associated with the Union of Kurdistan Communities face trial on terrorism charges while hundreds are held in administrative detention.
“Turkey”, writes Serkan Demirtas, “has become a country where the ruling party representing half of the country's electorate is exercising the state's police (and military if needed) force in the most brutal way on the other half of electorate, who launched a massive uprising against the government's growing authoritarian inclinations.” (“Welcome to the Turkish Republic of Police State”, HDN, June19, 2013)
“[T]aking measures”, Serkan writes, “to increase the degree of state intervention in personal, social and political matters has also been much more visible in Turkey . Increasing the powers of the National Intelligence Organization (MIT) and decorating it with the unquestionable authority of providing detailed information about every individual was the latest attempt of the government …” (ibid.)
Serkan writes: Mass detentions of critical voices, calling government opponents “traitors,” describing peaceful demonstrators as marauders and illegitimate are only some ways to silence the opposition under this rule. (ibid.)
Erdogan, Serkan adds, discriminates “against those who do not share the conservative lifestyle”, creates “a sort of ‘neighborhood pressure' on them”, and expands “its influence on different segments of the society through intimidation.” (ibid.)
The sections standing opposite to the sectarian rulers include, as Serkan mentions, dissident academics, social democrats, some nationalist groups, Alevis, communists, socialists, trade unionists, artists, social media activists, “twitterers” in English, sympathizers of the Gezi Park demonstrators, alcohol-cigarette consumers, those who are against having three kids, defenders of the right to abortion. (ibid.)
The elites find conspiracies hatched by enemies in the EU, the Council of Europe, most Western countries, the UN, the “interest rate lobby”.
Conspiracy theories are touted, in the face of political opposition and protest, for (1) confusing members of the public, (2) strangulating voices of opposition, and (3) denying debate in broader society.
Resorting to conspiracy theory signifies inability to (1) find out problems within, and (2) initiate political move/program; and these two spuds in self-incapacity, and only a doom waits for the conspiracy theory preacher as the sermonizer confirms self-inability. Conspiracy-organizers can not hatch their plan if there is no space for conspiracy – weakness within.
The ruling class interests have failed to resolve the secular-conservative contradiction, which is a contradiction, on the one hand, within dominating capital, and on the other, between dominating capital and broader society. The dominating class interest is confronted with contradictions between its “civil” and military parts, which is the capital's problem but which is impacting the broader society. The question of official ideology faces the same situation.
Indeed, these are failures of the ruling elites, one faction of which is representative of conservative authoritarianism that feels its power in arrogance, and imagines that secular culture within the broader society can be eliminated with force of power. The attitude and practice, dependence on mechanical force and failure to win over social factors, make it vulnerable.
The ruling elites imagine that the Alevis, about 20 percent of the population, and the Kurds can be ignored. It doesn't take into account the fact reflected in an April 2013 Pew Institute survey: Only 12 percent of Turks want to institute Sharia law.
These make the ruling elites' all efforts for dominance a gigantic dream for constructing a medieval castle on the sky as it widens divisions within the society, brings more political rifts within its camp, make problems more complex, undermines its dream for creating a 21 st century Sultanate. The economy it presides over can bring nothing else within the reality it faces.
The ruling elites “democratization” rides an authoritarian horse that tramples all contending forces with secular standard as the Taksim-days showed. The ruling conservative elites' rise to victory depends on demolishing progressive ideas and advanced culture, and monopolization of all political power, an act of losing broader support.
This type of failures leads to following type of pronouncements, which are reflections of level of politics and political propaganda:
Erdogan, in a recent speech at the EU-Turkey conference in Istanbul , said: 17 persons died in New York due to police treatment of Occupy Wall Street protesters. But he was not factual. No one was killed at NYC OWS at that time.
On June 16, 2013 Erdogan, indicating to him, proudly said: “You can never find a prime minister like this in the world”.
Erdogan can't ultimately sustain in power even if he now succeeds in lingering his clinging to power by capitalizing weaknesses of the protests. He is facing the biggest ever political problem in his political life. Now, Erdogan's program and move make him a spent politics.
With the passage of time, he will find him standing on a fragile ground of support. There is evidence that his support base is shifting. Connections between huge construction projects and business houses are getting exposed. Rhetoric and playing with emotions of people don't ultimately pay in politics.
Despite the contour of fear and threat, the country found a protest initiated by a few to save a small piece of greenery that widened with dramatic speed: The Gezi-Taksim movement. Despite heavy-handed intervention and excessive use of force by the authorities the movement, since the beginning of its journey in Istanbul's Gezi Park on May 28, spread like a wildfire to about half of the county's 81 provinces.
These protests are political. The ruling machine has accelerated surfacing of the movement's political appearance with the machine's assault on the movement. A section of the elites resorted to inciting shallow emotion and scandal. It's a show of the section's political-helplessness. Scandal and shallow propaganda is resorted whenever political arguments start losing edge or politics starts turning blunt.
However, neither Tahrir-dynamics nor Occupy Wall Street-dynamics can be found in Taksim as historical-social-economic backgrounds of the three – Egypt , the US and Turkey – are different. There is no reason to expect that all the time Taksim will have equal speed and force, and that the speed and force will be on the surface all the time.
The ruling elites have widened the movement's support base by making indiscriminate assault on sections of the society joining and supporting the movement. Taksim doesn't determine the course of contradictions in the society. Rather, it's the opposite. And, the ruling elites can neither escape the contradictions nor can they handle these as their class interests put bar on this capacity. The contradictions within the society won't wither away if Taksim movement gets suspended for one reason or other.
A state machine bares open its weakness when it violently reacts to an environment initiative, when it can't peacefully handle a movement of scores of environment-aware citizens and helps the citizens' initiative turn broader, when it fails to deliver judgment to the satisfaction of its citizens, as happened in the case of Ankara protester shot dead, when leaders of environment initiative are haunted, as evident in house searches of the Taksim movement leaders, when, as reported in the Turkish media in early-July 2013, relatives of dead protester in Ankara are threatened. The state machine is aware, and is scared, of broader and wider fault lines under the surface. The fault lines influence the machine's course of action, and the machine gradually decimates its acceptability with the actions.
The Standing Man protests ignited by performance artist Erdem Gundüz in Istanbul are only the latest example of “disproportionate creativity” mobilized against “disproportionate police force”, writes one Turkish journalist. The Standing Women and Men stood silently for hours in defiance in town and cities – a silent resistance, as Erdem Gundüz told, against violence by authorities.
Pushing away of the Standing Women and Men shall not take away the contradictions within the society, which the ruling elites are failing to resolve. And, this reality will make the faces of change clearer.
Elites in quarrel in a theological state
Living with decreasing oil exports, recession and negative growth Iran is witnessing its stultified manufacturing sector, increasing unemployment and inflation at its highest level in about two decades – more than 32%-40%, depending on the method of calculation. Its GDP in 2013, as IMF calculates, decreased by 1.3%. The value of its currency, rial, has more than halved in a year that has cut its imports drastically. Production costs have jumped to aashmaan , sky. None will disagree: The economy is in its worst condition for decades.
Squabbles, obviously surface of deeper contradiction, among the ruling elites are increasingly coming to public view, a failure of the authoritarian rulers as this type of rulers don't consider people possess sense of judgment. Recent developments in the state are significant.
Ahmadinejad , Iran 's outgoing president, has to appear in front of a criminal court in November, a few months after he will be relinquishing presidency to Rouhani, the cleric propagated as moderate, as Ahmadinejad has been summoned by the court to face charges. The plaintiff is Ali Larijani, parliament speaker.
The “story” is a bit old.
A few months ago, Ahmadinejad and Larijani engaged in a public bickering at the highest levels of the Islamic state as Ahmadinejad exposed financial corruption of Fazel, the speaker's brother. Fazel was, as was said, trading with his brother's political power.
Later, in Qom , the city considered holy by the cleric-elite-disciples, Larijani had to experience slogan shouting angry people throwing shoes at him as he was delivering a speech.
The society once again experienced an arbitrary show of “reason” by the political apparatus of the state as it was going to presidential election a few weeks ago. Without citing any reason the Guardian Council, the state's constitutional body, disqualified Mashaei, Ahmadinejad's confidant. To a section of the ruling clerics, Mashaei undermined clerical power as he advocated nationalism and placed the country ahead of religion. The council virtually handpicked candidates, assumed as friendly to the constitutional body, for the presidential election and violated the state's constitution.
These, the public exposure of corruption at higher level, the court summon, and the handling of the election process, are dramatic reflections of power struggle between ruling factions that creates cracks and fractures in the palace of power the cleric-elites have built up over the last 30 years. And, the power struggle sprouts from competition for control over the economy as the factions have interests there.
Condition of labor in a society is an indicator of the state of the society, and of the power equation and contradictions within the society. A few recent incidents, instead of getting into details throughout a long past, in the case of labor in Iran help understand a part of the prevailing reality in the society. Following are descriptions, in brief, of the incidents, actually, assaults on labor:
(1) In a letter to the International Trade Union Confederation, the Free Union of Iranian Workers said:
“[T]he sporadic independent workers bodies and organizations in Iran have always been under most difficult pressures and in the past years, many members of those organizations were expelled, thrown into jails and had to face prosecution […I]n Iran, […] widespread violations against the […] organizations and their activists have increased. In addition to expulsion, detentions and arrests, many members of such organizations particularly members of Free Trade Union of Iranian Workers and coordinating […] workers' organizations have been under tremendous pressure by the security and intelligence forces to resign from their organizations. This is up to the point where after the activists were summoned on imaginary charges, some judges and security operatives have demanded our union members' resignation from the Free Trade Union of Iranian Workers as a precondition for them to receive not guilty verdicts, otherwise to receive heavy sentences. Applying such pressures against effective members of our union increased specially during last year's May Day commemorations and since then, worker members of our union have prepared a protest letter campaign signed by over forty thousand factory workers throughout the country demanding increase of minimum wage in accordance with Article 41 of the Labor Act and setting aside the anti-workers bill to amend that article, and implementation of other basic rights.
“This trend, and the security and intelligence forces declaration of our organization and few other independent organizations as being illegal, [have] increased in the past year. We witnessed daily establishment of […] types of labor and trade unions in Iran and according to minister of labor's claim, the number of such organizations have increased by 2 times. […T]here is no law in Iran governing registration of labor organizations as labor or trade unions […] since all were under Labor House, government and security forces not only do not bother them, the labor ministry's policy is to create […] such unions in attempts to substitute Islamic Councils to enable them to relieve themselves of the pressures applied by international labor organizations because of the ideological natures of the Islamic Councils.”
The letter mentioned organization by and direct involvement of “the operatives of the Supreme Center for Islamic Councils” “in suppression of the Syndicate of Workers of Tehran and Suburbs Bus Company”, “[acts] in coordination with security and intelligence forces”, “confiscat[ion] [of] workers' protest signatures and prevent[ing] them to reach the organizers”, and “level[ing] imaginary accusations against the signature campaign coordinators claiming them being affiliated to special forces”. These were “their attempts in creating environment of fear for the workers and coordinators of the signature campaign.” ( iran labor report, May 30, 2013, “Free Union of Iranian Workers' Letter to ITUC on Workers' Organizations and IRI Labor Delegates”)
(2) On the eve of the 102nd session of the ILO in June, Vahed Bus Workers Syndicate released a statement on the state of the Syndicate and its members and the situation of the state-sponsored labor organizations in Iran . The union asked ITF to file a complaint against Iran for its noncompliance with ILO regulations. Behnam Ebrahimzadeh, an imprisoned labor activist, published an open letter to ILO asking the body to not stand silent in face of trampling of workers rights. (ibid, May 30, 2013, “Imprisoned Iranian Labor Activists on the Eve of the ILO Session”)
(3) Many labor activists in Iran are in jail because of their union activities and pursuance of workers' rights. They include Reza Shahabi, Shahrokh Zamani, Mohammad Jarrahi, Behnam Ebrahimzadeh, Rasoul Bodaghi, Abdolreza Ghanbari and many others. They faced/are facing arrests, imprisonment. (ibid)
Reza Shahabi, a member of the secretariat and treasurer of Vahed Bus Workers Syndicate, is in jail for three years. He was released on February 7 for treatment of injuries after spending 22 days on hunger and medicine strike only to be returned to prison on April 15 although physicians suggested his continued physical therapy and oral surgery. The injury was incurred during his arrest
Shahrokh Zamani, an activist with Committee to Pursue the Establishment of Workers Organizations in Iran and member of Tehran 's Construction Decorative Workers Union, was arrested on June 2011 and has been sentenced to 11 years in prison.
Mohammad Jarrahi, a labor activist with the Committee to Pursue the Establishment of Workers Organizations in Iran , was returned to prison after his operation for thyroid cancer on February 16. But he is in need of chemotherapy treatment. He was arrested on June 2012 and sentenced to five years in prison. He was also arrested in 2007 and was sentenced to 14 months in jail on charges of “propaganda against the Islamic Republic” and “Counter Revolutionary activity”. But the sentence was then suspended due to his lawyer's efforts.
Behnam Ebrahimzadeh, an activist with the Committee to Pursue the Establishment of Workers Organizations in Iran and Street and Labor Children Defense Society, was arrested for his labor and children's rights activism on June 12, 2010, and was sentenced to 20 years' imprisonment in December 2010 on national security charges. But the sentence was overturned by the Supreme Court and commuted to five years in prison. He was released on January 10 of this year following pressures on the authorities because of his son Nima was hospitalized for leukemia. He was then sent back to prison to spend the rest of his prison term.
Rasoul Bodaghi, a member of the board of Teachers' Trade Association, is in jail since September 2009 serving a six year prison term because of union activities. He was kept in solitary confinement for several months and was severely beaten by the prison guards. He has been expelled from the Education Ministry, and he has lost his salary.
Abdolreza Ghanbari, a teacher with 14 years of experience, is in jail since December 2009 for taking part in demonstrations. He was originally sentenced to death, which was later overturned.
Pedram Nasrollahi, a member of the Coordinating Committee to Help Form Workers Organizations in Iran , was arrested on November 14, 2012 following his summon to the court in Sanadaj. He is serving a 19 month sentence in prison.
Ali Azadi, Behzad Farajollahi, Vafa Ghaderi, Seyyed Khaled Hosseini and Hamed Mahmoudinejad, activists with Coordinating Committee to Help Form Workers Organizations in Iran , were arrested on March 7.
Sharif Saedpanah, an executive of the Free Union of Iranian Workers and one of the coordinators of 30,000 workers petition, was arrested on March 10. He was sentenced to six months in prison.
Mozzafar Salehnia, activist with Free Union of Iranian Workers, was arrested in January 2013 and was sentenced to six months in prison.
Mehdi Farrahi, a contracting teacher and founding member of Contracting Teachers Union and a labor activist, was arrested during the May Day ceremonies of 2009 in Tehran . He is in jail since June 1, 2010. While in a court to collect his personal belongings he was met with “inhumane treatment”, which led him to protest, for which he was then taken to the notorious Kahrizak prison in Tehran under baseless accusations of disturbing peace. He has later been transferred to Evin prison, where he was kept in solitary confinement for nine months. He was also arrested in 2006 and spent 9 months in prison.
Ghaleb Hosseini and Ali Azadi, labor activists with Coordinating Committee to Help Form Workers Organizations in Iran , were arrested on March 8 for organizing women's day celebrations. Azadi was released on May 9 on bail and Hossein was released on May 13 after spending 54 days in jail.
Afshin Osanloo, an intercity bus driver and a founding member of Intercity Bus Drivers Union (in jail since January 2011 sentenced to five years in prison, was severely tortured during his prison term). (ibid.) [Afshin later died in questionable circumstance.]
(4) Following a May Day march in Sanandaj, several labor activists were arrested. They include: Jalil Mohammadi, an activist with the Coordinating Committee to Help Form Workers Organizations in Iran , Hamed Mahmoudinejad, an activist with the Coordinating Committee (both of them were arrested on May 2), Bakhtiar Chatani, Nastaran Mohammadi , Aram Zandi and Fardin Ghaderi (they were released on bail, however Jalil is still in jail). (ibid)
(5) Mohammad Ghasemkhani and Bahram Saeedi joined a protest gathering by Iranian parliament on May 1. They were arrested on May 2 upon entering the factory compounds. Mohammad Ehyayi, an auto worker and labor activist, was arrested on May 4 following being called to the factory offices and being interrogated by plain cloth security operatives. His house was searched. Ehyayi and few other workers were organizing a strike for back wages and planned privatization of the factory. (ibid)
(6) Afshin Osanloo was declared dead by the notorious Rejai Shahr prison authorities on June 22. The cause of his death was told as heart failure; a claim vehemently denied by his family and comrades. He had no prior history of heart problems and his mother, who had met him a week before his tragic death, said he was in perfect health at the time of her visit. Afshin was scheduled to be released by next January. (ibid, June 25, 2013, “Afshin Osanloo (1971-2013) Repression Takes the Life of Another Labor Organizer”)
(7) Afshin is not the first labor activist to succumb under inhumane conditions in prison. Last year, Sattar Beheshti was murdered in custody after being severely beaten. According to published reports, Afshin was tortured at the time of his arrest four years ago. Aside from this, conditions at Rejai Shahr are among the worst in the Islamic Republic. Prisoners are kept in windowless cells where prison guards have unlimited power over their victims, and family visits and furloughs are cut back or denied at the whim of the prison wardens. (ibid)
Labor is a “slice” of society; but it's a significant and undeniable part as society depends on this part for creating resources and attaining rosperity, although the part often has to bear marks of capital's whipping and deprivation. Labor in Iran is no exception.
The older “story”, persecuting other social forces that also stood against the Shah regime, is of pain to many. The “story” is of reneging of commitment by the clerics that usurped political power. The clergy, after usurping the command of the anti-Shah upheaval, annihilated progressives, and other secular and nationalists forces in the society.
Progressives, who took part in the 1979 political upheaval overthrowing Shah, needed not much time to turn disenchanted as they witnessed their cleric-colleagues' betrayal and hijacking of the political change. The clerics were bent on imposing a stifling political system. The usurpers started driving a supremacist, actually racist, class biased political concept, and strangled an entire society.
The mainstream Anglo-US media backed and skillfully promoted the clergy that helped them suppress the progressive forces in the anti-Shah upheaval. Section of imperialist capital favored the Iranian clergy.
Now, a handful of persons impose their will on the vast majority of masses in Iran . The rulers' survival depends on keeping their hold on power, power of all sorts – economic, political, cultural and ideological. Their diktat on life style, legal system, expression, education, even subjects to be studied by female students, has been imposed on people. Savak's persecution, it seems, has not been forgotten by these rulers.
The thousands of people persecuted by the scorned Shah-cracy, the millions of people who rose in revolt against the Shah-rule found their dreams shattered within a short time.
People with progressive outlook face persecution in the theologic state. The progressives now realize the importance of correctly identifying class character of an ally, and the price a nation pays for political mistakes.
However, the ruling elites are not invincible. The fragile nature of the ruling elites' ideology surfaces when a few seconds telecasting of bare arms of singer Shakira and “indecent” and “un-Islamic” images in the middle of a live coverage of a football match, as was recently telecast by the country's state television Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) network, generates furious debate and a section of the ruling elites attacks the telecaster, in this case the IRIB. The ruling ideology can't withstand a few seconds “deviation”! Is the ideology and morality so weak? Are Shakira's arms so powerful that a few seconds of its telecasting has the power to corrupt citizens' morality? The debate and the furious attack is a primary show of weakness of the theocratic authority. It'll be easier to grasp the weakness if one identifies the place in which ideology gets created.
Sayings/observations of Hassan Rouhani, the newly-elected president in the country's 11th presidential election held on June 14, 2013, are significant as it reveals at least a part of the ruling elites' mind. Rouhani, in a recent interview with a youth magazine, said:
(1) “Today the republican [nature] of our country is overshadowed by a specific interpretation of its Islamic [character].” (2) “Some of the principles of our constitution have been emphasized while others were neglected and this is why we are facing an imbalance as a result.” (3) “The freedom and rights of people have been ignored but those of the rulers have been emphasized … Restricting [people's right] to criticize will only stifle and lead to inefficiency.” He admitted that citizens' rights had been neglected. He felt, as he told in the interview, the country was at peril.
During his first post-election speech, he said a country receives its legitimacy from its people. He expressed the opinion that the Islamic republic's legitimacy is meant to come from the popular vote.
“Legitimacy from people” takes away a part of theoretical foundation of a theocratic state. A basic problem can be identified if relation between theoretical foundation and economic interests is identified as the interests formulate theory or theory reflects interests.
A theocratic state, no doubt, faces some sort of problem when the state leans on people to have a sort of legitimacy, even it's for propaganda purpose, instead of leaning on some other source that its theory propagates. Implication of this view, even if partially propagated, will reach far away places of authority.
Answer to a question has to be searched if the fundamental questions related to “legitimacy from people” are set aside, and are considered as “pop stance” and temporary, and the question is: why a part of the ruling elites is talking about “legitimacy from people” while legitimacy ultimately comes from, as the decision making set up in the state shows, a group's final judgment? It's a theoretical defeat of a state as it, at least a section of ruling elites whom Rouhani represents, goes to or talks about people to gain legitimacy. One may ask: Does the state consider people sovereign? People can't provide legitimacy if it's not sovereign. A significant and powerful part of state mechanism will face question if people, instead of a clique, provide legitimacy.
Rouhani, considered a moderate by a section, also made other observations that are significant. Rouhani said he opposed segregation of men and women including at universities. He criticized those who are against allowing women to enter stadiums to watch football matches along with men.
On women wearing the hijab he said he was against the crackdown against women with loose clothing. He said: “I'm certainly against these actions”. He was of the opinion that a women without a hijab is not necessarily without virtue. “If a women or a man does not comply with our rules for clothing, his or her virtue should not come under question … In my view, many women in our society who do not respect our hijab laws are virtuous. Our emphasis should be on the virtue.”
Women, female-male segregation, hijab, mandatory religious code are not insignificant issues in a theocratic state as these are part of the ruling elites' dominance on the society, and this dominance is essential to secure status quo, especially the existing property relation. Even, significance of these issues is not lost if these issues/allocation/practices are narrowly and mechanically viewed as only related to practice and culture, as often viewed by a section in the advanced societies.
The issues are actually related to fundamental interests. Moreover, the issues impact on a portion of society, which is a part of constituency, and the part can take the size of, in terms of number, millions. A change in this sphere will impact, if not within a short period, fundamentally, on areas ranging from fundamental interests to psychology.
The expressed position, as was reported that Rouhani told, is of a section of the ruling elites, and it's the section's felt need that has grown out of compulsions within the society and among concerned interests. Efforts to resolve a few contradictions within the society, with the women and with the interests of the women, and winning over a section of the society, a constituency, may drive to the expressed position on the issues.
However, this effort will generate new contradiction within the elites as a section will be opposed to the position. The felt need or compulsion is serious if there is no section opposing the position. The questions, who opposes and how is opposed, will come up if there is any opposition to the opinion of the newly-elected president. On the other hand, discontent within the constituency, women, will increase if the pronouncement is not materialized. And, the discontent will devour reliability and authenticity of the ruling elites' pronounced motive, which has far-reaching implication.
Rouhani's position, as expressed in the interview, on artists (his opinion or saying: the state – instead of interfering in the affairs of artists and cultural figures – should provide them with security), for minimizing censorship of artistic and cultural works, on the youth (“A large population of our youth are ignoring the [state] television because in it they haven't seen the honesty, morality, justice that it merits”), on TV show (“When the state TV shows a program about the birth of a panda in a Chinese zoo but doesn't broadcast anything about workers staging a protest because they haven't been paid for six months … it's obvious that people and the youth will ignore it”), on some of the internet filtering measures taken by the authorities (was not done in good faith and was instead politically motivated, “There are political reasons. They have fears of the freedom people have in online atmosphere, this is why they seek to restrict information”) is also related to the condition of a section, if not the entire, of the ruling elites. The problem does not escape if it's the whole instead of a section of the elites.
All of these efforts seem to be geared towards gaining back total control of the political system by the clerics fractured into factions: hard or soft, originalist or moderate, dogmatic or pragmatist, divineist or nationalist and secular, putting religion above country or the opposite. Common and fundamental interests are the same irrespective of the factions.
Now, the conservative clerics, as Akbar E. Torbat writes in his “The Unexpected Results Of Presidential Elections In Iran”, can retain their control over the revolutionary Guards, the Judiciary, the Islamic Endowment Funds, and the revolutionary foundations while the moderate clerics will take back the executive branch and in turn, will control the industry, commerce, and the financial sectors. ( Countercurrents.org , June 30, 2013) But contradiction between elites' and commoners' interests shall not wither away as the cleric elites don't stand for changing property relation, where their interest is grounded. The ruling elites with their ties with capitalism don't question the existing class relation. This carries seed of conflict within the broader society.
Contradictions brew up within the society as people interact with modern education, science, as information reaches them, as ruling elites are bent on to control economy and society. But modern education, science and wider access to information stand as barrier to the elites' attempt.
Now, people nourish disregard to the sectarian rule while they show an outwardly obedience to the authoritarian system run by the clerics. The society, about three decades after the clerics' usurpation of power, is now dominated by a prosy feeling. The group of clergy controlling the state is experiencing its gradually loosening grip on the society, its gradually minifying power to manipulate social psychology. This is evident in activities and organs of the state as well as the election result and the outpouring of people on the streets.
The existent economic relations will be maintained under the control of one faction or another of the ruling elites despite the ruling elites' ongoing retreat. Efforts will be made to safeguard the status quo – the power equation in the society, the privileges, the property relation.
People, marginalized in the society, now wait for moments, as the people outpouring onto city streets after the election result show, as cracks appear in the walls of clerics' bastion.
Accelerated interaction
The people in these two countries aspired change. Changes were made. But it was an aspiration-betrayed. The elites in both the countries haven't initiated/have failed in initiating a new beginning on the right track. That was their historical class failure. It was a disappointment for the people. Ruling elite's assaults on culture and history signify their dwindling political arsenal.
People's discontent is visible in the two societies. People's initiatives will turn organized and stronger whenever political and organizational issues within and related to these initiatives are resolved. The political and organizational problems are rooted in the societies, their histories and class positions. The initiative will resolve questions of program, organization and leadership as gradual development of struggle in varying forms will show the need for organization and leadership. And, the question of leadership is an issue related to class(es), where role of individuals are fundamentally dependent on related class(es).
Factions among the ruling elites are there that compete among them, and at the same time, collectively carry on their effort to keep their dominance on the people. However, the competition provides people seemingly, and at times really secular space.
People's rejection of and revolt against the tyranny and corrupt regimes in these two societies were used to impose another type of tyranny and authoritarian rule. The authoritarian groups' wishes were/are being imposed in guise of political process.
The dictator game, not in terms of experimental economics, but in terms of real politics and in terms of unresolved aspirations of the peoples and unresolved contradictions in the societies, will be over as people, considered passive by many, will liberate them from the tentacle of fear and turn active participant in politics with their own political organization, leadership and program.
The dictator game in politics is dependent not on dictatorial system only. It's, in politics, not one actor's one sided move, choice, preference. Outcome of the game ultimately depends on people, a major party in the “game” and not passive all the time. The authoritarian system in the game denies people democratic space for participation while ensures control of the elites, who are part of the system, and by this denial the system ultimately creates condition for the system's denial by people.
People always try to widen their democratic spaces. This striving is essential for their survival. And, this nisus – a dynamic within the spheres of economy, society, culture and politics – ensures fall of authoritarian rule as classes competing for allocation interact forcefully. This interaction is getting accelerated in these two countries.
Farooque Chowdhury is Dhaka-based freelancer.
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