In Turkey, Black Boxes Aim to Turn Neighbors into Spies

Istanbul has been abuzz this week with the harsh verdicts meted out in the five-year Ergenekon coup plot trial, with 17 of 275 defendants receiving life sentences for plotting to overthrow the government. It’s a stern warning to coup plotters, to be sure, much like another bit of recent, less-covered news.

Last week, police announced plans to install neighborhood informant boxes in cities across Turkey. Dubbed the Confidential Police Notice Point Project, the move will allow residents to submit anonymous written and oral tips on their neighbors. Picture a small black box on the corner where neighbors drop in slips of paper incriminating one another for offenses like banging pots and pans in support of the Gezi Park protesters (a nightly show of solidarity in many urban areas in the weeks following the countrywide protests).

“It’s a crime to disturb neighbors,” Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan reportedly said in July, urging the public to turn in dissenters. “I’m telling you that such acts require punishment.”

The informant boxes follow a government decision to replace private security workers with state police at all state-run universities, the better to keep an eye on protest-prone college students. Meanwhile, anti-government protests that started back in May continued this past weekend.

On a sultry night, police chased a few hundred demonstrators from Gezi Park using teargas. Then, seemingly unaware of the irony, they drove armored trucks down Istiklal, or Independence, Avenue — Istanbul’s main pedestrian thoroughfare, filled with high-end shops and cafes — shooting rubber bullets at those brave or dumb enough to get in their way.

All this should be acutely troubling to anyone who cares about democracy in the urban world. Istanbulites long weary of the gaze of their government now must look into the eyes of their neighbors. Sure, in the 21st century, public assistance for crime-solving is a must. And most Western countries maintain anonymous hotlines and 411 numbers citizens can call with information on crimes and suspicious activity. But tools similar to the informant boxes have been used in dictator-run Arab countries, and as well as in Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia — places where secret police kept watch and public trust evaporated.

In fact, local informants are not completely new to Turkey. “Historically, Istanbul police relied on local informants — the imam, the mukhtar (neighborhood or village leader) — at times of social unrest,” Fariba Zarinebaf, director of Middle East and Islamic studies at the University of California-Riverside and author of Crime and Punishment in Istanbul: 1700-1800, said via email, citing the late 19th century. “But I doubt these measures were ever that effective.”

In a modern world, with a government that has used force to silence demonstrators and cast them as looters, terrorists and rodents, this plan seems far more sinister.

What’s more, the rule of law has never been terribly strong in Turkey. With anonymous reporting, the potential for abuse is considerable. The government has in recent months made little secret of going after journalists it deems a threat to its reputation. What would stop the authorities from going after citizens that draw their ire, claiming an informant’s tip as their prod?

“It is interesting that dissent, i.e. banging on pots and pans, is being defined as a crime,” Zarinebaf said. “Citizens are asked to report this specific form of dissent, and you can imagine how much tension this would create among neighbors who may be mad at each other for various reasons, trying to settle scores.”

On the conservative Istanbul street where I live, near Galata Tower in Beyoglu, locals are out in the street all day. Older men chat, smoke and stare while headscarved women watch their children play and young boys huddle in groups to snack and laugh. They know everybody and trust each other. Crime is rare.

Security in the city relies on a patchwork of similarly organic neighborhood watches, based on familiarity. Take away that sense of familiarity and openness, and erode the system of public trust that has made Istanbul one of Europe’s safest cities.

“If the boxes work, it will tear away the unity of the mahalle (neighborhood) and will create extreme distrust,” Zarinebaf said. “But I am sure the citizens will defy the measure in most neighborhoods. The public has a clear understanding of what constitutes a ‘crime’ and when they should inform on criminal elements.”

The question is whether they may begin to expand those concepts at the urging of their government. In a recent television ad from the government security directorate, a young man is shown giving a rose to a young girl. Soon after, the girl is seen chanting slogans in a street protest. “They use the mask of ‘standing up for your rights’ in small demonstrations,” the narrator says, “ then they quietly steal your child from you.” The story closes with the girl becoming a suicide bomber.

The message is that any young person who stands up for his or her rights is a terrorist — and that everyone must be on guard against threats lurking in plain sight, like the young man with the rose.

There is, however, still hope for many parts of Istanbul where residents have already banded together in the wake of the Gezi protests. Urban Turks have launched more than 100 neighborhood forums all over the country. Most groups meet a few times per week and discuss the issues of the day, from the local to the national, and tend to share a strong sense of solidarity in opposition to the government of Erdoğan and the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP).

For these groups, the informant boxes will not be a welcome addition to the neighborhood and likely will go all but ignored.

But the same cannot be said of the large swaths of AKP supporters — like many residents of my neighborhood — that make up as much as half of Turkey’s 75 million people. For them, the çapulcu, the pot-banger, the terrorist and the coup plotter may soon be one and the same -- and the informant box may have its uses.


Originally published here, for Next City

How Istanbul Became One of Europe's Safest Cities

For Atlantic Cities

By David Lepeska

Political observers have recently been trumpeting the Turkish Model, citing Turkey's democracy, its open-minded Islamists and economic zip as an example to newly liberated Arab nations and other Muslim countries.

In the 18th century, however, its capital presented a less positive model. The Istanbul of that era – with waves of migrants, an underclass of servants and unskilled laborers, overburdened housing stock, dirty slums abutting elegant mansions, high levels of petty and violent crime – looked much like Dickensian London.

"The scholarship has kind of put all cities in the Middle East in the category of 'Islamic cities,' focusing on Islamic institutions and drawing a hard-and-fast line between these cities and European cities,” says Fariba Zarinebaf, professor of Islamic studies at University of California, Riverside.

In Crime and Punishment in Istanbul, 1700-1800, Zarinebaf uses court, prison and police records, surveys, imperial orders and a variety of Ottoman narratives to map the city's criminal activity. She also highlights Istanbul's importance as a port, its layered history and its great diversity. "It was so much more diverse than any other European city," she says. "It's the most cosmopolitan city in the Mediterranean world."

To control crime and rebellion (the city experienced uprisings in 1703 and 1730, the latter of which toppled the leadership for several months) the state embraced heavy-handed tactics familiar to contemporary Arab autocrats: planting spies in coffeehouses to eavesdrop, rounding up and exiling foreigners and the marginalized and creating guilds and neighborhood associations to report back on questionable activity.

"What's happening today with the Arab uprisings is just déjà vu," says Zarinebaf, who points out that protest movements in both eras were due in part to simple hunger. "What happens when people rebel? The state cracks down."

Yet the historic Turkish justice system offered a much more enlightened model, mixing elements of Sharia with modern law. With thousands of Albanians, Greeks and Kurds among its population of about 400,000—the same as Paris at the time—18th century Istanbul was about 40 percent Christian and 5 to 10 percent Jewish. "Istanbul was never really a Muslim city," says Zarinebaf. "It had to cater to these various interests and as a result it became far more flexible."

Rather than having his hands cut off, for instance, a man found guilty of pickpocketing was generally sentenced to row in the galleys. Rather than lashed, a woman guilty of prostitution might be banished to Bursa, in Anatolia. If the woman repented, she could choose to pursue rehabilitation.

In this regard, 18th century Istanbul was more modern than a handful of 21st century states. Saudi Arabia and Yemen still punish homosexuality with death. In Pakistan, women unable to produce four adult male witnesses to their rape are found guilty of fornication and jailed.

As a result of its complex history, 21st century Turkey balances Islam, liberty and a touch of authoritarianism. Alcoholic drink and public brothels are tolerated by the state – political dissent and a free press less so.

In terms of policing, Turkey's vast cosmopolis offers lessons for the developing megacities of today, places like Dubai and Jakarta, Nairobi and Cairo. Istanbul has in recent decades been undergoing a rapid transformation, as urban expansion and modernization remake previously dilapidated and marginalized neighborhoods into welcoming retail and residential districts, often pushing the less advantaged to outlying areas. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a former Istanbul mayor, envisions the city as a global hub and world financial center.

It's already one of the safer major international cities, for which Zarinebaf cites layers of law enforcement. Policing principles are drawn from the military. Training and education is essential – 85 percent of Turkish police have undergraduate degrees.

The city sets up police checkpoints at night to monitor movement. An integrated surveillance system connects hundreds of CCTV cameras to thousands of squad cars and scores of mobile stations, keeping an eye on most public areas.

At the same time, a community watch program maintains local vigil, via merchant guilds and neighborhood groups. “Today if I move to Turkey I have to report to the local police and tell them,” says Zarinebaf. “This kind of approach to policing – not only from the top, but also from below, keeping an eye on the neighborhood – this sort of policing is uniquely Ottoman.”

Zarinebaf lives in the Windy City but prefers the former Constantinople, which has the lowest assault rate in Europe. “In Istanbul, I feel safer than I feel in Chicago,” she says.

That should come as little surprise to Chicagoans, who saw their murder rate spike by more than half in January. Maybe it's time to take a closer look at the Turkish model.



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Ran February 2012:
http://www.theatlanticcities.com/neighborhoods/2012/02/how-istanbul-became-one-europes-safest-city/1103/