When Stalin’s Ambasador met churchill – Pages 12-14
OCTOBER 2015 N o 1510
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FOUR MILLION SYRIANS LOOKING FOR A LIFE
Neighbouring states
Europe is coping badly with a great migratory influx,
including many fleeing Syria’s civil war. However, Syria’s neighbours, Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan, have already taken in more than 3.5 million refugees,
changing the map of the region rebeca raue – ‘Hell (enter)’ (2014)
Big media versus the people
BY SERGE HALIMI
Attempts to break with neoliberal politics are spreading. After Syriza in Greece comes the surprise election of Jeremy Corbyn in the UK (see The unspun Jeremy Corbyn, page 4), and there may soon be an awakening in Spain. As the Greek experience shows, these developments do not always flourish, but at least some of the obstacles are now clear: the financial markets, multinational corporations, credit rating agencies, the Eurogroup, the IMF, the European Central Bank, Germany’s monetarist policy and its social-liberal acolytes. The power of these players and the convergence of their interests help explain the caution and capitulation of some, and the suffering and hesitations of others. But that is only a partial diagnosis; a critical element is missing. It is often discussed in Le Monde diplomatique, but mostly ignored elsewhere, especially by the political forces that should pay it the greatest attention.
That element was revealed in all its perniciousness in Greece when Syriza stood up to EU diktats; it was instantly unleashed in the UK against Corbyn as the new leader of the Labour Party; and it will be visible again if Podemos wins the Spanish election in December. It has been systematically reconfigured in France in the past six months – the steady advance of a media barrier able to block any project counter to shareholder interests.
Since media proprietors are also the architects of industrial concentration and beneficiaries of huge market capitalisations, this is hardly a surprise. In France, six of the 10 richest people now own media groups (1), and one, Patrick
Serge Halimi is president of Le Monde diplomatique
Drahi, has also recently shot to the top of Israel’s rich list (2). The media sector shapes public attitudes, the economy, culture, leisure and education, but it is hard to detect any political attempt to check the danger, as though politicians had other priorities and emergencies, and were content to wait and see on this score.
We saw what happened when Alexis Tsipras’s government came to power in Greece in January, relying, rashly, on the solidarity of European peoples who had suffered from austerity policies, and thinking that would make it easier to resist German inflexibility. Many reasons linked to the fragmentation and weakness of Syriza’s allies, political and in the union movement, across Europe explain why those hopes have been dashed. But an important factor should not be overlooked: media treatment of Greece distorted the terms of the debate and tried to create worry in European public opinion about what the
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Inside this issue Corbyn: Labour’s lightning rod alex nunns Page 4 Xi Jinping: China’s new emperor émilie frenkiel Page 5 Japan: what next for Okinawa? gavan mccormack Pages 6-7 UN: getting fit for the 21st century bertrand badie Pages 6-7
BY HANA JABER
“M
y mother stayed behind in our village, with my little brother, to look after the old people,” said Hamad
Hamdani, 15. “She insisted I should go to Turkey with my uncle. She wanted me to be safe. She was worried about me because of the militias that have taken control of Azaz.” Hamad comes from a village near Azaz, a small town northwest of Aleppo. He left Syria in 2012. In July that year his father was killed by a barrel bomb dropped by Bashar al-Assad’s air force. A few weeks later, in the small hours, Hamad said goodbye to his mother and climbed into a van with his uncle Wael, who had deserted from the Syrian army, and his family. Every refugee fleeing the civil war has a different tale, a small glimpse of the Syrian tragedy and its impact on neighbouring countries.
Hamad and his relatives initially sheltered at the Öncüpinar camp in Turkey’s Kilis province, one of 22 refugee centres set up by the Turkish government since 2011 in the eight provinces bordering Syria. According to UNHCR, the UN refugee agency, more then 4 million people have left Syria, and another 7.6 million have fled to other parts of the country (1). Around half of all Syrian refugees are now in Turkey (1.9 million according to UNHCR), and 80% of those are outside the camps. Hamad’s family now have a little flat in a working-class district of Gaziantep, where more than 10% of the population is Syrian. Hamdani works as a café waiter; his uncle Wael is a porter and handyman in the café’s kitchen. “At first, the Kilis camp was clean and well organised,” said Wael. “We had everything we needed. But there was no privacy. I couldn’t stand the fences and being watched when we went in and out of the camp.
Hana Jaber is research associate to the Chair of Contemporary World History at the Collège de France, Paris
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I didn’t risk deserting just to be locked up as if I was in barracks. I needed to work, I needed to be able to move around and earn money to support my family. But I never realised it would be so difficult.” Hamad misses the camp because it had a school; now he’s one of thousands of boys roaming the streets, not using his brain.
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan says the influx of refugees is “a colossal challenge for Turkey”. Beyond logistical and security issues, Turkey is keen to protect its image by “receiving Syrians in the most decent conditions possible,” according journalist Ali Bayramoglu. International media have described the high quality of services provided to the refugees. The camps, jointly managed by UNHCR and the Turkish authorities, and closely monitored by the Turkish security services, are some distance from cities, acting as an airlock. Those who want to leave them must tell the authorities where they plan to go. Though the government claims it is keeping ISIS (Islamic State) fighters out of Turkey, many articles in the Turkish press say the authorities are blind to the reality.
Maintaining the cohesion of Turkish society is a challenge. The 800-km Turkish-Syrian border runs through a patchwork of ethnic and religious groups – Turkmen, Kurd, Armenian, Orthodox, Sunni, Alawite, Arabic- or Turkishspeaking – where it has taken the state a century to achieve peaceful cohabitation. The influx of refugees has revived old conflicts never properly settled. There is often trouble. Arabicspeaking Turks in southwest Turkey have been accused by ultra-nationalists of encouraging the influx of Syrian refugees in order to “Arabise” the region, especially the Sanjak of Alexandretta (disputed with Syria since its absorption into Turkey in 1939).
Turkey signed the 1951 Geneva Convention, but maintained a clause that limited its application to European refugees. In 2013 it adopted a law on the international protection of foreign nationals, under which Syrian asylum seekers cannot be turned away and there must be greater flexibility over issuing of work permits. In 2014 the government established a general directorate of migration management,
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