The Turkish-based charity Insani Yardim Vakifi, known by the initials IHH, has come under heavy scrutiny since Israeli commandoes attacked the Gaza-bound Mavi Marmara last week. It was IHH funds that bankrolled the Mavi Marmara’s “humanitarian” voyage to deliver relief supplies to Palestinians in Gaza. Was there more to it?
Israelis believe so. “The IHH..is widely considered a terrorist organization by a number of bodies – including the Israeli government,” wrote Jerusalem Post’s Ben Hartman. “Israeli authorities say IHH bolsters Hamas…It also charges that the group has links to al-Qaeda…”said the New York Times.
IHH officials deny this. “IHH’s aims are humanitarian, not political,” said Omer Faruk Korkmaz, an IHH board member. “We are Muslims that is all.” And that is precisely what is raising eyebrows.
IHH was formed in 1992 during the Balkan wars to provide aid to Bosnian Muslims. It has since grown to become a multi-million dollar charity supporting Muslims in over 120 countries around the world. Much of this support goes to orphan care, educational programming, including the building and repair of schools, and food aid programs. It has several thousands of volunteers and supporters outside of Turkey, as demonstrated by the various nationalities aboard the Mavi Marmara.
“IHH’s funding is drawn from a broad base of middle-class donors,” Korkmaz told the Financial Times. The middle class has become a significant economic and political force in Turkey, as the country’s ruling Justice and Development (AKP) party will tell you.
The AKP’s rise to power in the late 1990s came at the hands of a growing class of entrepreneurs from the Anatolian heartland. These entrepreneurs, pious and traditional, made millions, with which they pursued policies that reflected their devout views. Breaking the illegal blockade of Gaza is a recent example.
As the United States and leaders from other countries, including Israel, encourage young men and women, particularly in Muslim majority countries, to take up entrepreneurship as a means of lifting themselves of poverty and out of the grips of figures such as Hezbollah leader Nasrallah they should consider similar outcomes.
Just as in Turkey, the rise of a Muslim middle class will inevitably result in more and more philanthropic support for Muslim-based causes. Not all these causes will be extremist or violent. They will be, however, causes that, as the Mavi Marmara demonstrated, at times, will challenge Western policies – and might outright oppose them. Does that make them wrong?
2 Comments
No, it does not make them wrong, just more ‘democratic’, even if they oppose Western policies. That’s what makes living in Turkey so interesting politically. The rise of the so-called Anatolian Tigers has challenged many Turks I know; mainly it has taken the votes of our large family from the marginalized Kurdish parties and given them to the AKP, with whom they identify more strongly than the secular CHP. And now that Kemal Kilicdaroglu, an Alevi Kurd from Tunceli (!) is head of that party, it’s going to be fascinating to see what happens the next election.
I’m tired of anything Muslim being equated with ‘terrorist’. It’s so easy to label without digging below the surface to see what’s really there, and in very general terms, the West is guilty of that. Thanks for writing about a subject much on my mind lately, Elmira!
Two opinions this week that speak to your question, Elmira: Thomas Friedman’spiece in the NYT which gets it wrong, and this interview on Democracy Now by Stephen Kinzer which gets it right. Unfortunately we know who will get the bigger audience.
Friedman is stuck in a past view which tries to put Turkey in a clearly labeled box – can’t be done, since it’s both East and West, Middle Eastern and Asian. Kinzer on the other hand, is revolutionary in his view of the emergence of middle powers to shape the 21st century…and if you really believe in letting the democratic process flourish, some if not most of those powers will not agree with 20th C Western policies.