Talking Turkey

by Chris Bertram on March 26, 2005

I don’t share Mark Kaplan’s philosophical predilections, but he is a sharp observer of blogospheric rhetoric. At “Charlotte Street he announces”:http://charlotte-street.blogspot.com/2005/03/note-on-notes-turkey-ruse.html that his perceptive “Notes on Rhetoric” “now have their own site”:http://notesonrhetoric.blogspot.com/ . I particularly enjoyed his latest reflections on the “Turkey” ruse:

bq. Turkey – If your opponent is criticising the policies of some state you favour, demand that he talks about Turkey instead. This may sound a feeble ploy, equivalent to saying ‘please talk about something else’ but can be effective if you use language like ‘if you’re being consistent’ ‘disproportionate and selective attention’. (You may if you wish substitute some other country for Turkey – obviously so if, by chance, your opponent is talking about Turkey.)….

bq. The reductio ad absurdum of this position is that one should busy oneself with impotent cursing and condemnations of foreign regimes over which one has zero influence, while exempting your own government and its allies from criticism. In other words: ethical bombast on the one hand, and ethical abdication on the other.

bq. At worst, the ‘Turkey’ tactic can also short-circuit moral universality – the belief that we should apply to ourselves the same principles we apply to others. So, for example, moral condemnation of torture by American and British soldiers (in accordance with moral universality) meets with ‘but why are you silent about much more horrific things elsewhere..’; patient criticisms of the ‘democratic deficit’ in our own societies meets only with our attention rerouted to utterly undemocratic regimes. So it goes on, diversionary and insidious.

{ 29 comments }

1

bi 03.26.05 at 2:12 pm

The simple response is that unlike the US, Turkey doesn’t pretend to be some beacon of freedom. Now we can go back to talking about the US. :)

2

bi 03.26.05 at 2:28 pm

By the way, what’s this about doxa.com?

3

luci phyrr 03.26.05 at 2:52 pm

I’m pretty sure (but too lazy to google) that Turkey killed an order of magnitude more Kurds than Saddam Hussein (10-20K vs. 100-200K). But the US has a military base there, and all is good times with the Turks.

“But Saddam gassed his own people!”

Propaganda can be true, obviously. It’s a matter of emphasis.

4

Eve Garrard 03.26.05 at 4:09 pm

Chris, surely the Turkey tactic is entirely neutral between exempting your own government and its allies from criticism, and exempting those of your adversaries? After all, anyone who sounds off about the horrifying practices to be found in eg Saddam’s jails, or Syrian ones, is liable to be told to consider Guantanamo Bay, or post-Saddam Abu Ghraib. Leaving aside the appropriateness of such comparisons, aren’t they obvious cases of Turkey tactics? And can’t they also be put at the service of lazy and insidious moral equivocation?

5

abb1 03.26.05 at 4:24 pm

“Criticizing Israel is not anti-Semitic, and saying so is vile. But singling out Israel for opprobrium and international sanction out of all proportion to any other party in the Middle East is anti-Semitic, and not saying so is dishonest.” — Thomas Friedman

6

bob 03.26.05 at 4:32 pm

‘..anyone who sounds off about the horrifying practices to be found in eg Saddam’s jails, or Syrian ones, is liable to be told to consider Guantanamo Bay, or post-Saddam Abu Ghraib.’

I don’t think I’ve ever seen such an argument made. Of course it’s possible, but the other way around seems to me much more frequent.

7

lemuel pitkin 03.26.05 at 5:06 pm

surely the Turkey tactic is entirely neutral between exempting your own government and its allies from criticism, and exempting those of your adversaries?

Yes, if you’re commenting from the surface of the moon, or maybe from Finalnd or New Zealand or some such place. Otherwise, No.

As an American, I am implicated morally and practically in the actions of the U.S. governemnt in a way taht I am not in the actions fo the governments of Saudi Arabia or Syria. To pretend that the choice to focus on my own government’s acts or on someone else’s is “perfectly neutral” is (deliberately) obtuse.

8

Eve Garrard 03.26.05 at 6:22 pm

Lemuel, I didn’t say that the choice to focus on my own government’s acts or on someone else’s is perfectly neutral. I said that the argumentative strategy which Chris is calling Turkey tactics is neutral between criticism of your friends or your adversaries – ie it can be used indiscriminately against either. Many argumentative strategies are like this, for example ad hominem arguments, such as attacking a view by claiming that its holder is being deliberately obtuse (rather than by demonstrating failures of reasoning etc.) This is a poor argumentative strategy, but it’s one that can be used quite indiscriminately.

9

bob 03.26.05 at 7:22 pm

Eve,

Just speaking impressionistically, wouldn’t you say that the Turkey tactic is used more one way than the other one – the one you suggest it equally plausible. It’s equally plausible, yes.. But in actuality?… what are your thoughts?

10

lemuel pitkin 03.26.05 at 7:41 pm

Eve,

To say “why aren’t you talking about A rather than B” is not a a tactic if there is, in fact, a substantive reason why you should be talking about A rather than B.

11

Eve Garrard 03.26.05 at 7:46 pm

Bob, I think it’s very difficult to tell in actuality which way Turkey tactics are used. Those who spend a fair proportion of their time criticising the USA or UK will receive Turkey proposals in one direction; those who spend more of their time criticising those who are hostile to the West will receive them in the other direction. Both groups are likely to feel that the tactics are being used disproportionately against them, for morally invidious purposes. (In fact, both groups could in principle be right about this, though I’m not convinced that they are. But it wouldn’t be impossible.) Hence I doubt that impressions will be a very reliable guide to the actual incidence on either side. A more resolvable question (and maybe a more interesting one) is about when Turkey tactics are intellectually legitimate, and what work they do when they are.

12

Eve Garrard 03.26.05 at 7:57 pm

Lemuel, you say: To say “why aren’t you talking about A rather than B” is not a a tactic if there is, in fact, a substantive reason why you should be talking about A rather than B.

Sure, I agree with that, more or less. But that’s just to say that the Turkey manoeuvre is sometimes legitimate. And sometimes there’s a substantive reason for talking not about the failures of our own governments, but about the failures of others (whom we may be very pressingly affected by, and whom in turn we can, quite often, affect in various ways). That’s just what I was arguing for – that the Turkey manoeuvre (if you don’t like the term ‘tactic’)can be used on either side – it’s neutral in that respect.

13

john c. halasz 03.26.05 at 8:34 pm

“…the service of lazy and insidious moral equivocation?”- Is this meant to imply that the lazy and insidious kind of moral equivocation is the only kind? That there is no moral ambiguity or that intellectual clarity is the sine qua non of morality, based on the identity of one’s position? Is morality an empirical matter? Considered empirically, after all, evidence for morality is scant, dubious and ambiguous. Isn’t the ensuing set of comments/argument precisely a case of moral equivocation?

Incidentally, the ad hominem manoeuvre is not always fallacious, but has a legitimate ancillary usage: viz. when it is a matter of diagnosing or obviating failures of understanding.

14

Fergal 03.26.05 at 11:53 pm

Thanks for the Thomas Friedman quote, Abb1. He gets it utterly right. Can we attribute this opinion to you next time?

15

bi 03.27.05 at 12:59 am

Well, _everything else being equal_, the Turkey technique is a valid argument form.

The problem is that not everything is equal. As I said, there are countries which go around proclaiming that they’re the be-all and end-all of freedom and democracy and human rights, and Saddam-era Iraq wasn’t among them. That’s one difference already. Can Saddam be blamed for hypocrisy on human rights if he doesn’t believe in human rights in the first place?

By the way, when’s the US going to invade Saudi Arabia?

16

abb1 03.27.05 at 4:06 am

Hi Fergal,
What do you mean by ‘Can we attribute this opinion to you next time?’ I’m not sure understand your question. You should attribute it to Mr. Friedman, of course.

Are you asking if you can call me ‘anti-semite’ when I don’t mention Turkey? Sure you may, no problem. Or you’re suggesting that I use the same rhetorical device sometimes? But if I do, that’s usually to expose my opponent’s hypocrisy, not as a slur; that’s legit, isn’t it?

Thanks.

17

Luc 03.27.05 at 4:43 am

That list of rhetoric devices could be made a lot longer. The Friedman quote above is a nice example of the “Yes, but” tactic.

Or better phrased by Lemuel Pitkin:

“Yes, if you’re commenting from the surface of the moon, or maybe from Finland or New Zealand or some such place. Otherwise, No.”

18

Fergal 03.27.05 at 9:39 am

Are you asking if you can call me ‘anti- semite’ when I don’t mention Turkey?

Turkey, America… no one asks anymore, Abb1. But, of course, had I done so, it would certainly be, uh, not as a slur!

19

abb1 03.27.05 at 3:51 pm

The Friedman quote above is a nice example of the “Yes, but” tactic.

Juan Cole in today’s post calls it (or something very similar) ‘189 Fallacy’:

Another stupid thing in Plaut’s GoogleSmear (there are so many) is a typical 189 Fallacy argument. The Zionist Right maintains that you can’t criticize Israeli violations of basic human rights and international law until you first criticize all the other 188 countries in the world.

Clearly, though, it’s a variation of the ‘Turkey’ tactic, as described in this post.

20

Jonathan Edelstein 03.27.05 at 7:06 pm

Juan Cole in today’s post calls it (or something very similar) ‘189 Fallacy’

Of course, there are times when the ‘189 Fallacy’ is not a fallacy. For instance, if someone describes Israel (or another country) as ‘the only,’ ‘the most’ or ‘the worst’ of anything, then that person has implicitly examined and ruled out the other 188 cases, and citing one of them is a legitimate means of refuting his argument.

21

Jonathan Edelstein 03.27.05 at 7:33 pm

Another time that the ‘189 Fallacy’ or ‘Turkey tactic’ might be legitimate is when one’s interlocutor claims a universal mission or focus. If a member of a Palestinian solidarity group talks about nothing but Israeli human rights violations, then that’s only to be expected and should be answered on its own terms. On the other hand, if someone from an entity calling itself the ‘World Campaign for Human Rights’ or something similar spends a disproportionate amount of time on the misdeeds of a single country, then her reasons for doing so might be legitimately questioned.

22

theogon 03.27.05 at 10:38 pm

Edelstein:

Very true. Anybody who talks about Israel in such exceptionalist terms – “the worst human rights violator in the world,” etc. – is obviously a loon.

Of course, Israel is part of the “First World” in every way save geography, so that specific attention is payed to it should not be surprising. Americans and Europeans are likely to hold their peers to a higher standard for both heightened baseline expectations and the “I have a responsibility for my own team’s behavior” thing mentioned upthread – perhaps especially pertinent given the American state’s support for Israel. (Of course, the US props up Saudi Arabia and a bunch of other much-worse-than-Israel regimes in the area as well, so we’re back on square 188…)

23

Fergal 03.28.05 at 2:32 am

Juan Cole in today’s post calls it…

Ah, yes. The gospel according to Pope Juan Cole. Just in time for Easter.

24

bob 03.28.05 at 3:09 am

There’s nothing on Abb’s post to suggest she regards Juan Cole as Gospel, but to imply that your interlucotor is unthinkingly in thrall to some Authority is a familiar enough ploy. Perhaps one for the ‘notes on rhetoric’.

25

abb1 03.28.05 at 4:17 am

Of course, there are times when the ‘189 Fallacy’ is not a fallacy. For instance, if someone describes Israel (or another country) as ‘the only,’ ‘the most’ or ‘the worst’ of anything, then that person has implicitly examined and ruled out the other 188 cases, and citing one of them is a legitimate means of refuting his argument.

True. However, there is clearly a difference between a factual claim and rhetorical statement: ‘the best pizza in town’, ‘the worst president in history’, etc.

26

Eve Garrard 03.28.05 at 4:48 am

Jonathan, you say: ‘If a member of a Palestinian solidarity group talks about nothing but Israeli human rights violations, then that’s only to be expected and should be answered on its own terms. On the other hand, if someone from an entity calling itself the ‘World Campaign for Human Rights’ or something similar spends a disproportionate amount of time on the misdeeds of a single country, then her reasons for doing so might be legitimately questioned.’

That seems right, but surely there’s another circumstance in which Turkey tactics are legitimate: if people focus primarily on the misdeeds of one group or country, and judge them and find them wanting by a standard more demanding than is normally used for other groups or countries, and furthermore advocate punishments and sanctions not used against other groups or countries, then even if they’ve claimed no universal brief we might question their motivation, and suggest that they get out a bit more and look at the remaining 188, mightn’t we? It’s the double standard that legitimises the invocation of Turkey et al.

27

abb1 03.28.05 at 5:24 am

if people focus primarily on the misdeeds of one group or country, and judge them and find them wanting by a standard more demanding than is normally used for other groups or countries

I think Jonathan is correct: it’s only true if the same people use a different standard in different case. For example, when US government propagandists focus on, say, Cuba and ignore, say, Saudi Arabia – they sure are hypocrites, but when Cuban exile people focus on Cuba – that’s their shtick, no problem here.

28

james 03.28.05 at 10:05 am

What if their shtick is to focus on one group or culture? Say for example the plight of the Kurds. Then it becomes hypocritical to focus solely on Iraq’s mistreatment of the Kurds while ignoring Turkey’s.

29

Fergal 03.28.05 at 11:47 am

there is clearly a difference between a factual claim and rhetorical statement

My point precisely. Even when its message is vile we can often excuse a rhetorical statement.

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