Each time I go there, it’s déjà vu all over again. Yes, the Turkish Embassy in Washington looks just like the spooky embassy of an ancient imperial nation should look – something straight out of a spy thriller movie, a hulking bunker, faced with stone in a rococo 18th century style. Topped with one of those fish bone short wave antennas pointed directly at Ankara, there it broods, murmuring, in low but menacing tones, of ancient intrigues, age-old rivalries, autocratic greed, harem lust, dictatorial hubris, merciless oppression, brutal tortures, oceans of blood and piles of severed heads.
Speaking of severed heads, the first thing one sees upon entering is the improbably enormous likeness of Ataturk’s noggin, fifty times life size, cast in bronze, dominating the lobby with its eerie, vacant gaze – no doubt about it, Big Mustafa Kemal Is Watching You. But dealing with creepy stuff in what amounts to weird and exotic foreign countries – that is, on the grounds of their embassies – is part of my job. So when Special Attaché Without Portfolio, Plenipotentiary Advocate Skratzmai Itchibak summoned me this morning to that cavernous and unnerving mansion, I was there ten minutes early, the fact that it was a Sunday notwithstanding.
Nothing happened until my host and I were totally buzzed on sweets and a type of coffee that has something resembling black mud at the bottom of the cup. During this, I was subjected, as usual, to forty-five minutes of totally inconsequential small talk – not that I really minded, since I bill by the hour. This was followed by the usual fifteen minute tirade about the Armenian Question, including the customary talking points, which by now I can recite from memory. They go like this: Everyone knows, the Turks politely insist, that the Armenians mounted what “anyone would recognize as a terrorist insurrection” against the Ottoman Empire, engaging in “unrestricted terrorist guerilla warfare” and “committing numerous unspeakable atrocities,” thus leaving Sultan Abdul Hamid II “no other choice.” And while the Sultan’s 1909 counter-coup against the Young Turks was not, in retrospect, the best advised course of action, it must be noted that, upon regaining power, the Young Turks themselves were ruthlessly maneuvered into a similar dilemma by the “rapacious and implacable Armenian insurgency.” When the Armenians “callously betrayed Turkey,” siding with the Russians in World War I, what policy, other than one calculated to save the Turkish state at any cost, could they have expected? While scholars and historians may debate, my host duly noted, whether the Armenians were directly responsible for the defeat of the Ottoman Empire at the hands of Czarist Russia in the Ottoman attempt to capture Baku in November of 1914, defense of the Dardanelles, if nothing else, he maintained, surely mandated extraordinary measures, up to and including the May 1915 legislation and subsequent actions taken to defend the Turkish state. And, in any case, he concluded, that was all a very, very long time ago, and America has an extremely strong incentive to maintain its military bases in Turkey. “I’m sure you agree, Mr. Collins,” a smiling and smarmy Itchibak asserted, as he always has.
“I would not be here,” I assured him, as I always do, “if I were not prepared to agree with you wholeheartedly on any such matters considered to be so important to your government.”
So, at last, preliminaries out of the way, Itchibak moved to on to discuss what he actually had on his mind today.
“As you are no doubt aware,” he opened, “Prime Minister Erdogan banned Twitter late last Thursday night.”
“That’s what the media have been reporting,” I cautiously concurred.
“He had no choice, of course,” Itchibak asserted. “Subversive elements of Turkish society were using Twitter to spread seditious lies.”
“Such as,” I offered, “covert audio recordings presenting obvious evidence of widespread corruption in the Erdogan government, including conversations in which Erdogan himself is overheard engaging in corrupt practices, such as instructing his own son in how to launder bribery money?”
“It is the nation of Turkey’s official position,” Itchibak dryly responded, “that there is absolutely no significant corruption in Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government. Given that, it is therefore impossible for any of the statements or recordings maintaining otherwise which have been broadcast on Twitter to be anything other than malicious malevolent misinformation disseminated by malingerers, miscreants, malcontents and madmen.”
“My my,” I mused, “how magnificently moving.”
“And Finance Minister Mehmet Simsek,” Itchibak added, “agreed with him yesterday, reminding the international community that no corporation, whether its business is oil exploration, industrial manufacture or social media, should consider itself to be above the law!”
“Above the law?” I innocently asked. “How did Turkey conclude that Twitter considers itself above the law?
“Because,” Itchibak fumed, “we told them to censor the offensive… um… uh…”
“Tweets,” I helpfully interjected.
“Ah yes… tweets,” he continued. “And they refused.”
“Refused?” I prodded.
“Well,” he shrugged, “more or less the same thing. They ignored hundreds of Turkish court orders to remove, um… links… found to be illegal defamations of the Erdogan government. Essentially, we told Twitter to shut those lying ruffians up and they didn’t do it.”
“And so you did it for them,” I observed.
“Correct,” Itchibak agreed. “And on Thursday, before doing so, Erdogan proclaimed that his government would wipe Twitter out, pull it up by the roots and throw it on the trash heap of history. He swore that with the Twitter ban, everyone will see the power of the Turkish Republic.”
“And how,” I inquired, looking discreetly away and doing my best to suppress a knowing smirk, “did that work out?”
“Terrible,” Itchibak moaned. “As soon as the people saw the notices posted by their… um… ah…”
“Internet service providers?” I suggested.
“Yes,” he nodded, “them. As soon as the people saw those notices, those ungrateful, unpatriotic troublemakers started figuring out ways to get around Prime Minister Erdogan’s ban!”
“And how long,” I prodded, “did it take them to succeed?”
“Less than a day!” Itchibak wailed disconsolately. “They started using S… S… um…”
“SMS?” I guessed.
“Yes, yes,” he responded, “that’s it – SMS. Which is what?”
“Short Message Service,” I answered.
“And also, I have been told,” he related, “they switched their D-something or other.”
“DNS,” I elaborated. “That’s the Domain Name System.”
With that, Itchibak produced a photograph which he ruefully showed me with a vaguely embarrassed air. “See here, these graffiti on this wall? Our network specialists tell me those numbers with the dots between them mean something on the Internet.”
“Yes,” I confirmed, “they do. Those are alternate Internet Protocol, or IP addresses that people can use to circumvent Prime Minister Erdogan’s ban on Twitter. I understand they are also using VPN technology.”
Itchibak’s eyes widened. “What’s that?”
“VPN stands for Virtual Private Network,” I explained. “There are scores, if not hundreds of VPN services on the Internet. Plus anonymous browsing solutions, such as Tor.”
“Anonymous browsing?” Itchibak stared back at me, uncomprehending.
“Sure,” I told him, “there are more than a dozen popular anonymous browser solutions available. You’d have to block all of them. Then there’s peer-to-peer technology. If, by some series of extremely improbable network miracles, the Erdogan government manages to stifle the SMS, DNS, VPN and anonymous browser workarounds, there’s always that – Gnutella, JXTA, Delasa, Open Garden, Netsukuku, Coolstreaming, Livestation, Osiris, Gossip, Kazza, BitTorrent and so forth.”
“And… so forth?” Itchibak shuddered. “What do we have to do to stop this, then, shut down the entire Internet?”
“Various governments tried to do that,” I reminded him, “during the Arab Spring. They found that, because of smart cell phones, the strategy won’t work unless you’re willing to shut down your telephone system, too. And frankly, if Erdogan shuts down the Internet and the telephone system in an attempt to quell criticism of his government before the election, that would be pretty much tantamount to admitting the allegations are true, wouldn’t it?”
“But, but, you don’t understand,” he protested, suddenly verging on the lachrymose, “since Prime Minister Erdogan banned Twitter, the number of… tweets… coming out of Turkey has doubled from ten million a day to twenty million! Mr. Collins, we have to do something, and soon! The Turkish people are making us look like a bunch of bumbling, ignorant, power-drunk idiots!”
“In 2012,” I pointed out, “our Republican Party here in the United States lost the presidential election, and quite a few congressional elections, too, because they didn’t understand Internet technology. They proved that when it comes to the Internet, Republican politicians are a bunch of bumbling, ignorant, power-drunk idiots.”
“So I have heard,” Itchibak agreed. “And afterward, as I recall, your Democrats took a great deal of pride in their Internet acumen.”
“Oh, yes, indeed,” I confirmed, “the Democrats certainly weren’t shy about that – success, after all, as the hoary proverb holds, has a hundred fathers. There was definitely no shortage of Democrat advisors, gurus, talking heads and self-proclaimed experts willing to step forward and take credit for the triumph. A plethora of exuberant news stories were written and a multitude of fawning media interviews were held. Quite a number of shallow, vapid books, both of the excessively prideful and irrationally extolling variety, were written about the subject and the supposedly heroic protagonists of its associated saga. No doubt about it, an extraordinary amount of hoopla was expounded about how savvy and clever the Democrats were about Internet technology in 2012. Actually, the whole thing was just a matter of degree, with the Republicans being so grievously lame in the Internet department that by comparison the Democrats looked like a bunch of geniuses. All of which was amply demonstrated in 2013, when the Democrats tried to deploy what amounted to a garden-variety e-commerce Web site to implement enrollment in their beloved Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare, and they proceeded to conclusively and irrefutably prove that when it comes to Internet technology, Democratic politicians are also a bunch of bumbling, ignorant, power-drunk idiots.”
Itchibak poured himself another diminutive cup of Turkish coffee, and, after waiting just the minimal amount of time for the grounds to settle, knocked back half of it without a blink. Then, placing that cup gently upon its ornate silver tray, he leaned forward expectantly. “And your point is?”
“That Prime Minister Erdogan is in good company. As recent history has so starkly illustrated, for all practical purposes, when it comes to Internet technology, every single modern politician today is a bumbling, ignorant idiot. And every chance they get, their attempts to interact with that technology show us all – in extremely disturbing detail – just how drunk they have become with the power we conferred upon them.”
“Okay,” Itchibak allowed, “let us say that my Prime Minister is no better than your Democratic President or your Republican Speaker of the House, and perhaps politicians are more adept at running off at their mouths, shaking hands, kissing babies, making empty promises and negotiating questionable back-room deals than they are at using their brains, and consequently cannot figure out the Internet. In that case, what would you recommend?”
“Prime Minister Erdogan,” I advised, “has failed miserably, trying control that which he does not understand and which, furthermore, cannot be controlled even by those who do understand it. In the process, he has not only rendered himself, but also his government and his nation world wide laughingstocks. His only choice is to relent, restore Twitter, admit his mistake, apologize, take the political heat over those corruption allegations in the upcoming election, and start using the Internet the only way that works for politicians in a contemporary democratic society.”
“And what,” Itchibak wondered, “would that be?”
“Why, to spy on everybody, of course!” I declared.
“Oh, right!” Itchibak exclaimed. “That’s what your Republican president George W. Bush and your Democratic president Barack Obama both used the Internet for!”
“And quite successfully,” I noted. “And it’s still going on with continuing outstanding results, I might add. It seems that for some reason, unauthorized surveillance of the people who elected them is the only thing that today’s politicians can do with the Internet and not totally screw it up.”
“But actually, Mr. Collins,” Itchibak quietly confessed, “the Turkish government is already using the Internet to spy on its citizens, just as your government does to spy on yours. We even hired some of the same Internet contractors to help us do it.”
“Of course you are,” I acknowledged. “And I suggest you advise Prime Minister Erdogan to lift the Twitter ban, start showing some of his famous false humility and apologize, then get back to what he’s good at – using the Internet to invade Turkish citizens’ privacy and turn their tweets against them.”
“And if he doesn’t?” Itchibak asked as poured us each another tiny cup of coffee.
“In that case,Skratzmai,” I confided with a knowing wink, “remember your good friend President Abdullah Gul. After all, we’d hate to lose you here in Washington.”
“And I,” Itchibak assured me with a wry smile, “would hate to leave.”