American Geographical Society
"POPPIES ARE DEMOCRACY!" A CRITICAL GEOPOLITICS OF OPIUM ERADICATION AND
REINTRODUCTION IN TURKEY
Author(s): KYLE T. EVERED
Source: Geographical Review, Vol. 101, No. 3 (July 2011), pp. 299-315
Published by: American Geographical Society
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The Geographical Review
VOLUME 101 July 2011 NUMBER 3
"POPPIES ARE DEMOCRACY!"
A CRITICAL GEOPOLITICS OF OPIUM ERADICATION
AND REINTRODUCTION IN TURKEY*
KYLE T. EVERED
abstract. Historical scholarship in traditional geopolitics often relied on documents
authored by states and by other influential actors. Although much work in the subfield of
critical geopolitics thus far has addressed imbalances constructed in official, academic, and
popular media due to a privileging of such narratives, priority might also be given to unearthing
and bringing to light alternative geopolitical perspectives from otherwise
marginalized populations. Utilizing the early-i970s case of the United States' first "war on
drugs," this article examines the geopolitics of opium-poppy eradication and its consequences
within Turkey. Employing not only archival and secondary sources but also oral histories
from now- retired poppy farmers, this study examines the diffusion of U.S. antinarcotics policies
into the Anatolian countryside and the enduring impressions that the United States and
Turkish government created. In doing so, this research gives voice to those farmers targeted
by eradication policies and speaks more broadly to matters of narcotics control, sentiments
of anti-Americanism, and notions of democracy in Turkey and the region, past and present.
Keywords: critical geopolitics , narcotics , opium poppy ; oral history, Turkey.
This article addresses experiences of opium poppy eradication and reintr
tion in early- 1970s Turkey from a critical geopolitics perspective and as informed b
oral history interviews collected from now-retired poppy farmers. A subfield
political geography, critical geopolitics emerged in the early 1990s and drew up
key works from both critical theory and alternatives to realism in international
lations research (Ashley 1984, 1987; Campbell 1988; Walker 1987, 1988). As such, semi
nal critical geopolitics scholarship engaged especially in critiques of state-center
positivist traditions within and beyond political geography (O Tuathail 1989, 19
* In authoring this second article on poppies for the Geographical Review, I again am indebted to the forty re
poppy farmers who provided me with the wealth of their experiences and memories and to my research assis
Yiiksel, Zuhal, and Augie. I am also most grateful for the suggestions made by several anonymous reviewers an
Craig Colten. My research was supported by the Center for the Advanced Study of International Developme
Women and International Development, and Muslim Studies, all at Michigan State University. Additionally, th
not employed directly in the research for this article, this study was also informed by opportunities to re
archival and document collections pertaining to the period of eradication held in the Washington, D.C., area
were made possible through a short-term fellowship administered by the Kennan Institute of the Woodrow W
son International Center for Scholars in the summer of 2008.
Dr. Evered is an assistant professor of geography at Michigan State University, East Lansing,
Michigan 48824-1117; [ktevered@msu.edu].
The Geographical Review 101 (3): 299-315, July 2011
Copyright © 2011 by the American Geographical Society of New York
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300 THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW
Dalby 1991; Dodds and Sidaway 1994). The subfiel
far include studies of geopolitical discourse as re
ideas associated with institutions, policymakers,
and other politics; scholarly, journalistic, and o
policymakers; and popular media and culture (for
Dalby 2002; Gregory 2004; Smith 2004; Debrix 2
with Simon Dalby's Environmental Security (20
avenue for bringing together the otherwise "dist
ship once found in political ecology and political
Although considerable work within critical geo
imbalances conveyed in official, academic, and p
ing of particular narratives and frames of analysis,
unearthing and bringing to light of alternative
among otherwise marginalized populations. Indee
ward a more "progressive geopolitics." In outlinin
beyond geopolitics as merely an examination- an
tions between states," Gerry Kearns observed, "T
tique of existing theory and the other would be by
neglected practices, and critical geopolitics is n
first of these respects" (2008, 1600-1601). Both in
reorienting our geopolitical focus accordingly, m
and oral history provide a means for identifying
political options.
Employing the early- 1970s case of the United Sta
article I examine the geopolitics of both the erad
opium poppies in Turkey. Although various histo
policies involving Turkey and Turkish experienc
introduction as matters either of Turkish-U.S. fore
Turkey (Zentner 1973; Wishart 1974; Spain 1975; Alt
local-scale connections emphasized in this study
I supplemented both archival and secondary sou
during a four-week period in the summer 2009
and twenty women, with ages ranging from fiftyof
the interviews). Informants lived and worked
and in the years following its reversal. Their interv
wider, multiyear research project devoted to the
geopolitics of opium poppies in Turkey. As a ge
history is of particular utility for reconstructin
relationships, processes, and events and for analy
memories of particular experiences continue to b
wise (Perramond 2001; Robbins 2010; Evered 2011
Through its incorporation of first-person acco
exploring the U.S. and Turkish political rhetori
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POPPIES ARE DEMOCRACY! 301
farmers experienced antinarcotics policies and how they
and outcomes today. It thus renders a better understan
antinarcotics policies into the Anatolian countryside a
and the enduring impressions that the U.S. and Turkis
such, this article not only gives voice to those first target
also speaks more broadly to sentiments of anti-Amer
region and informs the present conduct of antinarcoti
The United States' "War on Drugs" and Turkey
U.S. consternation over narcotics consumption began well before the 1970s "war
drugs" declaration. Indeed, agendas for control date to the nineteenth century
have reflected through time continuities and connections with both the countr
prohibition movement and its racial politics (Ahmad 2007). Notably, such agend
contrasted strikingly with early U.S. involvements in international opium trade- for
example, as facilitated by many New England clipper ships. Since the early twen
eth century the United States has played a significant role in early efforts towa
institutionalizing international regimes of narcotics control. This commitment w
evident at the February 1909 Shanghai meeting of the International Opium Com
mission, with the International Opium Convention of 1912, and with the 1931 C
vention for Limiting the Manufacture and Regulating the Distribution of Narc
Drugs, as facilitated through the League of Nations (Booth 1998, 175-190; Mus
1999).
During World War II efforts toward international control diminished initially,
but momentum had resumed by 1943. In this context, Great Britain and the Netherlands
began to contemplate a postwar curbing of opiate production and consumption
in their Asian territories. In these pre-i970s efforts, which spanned the transition
from the Ottoman era to the republican era, Turkey was a focal point in attempts to
restrict producing regions. In association with European intentions for a postwar
order, as early as September 1944 U.S. officials engaged with Turkish authorities. In
correspondence from the U.S. embassy in Ankara, Ambassador Laurence Steinhardt
wrote of Allied intentions, the above-noted developments, and the purported Japanese
source of Asia's opium problem. Specific to Turkey and to a postwar arrangement,
he indicated that the United States hoped "Turkey and all opium-producing
countries [would] be willing to participate in a conference which is expected to be
held after the war for the purpose of drafting a suitable poppy limitation convention,
preparations for which were undertaken several years ago by the Opium Advisory
Committee" (usdos 1945, 63).
On 14 May 1945 Turkey's Ministry of Foreign Affairs sent a response to this initiative
that recalled commitments to international efforts since as early as 1932- when
Turkey ratified adherence to the 1931 Convention for Limiting the Manufacture and
Regulating the Distribution of Narcotic Drugs- and expressed both interest in such
a conference and concern regarding equality in applying any resulting international
standards. In doing so, the ministry further articulated clearly its apprehensions
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302 THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW
about how such measures might unfairly im
and ecologies and those states that were expec
it noted the ecological circumstances of Anato
nomic and dietary dependence on the poppy a
(usdos 1945, 69). This issue of the local cultivator
a largely agrarian country with a ruling part
continued to limit Turkish compliance with d
lated by the United States in the late 1960s and e
Evered 2011).
The United States persisted in its engagement of Turkey on the question of opiates
from that time through the administration of Lyndon B. Johnson, but President
Richard M. Nixon radically redefined the focus both on drugs as an issue of
concern and on Turkey as a site of production. Even prior to his presidency (20
January 1969-9 August 1974), Nixon's first-term campaign team constructed the
question of illicit drugs and associated moral decline as vital political issues as they
sought to appeal to Nixon's "silent majority." In his rhetoric Nixon targeted social
unrest and criminality as problems afflicting the nation- problems that, he claimed,
the purportedly growing rates of drug abuse exacerbated substantially.2 However,
I contend that powerful reasons exist to suggest that much of the so-called problem,
especially its definition and framing for the U.S. media, was invented by Nixon,
his campaigns for election and reelection, and his presidential administrations. In
this regard, an approach based in a discourse-focused field of study such as critical
geopolitics provides a useful means of analyzing how the United States constructed
the problem in a manner that implicated singularly the poppy fields of Turkey.
Although both the Democratic and Republican parties indicated that drug abuse
was a matter of national concern in their 1968 presidential election platforms, the
Nixon campaign defined and made reference to it as a threat that warranted a greater,
federal- and international-scale solution. Not long into his first term, on 14 July
1969, President Nixon announced before the U.S. Congress that drug abuse had
"grown from essentially a local police problem into a serious national threat." That
threat, he warned, demanded a response on a national scale: "A new urgency and
concerted national policy are needed at the Federal level to begin to cope with this
growing menace" (1969a).
Overall, voiced either directly by President Nixon or indirectly by his appointees,
there thus existed a trend toward escalating the scope of both the problem and
the measures necessary to surmount it. They represented the issue as an "epidemic,"
a "national threat," and a "public enemy"; and the means to prevail over it ranged
from an "offensive," to a "crusade," and eventually to a "war." To heighten the urgency
of this problem, instillation of alarm and apprehension was a theme common
to the discourse that emanated from the White House.3 In July 1969 President
Nixon indicated that American parents could no longer send their children to college,
high school, or junior high school without substantial trepidation concerning
exposure to drugs. As he further declared on 17 June 1971, at the close of the same
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POPPIES ARE DEMOCRACY! 303
speech in which he first employed the "war" metapho
among our people is one which properly frightens man
etly into homes and destroys children, it moves into n
fiber of community which makes neighbors."
According to Edward Jay Epstein, this rhetoric prov
of blaming the United States' social and economic ills on
nals and, on the other hand, a pretext for consolidating
oughly controlling law enforcement power under the
executive branch of government.4 Citing numerous pas
cotics-related charges by U.S. authorities against fore
"The charges were based more on the needs of propaga
than on firm evidence of narcotics traffic." He continued
amid the Nixon-era expansion of the antinarcotics miss
cided to extend the war on drugs to friendly nations,
(1990, 81).
Though compelling, Epstein's overall thesis falls beyond the scope of this article.
His observation about the sites for engagement in the new "war," however, is germane.
The first target selected was Mexico's transborder trade in heroin and marijuana.
Involving a cast of characters that included Egil Krogh (presidential assistant
and convicted White House "plumber"), Eugene T. Rossides (assistant treasury secretary),
and G. Gordon Liddy (White House employee, aide to Rossides, and convicted
"plumber"), among others, the administration implemented Operation Intercept on
21 September 1969. After witnessing a rapid deterioration in U.S.-Mexican relations
and widespread criticism, the White House clumsily renamed the scheme Operation
Cooperation on 10 October 1969 and then effectively abandoned the program within
just twenty days (Nixon 1969b; Craig 1980; Epstein 1990, 81-85).
Despite the initial failure of its emergent "war" strategy, the Nixon administration
continued along, promptly designated Turkey another initial site for dramatic
engagement, and applied considerable pressure not only to Turkey itself but also to
William J. Handley, the U.S. ambassador in Ankara from 1969 to 1973.5 For many
Americans, this choice resonated in terms of the recent identification and toppling
of the so-called French Connection; a term popularized in the public's imagination
by a 1969 nonfiction book and a 1971 motion picture starring Gene Hackman- both
titled The French Connection . This linkage involving France was a rudimentary- albeit
illicit- commodity chain; poppy cultivation and production of raw opium in Turkish
villages (Evered 2011), processing and distribution of heroin in Marseille, France,
and marketing and eventual consumption of heroin in New York City and beyond.
In addition- and obscured by attention focused on the traffic through France to the
United States, there existed a centuries-long trade in opium exported from Turkey
to consumers in Iran, where numerous consumers smoked the drug "raw" (unprocessed
into heroin).
To legitimate the urgency of a "war" on Turkey's poppies, the Nixon administration
also employed expert authorities and statistics.6 Indeed, media placement
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304 the geographical review
of such experts and their testimonia
some critical geopolitics studies. Public
and public forums were especially co
Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (bndd
sentation to the U.N. Commission on
ing he declared, "Humanity has a rig
will cooperate fully with the interna
opium, even if that causes an econom
the farmers who plant the poppy" (p
Matters to the Secretary of State Har
dress in New York to the American T
"hard for the Turkish Government and
which come from use of and addictio
encouraged the society to "be a brid
tween the United States and Turkey i
that a decree would come on 30 June
poppy production in Turkey, which res
the 1971/1972 year (pp. 140, 145-146).
As a matter of statistical evidence, t
percentage figures to convey how Tu
United States. As early as 1969 the Ni
cent of the heroin consumed in the Uni
most contemporary sources indicated
between 7 and 15 percent of the wor
1970s administration officials inflated a
85 percent. Apart from the fact that
tation as the world's best, or most p
from, perhaps, an assumption that A
only consumed the best product avai
because they omitted then booming
ments from Southeast Asia (as docum
ties never validated their statistics t
derivation, or even the raw numeric
mation. Nonetheless, as Epstein wrot
endlessly as "journalistic 'fact' " (1990
the U.S. market at this scale, Epstein de
likely assumptions regarding the percen
the illicit market, the need for all of th
the United States and the consequent
tional markets for Turkish opium (1990
rials substantiating Nixon-era claims an
shipments, these figures neglected to r
with Iran and Europeans' consumptio
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POPPIES ARE DEMOCRACY! 305
points, this question of statistical propaganda constituted a ma
eventual Prime Minister Biilent Ecevit later recalled (his first
term was 26 January to 17 November 1974) (1996, 11-14).
In addition to the economic distress forecast for Turkey's f
cials' obvious manipulations of Turkey's image and intern
problem with targeting this ally involved the facts that the c
gaged in reducing the scale of its poppy cultivation and th
involved collaboration with the United States (as indicated
and other bndd reports). Indeed, Turkey reduced producti
then sixty-seven provinces in 1962/1963, to twenty-one in
by 1969/1970. The state further reduced this number to s
Burdur, Isparta, Kiitahya, Denizli, Usak, and four subprovincia
1970/1971, to just Afyon, Burdur, Isparta, and Kiitahya by 19
cultivation entirely following the 1972 harvest (jt-aam 197
Although the will for absolute eradication of Turkey's p
existed among a growing and bipartisan number of U.S. po
achieving such a goal did not exist until March 1971. Give
control and the upcoming elections, profouad pressure exi
rected by- the Nixon administration on this issue. Despite
pliance and resistance to demands to diminish, control, a
cultivation and/or sales, Turkey was in no position to resis
nonviolent "coup by memorandum." Carried out by the m
ineffective and increasingly unpopular rule of Prime Min
the military installed Nihat Erim as prime minister on 26
With a military administration greatly dependent on its con
Atlantic Treaty Organization during the cold war and on t
other aid, the Nixon administration pushed for total era
policy, the United States employed carrot-and-stick incen
assistance to compensate Turkish farmers and other aid fo
ening to withhold military and other aid if Turkey prove
dependent international position vis-a-vis the United State
ternal instability, Turkey acquiesced. Within the Turkish
ever, this was an enormously unpopular development. In t
number of critics of the military/Erim-led state, this move w
as an act of imperialistic U.S. pressure, often expressed in
United States with the Great Powers and its imposition of
empire and the republic, as demonstrating the absolute lac
leadership in Turkey, and as outright victimization of pop
War on Turkey's Poppy Farmers
Timed to coincide with Prime Minister Erim's pledge to eliminate cultivation within
one year and news of an associated decree, on 30 June 1971 President Nixon congratulated
the prime minister for his "courageous" and "statesmanlike" "contribuThis
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306 the geographical review
tion to the well-being of the world" (usdos 1
gressional approval, the United States commi
national losses in licit trade in medical morp
dent Nixon further recognized both Turkey's r
pledging U.S. technical support to identify a
To facilitate eradication and meet this pled
Secretary of Agriculture Clifford M. Hardin to
to Turkey. Their assignment entailed work w
incomes of and opportunities for former po
work, the Turkish state commissioned a rep
"Interministerial Commission on poppies" t
seven leading poppy-producing provinces. O
contrast with official press releases (usdos 1
tions to "not be concerned with an evaluatio
farmers and others from the banning of pop
consisted of identifying development opport
"in the absence of poppy production" (jt-aam
In the introduction to the mission's publi
Hardin recalled President Nixon's remarks a
of eradication and stated, "I am sure the Govern
tion to the [mission's] recommendations" (jtport
consisted of abundantly obvious recomm
throughout rural Turkey, not just poppy-pr
construction, among other suggestions- it a
particular, it identified sunflowers, sugar beets,
and millet. At no time, however, did the stu
between income derived from poppies and th
differences between the prices paid to farmers
sunflower oil, on one hand, and opium- legal
or illegally for traffic in opium and heroin- po
other. Moreover, they also failed to address the
what would be lost from the crop's other use
for baking and oils, of leaves for salads, of st
fuel source for stoves.
At the time, the national newspaper Milliye
volving crop substitution. Based on calculation
stitutes, for every Turkish lira equivalent of u.
earned only u.s.$o.o8 from wheat, u.s.$o.i6 f
sugar beets (Oral 1972). Most of the retired
later confirmed that income derived from
least double what they earned from any other c
times as much. Additionally, U.S. congressio
views" in the poppy-growing region indicate
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POPPIES ARE DEMOCRACY! 307
at local levels due not only to matters of income but also c
taste.
One farmer illustrated the solemn independence and strength found in farmers
throughout the world. Over 70 years of age, he worked his small fields every day
assisted by his family members. He had grown poppies on those hills every year until
1972. He had, at the governments suggestion, grown sunflowers as a substitute for
this, the third year of the ban. But he did not like the taste of sunflower seed oil. He
also planted barley now as a substitute cash crop but it earned much less money than
the poppy.
Did he want to grow poppies again? Yes, he said
His insistence, although expressed courteously to the foreign
fact in Turkey today. (U.S. Congress . . . 1974, 8)
Western policymakers and scholars sometimes recogni
lem of the crop's integral role in local food systems, not
something President Nixon even acknowledged in speec
statement, for example. As James Spain wrote regarding
sions of the "opium problem," "In some remote and im
lages, the poppy was the only crop that made a subsisten
The poppy meant at least as much as tobacco to Kentuc
instances, however, political discourse reflected only the
trol and generally lacked any recognition of such on-the
In my interviews of now-retired poppy farmers, one
when asked about his and others' reactions to the ban,
ecological and economic dimensions of the crop and to
eradication in the collective memory. Appearing as if he
ment of utter devastation in the combined histories of
and his community, he replied, "They banned our bread
cording to most informants, they first learned of the ban t
person, an intermediary between villagers and state insti
about the widespread distress that this news evoked thr
communities. As one retiree related, "We were all brought t
ment from our village leader, and he then told us about
caused great sadness and worry."
Asked about their reactions to the criminalization of
opium sales, one woman recalled, "Young people seemed m
to the ban." Indeed, the 1970s were part of a turbulent p
with various cleavages ranging from ultranationalist/right-w
overgeneralized in Turkish as "Marxist"). The various gr
which the country's youth were involved, often clashed
the state and its security forces. In a cold war context with
eties about activism and leftist politics, such dissent fr
nation's youth was a major factor behind the military's
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308 the geographical review
associated with university campuses and urba
and struggles of the time pulled in communi
This draw upon local youths was especially
terpreted the ban as a function of U.S. infl
military state. For most farmers, however,
Fig. i- The specter of the United States' pol
over the poppy fields of Anatolia on the fro
leftist pamphlet. Source : Info-Turk Ajansi 197
ences that they associated with utter marginaliz
sustenance, and a way of life. This specter t
rialism-represented in the lives of farmers
words and graphics (Figure 1). As conveyed in t
father, "Why was America against us?"
Poppies, Populism, and Democracy in Turkey
For his part, Prime Minister Erim was honored with an invitation to the White
House invitation for late March 1972. His visit coincided with President Nixons
signing ceremony for the Drug Abuse Office and Treatment Act, during which the
president reassured Americans that "the present Turkish Government is totally committed
to stopping all growing of the opium poppy" (Nixon 1972). That evening, in
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POPPIES ARE DEMOCRACY! 309
addition to toasting the past and future of Turkish-Am
dent Nixon applauded Prime Minister Erim's commitm
and democracy: "What is important is that you are atte
despite great pressures that might be applied upon you
dence and freedom, rather than succumbing to the gre
and oppression" (usdos 1972, 601).
Despite the United States' accolades, Prime Minister E
key was quite low. Only weeks after his visit- and follo
tion of his proposed initiatives- he resigned his premie
this resignation on 22 May 1972 and installed Ferit Mele
1973, and then Nairn Talu, who served until a return to de
tion of Biilent Ecevit on 25 January 1974.
Throughout the early 1970s, the Turkish mediaers-voiced
pitched, national-scale condemnation of era
!974> 3)- Regarding this public reaction to the ban and
political scientist later wrote, "This controversy broug
and dependence to the forefront in Turkish politics" (Couf
this discourse, the ban represented at least five source
turn, Turkish citizens argued for its return as an expr
anti-imperialism, Turkish geopolitical and economic sov
integrity, and social justice. More than three decades later,
I collected conveyed these same concerns as retired fa
questions about the period and its wider significance.
Reflecting long-held sentiments concerning the Unit
and the view that it was a form of imperialism, one in
didn't want us to get stronger, and America still doesn't w
past relations with the United States, which most Tur
portive of the Truman Doctrine, for example- many f
betrayal. As one grandmother recalled, "Everyone was
that America had turned against us."
Other retirees regarded it as a beginning of the Unit
dination of Turkey in geopolitical/economic terms. In
ther, "America put down a ban- just like with the [la
America did not want us to [prosper] . Now they don't wan
they can sell us their poor quality [cane] sugar." As seen
ban, a presumed subordinate status vis-a-vis the Unit
negative impacts on local livelihoods. As one informant
could still grow [the poppy], but [the United States'] b
work for someone else."
Although some of my interviews indicated that compensation, once received,
enabled a few villagers to "get rich"- by local standards- most complained about
delayed payments, low payments, and even nonpayment due to inappropriate compensation
calculations and flawed payment schedules. As one farmer recalled, "When
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310 THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW
America paid, it was based on an average of
three years, but we were only paid a third [of
that her family received only a fourth of what
ment calculations, one grandmother noted, "T
those who weren't going to grow [it] that year
figure compensation] . If they had planned to ta
and didn't plant, then they didn't receive any re
the eradication was announced."
Coupled with wider-scale views of the ban as associated with lack of democratic
representation, informants raised issues that conveyed how eradication impaired
the regular conduct of village life and economic well-being. Recalling the views
expressed about crop substitution, something that the journalist Aytun^ Altindal
discussed as an attempted "Americanization" and "Westernization" of Turkish agriculture,
informants also complained about how substitutes were entirely inappropriate,
economically and otherwise (1979, 231). Throughout interviews concerning
both the ban and the area's ecologies, interviewees indicated repeatedly how
everything- except for a few items, such as tea from the Black Sea region or from
abroad- was, and still is, produced and consumed locally and how the ban thus
resulted in profound economic and household-level hardships. Some informants
also stated that the lack of poppy harvests delayed anticipated marriages in their
communities. Both this cultural dimension and the economic benefits associated
with the poppy's reintroduction were evident in one retiree's comments on life after
the poppy's return. He recollected with a smile, "People planted again, got money,
got married, got land, and got tractors. We were happy again!"
In memories of most retired farmers, resumption of local livelihoods and ways of
living would have been impossible were it not for Prime Minister Ecevit's actions. In
truth, however, all of the parties involved in Turkey's first elections since the 12 March
1971 coup vowed to reinstate poppy cultivation, at least in some form. Nonetheless,
many of the rural poor embraced Ecevit's campaign pledge and his subsequent
actions. In the months that followed, the prime minister declared that the poppy
was "not only a livelihood but also a way of life" that was "inseparable from the
peasant's lifestyle" and that realistic alternatives needed to be identified. The consequence
of not doing so left farmers "destitute and hopeless," so a national mandate
existed to restore the poppy, albeit in a controlled manner (Milliyet 1974).
For retired farmers today, Prime Minister Ecevit remains a symbol of this return
to democracy, Turkish sovereignty, humanity and social justice, and the poppy
itself. In almost all interviews, retirees were animated in recalling the leader and his
resolve. As one grandfather told me, after straightening his posture in his chair, "Ecevit
said, 'My farmers' livelihoods rely on it, and we are going to grow it again!' "
Not only a champion of the farmers, many also remember Prime Minister Ecevit
as a champion both of the Turkish nation and of decency. As another grandfather
declared- also filled with pride, "Ecevit said, 'How dare America interfere with our
farmers. We know what to grow.' So he said, 'No!' to America. Everyone was happy
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POPPIES ARE DEMOCRACY! 311
again." Recalling the other key international event that de
first term, Zehra remembered, "He was a brave man, s
also when the Greeks wanted to take Cyprus." Althoug
lamist Necmettin Erbakan disintegrated shortly after Turk
Prime Minister Ecevit's reinstatement of poppy cultiva
Fig. 2- The linking of Prime Minister Biilent Ecevit
to the poppy and the poppy farmer. Source: Ecevit 1976,
front cover.
tion among particular generations and cross-sections of Turkish society- an image
his publisher clearly promoted in 1976 (Figure 2). Commenting further on the prime
minister's apparent empathy for farmers and his perceived ethics, Eflatun Bey declared,
"Ecevit was the best president there ever was! He never mixed the holy with
the sinful!"
To allay U.S. and international fears that Turkish poppies would again result in
heroin, Prime Minister Ecevit guaranteed secure production. He did so by committing
a security force of at least 400 to monitor cultivation and production- in addition
to tasking Turkey's omnipresent gendarmerie with enforcement- and by
universally mandating the imminently policeable straw method of opiate extraction
which involves whole capsules rather than lancing capsules for their "milk."
Despite great skepticism among U.S. officials, Turkish, U.S., and international moniThis
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312 THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW
tors shortly thereafter affirmed that Turkey ha
with no appreciable "slippage" into illicit mar
1975).
Since its reintroduction poppy farming has become a government-controlled
enterprise benefiting both the state and licensed farmers. By all measures and by the
oral testimonies of past and present farmers, reintroduction of the crop was profoundly
successful at local and national scales. Ironically, though viewed as a symbol
of national as well as rural independence, the regime of control through licensing
-essentially a contract between state and producer- has enabled the state to insinuate
itself far more into rural economies and livelihoods than ever before. Commenting
not only on the Ecevit-era return to electoral democracy but also the ideal
of democracy as conveyed through Kearns's notion of a "progressive geopolitics"
-the sort that enables not only voting but also having the means with which to live
a meaningful life and raise a family- one current farmer told me, "Poppies are de-
mocracy!"
"Wars" on Drugs- or Democracy?
Beginning with his 14 July 1969 classification of illegal narcotics use as a "serio
national threat" before the U.S. Congress and culminating with his 17 June 1
identification of drug abuse as the country's principal "public enemy," Presiden
Nixon established for Americans the rationale for a "war on drugs" (Nixon 1971
However, this declaration entailed far more than just increased vigilance and pol
ing of illicit production, trafficking, and consumption and the July 1973 formation
of the Drug Enforcement Agency. President Nixon's pronouncement also initiat
policy imperatives for the decades-long pattern of U.S. intervention in the affairs of
other states that continues today. Although the popular and academic media view
this orientation toward drug-abuse problems within the United States primarily
a matter of law enforcement and foreign policy, the "war on drugs" culminated
profound changes for rural communities globally.
Indeed, President Nixon's declaration continues to reverberate differentially
multiple scales. In some contexts, as in Turkey, entire countries or regions w
targeted with policies of crop eradication. In other cases, particular areas engag
in- or substantially altered existing modes of- cultivation of various crops in r
sponse to evolving geopolitics in drug enforcement, as in Egypt, for example (Hobbs
1998). As I have indicated, however, the motives behind and the impacts of th
ongoing type of campaign are questionable at best.
For its part, Turkey is no longer viewed as a site of illicit production, although it
continues to be implicated in international trafficking of narcotics. Instead, m
Europeans regard the republic as a transit state, a "Colombia of Europe" (Robi
2007). Its history, however, gives both cause for concern and hope for alternatives as
we look to ongoing calls to implement eradication elsewhere. In Afghanistan, wh
both anti-Americanism and democractization are problematic issues of immedia
import, a more "progressive geopolitics" of narcotics policies remains to be fou
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POPPIES ARE DEMOCRACY! 313
Notes
1. For approaches to the local-scale impacts of cultivating opium poppies and other d
plants- and associated politics- see Steinberg, Hobbs, and Mathewson 2004.
2. Some histories of Nixon's approach chronicled an unequivocal stance vis-a-vis drugs, as
David Musto's The American Disease (1999, 248). However, Musto analyzed such motives with gre
care in the second chapter of his later, coauthored book, The Quest for Drug Control (Musto
Korsmeyer 2002).
3. On Nixon's use of fear for political effect, note Rutherford 2000, 48-67. Also, see Sharp's b
though insightful discussion of cold war geopolitics, fear, and illicit drugs in Readers Digest and o
popular media (2000, 145-147).
4. Epstein's account is an indispensable source for any critical geopolitics study of the Un
States' antidrug "wars" due to its interrogation of both the language that proclaimed and the mo
behind the Nixon administration's policies and the key actors he interviewed, including Krogh, Rossid
and Handley. Originally published in 1977, in a number of sections, his account also dealt specific
with the politics in Washington, D.C. that surrounded the designation of Turkey as a site for interve
tion-and some of the personal agendas at stake; for example, Rossides, an American of Greek Cy
riot ancestry, was portrayed as rabidly anti-Turkish in even the years prior to the July- August
Greek-Turkish conflagration over Cyprus. Epstein's questioning of the legitimacy of the "war on dru
thus set it apart from other contemporary accounts, such as the Newsday journalists' Pulitzer P
winning book The Heroin Trail , which, though informative, did not problematize meaningfully
broader dynamics behind or the implications of the "war's" politics but simply retraced the full r
of the so-called French Connection (Newsday Staff 1974).
5. For an account of the Nixon administration's bizarre practice of intimidating the ambassad
including exchanges with Liddy and pledges to bombard Istanbul should Handley fail to ach
eradication- note Epstein 1990, 90-92.
6. On the politics of public opinion in the Nixon era, see Rutherford 2000, 48-67; and on
politics of public opinion and crime, note Marion 1994.
7. Senior Advisor to the Secretary of State and Coordinator for International Narcotics Matt
-and, shortly thereafter, federal convict for tax fraud and perjury in a case of political corrup
Nelson Gross even asserted this point on Southeast Asian opium in his statement to the U.S. Sen
(1972, 506-510).
8. This statistic is still repeated uncritically in otherwise solid academic sources, as in Mc
2004, 47.
9. This sentiment was quite apparent both in Aytun<; Altindal's and (Jagri Erhan's historical studies
and in the interviews collected during the summer of 2009 for this article (Altindal 1979; Erhan 1996).
10. Although Nixon approved providing $100 million for compensation to Turkey and its farmers
over three years, according to Epstein, Rossides broke ranks with the administration and lobbied hard
with Congress not to pay anything. As a result of his seemingly anti-Turkish inclinations and/or his
views on compensation being a "ludicrous" idea, Turkey only received $35 million (1990, 92).
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