Islamic identity in post-Kemalist Turkey and the West

The new US president, Barack Obama, is visiting Turkey in early April. It is going to be Obama’s first visit to an Islamic country. Many commentators attributed this early visit to the value of Turkey’s “identity” for Obama’s foreign policy priorities, not to its “geopolitical location” as it used to be.

The value of Turkey lies in its ability to reconcile its Islamic identity with democratic politics, free-market economy and pro-Western foreign policy orientation. Thus the “new Turkish identity” has become a more valuable “strategic asset” to prevent a clash of civilizations.

With such attributes the new Turkey is ever more capable of bridging the Islamic world and the West, contributing to the global coexistence of different cultures and civilizations.

What enabled this was not the practice of “authoritarian secularism” in an Islamic country but, on the contrary, an embracing of modern political values such as democracy, human rights and the rule of law by Islamic circles, leading to a transformation of Islamic political identity in Turkey over the last decade. Questioning their past identity, political strategy, discourse, and objectives, the Islamic elements have abandoned the notion of an Islamic state -- not only out of political prudence but also incompatibility between Islam and an ideological Islamic state. In the end, they have settled for a democratic Turkey aiming for EU membership.

The process of rethinking Islamic identity and its political model was begun by confronting the old notions of the West and Westernization. The trauma of the early encounters in the 19th century between Islam and the West was overcome as Muslims have grown confident in their relationship with the West after the years of modernization and economic development. A century after being labeled the “sick man of Europe,” Turkey is now a country with the biggest army in NATO after the US, the 16th largest economy in the world and the sixth-largest in Europe. This self-image has helped change Turkey’s positioning vis-à-vis the West.

In rethinking the West, the experience of the Turks living in Europe was also crucial for demonstrating that it is possible after all to be in the West, part of the West and still remain Muslim. Moreover, they realized they were better off in Europe in terms of freedom of belief, as the European states interfered less in the way they dressed, organized and practiced their religion than Turkey, especially in the late 1990s.

Thus, Islamic groups, under the pressure of the authoritarian Kemalist institutions at home, started to view the EU as an opportunity to curb the power of those Kemalist/secularist centers. In this context, Islamic groups realized that the EU demands for greater democratization, respect for human rights and a restrained military role in politics overlapped with their practical priorities.

Moreover, following Sept. 11 and the Justice and Development Party’s (AK Party) ascendance to power in Turkey, the new justification for Turkey’s membership in the EU -- namely the “alliance of civilizations” argument -- led the Islamic groups to embrace the EU accession project. Turkish membership was no longer presented as the accession of a successful “secular” but authoritarian model in the Middle East, but of a “Muslim” democratic country with capabilities for bridging Islam and the West. It should be noted that the latter rationale is embracing and presuming the “Muslim identity” of Turkey while the former is reflective of Turkey’s republican departure from the past/Islam. Islam was no longer an identity abandoned but preserved in the EU context.

Thus the EU membership process served as a catalyst for the Islamic circles to revisit their historical stand about the West and the Westernization. Mainstream Islamic circles in the social realm, in politics and in business turned to be strong adherents of Turkey’s EU membership, a goal they used to oppose as part of their anti-West stance. The departure of the Islamic elite from a conventional anti-Western position to embrace modern political values and the EU membership constitute a unique opportunity to construct a new Islamic “political” identity in the 21st century, disproving the thesis of a clash of civilizations and abandoning a burden of the past that produces animosity.

This is an opportunity not to miss. Western leaders like Obama are on trial. It is time to see the potential of a post-Kemalist democratic Turkey.

16 March 2009

Who will stop the AK Party?

As we approach the local elections scheduled for March 29, it appears, according to opinion polls, that the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) will hold on to its popular support, which had reached 47 percent in the 2007 general elections.

So it is time to rethink the strategies that have been employed against the AK Party since 2002. The number one mistake of the opponents of the AK Party was their unprincipled pragmatism, using any means available to get rid of the AK Party, including undemocratic means, which proved ineffective over the years, depriving the opposition of democratic credibility and pushing the democratic masses to support the AK Party.

In April 2007 a memorandum was issued warning the government and, in fact, Parliament about presidential elections. The main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) supported the military's attempt at intervening in the business of Parliament. CHP leader Deniz Baykal even referred to the military as a "civil-society organization." Imagine a professor of political science back in the 1970s describing the military in that way. I am sure Baykal himself did not believe what he said. But this was politics for him: to get rid of the AK Party by any means necessary. Yet, angry about the military's intervention in politics, people voted for the AK Party in the subsequent general elections.

Then in March last year the judiciary, another ally of the opponents of the AK Party, moved in and opened a closure case against the ruling party in the Constitutional Court. The opponents of the AK Party welcomed this undemocratic attempt and supported it at the expense of their democratic credentials. However, political prudence on the part of the court and other segments of the bureaucracy averted the closure.

Then came the global economic crisis. It was the last hope to get rid of the AK Party government. After all, it was the 2001 economic crisis that brought the AK Party to power in 2002. So with the hardship that would fall on the people at large, the AK Party was expected to lose popular support. But this has not happened, either. Despite the effects of the economic crisis, the AK Party has maintained, even increased, its support base. Even Baykal set the AK Party's success threshold at 52 percent, preparing himself to call the AK Party unsuccessful if it manages to get just 50 percent of the vote! By the way, Baykal considers the CHP's 26 percent vote to be significant!

Many have denied the fact that the problem is not the AK Party, but the lack of a viable, principled and democratic opposition. The opponents of the AK Party should understand that people are not stuck to the AK Party. Once they see the ruling party not performing well, they will vote for another one. But for this, they need an alternative party to vote for.

The recent history of elections in Turkey shows that people's preferences are not unchangeable. Just remember the five elections that Turkey had from 1987 to 2002. In five elections we had five different parties winning in the elections: in 1987 the Motherland Party (ANAVATAN) of Turgut Özal, in 1991 the True Path Party (DYP) of Suleyman Demirel, in 1995 the Welfare Party (RP) of Necmettin Erbakan, in 1999 the Democratic Left Party (DSP) of Bülent Ecevit and in 2002 the AK Party of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

These results demonstrate the people's will, ability and power to change governments depending on their performance. So the AK Party, too, has not been elected for good. It has the mandate to rule the country until the next election. Meanwhile, the thing to do is to come up with one, two or even three viable, credible and principled alternatives. If the opponents of the AK Party still expect Baykal to bring down the AK Party, they are doomed to fail. Can you imagine a leader who lost two general elections and who will, by the end of this month, have lost two local elections against the AK Party still being the only option the opponents of the AK Party can come up with?

The question is not the ruling party -- we have one -- but an alternative, which we still do not have.

09 March 2009, Monday

Is democracy possible with this military?

With each passing day it becomes quite obvious that establishing a full-fledged democracy in Turkey requires a radical transformation of civilian-military relations.

The military has been a "political power" with a vested interest in the undemocratic character of Turkish politics that enables them to extract and exercise enormous power.

This is not a baseless and abstract assertion, but a fact. It is the military that has interrupted Turkish democracy four times in the last 50 years. The first such coup in 1960 set a poisonous precedent for the intervention of the military in politics, executed in order to establish and sustain its power and privileges. The justification for unlawful intervention has changed over the years: protect the Constitution, establish public order, fight against communism, stop secessionist Kurdish movements, protect secularism, etc. What has not changed is the objective: keep power and resources in the grip of the military leadership.

This was evident once more in the release last week of a leaked conversation of İsmail Hakkı Karadayı, the former chief of general staff. Everyone interested in civilian-military relations in Turkey should get a copy of this tape, which is an honest confession by a retired chief of the Turkish military about conspiracies against democracy carried out from the 1960s to the end of the 1990s.
The content and style of his remarks remind us that a politicized Turkish military constitutes one of the greatest obstacles to achieving a genuine democracy in Turkey. From the tape we can see that the tradition of toppling democratically elected governments by the use of force is part of the institutional culture in the military, which sees itself as above the law, democratic principles and the will and wishes of the nation; they regard themselves as untouchables.

Gen. Karadayı admits his role in military coups from the 1960s onwards. On the more recent coup of 1997, carried out when he was the chief of general staff, Karadayı explains how they threatened an elected government in order to force them to resign, then how they offered the government to a political party, and how the president at the time, Süleyman Demirel, worked with them. He referred to Demirel as the one who "did whatever we asked him to do." I cannot repeat here how Gen. Karadayı referred to former Prime Ministers Tansu Çiller and Mesut Yılmaz!

This and other revelations about the military's role in the "power game" in Ankara explain a lot about Turkish domestic politics and foreign affairs. They have naturally resisted -- and will continue to resist -- reforms that take away those powers deemed unacceptable in a normal democracy. Since the EU noted in 1997 (Agenda 2000) that the nature of civilian-military relations in Turkey was an obstacle to Turkey's accession, the military has guarded the nation against the EU and related reforms.

The military has resisted Turkey's march into an EU membership and an engagement with globalizing dynamics because they want Turkey to be ruled in Ankara, where they have the ultimate say, if not a veto power over economic and political decisions. The military is much aware that its rule over Ankara will not continue if Turkey becomes a member of the EU, so we hear them referring to the need to keep "Turkish independence and the nation-state" intact, a move to justify their resistance. So the position is clear: Keep Turkey ruled in Ankara and don't bring Brussels into the power game played over in Turkey. Isolation of Turkey from the outside world, including the EU, is key for the military to continue to exercise its political power in Turkey. Therefore market economy, democratization, globalization, and the EU accession process are viewed as the greatest threats to the military's established interest to rule Turkey.

When the military starts minding its own business instead of intervening in politics, we will get closer to achieving a contemporary democratic civilization. The question is: Who will persuade or force the military to withdraw to its barracks?

02 March 2009