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

The liberal turn in Turkish foreign policy

For decades Turkish foreign policy was informed by a "siege mentality" that saw Turkey as surrounded by enemy nations with territorial ambitions over the country. The geopolitical position of Turkey was exaggerated to explain why foreign enemies had their eyes on it. This laid the ground for a perception of the external world in adversarial terms. The foreign policy elite believed that Turkey was located in a region where everyone was at war with everyone else, as in a Hobbesian state of nature.

Such a portrayal of the outside world was extremely convenient for domestic political purposes. Threats from outside justified the authoritarian regime inside. As Turkey was the focus of efforts emanating from the outside, the people at home had to be united against external enemies, and also beware of the internal extensions of these enemies. By such reasoning, democracy, human rights, and pluralism were regarded as luxurious and even risky, as the country was facing a constant threat to its very existence.

The politics of survival was the basis of this thinking. Everything -- any kind of authoritarian regime, radical nationalism, denial of the existence of the Kurds and delays in democratization -- could be explained or excused by reference to the primacy of survival in the face of external and internal threats.

Starting with the 1999 decision of the EU regarding Turkey's candidate status, the country learned to look at its foreign policy matters and regional affairs from a different point of view.

The 1999 candidacy move not only marked the beginning of an EU-stimulated process of domestic reform, but also the Europeanization of Turkish foreign policy. Instead of bullying in the region and projecting power over regional actors, Turkish leaders began to seek genuine peace and stability in the neighborhood, thus abandoning a conflict-based, security-centric and insecure perspective in approaching regional and global affairs. A paradigm shift occurred from pure power politics motivated by a search for survival in a hostile environment to a liberal foreign policy agenda seeing the countries of the region not as adversaries, but as partners prioritizing cooperation over conflict and soft power over military might and bullying.

The reason for this transformation was the restructuring of priorities in Turkish politics and foreign affairs in the late 1990s. Attaining the goals of "democratization, economic development, and EU accession" set the main agenda of Turkish foreign policy, as well as its domestic affairs, in the post-1999 period.

The stabilization of the region through active diplomacy, including mediation efforts, engagement with neighbors and the development of economic interaction and interdependence, have thus come to occupy the central stage. Turkey's rising regional profile has, however, led some commentators to accuse the Turkish government of departing from the West and embracing the East.

What has happened, in fact, is quite the contrary: Turkey is reiterating its "Western vocation" by brokering peace and stability in the region, as reflected in its efforts in the Caucasus and the Middle East. This is so because Turkey has realized that it has a very high stake in peace and stability in its neighborhood. Without peace and stability, it is impossible to attain its broad objectives of democratization, development and EU membership.

Yet such thinking is something new. In the old days, when Turkey offered merely its "strategic value" to allies, regional peace and stability did not matter. The more conflict-ridden, unstable and insecure the region was, the higher the "price" that would be offered to Turkey for its "strategic assets" in the region. Turkey, at the time, loved to be an "island of stability" in a region of chaos and conflict.

This has all changed due to the changing priorities of Turkey in the post-1999 era. A stabilized and war-free region is now essential for Turkey's quest to deepen its democracy, sustain its economic development and secure its accession to the EU. Being part of the conflict, tension or war will only serve the power of authoritarian elements in Turkey. Establishing peace, security, and stability in the region is, therefore, a means to foster Turkish democracy.

Turkey's quest to secure peace, security, and stability in the region by mediating between Israel and Syria, the US and Iran and Fatah and Hamas should be seen from this point of view. It is part and parcel of a liberal foreign policy that is based on cooperation, engagement, and multilateralism.

23 February 2009

The roots of a new anti-Semitism in Turkey

The latest row over the Israeli attacks on Gaza and the ensuing public reaction in Turkey has raised questions about the rise of anti-Semitism in Turkey. The recent rise of anti-Semitism is in fact related to the activities and ideology of neo-nationalist (Ulusalcı) groups.

Let me explain. A near witch-hunt of people with Jewish origin was started in early 2004 with the publication of a series of books on Sabbateanism. The authors of these books are Yalçın Küçük, an academic with a Marxist background, Soner Yalçın, a leftist journalist currently working at the Hürriyet daily, and Ergün Poyraz, a freelance journalist.

The books of these authors were sold in hundreds of thousands in recent years. The books were available not only in bookshops but in almost all newspaper kiosks throughout Turkey. Yalçın's book "Efendi," published by Doğan Yayıncılık, had been reprinted 82 times by April 2008. Poyraz's books sold over 150,000 copies just in 2007, a phenomenal success by any measure.

These publications have created a mental climate in which being a Jew or having a Jewish background is something to be ashamed of, and enough to be anti-Turkish, a mindset which prompts hatred. The picture that was emerged out of these publications was that Turkey was and has always been under the influence of Jews. These books popularized the view that almost all important public figures, past and present, were Sabbatean, of Jewish origin; that the Turkish republic was a "Jewish project"; and that the Turkish economy and political and cultural life were under the control of people of Jewish origin. These were not unknown ideas. But the important thing was that through these books, the anti-Semitic sentiment was introduced to new segments of society; people who were urban, educated, professional and secular. An idea that was hitherto popular among a very small number of radical Islamists has spread into new social and political environs.

The underlying theme was that Turkey has been controlled by a Jewish conspiracy, and, as such, a new struggle for national independence was required. Poyraz's books, entitled "The Children of Moses" and "The Rose of Moses," even went as far as to claim that President Abdullah Gül and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan are of Jewish origin. This kind of writing was part and parcel of creating a siege mentality, provoking anti-Semitism and justifying a neo-nationalist popular uprising.

Those books and the authors' TV appearances normalized anti-Semitism, camouflaged as Sabbatean "research" that turned into a campaign to discredit all influential public figures who are pro-reform and take a pro-EU stand.

This new anti-Semitism is part of an attempt to spread the neo-nationalist position into the grassroots, where the neo-nationalists have tried to forge alliances with conservatives. On Feb. 28, 2005, in an interview I gave to Neşe Düzel from the Radikal daily, I warned that anti-Semitism was being used to scare a diverse array of people, including leftists, rightists, Islamists, and socialists, and bring them together under a militarist ideology. The anti-Semitism provoked in 2004 and afterward has been part of an attempt to create the support base in society for a nationalist/militarist march to power, whether legally or illegally.

So the new anti-Semitism is the child of nationalist-militarist formations.

09 February 2009

From apology to reconciliation

Thanks to a recent petition prepared and signed by a group of intellectuals, we have found ourselves discussing the Armenian issue. It appears that not only the recognition of genocide claims but also the fact of the massacres against the Ottoman Armenians is a taboo. Those who signed the petition have been accused of treason.

Even Turkish President Abdullah Gül, who recognized the right of individuals to prepare any kind of petition, became a target of a racist assault by Republican People's Party (CHP) deputy Canan Arıtman, who argued that Gül's ancestors may be of Armenian origin. This scandalous statement was, in fact, a logical outcome of the xenophobia that has grown amongst Turkey's secularist circles.

But there also exists a historical aspect of this hatred toward "foreigners." We should not forget that not only Armenian identity, but modern Turkish identity, too, has been shaped by the events of 1915. As Minister of Defense Vecdi Gönül admitted a month ago, many in Turkey believe that the forced deportation of Armenians and Greeks made it possible to establish a "Turkish nation-state" in Anatolia.

This is the bottom line: Anything that is viewed as necessary to form a state, any kind of state, which is the guarantee of the survival of the "nation," is to be justified. For this reason, ultranationalists in recent years have been calling for the need to wage "another war of independence," aware that such a state of affairs would justify anything, including a military coup. Their motto made this very clear: "If the motherland is at stake, the rest is a matter of details." So those ultranationalists were trying to build a consensus on the "essentials" of the national existence: to protect the state (whose characteristics would not matter at all) vis-à-vis the assault of global forces and their domestic collaborators.

The secularists and the "conservative democrats," including Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, have united in defense of what the Committee of Union and Progress did in 1915.

We do not have to, and should not, accept that the 1915 events constituted genocide, but we must stop trying to find excuses for the massacres of Ottoman citizens of Armenian origin. Otherwise, we can find excuses for the suppression of the Kurds, of Islamic dervish orders, of the girls who wear the headscarf, etc. If we allow the raison d'état to reign, then everything will be explainable and justifiable.

The debate over the apology campaign has revealed that many in Turkey, including Islamists, conservatives, leftists and even liberals, continue to think within the paradigm of the nation-state and nationalism.

The fact is that at the turn of the 19th century, all the peoples of the Balkans and Anatolia suffered at the hands of nationalists, be they Bulgarian, Greek, Turkish or Armenian nationalists. There is, therefore, no point in maintaining and reproducing the same nationalist sentimentalities today. What is needed is a process of reconciliation that does not come through by standing behind the crimes of nationalists of all kinds committed a century ago.

22 December 2008

Understanding AK Party’s Kurdish strategy

Given the electoral support the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) received from Kurds in the July 2007 elections and the party's reformist credentials, it was optimistically expected that the long-awaited solution to the Kurdish question was about to come.

Instead of developing a comprehensive approach to address the roots of the question, the AK Party developed a strategy of solving the Kurdish question "without recognizing the Kurdish ethnicity."

This is, of course, an unrealistic strategy but understandable because the party does not really have a free hand in its approach to the question and thus must act within the limits drawn by the security establishment, which claims to have the final say on the issue.

The security establishment realizes that the AK Party's popularity among Kurds is an opportunity and is pushing the party to the forefront to implement policies to buy the Kurds' loyalty. The "state" therefore wants the AK Party to ease the Kurdish question without damaging the basic characteristics of the Turkish nation-state.

What is left for the AK Party is to develop a three-tier strategy.

First up is providing people in Kurdish areas with economic and social benefits. Pumping resources into the region to complete the Southeastern Anatolia Project (GAP) and implementing small-scale benefit projects are part and parcel of this strategy. Acting as a "social welfare state" in the region is expected to generate relative prosperity among the poverty-ridden Kurds and build a bridge to the "Turkish" state. Fighting against poverty is certainly an issue -- especially since large cities in the region are surrounded by hundreds of thousands of people who were forced to leave their villages. The shantytowns around Diyarbakır have made the Kurds' poverty more visible than ever. There is, therefore, a rationale behind providing these poor people with some economic benefits in return for their votes. However, this approach presumes that the Kurdish question is a matter of economic backwardness and that a more affluent Kurdish region will acquiesce to the Turkish state's denial of Kurdish identity. This is an approach that fails to understand the identity aspect of the Kurdish question and one that has been adopted many times by other political parties. Yet the AK Party is allowed to pursue such a policy precisely because it is a policy without an identity dimension.

The second element of the AK Party's Kurdish strategy is to appeal to "Kurdish conservatism," a strong social and political force in the region. Though the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) is a Marxist-nationalist organization, the outlawed Kurds at large are religious people who have very close connections with various religious orders and groups. The AK Party standing as a conservative party in line with the Kurdish social inclination gives the party a great advantage vis-à-vis the Marxist PKK. What is important for the Turkish security establishment is that a notion of "Muslim brotherhood" pursued by the AK Party may be effective in making Kurds loyal to the Turkish state without recognizing the Kurdish ethnicity. Thus a rhetoric employing Islam portrayed as anti-secular in the Western part of Turkey is not a problem in the Kurdish areas so long as it suppresses the Kurdish national identity.

The last element of the AK Party strategy is to develop a closer relationship with Iraqi Kurdish entities and leaders. It is important to note that this is not a unilateral AK Party policy. There is now a broad agreement among the Turkish policy actors -- including the security establishment -- on a policy of rapprochement with Iraqi Kurdish authorities. There has emerged such a consensus because cooperating with the Iraqi Kurdish entity against the PKK does not mean recognizing Iraqi Kurds' right to statehood or the ethnic identity demands of the Kurds in Turkey. Iraqi Kurds may be instrumental in containing and eliminating the PKK forces stationed in Iraqi territory.

On the part of the government, there is a political dimension as well. To recognize Iraqi Kurdish gains in post-occupation Iraq has been the desire of Turkey's Kurds. Visits by Iraqi President Jalal Talabani to Ankara and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to Baghdad have revealed that Turkey is prepared to develop a dialogue with Iraqi Kurds and that it is not unhappy with the newly acquired power of its Kurdish brothers in Iraq.

Given the popularity of Iraqi Kurdish movements in Turkey among the Kurds, the government's dialogue with the Kurdish leaders is certainly welcomed by Turkey's Kurds and will create a political advantage for the AK Party government. The AK Party's opening to northern Iraq can, therefore, also be seen as political maneuvering to reach out to Turkey's Kurdish population just before vital local elections, scheduled for March, without recognizing the Kurdish ethnicity.

15 December 2008