Can the islamic republic survive?

Participatory politics are hard to control for those at the height of political echelons, even if this is a regime like Iran's, which over the years has developed mechanisms of social and political engineering. Once people are asked to choose, this is it. There is no way to turn back. Participatory politics develop their own dynamics and culture.

Iran has experienced some degree of participatory politics since 1979, and no doubt, its Islamic regime has enjoyed a high level of legitimacy incomparable to many Arab regimes in the region.

But now that the top leadership, as opposition forces in Iran claim, is not respecting the outcome of people's votes, trouble has started for the regime, which cannot generate legitimacy without popular participation.

Yes, the post-revolutionary regime in Iran has enjoyed high legitimacy. But the legitimacy that was enjoyed by the regime in Iran had two pillars: First was the ideological component of the revolution, and second, was the popular base of the revolution.

As for the ideological pillar, the opposition does not seem to be challenging the “founding” principles of Iran's Islamic regime. They do not question Khomeini's theory of Velayat-i Faqih or the ideological elements in the Iranian constitution. However, the opposition argues that an Islamic republic does not mean a dictatorship of the jurists or of the Revolutionary Guards. It is a republic that respects people's choices. This means that the opposition directed at Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, who won the disputed presidential election, is one coming from within.

Mir Hossein Moussavi's revolutionary credentials cannot be questioned: He served for years as prime minister when Khomeini was the supreme leader. His point is clear and sharp: an Islamic republic should conduct free, fair and competitive elections, as happened many times in the past. His is therefore not a radical departure, denying past practices and principles. On the contrary, Moussavi and his supporters claim to fight against those who have deviated, by rigging the election, from the true spirit of the revolution.

This is a strong position that protects the opposition leader from charges of being a “counter-revolutionary,” giving him some space for maneuvering. By resisting the outright authoritarian tendencies of the current power elite, the opposition is attempting to keep very important breathing space for the ordinary people: the right to vote and choose (even among those who are selected beforehand by the Guardian Council).

The defense of the right of the masses to participate in electing their country's political leaders can indeed be justified via references to the revolution and its true spirit.

As I mentioned above, the second pillar of the revolution was its popular support. The revolution was essentially the making of the people. The 1979 upheaval was a mass movement. It was the power of the people that overthrew the Shah's regime. Thus the revolutionary leaders knew from the onset that the very legitimacy of the revolution was derived from the people's power. Out of the recognition of the power of the people, post-revolutionary leaders institutionalized popular participation in public decisions making progress that has turned out to be a self-defeating process as the power elite in Tehran now tries to limit it.

Thus the revolutionary leaders allowed participatory politics within an ideological framework, which together constituted the dual bases of legitimacy for the Islamic republic.

Yet what we are witnessing currently is the dynamics of participatory politics, which was brought into the system by the revolution itself, pushing the limits of ideological premises and radical revolutionary actors.

Without a fair participatory mechanism, Iran will turn into an utterly totalitarian regime that can survive only by sheer oppression. But for how long?

22 June 2009, Monday

Islamization of population by the Kemalists?

What happened to the non-Muslims in this country was not the making of fascism, but nationalism and the quest to establish a nation-state assumed to be free of different ethnic and religious identities. Such a project was particularly difficult for a country like Turkey, which had been the home of different ethnic and religious groups under the roof of the Ottoman Empire.

Nonetheless, the history of the late Ottoman Empire in the age of nationalism provided a groundwork for the need to establish a national (Turkish) state as almost all ethnic components of the empire embraced the idea of a nation-state of their own. The non-Muslim groups, particularly the Armenians and Greeks remaining in Anatolia, emerged as “foreign elements” in the empire and then in the republic. This was to some extent a response to the history of the late Ottoman Empire, where foreign powers used the non-Muslims within the empire to expand their power and influence over the empire's territories. In the age of nationalism, each ethnic group was also prone to establish foreign alignments so as to achieve their national aspirations. The history of disintegration, especially in the Balkans and later in the Middle East, built-in Turkey a national psyche that viewed non-Muslims as the extensions of foreign powers.

Besides this, the search for a nation-state was thought to require religious and ethnic homogeneity. During the republican era, while Islam was excluded from the public sphere through radical secularization policies, the state pursued a policy of Islamization of the population. The exchange of population with Greece took religious differences as the point of departure. Those who were subjected to forced immigration were separated on the basis of their religion. The homogenization of the population was certainly a means to establish a nation-state for both Turkey and Greece.

Moreover, the homogenization of the people through the exchange of populations and forced immigration made it possible to close Turkey off from the world since the non-Muslim elements were the most cosmopolitan groups in Turkey. As they were forced to leave the country, Turkey turned ever more inward, enabling the Kemalist elite to pursue an authoritarian modernization project that situated its elite at the center of power independent of the world powers.

The result was that the creation of a nation-state out of an empire was traumatic not only for the non-Muslims but also for the Muslims since the new nation-state regarded all collective identities except the Turkish national identity as a deviation threatening the supreme state identity. The state demanded allegiances of all sorts. Any collective identity independent of the state constructed an alternative source of allegiance, thus threatening the single professed and forced identity of the state.

This was an attitude very similar to the Ottoman Empire in the age of expansion that never allowed the emergence of alternative centers of power and authority that might appear to be competing with the center.

Likewise, in the republican era, different identities, be they ethnic or religious or even ideological in more recent times, were regarded as divisive. An identity that demands allegiance from the citizens of the Republic constituted a threat to the consolidation and sustainability of the Kemalist identity.

So the problem, in essence, is the difficulty of the nation-state to live together with plural identities. It may be possible to deny and even repress ethnic or religious identities in an authoritarian polity, but contemporary liberal democracy requires respect for “difference.” To pursue a policy of assimilation or expulsion of ethnic and religious minorities is no longer possible. Yet this is not enough. Facing the past and confessing mistakes that went contrary not only to the contemporary notion of pluralism but also to the conventional Ottoman practice of tolerance and coexistence is necessary to move forward.


01 June 2009