paranoid laicism (1): religion and politics in Turkey
Finally posting on these matters: it's been hard to keep up, because the situation keeps changing, and because frankly, I am feeling rather bleak about all of this. There was a bombing yesterday in Ankara, in the Ulus area--six are dead, a hundred injured. Many hopes nourished in recent years, by people I love and respect, seem to be shriveling day by day.
I've split this in two--the first, longer post deals with the current crisis more broadly; the second is focused more narrowly on the headscarf issue (tomorrow).
In recent years those of us who follow Turkish politics been preoccupied with the tensions between pro-EU and anti-EU forces, and the festering problem of nationalist antagonism towards minorities. But the last few months have seen the resurgence of battle over another political faultline, perhaps Turkey's most enduring. The contest is usually glossed as the secular establishment versus the ruling "Islamist" AK (Justice and Development) Party, although this is a simplification, and one that has led to a lot of shoddy reporting in the Western press lately.
The issue that sparked the current confrontation was the governing Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, or AKP)'s nomination of Foreign Minister Abdullah Gül for the presidency. For an overview of the early development of the crisis and the main players, see this excellent post from the Head Heeb. (One quibble only: Jonathan's characterization of the situation as a "three-way confrontation between nationalist, Islamist and liberal-modernist political currents"--I think those categories aren't so neatly delineable, since here the secular "liberal-modernists"--though so liberal as we'd hope--and the (Kemalist) nationalists are often one and the same, and moreover, there are also nationalist variants with strong overtones of Islam, especially in the context of anti-minority sentiment.)
In any case, the current confrontation is between the AK Party and the old coalition that traditionally has underpinned the Kemalist state: namely, the army and the secular political establishment (including the now-opposition CHP Party, much of the state bureaucracy and judiciary, and the largely urban secular elite.) It's perhaps worth mentioning here the concept of the derin devleti, or "deep state", so often evoked in Turkish political discourse--that is, the somewhat shadowy, military-linked power structures that lay beneath the surface of electoral politics.
Today, the derin devleti seems to be rearing its head once more, as the various actors in this coalition have moved to destablize the AKP government by accusing its leadership of threatening to undermine Turkish democracy and secularism, of having hidden intentions to impose a reactionary religious regime. Hence the angry response to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's nomination of Gül to replace former President Ahmet Necdet Sezer, a stalwart secularlist.
My views on this are pretty simple: the army always has been, and remains, a far greater threat to Turkish democracy than the AK Party. While I am not a fan of the AKP's social conservatism, and have been disappointed by their lackluster approach to freedom of expression issues (Article 301), their legislative record makes the opposition's claims seem laughable--the religious agenda has been very limited, and mostly focused on expanding opportunities for practicing Muslims--ie, removing the restrictions on the wearing of headscarves in public universities and state institutions, or allowing graduates of religious secondary schools to qualify more easily for post-secondary studies. I am in favor of the former, and neutral about the latter. The only piece of AKP-sponsored legislation that I found really disturbing was the ill-considered and brief attempt to criminalize adultery; the government came under widespread domestic and international criticism and quickly dropped the proposed law. Otherwise, the AKP's sins have been primarily those of omission (failures of the reform agenda) or overreaching by local politicians. Aside from the adultery law scandal, most of the attempts at social-conservative legislation have been the acts of city officials, such as restrictions on alcohol sales in some places, the Ankara district governor's harassment of the queer rights organization KAOS GL in 2005, or the recent and very stupid attempt by an Istanbul city official to ban billboard featuring bikini-clad women (there's been a huge hue and cry, and I imagine the bikinis will be staying).
In fact, the AKP has overseen the most drastic reforms in the post-1980-coup era, largely as part of the harmonization with EU law--including reforms to the penal code that have taken positive steps on women's rights issues (for example, in the divorce laws and on punishment for "honor killings"). They have made more progress on minority rights issues than any government that has proceeded them (though there's certainly a long way to go yet). Finally, the AKP leadership has also worked tirelessly to gain entry to the EU, viewing membership as not only an economic opportunity but as a way of establishing civilian control over the military once and for all and consolidating the increased democracy of recent years (including on issues of religious freedom). There is very little here to provide convincing support for the secularists' claims that the AKP leadership are Islamist wolves in democratic sheepskins, looking to turn Turkey into another Iran-style Islamic Republic: as a matter of fact, their record of "religious legislation" looks mild in comparison with that of the American Republican Party. So why, then, the existential fear that has led to a "memorandum" from the military (essentially a veiled threat to intervene) and the large "pro-secular" protests in Ankara, İstanbul, and İzmir in recent weeks?
First, it's a bit of a misnomer to talk about Turkish "secularism"--the better term is laïcism, from the French laïcité (in Turkish, laiklik)--denoting not merely a separation of church and state, as in the American example, but instead a total exclusion of religion from the public sphere, and the control of religious institutions by the state. So Turkey has the Diyanet, a government ministry that oversees all approved mosques and their imams, while simultaneously banning the wearing of headscarves in state institutions and public universities, and other strict controls on religious freedoms.
Laicism is often named one of the key articles of faith of the secular republic--and indeed, it's one of the "six arrows" of official Kemalist thought--though it didn't become one until 1937, more than a decade after the state's founding. Mustafa Kemal (Atatürk), though willing to rely upon religion when useful as a demarcation of Turkish national identity, believed that the only way to make Turkey modern (and modernity, in Kemalism, is synonymous with the Western European nation-state ideal) was to rid the country of its "tradition"-bound past. Kemal's reforms attempted to purge the new nation of anything more than a nominal Islam. His grand social engineering projects succeeded in creating an elite and, in later generations, even a middle-class that largely shares these convictions. And the Kemalist cadres that have mostly governed Turkey since the 1930s hew to his ideals. But successive waves of democratic openings have all produced more religiously-tinged political movements--because the vast majority of the Turkish population are Muslim, and many of them are believers enough to welcome a less restricted role for religion in the public sphere. For the foreseeable future, a more democratic Turkey will also be a more Islamic one. But that need not mean extremist: for example, here's an interesting NYT piece on Konya, probably the most devout city in Turkey, and how several years of AKP governance actually seem to have had a moderating influence. The Turkish think tank TESEV recently published a study showing only 9% of the population would support a state based on sharia principles--a marked decrease from the 21% in a 1999 version of the poll. (And on specific measures, such as sharia penalties like death by stoning, support was below one percent). It's also worth noting that the AKP's electoral successes have also had a lot to do with their record of effective governance on the local level, and with the perception that they represented a fresh alternative to a corrupt old guard.
Yet a significant portion of Turkey's population remains deeply afraid that the AKP poses a fundamental threat to their "modern" lifestyle and to the secular republic. I would hesitate to exaggerate their numbers--the TESEV study in 2006 showed only 22% of respondents feared that secularism was in danger, though the proportion may have increased due to all the polarizing coverage of the issue. (This fear is also very much a function of class-based anxiety about the "backwards" masses and rural-urban migration, but that's another post). I've had people tell me, with a straight face, that the AKP's electoral successes mask a devious plot to overthrow the secular state and turn Turkey into "another Iran." Such an agenda would be worth fearing indeed--but I'm unconvinced it's much more than a chimera, one deliberately conjured up by the forces that benefit from keeping Turkish politics and civil society in check.
So Turkey's army-ridden past rears its head again: this is a country that has seen four coups since 1960, if you count the 1997 "soft coup" (sometimes called the "postmodern" coup) in which the army managed to force the Islamist Refah (Welfare) Party government out of office with the mere threat of intervention. The memorandum posted on the Turkish general staff's website last month is a chilling sign. The military remains one of the most highly-trusted institutions in Turkey--a trust that derives both from the militarist bent of nationalist education, and from the fact that most Turkish men serve as army conscripts in their youth. But the military's refusal to relinquish its role as "guardian", as the final arbiter of Turkish politics, strikes me as far more dangerous than the election of an Islam-based party that has proved itself willing to play by democratic rules. I should say I'm by no means unbiased here: the military's actions, particularly the 1980 coup and the massive human rights abuses in its aftermath, have wreaked far more damage to the lives of people I know and respect than anything the AKP has ever done. That's why the recent hints by some among the secularist parties that military intervention would be welcome strike me as so chilling.
For a more critical view, I'd also recommend Gamze Cavdar's recent article at MERIP. She takes the "pox on both their houses" line a little farther than I would, but her criticisms of the AKP are well-founded. It's not that I don't agree; it's just that I find the alternatives offered by the present political landscape even worse. If there were a genuine social democratic party in Turkey today I'd be delighted--but the CHP has become a nationalist parody of itself, and is garnering heavy criticism from the network of European Social Democratic parties on the grounds that its recent statements amounted to near-invitations for a military coup.
A final note: To some extent, I also blame the EU for the exacerbation of these problems. The souring of Turkey's accession hopes have had an incredibly damaging effect, especially on the health of the pro-reform coalition in Turkey. EU rejectionism (I'm looking at you, Sarko) has fueled a rise in nationalist sentiment, which was disturbingly evident in the recent protests. I saw a lot of signs and images caricaturing the AKP as puppets of EU or US imperialism--I particulalry recall an anti-Gül T-shirt that read ABDullah, playing off two Turkish abbreviations: "ABD" for "USA" and "AB" for the "EU". Those abroad who celebrated the protests as a defiant sign of secularist resistance to an Islamist onslaught often glossed over or missed entirely the nationalist overtones--an emphasis that I find deeply troubling.
I've split this in two--the first, longer post deals with the current crisis more broadly; the second is focused more narrowly on the headscarf issue (tomorrow).
In recent years those of us who follow Turkish politics been preoccupied with the tensions between pro-EU and anti-EU forces, and the festering problem of nationalist antagonism towards minorities. But the last few months have seen the resurgence of battle over another political faultline, perhaps Turkey's most enduring. The contest is usually glossed as the secular establishment versus the ruling "Islamist" AK (Justice and Development) Party, although this is a simplification, and one that has led to a lot of shoddy reporting in the Western press lately.
The issue that sparked the current confrontation was the governing Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, or AKP)'s nomination of Foreign Minister Abdullah Gül for the presidency. For an overview of the early development of the crisis and the main players, see this excellent post from the Head Heeb. (One quibble only: Jonathan's characterization of the situation as a "three-way confrontation between nationalist, Islamist and liberal-modernist political currents"--I think those categories aren't so neatly delineable, since here the secular "liberal-modernists"--though so liberal as we'd hope--and the (Kemalist) nationalists are often one and the same, and moreover, there are also nationalist variants with strong overtones of Islam, especially in the context of anti-minority sentiment.)
In any case, the current confrontation is between the AK Party and the old coalition that traditionally has underpinned the Kemalist state: namely, the army and the secular political establishment (including the now-opposition CHP Party, much of the state bureaucracy and judiciary, and the largely urban secular elite.) It's perhaps worth mentioning here the concept of the derin devleti, or "deep state", so often evoked in Turkish political discourse--that is, the somewhat shadowy, military-linked power structures that lay beneath the surface of electoral politics.
Today, the derin devleti seems to be rearing its head once more, as the various actors in this coalition have moved to destablize the AKP government by accusing its leadership of threatening to undermine Turkish democracy and secularism, of having hidden intentions to impose a reactionary religious regime. Hence the angry response to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's nomination of Gül to replace former President Ahmet Necdet Sezer, a stalwart secularlist.
My views on this are pretty simple: the army always has been, and remains, a far greater threat to Turkish democracy than the AK Party. While I am not a fan of the AKP's social conservatism, and have been disappointed by their lackluster approach to freedom of expression issues (Article 301), their legislative record makes the opposition's claims seem laughable--the religious agenda has been very limited, and mostly focused on expanding opportunities for practicing Muslims--ie, removing the restrictions on the wearing of headscarves in public universities and state institutions, or allowing graduates of religious secondary schools to qualify more easily for post-secondary studies. I am in favor of the former, and neutral about the latter. The only piece of AKP-sponsored legislation that I found really disturbing was the ill-considered and brief attempt to criminalize adultery; the government came under widespread domestic and international criticism and quickly dropped the proposed law. Otherwise, the AKP's sins have been primarily those of omission (failures of the reform agenda) or overreaching by local politicians. Aside from the adultery law scandal, most of the attempts at social-conservative legislation have been the acts of city officials, such as restrictions on alcohol sales in some places, the Ankara district governor's harassment of the queer rights organization KAOS GL in 2005, or the recent and very stupid attempt by an Istanbul city official to ban billboard featuring bikini-clad women (there's been a huge hue and cry, and I imagine the bikinis will be staying).
In fact, the AKP has overseen the most drastic reforms in the post-1980-coup era, largely as part of the harmonization with EU law--including reforms to the penal code that have taken positive steps on women's rights issues (for example, in the divorce laws and on punishment for "honor killings"). They have made more progress on minority rights issues than any government that has proceeded them (though there's certainly a long way to go yet). Finally, the AKP leadership has also worked tirelessly to gain entry to the EU, viewing membership as not only an economic opportunity but as a way of establishing civilian control over the military once and for all and consolidating the increased democracy of recent years (including on issues of religious freedom). There is very little here to provide convincing support for the secularists' claims that the AKP leadership are Islamist wolves in democratic sheepskins, looking to turn Turkey into another Iran-style Islamic Republic: as a matter of fact, their record of "religious legislation" looks mild in comparison with that of the American Republican Party. So why, then, the existential fear that has led to a "memorandum" from the military (essentially a veiled threat to intervene) and the large "pro-secular" protests in Ankara, İstanbul, and İzmir in recent weeks?
First, it's a bit of a misnomer to talk about Turkish "secularism"--the better term is laïcism, from the French laïcité (in Turkish, laiklik)--denoting not merely a separation of church and state, as in the American example, but instead a total exclusion of religion from the public sphere, and the control of religious institutions by the state. So Turkey has the Diyanet, a government ministry that oversees all approved mosques and their imams, while simultaneously banning the wearing of headscarves in state institutions and public universities, and other strict controls on religious freedoms.
Laicism is often named one of the key articles of faith of the secular republic--and indeed, it's one of the "six arrows" of official Kemalist thought--though it didn't become one until 1937, more than a decade after the state's founding. Mustafa Kemal (Atatürk), though willing to rely upon religion when useful as a demarcation of Turkish national identity, believed that the only way to make Turkey modern (and modernity, in Kemalism, is synonymous with the Western European nation-state ideal) was to rid the country of its "tradition"-bound past. Kemal's reforms attempted to purge the new nation of anything more than a nominal Islam. His grand social engineering projects succeeded in creating an elite and, in later generations, even a middle-class that largely shares these convictions. And the Kemalist cadres that have mostly governed Turkey since the 1930s hew to his ideals. But successive waves of democratic openings have all produced more religiously-tinged political movements--because the vast majority of the Turkish population are Muslim, and many of them are believers enough to welcome a less restricted role for religion in the public sphere. For the foreseeable future, a more democratic Turkey will also be a more Islamic one. But that need not mean extremist: for example, here's an interesting NYT piece on Konya, probably the most devout city in Turkey, and how several years of AKP governance actually seem to have had a moderating influence. The Turkish think tank TESEV recently published a study showing only 9% of the population would support a state based on sharia principles--a marked decrease from the 21% in a 1999 version of the poll. (And on specific measures, such as sharia penalties like death by stoning, support was below one percent). It's also worth noting that the AKP's electoral successes have also had a lot to do with their record of effective governance on the local level, and with the perception that they represented a fresh alternative to a corrupt old guard.
Yet a significant portion of Turkey's population remains deeply afraid that the AKP poses a fundamental threat to their "modern" lifestyle and to the secular republic. I would hesitate to exaggerate their numbers--the TESEV study in 2006 showed only 22% of respondents feared that secularism was in danger, though the proportion may have increased due to all the polarizing coverage of the issue. (This fear is also very much a function of class-based anxiety about the "backwards" masses and rural-urban migration, but that's another post). I've had people tell me, with a straight face, that the AKP's electoral successes mask a devious plot to overthrow the secular state and turn Turkey into "another Iran." Such an agenda would be worth fearing indeed--but I'm unconvinced it's much more than a chimera, one deliberately conjured up by the forces that benefit from keeping Turkish politics and civil society in check.
So Turkey's army-ridden past rears its head again: this is a country that has seen four coups since 1960, if you count the 1997 "soft coup" (sometimes called the "postmodern" coup) in which the army managed to force the Islamist Refah (Welfare) Party government out of office with the mere threat of intervention. The memorandum posted on the Turkish general staff's website last month is a chilling sign. The military remains one of the most highly-trusted institutions in Turkey--a trust that derives both from the militarist bent of nationalist education, and from the fact that most Turkish men serve as army conscripts in their youth. But the military's refusal to relinquish its role as "guardian", as the final arbiter of Turkish politics, strikes me as far more dangerous than the election of an Islam-based party that has proved itself willing to play by democratic rules. I should say I'm by no means unbiased here: the military's actions, particularly the 1980 coup and the massive human rights abuses in its aftermath, have wreaked far more damage to the lives of people I know and respect than anything the AKP has ever done. That's why the recent hints by some among the secularist parties that military intervention would be welcome strike me as so chilling.
For a more critical view, I'd also recommend Gamze Cavdar's recent article at MERIP. She takes the "pox on both their houses" line a little farther than I would, but her criticisms of the AKP are well-founded. It's not that I don't agree; it's just that I find the alternatives offered by the present political landscape even worse. If there were a genuine social democratic party in Turkey today I'd be delighted--but the CHP has become a nationalist parody of itself, and is garnering heavy criticism from the network of European Social Democratic parties on the grounds that its recent statements amounted to near-invitations for a military coup.
A final note: To some extent, I also blame the EU for the exacerbation of these problems. The souring of Turkey's accession hopes have had an incredibly damaging effect, especially on the health of the pro-reform coalition in Turkey. EU rejectionism (I'm looking at you, Sarko) has fueled a rise in nationalist sentiment, which was disturbingly evident in the recent protests. I saw a lot of signs and images caricaturing the AKP as puppets of EU or US imperialism--I particulalry recall an anti-Gül T-shirt that read ABDullah, playing off two Turkish abbreviations: "ABD" for "USA" and "AB" for the "EU". Those abroad who celebrated the protests as a defiant sign of secularist resistance to an Islamist onslaught often glossed over or missed entirely the nationalist overtones--an emphasis that I find deeply troubling.
posted by kitabet at 11:03 PM
3 Comments:
Having never been there (well, yet) all my knowledge of Turkey comes from reading up books and newspapers and speaking to as many people as I can from that region.
And it's always surprising how many people really do feel that the AKP is a wolf in sheeps clothing type islamist party. (For all intents and purposes I might have a terribly biased sample, but it's still lightly surprising. Also the number of people who are very anti Orhan Pamuk. Its always made me wonder about the role education and in that sense some sort of nationalistic indoctrination has had.)
So I guess a huge part of the problem i just that people have no qualms in turning to the military in the first place. (Oh, and I agree with everything you've written more or less 100%).
Also have you read this article by Ayaan Hirsi Ali? (It made me rather mad.)
Perhaps its not paranoid laicism? Could it be that a significant portion of Turkey's population rather likes Turkish laicité and finds the shilly-shallying of most western nations well, abhorrent? And is not keen on seeing something of the sort in Turkey. Or perhaps it was a reminder to the AKP, which, despite its overwhelming majority in parliament, was elected on 34% of the vote, that such a meagre plurality does not confer a mandate to annoy people.
Furthermore, in the words of one Turkish columnist, "Was it the same secularists who murdered the priest in Trabzon, the judge in Ankara? Was it the secularists who bombed banks, synagogues and the British Consulate in Istanbul? Was it them who tortured and killed Christian converts in Malatya last month? Was Hrant Dink's murderer a secularist? Who arson attacked and killed 33 people in Sivas in 1993? How many people ... have been attacked in Turkey for not fasting during Ramadan? How many people, if any ... have been attacked for fasting during Ramadan? How many people ... have been attacked for drinking alcohol “in Muslim neighborhoods?” How many people, if any ... have been attacked in Turkey for NOT drinking alcohol? Do secularists kill in the name of secularism? ... Is there, anywhere in the world, a concept called as “secularist terror?” Is there a concept called as Islamic terror?" Rhetorical flourishes aside, I for one would readily state that an excess of religion does lead to problems.
You quite rightly make a distinction between secularism and laicité; as an aside, I'd like to say that I find the US definition of "secular" to be risible. In the States, secularism has become equivalent to talking about your religion as often and as publicly as possible, preferably with a dash of politics thrown in. Which doesn't really square even with secularism let alone laicité.
I for one applaud the AKP for their economic policies and for opening negotiations with the EU. As well as being decent administrators - better than their secular counterparts. Kudos to them. However, good administrative skills do not necessarily grant anyone the right to do anything more. Moreover, dismissing the municipal party and separating them as you have done from the national is entirely artificial and misleading. The constant assault on Turkish secularism is generally done at the local level, perhaps because it is generally not quite as visible as such an assault at the national level. The manifestations of religiosity might not be apparent to you, but it is apparent to quite a few of us.
To call us *all* paranoid requires a degree of self-confidence which I personally would lack. Though you are no doubt aware that there is a clinical term for those people who view hordes of others as paranoid.
Plus, as a Kemalist, might I object to being treated as a member of some dubious cult? True, Kemalism has become a religion for some, and there are nutcases who claim to be Kemalist. But Kemalism, for all its arrows, is a very loosely defined political philosophy and for most it equates with some vague idea about modernity. The AKP does not - yet - fit into this image for our future. They need to soften their approach further and they will.
It might have fairer to us poor Kemalists if you had noted that the incidence of anti-EU or anti-US slogans was rather less than the blanket, "No to sharia, no to coup[s]". Which might have taken some of the sting out of the story as well as sapping your argument.
(It might be galling to be caricatured, but I do find both the current US administration and the rather hyprocritical EU to be quite worthy of caricature. Sarkozy by contrast, though I may disagree with him, is refreshing. Caricature can hurt, true, and I am very sorry if you were offended.)
I have rambled on too long. Finally, I would like to re-iterate my surprise and disappointment that an blog titled "verbal privilege" can dismiss others' views as paranoid. I probably disagree far more fundamentally with the AKP than you would do with me. Yet I do them the courtesy of not calling them names.
Your analysis of Turkish politics is attractive were it not for the ommission of the The Kurdish Question, in my view one of the most important political issues in Turkey for the last decade.
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