G
Gandalf Grey
Guest
Tomgram: Dilip Hiro on Head-Scarf Politics in Turkey
By Tom Engelhardt
Created May 11 2007 - 9:22am
- from TomDispatch [1]
For Americans, whose view of Islam and Islamic politics is, to put the
matter politely, less than complex, it's worth being reminded of just how
complex, how unexpected, politics (religious or otherwise) can turn out to
be anywhere on this planet. With that in mind, Dilip Hiro, Tomdispatch
regular [2] and author most recently of Blood of the Earth: The Battle for
the World's Vanishing Oil Resources [3], turns to a country that Tomdispatch
has (to my regret) seldom focused on -- Turkey -- and a situation, balanced
between democracy and autocracy, in which secularists [4] and Islamists
don't come down in the obvious, comfortable places.
Once before in memory -- in Algeria [5] -- generals ended democratic
development in the name of saving secularism and democracy from political
Islam. The results were horrific indeed -- for democracy and for the
Algerian people. Turkey, where, as Hiro reminds us, a soft "coup" against
political Islam has just taken place, is open to many destabilizing
possibilities, only made worse by the catastrophe of Iraq, and the conundrum
[6] of Iraqi Kurdistan, just across the border.
-- Tom
Unholy Alliance: How Secularists and Generals Tried to Take Down Turkish
Democracy
By Dilip Hiro
Recently Turkey came close to experiencing a soft military coup. In late
April, faced with the prospect of the moderate Islamist Foreign Minister
Abdullah Gul becoming president, the country's top generals threatened to
overthrow the elected government under the guise of protecting "secularism."
When the minority secularist parliamentarians boycotted the poll for
president, the Constitutional Court, powerfully influenced by the military's
threat, invalidated the parliament's vote for Gul on the technical grounds
that it lacked a two-thirds quorum -- something that had never been an issue
before.
This demonstrated vividly that secularists are not invariably the good guys
engaged in a struggle with the irredeemably bad guys from the Islamic camp.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of the ruling Justice and Development
Party (Adalet ve Kalknma Partisi or AKP) called the Court's verdict "a
bullet fired at the heart of democracy." Other critics pointed out that
earlier Presidents had been elected without the presence of two-thirds of
the 550-member Parliament.
Here was an example of the complex interplay between secularism and Islam in
a Muslim country. The Turkish secular elite, fearing a further loss of
power, raised the cry of "Secularism in danger!" and got their way -- for
now -- even though a recent poll showed that only 22% of Turks agreed with
this assessment.
During its nearly five years in office, the AKP government, led by the
charismatic, incorruptible Erdogan, has kept religion separate from its
politics -- the sort of behavior the American Constitutional system used to
emphasize -- while expanding democratic, human, and minority (that is,
Kurdish) rights through the most thorough overhaul of Turkish laws in recent
memory. The AKP has also been vigorously pursuing Turkey's full membership
of the European Union (EU).
"The primary reason behind the intervention of the secular establishment was
not the fear that Turkey would become Islamic," noted Suat Kiniklioglu,
director of the German Marshall Find of the United States' Ankara Office, in
an International Herald Tribune op-ed. "Their fear was that the
democratization drive, led in part by hopes of entering the European Union,
will erode their power."
The present confrontation between the AKP and the secularist establishment,
with the military at its core (originating with the founding of the Republic
in 1923), is rooted as much in political power and class differences as it
is in Islam.
On one side is an affluent, university-educated, westernized elite,
popularly known as "the White Turks," which dominates the military, the
bureaucracy, the judiciary, and the Education Ministry; on the other, a
coalition of the urban underclass and a rising group of prospering
entrepreneurs from (Asian) Anatolia, which covers 97% of Turkey. Both groups
are devoutly Muslim and socially conservative. Both have come to value
democratic rights and governance.
Torn from Landlords, Hooked to Pious Politicians
The urban underprivileged and the energetic entrepreneurs have, in fact,
been the primary beneficiaries of the Erdogan administration's adroit
management of the economy, which has expanded by an annual average of 7% for
five years.
During that period per capita income has, astoundingly, almost doubled, to
$5,500. And foreign investment since 2003 has soared to an unprecedented
$50bn.
The alliance of these classes has occurred against the background of a
multi-faceted socio-economic change: the fast diminishing size of the
Turkish peasantry as villagers abandon agriculture for better paying jobs in
urban centers; a staggering rise in the literacy rate to over 90%; and the
gradual loss of the traditional working- and lower-middle class awe of the
White Turks.
Ever since the prosperous mid-1980s, an increasing number of Turks have
benefited from an unprecedented extension of access to information. They
have also gained personal mobility through car ownership. Television,
telephones, and cars have become part of everyday life for many Turks.
Collectively, they have helped the previously underprivileged to think for
themselves.
This is particularly true of the rural migrants into cities such as
Istanbul, the capital Ankara, and Konya, which together account for a
quarter of the national population of 71 million. In an unfamiliar,
impersonal urban environment, they have found their moral and ethical
moorings in Islam. And they seek solace in the mosque and a caring political
institution like the Justice and Development Party and its two
antecedents -- the Islamist Welfare and the Virtue parties.
Over time, they have also come to realize the power of the ballot -- how the
principle of one-person one-vote, if applied fully, can help to right
socio-economic wrongs. It was their backing which initially placed the
Welfare Party in the town halls, inter alia, of Istanbul, Ankara, and Konya,
and then transformed it into the largest single party in Parliament in late
1995 under the leadership of Necmettin Erbakan.
Unlike their counterparts in the secular camp, Welfare Party leaders, who
derived their moral and ethical values from Islam, were not corrupt. This
mattered a lot to voters, growing increasingly disenchanted with the
corruption and factiousness of secular politicians
Breaking with past party practices, Welfare Party leaders set up social
networks at the grassroots. Their regular attendance at local mosques --
popular with traditionally pious rural migrants as well as local traders and
artisans -- helped strengthen the networks. The success of such a strategy
can be judged by the fact that two-thirds of 2.5 million first-time voters
favored the AKP in the November 2002 general election, when the year-old
party won 363 seats.
By contrast, such secular factions as the Republican Peoples Party (RPP) --
whose boycott of the presidential poll in late April made the Parliament
inquorate -- are stuck in the old, elitist mode of politics. "You talk to
the AKP people and they try to persuade you," remarked Ali Caroglu, a
political science professor in Istanbul. "But the RPP is very judgmental.
They don't want to talk to the people they don't approve of."
On being elected mayors in the early 1990s, Welfare leaders drastically
reduced corruption in town halls and delivered municipal services
efficiently. As Istanbul's mayor, Erdogan was instrumental in furnishing the
metropolis with a sorely needed subway system and tramway, as well as
providing bread at a subsidized price to residents.
The difference wrought by the Islamist parties was summed up aptly by Omar
Karatas, leader of the AKP's youth section in Istanbul. "Before, the state
was up here and the people down there," he said. "Now, there's a
harmonization between these two groups."
A Tortuous Road to Democratic Power
The road to "harmony" has, however, been tortuous. The progenitor of the
Islamic factions was the National Salvation Party (NSP), formed by Necmettin
Erbakan in 1972, which propagated pristine Islamic ideas brazenly. It was
dissolved, along with other political parties, following a military coup in
1980.
With the introduction of a new constitution in 1983, political life slowly
revived. The pre-coup NSP re-emerged as the Welfare Party under Erbakan. In
mid-1996, as leader of the senior partner in a coalition, he became the
prime minister. (His cabinet included Abdullah Gul, the AKP's presidential
candidate in the recent crisis.)
Within a decade of its founding, the transformation of the Welfare Party --
treated as a pariah by the White Turks -- into the senior constituent of a
governing coalition was a symptom of democracy striking firm roots in
Turkey. It invalidated the view -- held by most Western commentators -- that
democracy and political Islam are incompatible. In Turkey, it was the
secular elite, backing military coups against Islamists, that failed the
test of democracy,
Five senior generals tried to forestall Erbakan's premiership. In early
1996, as he was trying to form a coalition government, defense sources
leaked the contents of a secret military cooperation agreement Turkey had
signed with Israel a decade earlier. The generals figured that such a
revelation would so embarrass Erbakan, and alienate him from his Islamist
base, that he would abandon his prime ministerial ambitions. But, to their
chagrin, he persisted.
As it had done in 1960, 1971, and 1980, the military hierarchy seriously
considered staging a coup. Yet it could not overlook the drastically changed
international scene following the collapse of the Soviet Union. In earlier
years, in the midst of the Cold War, Washington had looked the other way
when the Turkish generals sent tanks into city squares and arrested all
politicians. Now, with NATO on the verge of opening its doors to Poland,
Hungary, and the Czech Republic, the Clinton administration was emphasizing
the importance of civilian control over the armed forces to their leaders. A
coup by the Turkish generals in such circumstances would have made a mockery
of this freshly stressed NATO principle.
To leave nothing to chance, however, following several private warnings to
the Turkish generals, U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright publicly
urged them "not to exceed the armed forces' authority within the democratic
system." (In the current crisis, an equivalent role was played by Olli Rehn,
the EU's Commissioner for Enlargement, who warned the military to stop
meddling in the presidential poll. Were the generals to seize power in
Ankara, he indicated, it would destroy Turkey's chance of becoming an EU
member.)
Instead, the Turkish generals orchestrated a war of attrition against
Erbakan by briefing the judiciary, the media, and businessmen on the evils
of Islamic fundamentalism, while pursuing their own regional foreign policy
centered on forging a military alliance with Israel. The generals' offensive
came on the heels of high inflation and unemployment as well as a chronic
Kurdish insurgency that Erbakan had inherited. He resigned in June 1997.
Thus, the generals achieved their aim by mounting a "soft" coup, a novel
strategy.
Seven months later, the Constitutional Court banned Erbakan's party and
barred him from public life. Yet Islamists remained a political force
committed to parliamentary democracy. Erbakan managed to play an important
role in creating the Virtue Party which emerged as the main opposition party
in the 1999 general election. Not for long, though.
In June 2001, the Constitutional Court outlawed the Virtue Party, describing
it as "a focal point of anti-secular activities" -- which meant being at the
center of protests against a ban on the wearing of women's head scarves in
government offices and educational institutions.
Head-Scarf Politics
Over the past decade, the battle between secularists and Islamists has
become focused on the symbolic politics surrounding the head scarf, which
almost invariably is worn in public together with a long coat. The two
garments constitute a modest dress for women according to pious Muslims. In
Islam, the importance of women donning such dress is attributed to a verse
in the Koran which enjoins believing women to "cast their veils over their
bosoms, and reveal not their adornment (zinah), except to their husbands"
and other blood-related males, as well as female relatives, and children.
In 1998, the Turkish authorities extended the head-scarf ban to
universities. Protests in response lasted two years. The issue reached a
fever pitch in May 1999 when Merve Kavakci -- an America-trained computer
engineer and freshly elected Virtue Party member of Parliament, holding a
dual nationality -- appeared there in a head scarf. She argued that nothing
in the statute books barred her from doing so. When it was discovered that
she had not secured permission from the authorities to contest a
parliamentary seat -- as someone with a dual nationality is required to
do -- she was quickly deprived of her Turkish citizenship.
Her case illustrates the difference between secularism as practiced in
Turkey and in the United States. The American version guarantees individual
religious rights, whereas the Turkish version invests the state with the
power to suppress religious practices in any way it wishes.
With the general election due on July 22, secularists are trying to push the
head-scarf issue to the top of their campaign. It is easier and more
effective for them to stress that Gul's wife, Hayrunisa, wears a head scarf
than to remind the public that he was a member of Islamist Erbakan's
government a decade earlier.
"People think that if the First Lady wears a head scarf, then many things
will change, threatening the whole secular system, forcing all women to wear
head scarves," said Nilufer Naril, a sociology professor in Istanbul. She
seemed oblivious to the finding of the Turkish Economic & Social Studies
Foundation that nearly two-thirds of women in Turkey already wear a head
scarf.
By contrast, the AKP is set to contest the upcoming election on its record
of providing a strong, uncorrupt government which has produced impressive
economic growth and implemented political reform. In desperation, leaders of
the Republican People's Party, the only secular group represented in the
Parliament, have decided to coalesce with a smaller secularist faction, to
mount a strong challenge to the formidable AKP.
As yet, though, neither secularist party is showing any sign of abandoning
its present strategy of building its program around its distrust of the AKP
and Erdogan. But then, negative thinking seems to have inspired the early
proponents of secularism in Turkey too.
"Influenced by the European anti-religious movements of the late 19th and
early 20th centuries, the Turkish secularist elite views religion as a
pre-modern myth, one that must be extinguished for modernity to blossom,"
notes Mustafa Akyol, deputy editor of the Turkish Daily News. "The outcome
of this mindset is an authoritarian strategy: Political power is to remain
in the hands of the secularist elite. Thus the 'secular republic' equals the
'republic of seculars' -- not the republic of all citizens."
Little wonder that secular fundamentalists in Turkey get along famously with
the military.
Dilip Hiro is the author of many books on the Middle East and Central Asia.
His most recent book is Blood of the Earth: The Battle for the World's
Vanishing Oil Resources [7] (Nation Books).
Copyright 2007 Dilip Hiro
--
NOTICE: This post contains copyrighted material the use of which has not
always been authorized by the copyright owner. I am making such material
available to advance understanding of
political, human rights, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues. I
believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of such copyrighted material as
provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright
Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107
"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their
government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are
suffering deeply in spirit,
and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public
debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have
patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning
back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at
stake."
-Thomas Jefferson
By Tom Engelhardt
Created May 11 2007 - 9:22am
- from TomDispatch [1]
For Americans, whose view of Islam and Islamic politics is, to put the
matter politely, less than complex, it's worth being reminded of just how
complex, how unexpected, politics (religious or otherwise) can turn out to
be anywhere on this planet. With that in mind, Dilip Hiro, Tomdispatch
regular [2] and author most recently of Blood of the Earth: The Battle for
the World's Vanishing Oil Resources [3], turns to a country that Tomdispatch
has (to my regret) seldom focused on -- Turkey -- and a situation, balanced
between democracy and autocracy, in which secularists [4] and Islamists
don't come down in the obvious, comfortable places.
Once before in memory -- in Algeria [5] -- generals ended democratic
development in the name of saving secularism and democracy from political
Islam. The results were horrific indeed -- for democracy and for the
Algerian people. Turkey, where, as Hiro reminds us, a soft "coup" against
political Islam has just taken place, is open to many destabilizing
possibilities, only made worse by the catastrophe of Iraq, and the conundrum
[6] of Iraqi Kurdistan, just across the border.
-- Tom
Unholy Alliance: How Secularists and Generals Tried to Take Down Turkish
Democracy
By Dilip Hiro
Recently Turkey came close to experiencing a soft military coup. In late
April, faced with the prospect of the moderate Islamist Foreign Minister
Abdullah Gul becoming president, the country's top generals threatened to
overthrow the elected government under the guise of protecting "secularism."
When the minority secularist parliamentarians boycotted the poll for
president, the Constitutional Court, powerfully influenced by the military's
threat, invalidated the parliament's vote for Gul on the technical grounds
that it lacked a two-thirds quorum -- something that had never been an issue
before.
This demonstrated vividly that secularists are not invariably the good guys
engaged in a struggle with the irredeemably bad guys from the Islamic camp.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of the ruling Justice and Development
Party (Adalet ve Kalknma Partisi or AKP) called the Court's verdict "a
bullet fired at the heart of democracy." Other critics pointed out that
earlier Presidents had been elected without the presence of two-thirds of
the 550-member Parliament.
Here was an example of the complex interplay between secularism and Islam in
a Muslim country. The Turkish secular elite, fearing a further loss of
power, raised the cry of "Secularism in danger!" and got their way -- for
now -- even though a recent poll showed that only 22% of Turks agreed with
this assessment.
During its nearly five years in office, the AKP government, led by the
charismatic, incorruptible Erdogan, has kept religion separate from its
politics -- the sort of behavior the American Constitutional system used to
emphasize -- while expanding democratic, human, and minority (that is,
Kurdish) rights through the most thorough overhaul of Turkish laws in recent
memory. The AKP has also been vigorously pursuing Turkey's full membership
of the European Union (EU).
"The primary reason behind the intervention of the secular establishment was
not the fear that Turkey would become Islamic," noted Suat Kiniklioglu,
director of the German Marshall Find of the United States' Ankara Office, in
an International Herald Tribune op-ed. "Their fear was that the
democratization drive, led in part by hopes of entering the European Union,
will erode their power."
The present confrontation between the AKP and the secularist establishment,
with the military at its core (originating with the founding of the Republic
in 1923), is rooted as much in political power and class differences as it
is in Islam.
On one side is an affluent, university-educated, westernized elite,
popularly known as "the White Turks," which dominates the military, the
bureaucracy, the judiciary, and the Education Ministry; on the other, a
coalition of the urban underclass and a rising group of prospering
entrepreneurs from (Asian) Anatolia, which covers 97% of Turkey. Both groups
are devoutly Muslim and socially conservative. Both have come to value
democratic rights and governance.
Torn from Landlords, Hooked to Pious Politicians
The urban underprivileged and the energetic entrepreneurs have, in fact,
been the primary beneficiaries of the Erdogan administration's adroit
management of the economy, which has expanded by an annual average of 7% for
five years.
During that period per capita income has, astoundingly, almost doubled, to
$5,500. And foreign investment since 2003 has soared to an unprecedented
$50bn.
The alliance of these classes has occurred against the background of a
multi-faceted socio-economic change: the fast diminishing size of the
Turkish peasantry as villagers abandon agriculture for better paying jobs in
urban centers; a staggering rise in the literacy rate to over 90%; and the
gradual loss of the traditional working- and lower-middle class awe of the
White Turks.
Ever since the prosperous mid-1980s, an increasing number of Turks have
benefited from an unprecedented extension of access to information. They
have also gained personal mobility through car ownership. Television,
telephones, and cars have become part of everyday life for many Turks.
Collectively, they have helped the previously underprivileged to think for
themselves.
This is particularly true of the rural migrants into cities such as
Istanbul, the capital Ankara, and Konya, which together account for a
quarter of the national population of 71 million. In an unfamiliar,
impersonal urban environment, they have found their moral and ethical
moorings in Islam. And they seek solace in the mosque and a caring political
institution like the Justice and Development Party and its two
antecedents -- the Islamist Welfare and the Virtue parties.
Over time, they have also come to realize the power of the ballot -- how the
principle of one-person one-vote, if applied fully, can help to right
socio-economic wrongs. It was their backing which initially placed the
Welfare Party in the town halls, inter alia, of Istanbul, Ankara, and Konya,
and then transformed it into the largest single party in Parliament in late
1995 under the leadership of Necmettin Erbakan.
Unlike their counterparts in the secular camp, Welfare Party leaders, who
derived their moral and ethical values from Islam, were not corrupt. This
mattered a lot to voters, growing increasingly disenchanted with the
corruption and factiousness of secular politicians
Breaking with past party practices, Welfare Party leaders set up social
networks at the grassroots. Their regular attendance at local mosques --
popular with traditionally pious rural migrants as well as local traders and
artisans -- helped strengthen the networks. The success of such a strategy
can be judged by the fact that two-thirds of 2.5 million first-time voters
favored the AKP in the November 2002 general election, when the year-old
party won 363 seats.
By contrast, such secular factions as the Republican Peoples Party (RPP) --
whose boycott of the presidential poll in late April made the Parliament
inquorate -- are stuck in the old, elitist mode of politics. "You talk to
the AKP people and they try to persuade you," remarked Ali Caroglu, a
political science professor in Istanbul. "But the RPP is very judgmental.
They don't want to talk to the people they don't approve of."
On being elected mayors in the early 1990s, Welfare leaders drastically
reduced corruption in town halls and delivered municipal services
efficiently. As Istanbul's mayor, Erdogan was instrumental in furnishing the
metropolis with a sorely needed subway system and tramway, as well as
providing bread at a subsidized price to residents.
The difference wrought by the Islamist parties was summed up aptly by Omar
Karatas, leader of the AKP's youth section in Istanbul. "Before, the state
was up here and the people down there," he said. "Now, there's a
harmonization between these two groups."
A Tortuous Road to Democratic Power
The road to "harmony" has, however, been tortuous. The progenitor of the
Islamic factions was the National Salvation Party (NSP), formed by Necmettin
Erbakan in 1972, which propagated pristine Islamic ideas brazenly. It was
dissolved, along with other political parties, following a military coup in
1980.
With the introduction of a new constitution in 1983, political life slowly
revived. The pre-coup NSP re-emerged as the Welfare Party under Erbakan. In
mid-1996, as leader of the senior partner in a coalition, he became the
prime minister. (His cabinet included Abdullah Gul, the AKP's presidential
candidate in the recent crisis.)
Within a decade of its founding, the transformation of the Welfare Party --
treated as a pariah by the White Turks -- into the senior constituent of a
governing coalition was a symptom of democracy striking firm roots in
Turkey. It invalidated the view -- held by most Western commentators -- that
democracy and political Islam are incompatible. In Turkey, it was the
secular elite, backing military coups against Islamists, that failed the
test of democracy,
Five senior generals tried to forestall Erbakan's premiership. In early
1996, as he was trying to form a coalition government, defense sources
leaked the contents of a secret military cooperation agreement Turkey had
signed with Israel a decade earlier. The generals figured that such a
revelation would so embarrass Erbakan, and alienate him from his Islamist
base, that he would abandon his prime ministerial ambitions. But, to their
chagrin, he persisted.
As it had done in 1960, 1971, and 1980, the military hierarchy seriously
considered staging a coup. Yet it could not overlook the drastically changed
international scene following the collapse of the Soviet Union. In earlier
years, in the midst of the Cold War, Washington had looked the other way
when the Turkish generals sent tanks into city squares and arrested all
politicians. Now, with NATO on the verge of opening its doors to Poland,
Hungary, and the Czech Republic, the Clinton administration was emphasizing
the importance of civilian control over the armed forces to their leaders. A
coup by the Turkish generals in such circumstances would have made a mockery
of this freshly stressed NATO principle.
To leave nothing to chance, however, following several private warnings to
the Turkish generals, U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright publicly
urged them "not to exceed the armed forces' authority within the democratic
system." (In the current crisis, an equivalent role was played by Olli Rehn,
the EU's Commissioner for Enlargement, who warned the military to stop
meddling in the presidential poll. Were the generals to seize power in
Ankara, he indicated, it would destroy Turkey's chance of becoming an EU
member.)
Instead, the Turkish generals orchestrated a war of attrition against
Erbakan by briefing the judiciary, the media, and businessmen on the evils
of Islamic fundamentalism, while pursuing their own regional foreign policy
centered on forging a military alliance with Israel. The generals' offensive
came on the heels of high inflation and unemployment as well as a chronic
Kurdish insurgency that Erbakan had inherited. He resigned in June 1997.
Thus, the generals achieved their aim by mounting a "soft" coup, a novel
strategy.
Seven months later, the Constitutional Court banned Erbakan's party and
barred him from public life. Yet Islamists remained a political force
committed to parliamentary democracy. Erbakan managed to play an important
role in creating the Virtue Party which emerged as the main opposition party
in the 1999 general election. Not for long, though.
In June 2001, the Constitutional Court outlawed the Virtue Party, describing
it as "a focal point of anti-secular activities" -- which meant being at the
center of protests against a ban on the wearing of women's head scarves in
government offices and educational institutions.
Head-Scarf Politics
Over the past decade, the battle between secularists and Islamists has
become focused on the symbolic politics surrounding the head scarf, which
almost invariably is worn in public together with a long coat. The two
garments constitute a modest dress for women according to pious Muslims. In
Islam, the importance of women donning such dress is attributed to a verse
in the Koran which enjoins believing women to "cast their veils over their
bosoms, and reveal not their adornment (zinah), except to their husbands"
and other blood-related males, as well as female relatives, and children.
In 1998, the Turkish authorities extended the head-scarf ban to
universities. Protests in response lasted two years. The issue reached a
fever pitch in May 1999 when Merve Kavakci -- an America-trained computer
engineer and freshly elected Virtue Party member of Parliament, holding a
dual nationality -- appeared there in a head scarf. She argued that nothing
in the statute books barred her from doing so. When it was discovered that
she had not secured permission from the authorities to contest a
parliamentary seat -- as someone with a dual nationality is required to
do -- she was quickly deprived of her Turkish citizenship.
Her case illustrates the difference between secularism as practiced in
Turkey and in the United States. The American version guarantees individual
religious rights, whereas the Turkish version invests the state with the
power to suppress religious practices in any way it wishes.
With the general election due on July 22, secularists are trying to push the
head-scarf issue to the top of their campaign. It is easier and more
effective for them to stress that Gul's wife, Hayrunisa, wears a head scarf
than to remind the public that he was a member of Islamist Erbakan's
government a decade earlier.
"People think that if the First Lady wears a head scarf, then many things
will change, threatening the whole secular system, forcing all women to wear
head scarves," said Nilufer Naril, a sociology professor in Istanbul. She
seemed oblivious to the finding of the Turkish Economic & Social Studies
Foundation that nearly two-thirds of women in Turkey already wear a head
scarf.
By contrast, the AKP is set to contest the upcoming election on its record
of providing a strong, uncorrupt government which has produced impressive
economic growth and implemented political reform. In desperation, leaders of
the Republican People's Party, the only secular group represented in the
Parliament, have decided to coalesce with a smaller secularist faction, to
mount a strong challenge to the formidable AKP.
As yet, though, neither secularist party is showing any sign of abandoning
its present strategy of building its program around its distrust of the AKP
and Erdogan. But then, negative thinking seems to have inspired the early
proponents of secularism in Turkey too.
"Influenced by the European anti-religious movements of the late 19th and
early 20th centuries, the Turkish secularist elite views religion as a
pre-modern myth, one that must be extinguished for modernity to blossom,"
notes Mustafa Akyol, deputy editor of the Turkish Daily News. "The outcome
of this mindset is an authoritarian strategy: Political power is to remain
in the hands of the secularist elite. Thus the 'secular republic' equals the
'republic of seculars' -- not the republic of all citizens."
Little wonder that secular fundamentalists in Turkey get along famously with
the military.
Dilip Hiro is the author of many books on the Middle East and Central Asia.
His most recent book is Blood of the Earth: The Battle for the World's
Vanishing Oil Resources [7] (Nation Books).
Copyright 2007 Dilip Hiro
--
NOTICE: This post contains copyrighted material the use of which has not
always been authorized by the copyright owner. I am making such material
available to advance understanding of
political, human rights, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues. I
believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of such copyrighted material as
provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright
Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107
"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their
government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are
suffering deeply in spirit,
and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public
debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have
patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning
back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at
stake."
-Thomas Jefferson
