Nationalisms and Politics in Turkey

Marlies Casier, Joost Jongerden, Marlies Casier, Joost Jongerden

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781136938665
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Storia
• Subtopic: Storia mediorientale

This book examines some of the most pressing issues facing the Turkish political establishment, in particular the issues of political Islam, and Kurdish and Turkish nationalisms. The authors explore the rationales of the main political actors in Turkey in order to increase our understanding of the ongoing debates over the secularist character of the Turkish Republic and over Turkey's longstanding Kurdish issue.

Original contributions from respected scholars in the field of Turkish and Kurdish studies provide us with many insights into the social and political fabric of Turkey, exploring Turkey's secularist establishment, the ruling AKP government, the Kurdistan Workers' Party and the Institutions of the European Union. While the focus of concern in this book is with the social agents of contemporary politics in Turkey, the convictions they have and the strategies they employ, historical dimensions are also integrated in their analyses. In its approach, the book makes an important contribution to a widening investigation into the making of politics in the contemporary world.

Incorporating the importance of the growing transnational connections between Turkey and Europe, this book is particularly relevant in the light of the ongoing negotiations over Turkey's membership to the European Union, and will be of interest to scholars interested in Turkish studies, Kurdish studies and Middle Eastern Politics.

Part I
Political Islam and Turkey’s Secularist-Nationalist Project

1
Turkey’s present ancien régime and the Justice and Development Party¹

Menderes Çınar

Introduction

Looking at the current Turkish political landscape one can draw two diametrically opposing pictures reflecting the deep cleavage in almost every walk of life since the election of the former Islamist Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi or AKP) to office in 2002. Those who see things from the perspective of the secular establishment – comprising a military-led network of the top echelons of the judiciary and the academia; the main opposition party, the Republican People’s Party (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi or CHP); former President of the Republic Ahmet Necdet Sezer (2000–7); military-friendly non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and think tanks; older middle classes; and some of the centre-right politicians – regard the AKP government as representing ‘the crisis’ of the secular regime. Claiming the existence of a hidden Islamist agenda behind its seemingly democratic policy proposals, they believe that the AKP undermines the secular republic and should not be entrusted with power. Hence, since 2002, almost no day has passed without the secular establishment drawing attention to the AKP’s acts undermining the secular regime. These acts can be as wide-range as moving the headquarters of the Central Bank from Ankara to Istanbul;² distribution of alcohol-free wet towels on Turkish Airlines flights (Hürriyet 2008b; Çöla

an 2006); defending the right to wear a headscarf on university campuses; Europeanization and democratization reforms; preparing a constitutional draft and advocating an Anglo-Saxon version of secularism.

On the other hand, the AKP has consolidated its predominant position in Turkey’s party system by increasing its votes from 35 per cent in 2002 to 47 per cent in 2007 which has marked a change in Turkey’s electoral behaviour, known for its instability, fragmentation and high volatility. Moreover, the AKP governments have lowered the inflation rates to single figures, stabilized the unemployment levels of a rapidly growing population, and accelerated the integration of the Turkish economy with the global markets through a series of substantial privatizations and legal reforms. The AKP governments have also taken important steps towards the civilianization and democratization of the regime as part of their early Europeanization drive between 2002 and 2004.³ As a result of these reforms, Turkey has fulfilled sufficiently the Copenhagen Criteria and started accession negotiations with the EU in October 2005. Rapid progress in Europeanization and stabilization of the economy have been the most concrete achievements of the AKP governments. Although unsustained, this track record has provided the ground for portraying the former Islamist AKP as true modernizers. It has also led Turkey’s liberal intelligentsia and progressive groups in the West to consider the AKP at least a suitable actor to join forces with, if not become one of them, in order to further a genuinely progressive agenda in Turkey.

In what follows, this chapter will first suggest that the AKP represents a serious potential to weaken, if not cast away, the well-established Orientalist paradigm that categorically denies the possibility of a fully fledged democracy in a Muslim country. Compelled by the logic of the military-led 28 February (1997) process, the secular opposition, in its struggle against the AKP, has aimed at constraining the power of politics by way of reproducing essentialist arguments about its Islamic character and altering the ground rules of the game. This will be shown in the second section. In the third section, this chapter discuss the reasons why the AKP’s potential contribution to go beyond Orientalism is limited only to a democracy-friendly political attitude. In doing so, this section will emphasize the AKP’s failure to lead the democratization process and the consequences for Turkish politics.

The AKP as an opportunity to overcome Orientalist modernization

Because of its underlying Orientalist assumptions that reify Islam as an inherently political and thus dysfunctional religion for democracy and modernity – which inevitably has led to an illiberal practice of secularism that controls, instrumentalizes and contains Islam – Turkish Westernization has resulted in a limited modernization in the sense of foreclosing the possibilities of a fully fledged liberal democracy.⁴ This is a vicious circle and, therefore, haunts the prospects of democratization in Muslim countries: ‘modernization and democratization practically requires the submergence of Islam, yet submergence of Islam is paradoxically undemocratic and feeds back into authoritarianism’ (Çınar 2002: 41). Consequently, the Orientalist debate over the compatibility of Islam and democracy results in an illiberal secularism, itself incompatible with democracy.

More recently, the verdicts of the Constitutional Court on the closure cases against the Welfare Party (1998) and AKP (2008) provide a restatement of the Orientalist assumptions of Turkish modernization. In both cases, the Court upheld that secularism in Turkey cannot be practised as in Western countries because of the [alleged] specific features of Islam.⁵ This is a view also endorsed by centre-right politicians like Mesut Yılmaz, former prime minister and leader of the Motherland Party (Milliyet 2008a). In this way, Islam becomes a pretext for an authoritarian practice of secularism that denies the possibility and legitimacy of ‘individual’ religiosity and different practices of religion. Therefore, the words of the EU commissioner Olli Rehn did not make sense to the proponents of Turkey’s current practice of secularism: ‘if one is respecting democratic principles and at the same time attached to religious beliefs, this overlaps with the European culture and heritage’ (Radikal 2007a). In fact, any argument contrary to the current practice of secularism is seen at best as well-intended but naive, if not as a sign of conspiracy against Turkey (Radikal 2008a).

The domestic and international proponents of Orientalist modernization fear that democratization in a Muslim country would inevitably lead to an anti-Western Islamist takeover. They thus argue in favour of a trade-off between secularism and democracy; and display a willingness to turn a blind eye to the political role of the military on the pretext of protecting secularism. As a result, the proponents of an Orientalist modernization for Turkey are content to end up with a second-rate democracy.⁶

Against this background, especially by virtue of its Islamist pedigree, the AKP represents a challenge to the Orientalist modernization paradigm that restricts the range of options in a Muslim society to either illiberal Islamism or illiberal modernization/ secularism. This is not just because the AKP has shouldered an important Europeanization/democratization process in its first years, making Turkey ‘an ever greater source of inspiration for all those liberal minded people in the Islamic world who want more freedom and democracy’,⁷ but also because its political stance incorporates human rights, democracy and rule of law as universal values (Duran, 2008: 87) and allows engaging with it within a liberal frame. Moreover, at a time when the age-old strategy of pursuing stability at the expense of democracy is increasingly questioned in the Western world, the importance of the AKP’s potential contribution to overcoming Orientalism is mounting also.

It is important to note that unlike the younger generation of Islamist movements elsewhere, the AKP does not speak from within Islam and does not stand for Islamic modernism.⁸ Islamic modernism upholds the idea that Islam is a total way of life and devises arguments for a proper understanding of it under modern conditions. It claims the compatibility of an Islamic system with democracy, or the possibility of an Islamic system under a democratic regime. The AKP does not endorse an agenda for Islamic modernism. It does not assign the state with the task of building an Islamic community either. Moreover, unlike its ancestor, the Welfare Party (1983–98), the AKP does not equate itself with religion and does not want to instrumentalize the current illiberal institutional structure, originally set up to contain Islam, for imposing a top-down Islamization process (Çınar 2006). What the AKP stands for is a very loose redefinition of secularism in a way that accommodates Islamic public visibility in Turkey. In this respect, it is a secular party representing the claims of Islamic identity by employing the language of negative liberties.

Secular opposition and the institutionalization of the logic of the February 28 Process

Originally, the February 28 process was initiated by the military in 1997 to oust the Islamist Welfare Party (Refah Partisi or RP) from power; to eradicate Turkey’s creeping Islamism; and to redesign the political sphere along Kemalist lines without taking over power directly (Cizre and Çınar 2003). The February 28 process was so named after a National Security Council (NSC) meeting on that date. In the actual meeting the military handed down a list of measures which included, for example, asking the then Islamist RP-led coalition government to close the Prayer Leader and Preacher Schools. The RP could not implement such measures and was forced to resign. The following governments were made to implement most of the measures at the expense of their popular appeal. Consequently, in the 2002 elections Turkey’s pro-state centrist parties were sent into oblivion and the military’s project of designing the political sphere was defied by the electorate, who gave their overwhelming support to the recently established AKP as the least state-friendly party. The military, however, continued to guide and steer secularist opposition against the AKP in the post-2002 period. All three features of the February 28 process were therefore reproduced by the secular opposition to the AKP. These were a political party-like military; essentialist assumptions in approaching the AKP; and militaristic methods in dealing with Islamism.

Mobilization of the top ...