A Turning Point For Turkey
Here’s a good way to explain the Turkish parliamentary elections of July 22: if there’s no change at all, it will be an earthquake.
Sound strange? Here’s why.
The last elections, five years ago, represented a total reversal pretty much of 80 years of Turkish history, during which Kemal Ataturk created a secular republic and his successors sustained it. The result was a country that did rather well at both development and preserving a democracy, a record matched by no other Muslim majority country.
There were some problems, of course. In the last half-century the army has staged a coup four times to restore representative government, each time quickly returning power to the civilians.
But Turkey was a real success story, especially compared to other Muslim majority countries.
Along came some significant social change. A lot of small businesses in the country’s center-called the Anatolian Tigers–made money, creating a new middle class of rather traditionalist people. And a lot of peasants migrated from villages to the big cities.
The more socially conservative, relatively religious group began to feel its power and Islam returned as a political factor. At the same time, the establishment politicians grew increasingly corrupt, bickering, and incompetent.
This paved the way for what happened five years ago, when an Islamic – some say Islamist – movement, in the form of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) won a landslide in Turkey’s elections. Due to the country’s electoral law (a party must get 10 percent to win any seats) all but one of the AKP’s rivals failed to obtain any place in parliament. That meant that with only 34 percent of the votes, the AKP got two-thirds of the seats.
Ever since then, the AKP has ruled Turkey.
Two anecdotes.
When I asked a Turkish professor friend in Istanbul about one prime minister, Tansu Ciller, who had been much praised abroad, he pulled me to a cliff overlooking the Bosphorus-that river-like body of water that flows from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean and divided Europe from Asia. He pointed across to a green hill the Asian side and said, “Do you see any apartment buildings there?”
“No,” I replied, worrying that if I guessed wrong he might push me over the cliff.
“Exactly,” he said, “and that’s where our prime minister and her husband were promising to build housing when they took our money.”
And my favorite moment, when after the last round of elections, a losing center-right political leader was asked on television why his party lost. Without hesitating he said, “Because the voters are stupid.”
Imagine your country was being taken over by an Islamic, possibly Islamist, party which seemingly threatened your whole way of life. You’d try to stop that from happening, right? Yet despite impending catastrophe, the two center-right parties still found it impossible to unite in the previous round of elections, and all sorts of splinter groups divided the anti-AKP vote.
It should be understood that the AKP is quite different from the Islamists in Iran or the Arab world. They are far more cautious and accept a lot more Westernization and modernization. The AKP has been clever in not pushing too far, too fast. It benefited from the fact that Turkey was coming out of a bad economic crisis. It also took advantage of a rising tide of anti-Americanism fueled more by nationalism than by Islam.
And it pursued membership in the European Union, the Holy Grail of Turkish politics, the much-desired certificate that Turkey has arrived socially and economically to receive membership in the town’s most elite country club. Unfortunately, this prize seems to be repeatedly pulled away by the Europeans for one reason or another. Still, while the Turks are starting to get tired of the chase, they haven’t given up on it yet. The AKP also made some long-needed reforms in a system where the government is doing its citizens a favor when it provides services to them.
True, the AKP had some bad moments. After its government lifted the speed limit on trains and there was a terrible accident with lots of fatalities, an AKP minister said that train accidents were acts of God. The prime minister called for the criminalization of adultery, an idea that was greatly ridiculed.
For Turkish secularists and status quo advocates-who would enjoy majority support in the country if they could only ever unite-the AKP was just pretending to be moderate. It was a group of fundamentalists in sheep’s clothing. Many of them felt something like Senator Ted Kennedy would feel, at the prospect of the late Jerry Falwell becoming president of the United States.
During the last few months, just when the AKP seemed to be settling down for a long term as the country’s governing party, a crisis occurred. It was sort of a peaceful rebellion among the secularists, fueled by the prospect of the AKP choosing the country’s president. The president names the chief of the armed forces and has influence over the courts as well as other institutions. Once AKP had the presidency, the secularists pictured them on a straight, irreversible, run to total and permanent power.
There were other signs and portents. Many Turkish journalists and television stations began to get scared. If the AKP was going to be in power forever, it might take revenge against critics.
Self-censorship became a powerful force. A Turkish newspaper dropped my column, I was told, under real or perceived threats.
The next to last bulwark against this slide is an incumbent president who is a much respected judge with impeccable secularist credentials. When the AKP’s leader was proposed as president, the minority party in parliament boycotted the vote, preventing a two-thirds’ majority.
Massive anti-AKP demonstrations were held regularly. It seemed like a political miracle was about to happen and the AKP would be kicked out.
Then the usual political mess set in. The AKP ran a good campaign. The two socialist left-wing parties united into one list; the two center-right parties splintered and fought each other. Predictions are that the AKP will win, perhaps with a reduced majority and maybe even having to take in a coalition partner, possibly an extreme nationalist party which could make for a combination even more hostile to the West. And so if the election that was supposed to reverse the course of Islamization fails to change anything that will be the real earthquake.
There is one more bulwark against the AKP driving, slowly or more briskly, down the road to a more Islamic, socially conservative society and a foreign policy more attuned to Iran and Syria than to the United States. That is the Turkish army.
But with European pressure to end its political role, the military seems likely to intervene, unless the AKP goes too far. And, aware of this situation, the AKP is likely to be cautious. Aside from that fact, there are a lot of leaders in the party who would prefer to be a Muslim version of European Christian Democratic parties.
At the same time, though, there are also many members who would feel comfortable with an approach like that of the Arab Muslim Brotherhood groups.
Is there, however, a point of no return for Turkish democracy, secularism, and relative Westernism? It hasn’t happened yet. But the election seems unlikely to reverse the country’s course, or even to slow the pace of change.
Barry Rubin is Director of the Global Research in International Affairs Center(GLORIA) Center, at the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) in Herzilia, Israel. His latest book is %%AMAZON=1403982732 The Truth About Syria%%
Well this is what you eventually get when the ‘political class’ has always been, or increasingly becomes dysfunctional.
Just because a grouping is ‘secular’ does not mean it is a decent alternative or not as corrupt as the day is long. The CURSE of virtually all countries in this area is incompetence in league with corruption. That simply drives the illusion of Islamist ‘purity’.
Even with the wolf at the door the the two center-right parties splintered and fought each other. Idiots usually get what they truly deserve.
The problem is that often they take everyone else down with them. The difficulty is not really the Islamists; the difficulty is the ‘secularists’. They are incompetent and corrupt and ‘objectively’ deserve to lose. And evidently they will.
I like you don’t really see a ‘good’ solution here. My guess is however that the Islamists will soon proove themselves every bit as venal and incompetent as their alternatives. As I said — it is the CURSE of the entire region. And it appears to be a permanent fixture .
I’ll believe that a turning point has been reached when they pull their troops off the border of Iraq…
http://www.americanlegends.blogspot.com/
The big payoff conclusion sentence of the article is boogered.
“But with European pressure to end its political role, the military seems likely to intervene, unless the AKP goes too far. And, aware of this situation, the AKP is likely to be cautious.”
“…unlikely to intervene ….” surely?
“It should be understood that the AKP is quite different from the Islamists in Iran or the Arab world. They are far more cautious and accept a lot more Westernization and modernization.”
Turkey’s participation with the West has been the exception, not the rule, and something which primarily emerged in the 20th Century due to the complicated geopolitical tensions between Communism and the West.
Before that Islamic Turkey was an avowed enemy of the West — and fought against the interests of the West at nearly every opportunity.
Turkish Muslims are not somehow inherently different from all their fellow terror loving, Jihad loving, Islam loving Muslim brethren, and it’s self-deluding for us to assume that they are different.
We have no real idea what the Islamists will do once in they consolidate their gains and marginalize all those who aren’t Islamic enough in this non-secular (but always propagandized as secular) nation. But if history is any guide, we do have evidence from virtually every other Islamic society on earth: Turkey is on a path to become more primitive, more corrupt, more intolerant, more violent, and more aligned with fellow Muslim societies.
Rather than arguing by assertion that Turkey’s Muslims “are different” — it seems to me that we should assume that Turkey will follow the same trajectory as every other Islamic trend across the planet.
The Islamic world has enjoyed an unprecedented inflow of wealth (mostly due to the accident of oil — though this has not been the case with Turkey). This unprecedented wealth is the main fuel powering the engine of Islam today. Worse, our Muslim enemies now live in their millions within our homelands in the West — and as Turkey’s descent into the Islamic sewer continues apace, the West will be confronted with an existential dilemma: Are we willing to fight and kill sufficient numbers of our enemy in order to blunt and reverse his Islamization of the World? Are we strong enough to endure the violence they will unleash as their Jihad gains more land and more wealth? Or will we succumb to their various projects of subversion, violence, terrorism, and outbreeding? Muslims have successfully waged this exact same war against other great societies and nations — think Byzantium, think Persia, think India.
The primitive violence of Islam has humbled other great nations before ours — Turkey was once the greatest and wealthiest Christian nation on earth — but Muslims reduced it to a sewer of degradation over 500 years ago.
I’m posting from a coffee shop in the Esenboga airport in Ankara while waiting for a flight back to the states. And I have to say that you left out what seems to be on the minds of absolutely everyone I’ve talked to in the last couple of weeks: the (Kurdish) PKK. From the people I’ve talked to and the newspapers I’ve read, the top issue doesn’t seem to be the rise of the Islamic-rooted AKP, but rather who is going to do what with respect to the ongoing PKK terrorism campaign. And here’s where it gets tough to figure out who to root for. The ruling AKP seems very cautious when it comes to invading northern Iraq. And this is obviously good from the standpoint of the U.S., as Kurdish northern Iraq is the best thing going in Iraq and the U.S. needs the support of the Kurds to have any hope of succeeding in Iraq. But the opposition parties all believe that the AKP has been far too easy on the PKK and believe the best way to end the terror campaign in Turkey is to invade Iraq and root out the PKK’s supporters. Which is worse, the contuing rise of religious influence in Turkish politics ala the AKP or a win by the opposition and a Turkish invasion of Iraq? That’s a really, really tough call. Here on the sidelines, I think the best hope is a very slim majority win by the AKP (close enough to force a secularist compromise presidency) with the U.S. successfully getting the Iraqi Kurds to crack down on the PKK.
As always, Mr. Rubin’s insight is very useful.
While one would not expect the emerging “middle class” to support Islamist extremists, is interesting that the “Tigers” have played a significant role in bringing the AKP to power.
Likewise, in Iran, the “Bazari’s”
were quietly and profusely funding Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeinni, substantially in 1977-79. Amazing that those one would expect to have least to gain from a religiously intolerant environment, seem among the first to bring it about. mariana