Turkey
is a great power of the world which is an important player of Middle East
politics. In the beginning of its independence, its state ideology was secularism,
but now it is trying to practice the Islam as state ideology because of popular
support to the Islam though present regime demands that they are not Islamist
but “Conservative Democrat”. According to secular ideology Kamalism which is
introduced by Mostafa Kamal, secularism will be practice in public affairs
because it accelerates the development of the state and Islam can be practiced
only in private life. But as it was the Hub of Islamic Chalaphat, secularism
did not get popular support and again it is reshaping institution of the state
on the basis of Islamic norms avoiding secularism. In the following we will
describe the political history of Turkey in brief, origin of secularism in
Turkey and finally the re-emergence of political Islam in Turkey politics.
For
centuries, Islam and the West have been competing to define Turkish identity.
Turkey was founded as a secular republic, but Islam has always played a
significant role in state and society. Today, Turkey seems to be embracing
Islamism over secularism. In 1923, when Atatürk founded the Turkish republic,
he established legal and governmental mechanisms to allow Turks to embrace
Islam in their private lives while restraining religion from public affairs.
Atatürk’s determination to separate mosque and state sprang from his belief
that the fledgling republic needed to modernize if it were to survive. Atatürk’s
modern republic would be anchored in the West but based on the Turkic heritage
of the East; democracy and Islam would coexist, but public life would be
governed by modern secular laws rather than sharia. Following Atatürk’s
death, Islam episodically regained momentum as an important factor in Turkish
identity, but was held in check by civilian and military officials who
considered themselves the custodians of Turkey’s secular democracy. On four
occasions, the military ousted Turkey’s civilian governments, three times via
outright coups d’état. Each time, the military returned political authority to
Turkey’s civilian leaders relatively quickly. The model of democracy that
governs the republic has thus been peculiar and tumultuous, yet vibrant.[1]
As a
Muslim-majority country that is also a secular democratic state,a member of
NATO, and a long-standing U.S. ally, Turkey is pivotal to U.S. strategy for
shaping the Middle Eastern security environment. However, Turkey has not been
immune to the changes that have transformed the religiopolitical landscape of
the Muslim world in recent decades, which include an increase of religiosity
and an upsurge in the political expression of Islam. These trends were
generated by a variety of factors, including the emergence of a religious
entrepreneurial sector and of a dominant political party with Islamic roots, a
more open debate about Kemalism and its relevance to contemporary Turkish
society, and a political crisis over the selection of a new president in the
spring and summer of 2007. Contemporary Turkey is a key test case for the role
of Islam in politics and its influence on external policy. It is also a
distinctive, possibly unique, case in several respects. The Justice and
Development Party (Adalet
ve Kalkınma Partisi (AKP)),
led by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan,
rules as a solid majority government, having trounced all rivals in Turkey’s
November 2002 elections and further reinforced its position with strong results
in 2004 local elections. The AKP won an impressive 46.6 percent of the vote in
the July 2007 election—increasing its electoral vote by 12 percent over its
performance in 2002—although because of the mathematics of the distribution of
seats in parliament, the number of seats held by the AKP decreased from 362 to
340, short of the two-thirds needed to amend the constitution. Even before the AKP’s victory in the
2002 general elections, there was a substantial religious component in Turkish
politics. The dominant center-right parties of the 1980s and early 1990s, the
True Path Party (and the Motherland Party (Anavatan
Partisi (ANAP)), always contained
significant socially conservative wings. Necmettin Erbakan founded a series of
Islamist parties over the past 30 years and was very influential as deputy
prime minister in the 1970s and briefly as prime minister in the 1990s. Before
the advent of multiparty democracy in the 1950s, Islamism had no expression in
the political system, which was the exclusive domain of the official Kemalist
party, the Republican People’s Party (CHP). Despite its Islamist roots, the AKP
government has not pursued an overt Islamist agenda (although critics accuse it
of seeking to infiltrate Islamists into the civil bureaucracy and condoning
Islamization at the local level). The Erdoğan government has given priority to
pursuing Turkey’s EU membership, economic stabilization, and reform of the
legal system. These reforms have included the abolition of the death penalty,
“civilianization” of the National Security Council, broadcasting in Kurdish by
the state-owned Turkish Radio and Television Corporation (TRT), and
ratification of international human rights conventions. The Erdoğan government
has been less aggressive than many had hoped it would be in reforming or
scrapping the controversial Article 301 of the Turkish constitution, which
criminalizes insults to “Turkishness.”
Opposition from nationalists and Kemalists, as well as the presence of
conservative nationalists within its own ranks, along with the rising mood of
nationalism, leave the AKP little room for maneuver in this area. Yet there
continues to be an active debate over the real nature of the AKP’s agenda and
close scrutiny of its credentials as a selfproclaimed “conservative democratic
party.” Erdoğan professes to lead a movement of “Muslim Democrats”—rather like
Christian Democrats in Western Europe—in which religion is a cultural backdrop
rather than an active part of the political agenda.[1] Opinions
are divided on whether this approach represents a genuine expression of a new
synthesis in Turkish politics or a tactic to hold Turkey’s entrenched
secularists, including the military (and constitutional strictures against
religious politics), at bay.Elements within the AKP, and in the religious
parties to the right of it, would surely like to press a more Islamic social
agenda. Pragmatists within the party, including Erdoğan and President Abdullah
Gul, recognize the risks of doing so. Against this background, the selection of
Gul as president and possible constitutional changes proposed by the AKP will
be key tests of the secular-religious balance in the country. Turkey’s
“recessed” Islamic politics—with religion as an implicit rather than an
explicit part of political discourse—is one source of Turkish distinctiveness. This
is a function of Turkey’s form of secularism: based on the French model of laicite, but with state-religion relations
rooted in the Ottoman tradition that subordinates religion to state authority.
Turkey’s constitution places firm limits on expressions of political Islam.
Religious associations—Sufi orders, for instance— cannot operate legally. To be
sure, Turkish secularism in the Kemalist mold is evolving under the pressure of
a more cosmopolitan intellectual debate. The private practice of religion is
more widely accepted today, even within secular circles. Secularists certainly
want to limit the role of religion in Turkish politics, but the automatic
association of religiosity with a backward, Middle Eastern outlook is now less
common. The common denominator of Turkish secularists is, above all, a desire
to prevent the erosion of their highly Westernized way of life. Much of the
sec-ular urban middle class views the implications of Islamist influence through
a “lifestyle” lens. Concerns about political Islam per se or a strategic drift
to the “East” are more prevalent among intellectuals, business elites, and the
secular political class. Another source of Turkey’s distinctiveness is history,
what the distinguished Turkish scholar Şerif Mardin calls “Turkish
exceptionalism.” The Ottoman Empire was the seat of the caliphate and thus the center
of Muslim political power and presence in international relations into the
early years of the 20th century. Ataturk’s secular revolution modernized and Westernized
Turkey in key respects. But even after 85 years, the results of this experiment
are contested. Turkey remains a place of sharp regional, class, and cultural
differences, and these unresolved tensions are part of the contemporary Turkish
political landscape. The AKP’s success can be explained in large measure by the
way in which the movement has captured a sense of Turkish popular
dissatisfaction with established political elites. A key question is whether the
AKP will maintain its present course, or whether the crumbling of institutional
restraints or pressures from more-radical elements will lead it to embrace a
more overtly religious agenda. A key factor shaping Turkey’s evolution is the
EU accession process; even if many in Europe are trying to keep Turkey at arms’
length. The EU project represents a convergence of the AKP’s international and
domestic strategic goals. The AKP discovered human rights and democracy as a
means of protecting itself from authoritarian Kemalists. It realized the advantages
of speaking the language of democracy— which enables the party to communicate
with the West and to reassure those who suspect that it may secretly harbor an
Islamist agenda. Erdoğan has spoken about “marketing Turkey” and has defended
the idea of globalization. The West, in turn, has emerged as an ally of the AKP.
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[1]
Ian O. Lesser, “Turkey: ‘Recessed’ Islamic Politics and
Convergence with the West,”
in
Rabasa et al., The Muslim World After 9/11, Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation,
MG-246-AF, 2004.
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