The Maturation of Turkish Democracy
Excerpt from Avni Dogru’s column, “Turkey: Ruling a Nation Through Fear”:
…In the past, the motto of “saving secularism” as an excuse to hoard power has always worked. But, if there was a real threat to secularism in Turkey, the results of a comparative study done by the Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation (TESEV), a leading Turkish think tank, in 1999 and late 2006 would show it. The study shows that from 1999 to 2006, the percentage of Turkish citizens who would favor a Shariah-based religious regime dropped from 21 percent to 9 percent. In the same period, the percentage of women wearing a headscarf decreased by 9 percent even though this choice of dress became more visible in larger cities due to migration.
All democracies go through a maturation stage and face similar challenges. Even though the chief prosecutor’s bid against the AK Party challenges Turkish democracy in the short run, Turkey is not the same country that it was 10 years ago. The majority of Turks are now aware that their democratic gains are at stake with this bid. Accordingly, there is growing public sympathy for the AK Party. Recent polls show the AK Party’s approval rating has jumped from 47 percent in the July 2007 elections to between 60 and 70 percent after the recent court case. Turkey’s elite is mired in so much fear that it does not even realize how much it is helping the AK Party gain power.
In the same period, the percentage of women wearing a headscarf decreased by 9 percent even though this choice of dress became more visible in larger cities due to migration.
The actual percentages of women who say they don’t cover their hair are 27.3% for 1999, and 36.5% for 2006. I wonder why he gave the actual percentages for the Sharia question and not this one. Anyway, I looked it up on page 58 of the actual report(pdf file).
Other interesting stuff also from the same study:
Only 22.1% think that secularism is under threat.(p. 76)
41.4% want there to be parties whose policies are based on religion. This is up from 24.6% in 1999. (p. 74)
56.8% want missionary activities for religions other than Islam restricted(p.80)
Hmpf. There’s another study, one that was more controversial, by KONDA. Here it is. This one says the percentage for uncovered went down from 35.8% in 2003 to 30.6% in 2007. (The opposite of the trend reported by the TESEV studies.)
Either way, it probably isn’t a good idea to imply a relationship between party closures being OK and the trend in headscarf use.