Passive and Assertive Secularism
Excerpts from an essay by Ahmet Kuru on the SSRC blog (The Immanent Frame):
Last March, the Chief Public Prosecutor of Turkey’s High Court of Appeals opened a closure case against the ruling Justice and Development (AK) Party, which had received 47% of the votes in an 18-parties election eight months ago. The prosecutor asked the Constitutional Court not only for the closure of the party, but also for a ban on 71 leading politicians for five years, including Prime Minister Erdogan and President Gül. The indictment presents the case as if it is based on the AK Party’s support for the recent constitutional amendments that would lift the headscarf ban at universities.
I am not convinced that the lifting of the headscarf ban is the real basis of the case for three main reasons. First, the constitutional amendments do not mention headscarves or anything else related to religion or secularism. They added the following two phrases into the Turkish Constitution. To article 10: “state organs and administrative authorities shall act in compliance with the principle of equality before the law in all their proceedings and in benefiting from all public services.” To article 42: “no one can be deprived of his/her right to higher education for reasons not openly mentioned by laws. The limits of the use of this right will be determined by law.” (The amendment specifically mentions “higher education” since the ban in all schools will continue while it is lifted at universities.) Second, the amendments were initiated and supported by the National Action Party (MHP), yet the prosecutor has not done anything against the MHP. Last, but not least, despite the constitutional amendments, the presidents of universities did not lift the ban. Students wearing headscarves are still not allowed to enter the campuses of almost all Turkish universities.
One may argue that the main reason for the case is the AK Party’s anti-secular activities in general. Yet, this is not convincing either. In Turkey, there has been a debate between the pro-Islamic conservatives, including the AK Party, and the Kemalists, including the majority of military and judicial bureaucrats, as well as the Republican People’s Party (CHP). The Kemalists have accused the AK Party for being anti-secular, while the AK Party members have criticized the Kemalists for being anti-religious. Actually, both sides defend secularism; but they have different notions of secularism…
The AK Party defends what I call passive secularism, which requires the state to play a passive role in the public sphere to accommodate the public visibility of religion. The United States, at this specific point, seems to be a model for the AK Party. The Kemalists, on the other hand, defend the dominant assertive secularism in Turkey, which asks the state to play an assertive role to exclude religion from the public sphere and confine it to the private life….
How can we explain the closure case against the AK Party if it is not really based on the headscarf issue, in particular, or secularism, in general? The best explanation has already been made by several Turkish and European commentators: the closure case against the AK Party is a “judiciary coup d’état.” The Kemalists try to stage a judiciary coup, since a military coup is no longer an option in a country that negotiates membership with the European Union. The main reason why the Kemalists have supported coups, rather than defending democracy, is the tension between the Turkish society’s religiosity and the Kemalist assertive secularist ideology. This tension dooms the Kemalist CHP to be a loser in elections (it has been unable to receive more than 20 percent of votes). Since Turkish society is highly religious, people do not vote for the assertive secularist party; therefore, the assertive secularists support military or judiciary coups. (click here for the full essay)
I am not sure the present tension has much to do with secularism or a long running struggle. That’s the apparent reason for sure, but the struggle depicted doesn’t really seem to exist in the manner presented. The so-called ‘Kemalist elite’ had ample opportunity in the past to crush religious organizations and didn’t do it. If it were as the article claims, you’d have, for example, Gulen lamenting the coup of 1980[1] instead of opining that Kenen Evren might be going to heaven because of his introduction of the mandatory religion classes in high schools. I’m also not convinced that the post-modern coup of ‘98 did as much agaist political Islam as people claim — if anything, it steered part of the RP crowd from positions unpalatable to the West to those that are now being advertised as outright Western. (Note that the same folks to our West who were supportive of RP’s closure by the same court are now crying bloody murder on principle.)
Anyway, let me just point out that the Turkish state’s approach to religion shifted covertly during the cold war and overtly after ‘80. (For the 90’s, keep in mind things like the Turkish Hizbullah too.) It wasn’t the religious folks who were doing the steering while this shift happened. Let me quote Seneca on this and leave it at that: “Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.”
I also find the reference to US-style secularism problematic. Again there is a lot of talk about US-style secularism in certain sections of the Turkish press, but it almost always misrepresented to stress the non-interference aspect of the first amendment while omitting the establishment clause. Thus you hear about how something is accommodated but almost never hear about thing like the Lemon Test. BTW this kind of misrepresentation is very common about the US. I’ve even seen comments, assertions etc. from people (who live in the US, are US citizens and educated enough to know better) about how the US judiciary never strikes down any law passed by the congress. People just eat this kind of fibs up in the present climate.
[1] I will cannot leave the following bit untouched. I quote from the article:
The main reason why the Kemalists have supported coups, rather than defending democracy, is the tension between the Turkish society’s religiosity and the Kemalist assertive secularist ideology.
This is — almost purely — nothing but propaganda. Perhaps what he implies could be said for the post-modern one of 98, and the one in 1960 (though even that is dubious), it most certainly cannot be said for the ones in ‘71 and ‘80. The vague ‘coups’ reference and the attempt to tie it to the religiosity/secularism tension is grossly misleading.
I’ve been noticing a pattern in writings targeted for the English-speaking audience (though I’m not sure if this author takes part in it). There appears to be a complete omission of the [almost surely] US/NATO backed coups of 71 and 80 in those writings and an attempt to attribute those coups to the purely local tensions of the present sort. While I can see why these people would want to obscure that aspect of Turkish power struggles, I cannot see how they can reasonably hope to get away with it. The cold war is over and the English-speaking West’s support of such interventions is no longer an iffy thing to talk about in any circle. What am I missing?