Israel, Obama and the AK Party
Excerpts from an article by M. K. Bhadrakumar (former Indian ambassador to Turkey) in Asia Times (click here for full article)
… It seemed for a fleeting moment that last year’s elections in Turkey would lead to engendering a balance between Islam, democracy, secularism and modernity. The AKP secured its mandate as a party of religiously observant people and as a party of the “average Turk” (to quote Erdogan), rather than as a party rooted in Islam…
The AKP maintained that Turkey should not remain transfixed and must instead move in consonance with modern democratic societies’ understanding of libertarian secularism, which provides scope for the cohabitation of individuals with different beliefs and lifestyles in society…
The AKP passes the litmus test of being a political party functioning in accordance with democratic norms…. Recent opinion polls have shown that the AKP continues to ride a wave of popularity. In January, its rating rose to 54%. (In comparison, the main “Kemalist” party, the Republican People’s Party, or CHP, has a rating of about 20%.)
The economy and political stability have been key factors of the AKP’s continuing popularity… Turkish columnist Tahya Akyol of the liberal Milliyet newspaper wrote recently, “… An average Turk rejects a theocratic state, but wants respect for religion; believes in democratic secularism, but wants the headscarf ban to be lifted; and places importance on a non-problematic course of things. Obviously, this Turk usually votes for the AKP, to which there is no alternative because unfortunately we lack a social democratic party supported by millions of average citizens from the whole of Turkey.”
Significantly, the Turkish military leadership has lost no time in endorsing last Thursday’s ruling by the constitutional court [overturning the lifting of the headscarf ban]… [The] ruling is bad news for Erdogan. A separate case filed by the public prosecutor is pending, which brands the AKP for its anti-secular behavior and forbids 71 of its prominent leaders - including Erdogan and President Abdullah Gul - to be members of any political party for a five-year period. Most Turkish observers visualize that Thursday’s verdict makes the court’s closure of the AKP a foregone conclusion. (The court’s verdict is expected by September or October.)…
But the AKP’s closure would have serious implications. The fact remains that the AKP is the only truly national party in Turkish politics. And, despite whatever aberrations of political conduct in recent months, Erdogan still remains an immensely charismatic politician….
True to past practice by banned political parties, the AKP in all probability could always re-emerge under a different banner. Erdogan, even if banned from active politics, might still remain an influential player on the political chessboard. But that isn’t the whole point. Turkey loses heavily. Its image takes a beating internationally. Ankara’s claim to European Union membership almost certainly would suffer. The mainstream forces of Islamism that are moderate - be it in the Levant or in Palestine or Egypt - would draw conclusions about the limits to inclusive participation that democratic life offers.
Israel and its neo-conservative supporters in the US might heave a sigh of relief that the AKP government is at long last removed from the region’s political landscape. They watched with abhorrence Turkey’s re-entry under the AKP’s stewardship into the Muslim world. Turkey’s growing closeness to Iran, its openness towards Hamas in Palestine and Hezbollah in Lebanon, its rapport with Syria - all these were anathema to Israel.
The sense of relief in the neo-conservative camp in the US is palpable. Michael Rubin of the American Enterprise Institute sees Erdogan as less an “aggrieved democrat” and more as a “protege” of Russian Prime Minister (and ex-president) Vladimir Putin, who has widened the gap between Islam and the West “by encouraging the most virulent anti-American and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories”.
Israel will invariably agree with Rubin - especially as it ratchets up belligerence toward Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah. Yet, the million-dollar question is what Democratic Senator Barack Obama, if elected US president, will think of charismatic Muslim statesmen like Turkey’s Erdogan.
An average Turk rejects a theocratic state, but wants respect for religion; believes in democratic secularism, but wants the headscarf ban to be lifted; and places importance on a non-problematic course of things.
What is this ‘democratic secularism’? How is this different that ‘equidistant state’ secularism where apparently the demos affects the state just by adopting religions?
Freedom in choice of clothing is a secular right,BTW. At least a safe, pincipled and productive way of approaching the problem would have been from that angle. It is lovely to see that we’re not only all Hrant Dink but also Humpty Dumpty[1] — since the parliament, the press, the populace and the constitutional court managed to see ‘headscarf’ and ‘religion’ in an amandment that mentioned neither. There’s a reason for that, of course: a ’secular’ and principled freedom of attire (protected by police force if necessary) is seen as such a nutty concept that nobody dreams of wanting it — even when they enthusiasitically vote on a piece of legislation recognising it as a right.
[1] http://www.sundials.org/about/humpty.htm
Re: “the parliament, the press, the populace and the constitutional court managed to see ‘headscarf’ and ‘religion’ in an amandment that mentioned neither.”
So true. I happen to think that
(1) the letter of the cancelled changes (to Articles 10 and 42) were innocuous if not redundant; and,
(2) they would have been neither questioned nor cancelled had they been brought up, hypothetically speaking, by a system party.
(3) they were and would be inadequate in either case.
Oops, is there some contradiction in my enumerated thoughts? Oh well, nerem(iz) dogru ki?
Okay, taking up Rusen Cakir’s clue as to the rationale for the Court decision (see his June 7 article (tr)), I took a look at the parliamentary commission report (click here (tr)) that brought the amendments to the floor to subsequently become law. There are no big surprises in the report, but I was struck by the discord between the content and conclusion of the report. The content is almost entirely a spirited objection –legally and speculatively– to the proposed amendments by, of course, commission members from the opposition ranks; there appears to have been only a few sentences said in defense of the proposal. Maybe I shouldn’t have been struck by any of this since the charge that AKP got too confident with its electoral and parliamentary arithmetic strength is not new. But I was.