Kamil Pasha

Excerpts from The Economist article on Turkey (for full article, click here)

… Many see the campaign to topple the AKP as part of a long battle pitting an old guard, used to monopolising wealth and power, against a rising class of pious Anatolians symbolised by the AKP. Others say it is mostly about an army that believes soldiers, not elected politicians, should have the final say over how the country is run.

… Opinion polls suggest that most Turks now identify themselves primarily as Muslims, not as Turks. The AKP did not create this mindset: rather, it was born from it.

In the early days of Ataturk’s republic, the façade of modernity was propped up by zealous Kemalists, who fanned out on civilising missions across Anatolia. They would drink wine and dance the Charleston at officers’ clubs in places like Kars…. In truth, life outside the cities continued much as before: deeply traditional and desperately poor.

A big reason why Anatolia seemed less Islamist in the old days is because it was home to a large and vibrant community of Christians. But this demographic balance was brutally overturned by the mass killings and expulsions of Armenians and Greeks in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Much of this history is overlooked by the secular elite. Pressed for evidence of creeping Islamisation under the AKP, they point to the growing number of women who wear the headscarf… Yet surveys suggest that… most Turks do not oppose Islamic headgear. Its proliferation probably has little to do with Islamist fervour, but is linked to the influx of rural Anatolians into towns and cities….

The biggest fault-lines in Turkey’s sharpening secular/religious divide concern alcohol, women and education. When Welfare rose to power in the 1990s, one of its first acts was to ban booze in restaurants run by municipalities under its control…. Some AKP mayors… want to exile drinkers to “red zones” outside their cities. A newly prosperous class of devout Muslims is creating its own gated communities, and a growing number of hotels boast segregated beaches and no liquor….

All this is feeding secularist paranoia about creeping Islam. Are these fears justified? In the big cities conservative Anatolians are expanding their living space. But this is not at the secularists’ expense. Life for urban middle-class Turks, and certainly for the rich, continues much as before. It is in rural backwaters that freewheeling Turks fall prey to what Serif Mardin, a respected sociologist, calls “neighbourhood pressure”. For instance, Tarsus, a sleepy eastern Mediterranean town (and birthplace of St Paul), made headlines recently when two teenage girls were attacked by syringe-wielding assailants who sprayed their legs with an acid-like substance because their skirts were “too short”.

Habits in the workplace are changing too. Female school teachers have been reprimanded for wearing short-sleeved blouses. During the Ramadan fast last year the governor’s office in Kars stopped serving tea for a while. Secular Turks contend that Islam will inevitably wrest more space from their lives and must be reined in now. With no credible opposition in sight, many look to the army as secularism’s last defender.

So do many of Turkey’s estimated 15m Alevis, who practise an idiosyncratic form of Islam: they do not pray in mosques, they are not teetotal and their women do not cover their heads. The government has not kept its promise formally to recognise Alevi houses of worship, called cemevler. Nor has it heeded Alevi demands for their children to be exempted from compulsory religious-education classes that are dominated by Sunni Islam….

Egitim-Sen, a leftist teachers’ union, charges that Islam has been permeating textbooks under the AKP. Darwin’s theory of evolution is being whittled away and creationism is seeping in. Islamist fraternities, or tarikat, continue to ensnare students by offering free accommodation. The quid pro quo is that they fast and pray, and girls cover their heads….

Had Mr Erdogan made an effort to reach out to secular Turks, “we might not be where we are today,” concedes a senior AKP official. He missed several chances…. Critics say that his big election win turned his head…. Maybe he has. But that does not mean he deserves to be barred from politics, and his party banned.

Tags: AKP closure case, Headscarf Debate, Kurds, Nationalism, Politics, Religion, Women //