By Joe Rothstein
Editor, EINnews.com
Think politics is complicated and governing is difficult in the U.S.? Take a look at Turkey. And we SHOULD be looking at Turkey, because it’s key to what happens in the entire Middle East.
I’ve recently returned from two weeks in Turkey, weeks when protesters continued to flood Istanbul’s most prominent commercial area and police in riot gear joined other sightseeing spectacles in that most picturesque and exotic of cities.
Officially, 98 percent of the country’s 77 million citizens are Muslim. The call to prayer is a constant reminder of that. But constitutionally, and by fierce tradition, Turkey is a secular country. Turkey’s neighbors are a Rogue’s Gallery of international bad boys: Syria, Iraq, Iran, Libya. Nearly 20 percent of Turkey’s population is Kurdish, an ethnic group whose most radical members have been fighting an interminable war on Turkey’s eastern border to gain independence. And while Turkish ethnicity is different from Arabs, Turkish sultans ruled most of the Arab world from Istanbul for more than 600 years, right into the early 20th century.
How’s that for a complex religious, ethnic and political brew to govern?
Turkey’s most revered political figure, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, took over from the last sultan after World War I and governed with an iron hand—achieving results rarely matched by any leader of any country in modern history. In fewer than 10 years with Ataturk at the helm, Turkey:
–aligned with the West rather than the East
–removed Islam as the state religion and substituted civil law for Islamic law
–adopted the Western calendar
–decreed that Turks should have surnames, similar to Western custom
–changed the alphabet from Arabic script to Roman letters
–abolished polygamy
–emancipated women
–established universal education
–established constitutional democracy
Each year at precisely 9:05 a.m. on November 10, all of Turkey still observes a moment of silence in his name, so enduring and popular has been Ataturk’s stamp on the nation’s life.
Ten years ago, Ataturk’s democratic nation gave its vote to a recently-formed Islamist political party, and Recep Tayyip Erdogan became its prime minister. The vote was widely seen as one in which Turks were fed up with the corruption of the existing regime. Erdogan has ruled since then, a period in which the nation has thrived economically.
Increasingly, however, resistance to Erdogan has grown, largely over fears that he is steering Turkey away from its secular course into more Islamic channels. He and his party are pushing hard for constitutional changes that would make him president, with vastly increased executive powers.
Earlier this year, in what’s seen as one of those Freudian slip-type moments surfacing his real intentions, Erdogan snapped back at opponents of his proposed restrictions on liquor sales saying, “If legislation introduced by two drunks is respectable, why do you feel a law dictated by religion should be rejected?”
This was a breathtaking slap at the untouchable memory of Ataturk, whose alcoholism was well-known and likely killed him with cirrhosis of the liver. Despite the outcry, Erdogan forged ahead and implemented draconian controls on the use and advertisement of liquor sales, claiming he was doing it to protect young people.
It was essentially those same young people and leaders of the political opposition who turned Istanbul’s Taksim Square and other locations in Turkey into war zones last summer, confronting Erdogan for what they see as a growing dictatorial threat. In response, Erdogan developed what he called a “Democracy Package,” aimed at tamping down concerns.
But the package granted police more power to detain anyone they think may be organizing a protest, and on October 30, crowds, pepper spray and riot police were once again in the streets of Istanbul’s main shopping and tourist district.
Why is all this important to the U.S.? Because Turkey is the economic lynchpin of the Middle East, a role it’s played for a thousand years. Istanbul exists in both Europe and Asia. Just the other day a new mile-long tunnel under the Bosporus Strait opened for traffic, connecting the two continents. The city’s 14 million people represent the second largest urban area in the world (Shanghai is number one), and its economy is booming. The number of high rises built and being constructed is staggering to see. Many retail malls hold their own and then some with the finest in the U.S.
Since early Cold War days, Turkey has been a valued NATO partner. Its cooperation has been essential in both Iraq wars, the fight against Islamic extremism, and currently with the delicate and dangerous nuclear negotiations with Iran.
For Turkey to fracture on a fault line between Ataturk secularists and those who favor restoration of an Islamist and expansionist state would be more destabilizing to the region’s military and economic order than anything that has yet occurred during this era of post-Arab spring.
Could it happen? In Taksim Square protesters are chanting “We are the soldiers of Mustafa Kemal” and “Shoulder to shoulder against fascism.” Erdogan is not a leader who tolerates such things lightly.
This happens to be the year of the Istanbul’s Biennial exhibition of art. Standing in front of Istanbul’s shiny new Museum of Modern Art I saw a display that perfectly sums up the moment: Turkish artist Ayse Erkmen’s replica of a wrecking ball swinging from a crane into the museum wall itself. The “ball” is soft and the “bang” is electronically created. The question for Turkey is, will it remain that way.
(Joe Rothstein can be contacted at joe@einnews.com)