Category: Turkey

The court action has gifted the Islamist parties with the popular underdog brand.

Since arriving in Ankara earlier this summer I have been having a cool Turkish dream. No, it does not take place on a yacht sailing through turquoise waters off the Turkish Riviera. Rather, my dream is a political one, involving Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), in the wake of the Constitutional Court’s recent decision to fine it for violating the secular Constitution rather than shut it down. In my dream, the Islamist-rooted AKP embraces full-scale liberalism and finds a lasting balance between secularism and democracy for Turkey. My dream is not such a utopian one. Each time the Turkish court sanctions an Islamist party, that party reinvents itself as a more moderate political movement. In return, the court’s reaction to each reincarnated Islamist party has become less harsh. The court shut down the AKP’s hard-core Islamist predecessors, the Welfare and Virtue parties. But now it has come down with a lesser verdict against the more moderate AKP, hoping that the party will moderate further.

The AKP’s record gives me much hope it will do so. When the court shut down the Virtue Party in 2001 for its antisecular activities, the AKP emerged as a breath of fresh air. It publicly eschewed Islamism and pronounced respect for secular democracy, as well as the West and its liberal values. Then things got even better. After coming to power in 2002, the AKP promoted European Union (EU) accession for Turkey, driving a liberal reform agenda and following pro-business policies. The party reached out to different constituencies, suggesting a pluralist understanding of democracy and alleviating concerns about its Islamist pedigree. For a while, it looked as if the AKP had found a liberal balance between Islam and democracy and that it was moving Turkey west.

Alas, it was a mirage on three fronts. First, after Turkey started accession talks with the EU in 2005, the AKP’s appetite for the EU faded. It realized that accession talks meant costly reforms, and shied away from pursuing Turkey’s EU dream. What’s more, a November 2005 decision by the European Court of Human Rights to uphold Turkey’s ban on a specific Islamic-style headscarf (turban) on college campuses disappointed the AKP, which had come to believe it could rely on Europe to redefine Turkish secularism. Second, the AKP started to treat liberal, egalitarian democracy as an à la carte menu, choosing some liberties while ignoring others. For example, while the party pushed to lift Turkey’s turban ban on college campuses for female students, it implemented religion-infused policies that led to a decrease in women’s employment. The erosion of Western values under the AKP resurrected fears about the party’s Islamist pedigree, and Turkey was split down the middle between its supporters and opponents. Third, the AKP moved from a pluralist to a majoritarian understanding of democracy. After winning 47 percent of the vote in the July 2007 elections, the party started to interpret its popular mandate as a blank check to ignore democratic checks and balances, and harass dissenters in the media, NGOs, the courts and business groups. Within this background, the country’s secular chief prosecutor opened a court case against the party, asking the Constitutional Court to sanction the AKP for violating Turkey’s Constitution. Tension rose; some alarmist pundits even suggested that Turkey was moving into the abyss of democratic collapse through a “judicial coup.”

But such pundits have been proved wrong. The Turkish court’s August decision to put the AKP on probation demonstrated that democracy in Turkey is alive and kicking—and this is where my dream comes in. With the court’s decision, the karmic wheel of religion-based parties has made a full circle toward democracy in Turkey, leaving the AKP with a stark choice. The party can continue to spin the karmic wheel by adopting a sincerely pro-EU political platform and pushing for economic and social reforms in Turkey. It can also pursue full-menu liberalism with respect to Western values including pluralist democracy, secular politics and the right to dissent. And it can advocate true gender-equality policies. That would be my dream come true—a liberal, secular and democratic Turkey for all.

Or, the AKP might challenge the court and continue to bolster its later majoritarian tendencies. If court action against Islamist parties has moderated such parties, it has also made them more popular, pulling them to the political center, as well as gifting them with the popular underdog brand. Recep Tayyip Erdogan has already issued a rebuke to the court’s decision, and the AKP might go after a narrowly defined understanding of democracy, dismissing checks and balances and ignoring the real work of EU accession. In this mind-set, the AKP would further its vision of a religion-based society with the party’s distaste for women’s employment, alcohol consumption and secular education dividing Turkey in the middle. Such a development would inevitably bring harsh court action against the AKP, maybe even a ban. The karmic wheel of Turkey’s religion-based parties would stop spinning toward democracy, and that would be my nightmare.

Cagaptay is a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and a visiting professor at Bahcesehir University in Istanbul.

© 2008

Source: Newsweek

By Alex Barker in Ankara

The often tense relationship between Turkey’s politicians and its generals might have entered a more cordial era with the appointment of a military commander with an ear for Beethoven and a pragmatic political streak.

General Ilker Basbug will head Turkey’s armed forces for two years, putting his mark on a powerful political institution that jealously guards the secular republic’s founding principles, intervening four times in 50 years to oust elected leaders.

His approach to the Justice and Development Party (AKP), the Islamist-rooted government, and the forces of change sweeping the country and military will be critical to shaping Turkey’s future.

Gen Basbug’s outlook is hardline and typical of a Turkish general. But his first gesture as commander was a surprise. By forgoing the annual purge of officers accused of indiscipline or Islamic practice, he assuaged the AKP.

One opposition politician, a traditional ally of the -military, was upset enough to chide the “warm” relations and speculate about underhand deals (which were angrily denied).

The incident highlighted a more fundamental change. For some months, the generals and the government have had a tacit agreement.

Strains remain, particularly over the place of Islam in public life. But on other military priorities – fighting Kurdish separatists, Cyprus, and the effective immunity for generals from oversight – there are signs of accord.

The generals, in turn, were conspicuously silent over the divisive legal bid to shut down the ruling AKP, which it narrowly survived last week. Cengiz Aktar, an academic and commentator, sums it up as “concessions for co-existence”.

Observers in Ankara consider Gen Basbug’s temperament to be well suited to both sustaining this working relationship and sternly policing its conditions.

The general fits the Turkish military mould. He reveres Mustafa Kemal Ata– t-ürk, the military founder of modern Turkey. His outlook is assertive, dogmatic and deeply suspicious of change. He is steeped in the westernised culture of the Turkish officer corps, with stints at Nato and Sandhurst. He listens to classical music, watches US movies and has no time for religion.

Yet his style is expected to be different. Ümit Cizre, a professor and army observer, calls him “a hardliner with a difference”, a well-read and more cerebral commander. Gen Basbug has given, for instance, unusually reflective speeches on terrorism.

His low-key approach contrasts with Yasar Buyukanit, his predecessor, who struggled to resist impromptu pronouncements on anything from headscarves to football. Gen Buyukanit frequently clashed with the AKP, but mostly lost.

Gen Basbug is expected to be shrewder and politically more effective.

His rise to the top carefully navigated the military’s more reform-minded and hawkish camps without fully committing to either, highlighting his pragmatic streak. “He is regarded in the military as a safe pair of hands,” said Gareth Jenkins, a security analyst based in Istanbul. “He has earned a reputation for being very calm and giving measured, well thought out responses.”

His relations with Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s prime minister, face three main tests. First Cyprus, where peace talks could explore terms that breach the general’s red lines, and second, an investigation into a ultra-nationalist “plot” to oust the government. The third, and potentially most sensitive, is constitutional reform.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008