Tag: AKP

Recep Tayyip Erdogan sparks furor in Turkey by saying he wants to ‘raise a religious youth’

By Fulya Ozerkan

ANKARA — Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s comment that his government wants to “raise a religious youth” has touched a nerve in society, fuelling debates over an alleged “hidden agenda” to Islamise secular Turkey.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan (C) arrives for a meeting in Ankara on February 9, 2012

“We want to raise a religious youth,” said Erdogan, himself a graduate of a clerical school and the leader of the Islamist-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP), during a parliamentary address last week.

“Do you expect the conservative democrat AK Party to raise an atheist generation? That might be your business, your mission, but not ours. We will raise a conservative and democratic generation embracing the nation’s values and principles,” he added.

Erdogan’s remarks drew strong criticism from the staunchly secular Republican People’s Party (CHP) founded by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, with its leader calling him a “religion-monger.”

“It is a sin to garner votes over religion. You are not religious but a religion-monger,” said Kemal Kilicdaroglu, accusing Erdogan of polarising the country by touching its faultlines.

“I’m asking the prime minister: what can I do if I don’t want my child to be raised as religious and conservative?” wrote prominent liberal commentator Hasan Cemal in Milliyet daily.

“If you are going to train a religious and conservative generation in schools, what will happen to my child?” he asked.

Columnist Mehmet Ali Birand also criticised Erdogan this week in an article titled, “The race for piety will be our end.”

“What does it mean, really, that the state raises religious youth? Is this the first step towards a religious state?” he wrote in Hurriyet Daily News.

Erdogan must explain what he meant, otherwise a dangerous storm may erupt and go as far as fights about being religious versus being godless, he argued.

Neither religious nor political uniformity can be imposed on Turkey given regional, ethnic and sectarian diversity in the country, wrote Semih Idiz in Milliyet daily on Tuesday.

He said millions of people “have subscribed to secular lifestyles” even before the republic.

Erdogan’s AKP has been in power since 2002 and won a third term with nearly 50 percent of the vote in the 2011 elections, securing 325 seats in the 550-member parliament.

But since then the influence of the military, considered as guardian of secularism, has waned.

Dozens of retired and active army officers, academics, journalists and lawyers have been put behind bars in probes into alleged plots against Erdogan’s government.

Critics accuse the government of launching the probes as a tool to silence opponents and impose authoritarianism.

Secular quarters argue Erdogan’s conservative government is also step by step imposing religion in every aspect of life, saying many restaurants already refuse to serve alcohol during Ramadan.

They also criticise recent changes to legislation under which religious school graduates will now be able to access any university branch they like, while in the past they had only access to theology schools.

Birand expressed fears that the changes would not be confined to this and would lead to censorship in television broadcasts.

The Turkish television watchdog RTUK “will restrict all kissing scenes; they will confuse pornography with explicit broadcast and all television screens will be made pious,” he added.

“Then will come religious foundations. After them, it will be municipalities. All kinds of Koran teaching courses, legal or illegal, will mushroom.”

Observers say Erdogan’s message contradicts what he had said during a recent tour of Arab Spring countries, in September.

“As Recep Tayyip Erdogan I am a Muslim but not secular. But I am a prime minister of a secular country. People have the freedom to choose whether or not to be religious in a secular regime,” he said in an interview with an Egyptian TV, published by Turkish daily Vatan.

“The constitution in Turkey defines secularism as the state’s equal distance to every religion,” he said in remarks that provoked criticism from the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.

Postmedia News

via Recep Tayyip Erdogan sparks furor in Turkey by saying he wants to ‘raise a religious youth’ | News | National Post.

February 10, 2012
Tiger Turkey at the crossroads

The country is one of success stories of the last decade, but is its increasingly autocratic government slowly threatening progress?

Patrick Cockburn

In the tea houses of Istanbul the mood is generally optimistic as customers listen to the news of the European economic crisis. “Turkey doesn’t need Europe,” says one tea drinker.

“Look at Greece – it was inside the European Union and they’re going bankrupt.” Osman, a middle-aged estate agent, adds that “when you compare Turkey today with Turkey 20 years ago, everything has got better.”

Not everybody in the tea house is quite so positive. Its manager says: “I think the economy is going well for those with money. But talk to somebody on the minimum wage and see how they feel.” There is some Schadenfreude over the problems facing the EU, given that it has so far rejected Turkey as a member. But one customer, looking up from his card game, says “I have just been to Germany and it is still better abroad.”

Turkey has been one of the world’s great political and economic success stories of the last decade. Over 70 million people under quasi-military rule of great brutality for 80 years appeared at last to be coming under civilian control. Torture stopped in the prisons. Elections not army coups d’état – four in Turkey since 1960 – determined who held power in Ankara. The Justice and Development Party (AKP) led by the Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, first elected in 2002, was just the sort of moderate, democratic pro-capitalist Islamic party that the West wanted to encourage. The foreign media boosted Turkey uncritically last year as a model for the Arab world as police states started tumbling.

There is more substance to the Turkish “miracle” than there was to most of the over-hyped booms in Europe, from Ireland to Greece. Political and economic changes here were real. The AKP outmanoeuvred the military leadership and its powerful allies in the state bureaucracy and appeared to break their long tutelage. In 2001 the economy had been a barely floating wreck as inflation touched 80 per cent a year and the Turkish lira halved in value. Banks closed and tens of thousands of enterprises went bankrupt. All these disasters became a distant memory as Turkey acquired a “tiger” economy. In a decade Turkey’s GDP and exports both doubled in value. Small and medium-sized manufacturers became energetic exporters. Foreign investment, the key to growth in Turkey, poured in and the economy became the 15th largest in the world. It is these gains that are now under threat. Political reforms stalled two years ago. One foreign observer says “Erdogan decided not to use his political capital to resolve the conflict with the Kurds, the dispute over Cyprus and relations with Armenia”. Overconfidence in Turkey’s new-found strength diverted attention from crucial questions, the most important of which is bringing an end to the Kurdish insurgency.

Some Turkish liberals suspect that, after being in power for almost a decade, the AKP has found it convenient to adopt the mechanisms of repression used by its predecessors. “The AKP had been on the periphery of political life and is now at the centre,” says Cengiz Aktar, professor of political science at Bahcesehir University in Istanbul. “They decided to stop the reformist process and enjoy life.”

The clamp down has been severe. This month Reporters Without Borders (RSF) demoted Turkey to 148th place out of 178 countries in its annual World Press Freedom Index. Its report said: “The judicial system launched a wave of arrests on journalists without precedent since the military dictatorship.” Some 99 journalists are in jail, about 60 per cent of whom are Kurdish. “It is a sort of political cleansing by the judiciary and the police,” says Erol Onderoglu, the RSF representative for Turkey.

Often journalists are held for more than a year without knowing the charges against them, and an editor can be jailed for any article appearing in his paper critical of government policy. In one case a Kurdish editor was sentenced to 166 years in prison, later reduced to 20 years by the High Court, for such a piece. Osman Kovala of Anadolu Kultur, a human rights organisation in Istanbul, says there is “still no clear distinction between expression of an opinion and membership of a terrorist organisation”.

Liberals fear that the so-called “deep state”, a secret cabal of soldiers, police and bureaucrats dealing in assassination and disappearances, is still in business, stalking its enemies and protecting its hitmen. Government critics suspect the AKP is no longer interested in rooting out these sinister agents.

In 2007 the murder of the Armenian-Turkish journalist Hrant Dink was widely believed to be their work and became a cause célèbre. Shot in the back by a 17-year-old student, his murder had all the marks of a well-organised plot. But, in January, a court in Istanbul appalled a broad swathe of Turkish opinion by finding the gunman had largely acted alone. Convinced of state connivance in Dink’s death thousands of marchers commemorated it by shouting the slogan, “The killer state will pay”.

The AKP government could argue that its most important struggle has been to end the military’s grip on the state. “I was amazed last year to see the ex-Chief of General Staff in prison,” says Murat Belge, professor of comparative literature at Bilgi University. “This is a miracle for Turkey.” Suggesting that civilian control is not as deeply rooted as many Turks assume, he believes the reason why the army has not overthrown the AKP government has been that the US does not want it to.

Mr Erdogan, a pious, populist nationalist of great political skill, is sounding and acting more and more like an autocrat. His belligerent personality may make him averse to seeking a compromise with the Kurds, but his intransigence is attractive to Turks who like the idea of a powerful state. “The Turks are childish about being powerful,” Mr Belge says. “Power is a magic word for them.”

A further cause of the faltering impetus of reform in Turkey is its failure to enter the EU. Expectations of EU membership in 2004-9 played a central role in promoting liberal democracy. Realisation that accession is unlikely to happen soon is having a reverse effect. Atilla Yesilada, an economic consultant at Istanbul Analytics, says “the fact that Europe no longer has the energy to absorb Turkey is a blow to hopes of creating a liberal democratic society”.

Rejection by Europe has been compensated for, at least psychologically, by Turkey’s expanded role in the Middle East but this intervention is beginning to sour. A couple of years ago, Turkey had developed good relations with most of its neighbours, particularly governments in Tehran, Baghdad and Damascus. Turkish trade to the Middle East expanded fast. Come the Arab Spring, Turkey adeptly changed horses, abandoned old allies and backed protesters and insurgents in Libya and Syria.

A foreign observer said: “The European leaders might behave to Mr Erdogan as if he was something the cat dragged in, but in Egypt he was treated like a demi-god.” But the advantages of this popularity can be exaggerated. Egyptians may like Mr Erdogan, but they are not asking him to rule them. At the start of this year Turkey is having to pay a price for an overconfidence that has provoked hostility on the part of the Syrian and Iraqi governments.

Will the Turkish boom turn out to be a bubble? Previous recessions have all seen outflows of foreign capital. The European banks investing here are themselves fragile. But Turks still make things like ships and cars. The outskirts of Istanbul are filled with workshops producing furniture, textiles and shoes alongside more technical products.

Mehmet Tuysuz employs 33 people making valves for medical equipment. He speaks well of the government, saying that it “helps small and medium-sized plants like us. They got rid of the mafia in the municipality, fire and tax departments.” He says in the 1990s he was frustrated by officials extracting bribes as the price for removing bureaucratic obstacles.

The next year should tell if Turkey is going to join the sick men of Europe. The year may also tell if Turkey has at last escaped the legacy of an autocratic state.

January 28, 2012
In Turkey’s footsteps
In Turkey’s footsteps

The AK Party model of governance is a model for countries like Egypt where religious norms are in conflict with civil liberties
- By George S. Hishmeh, Special to Gulf News
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The rise of Islamists in some Arab countries, particularly Tunisia and Egypt, that have undergone significant political change in the course of landmark elections, has appeared to have somewhat alarmed leading western governments, who did not anticipate these results.

Whether these results are final is too early to tell. Needless to say, the West is partly responsible for this surprise turnaround.

In 1977, US president Jimmy Carter revealed to an audience at the University of Notre Dame as he was spelling out his new “human rights” policy, that “an inordinate fear of Communism … once led us to embrace any dictator who joined us in that fear”.

Speaking at the American University in Cairo six years ago, Condoleezza Rice, US secretary of state during president George W. Bush’s tenure, seemingly apologised that “for 60 years my country, the United States, pursued stability at the expense of democracy in this region here in the Middle East — and we achieved neither”.

Disappointingly, the US did not adopt a new or different line thereafter, still feeling comfortable with autocrats in the Arab world.

But last week, US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta, until recently the director of the CIA, went on to urge Israel to “reach out and mend fences” with its neighbours, particularly Turkey and Egypt, underlining his concern about Israel’s growing isolation in the volatile Middle East.

“I believe security is dependent on a strong military, but it is also dependent on strong diplomacy,” Panetta said in remarks at the Brookings Institution in Washington. “And unfortunately, over the past year, we have seen Israel’s isolation from its traditional security partners in the region grow, and the pursuit of a comprehensive Middle East peace has effectively been put on hold.”

A day later, US Vice-President, Joseph R. Biden Jr, seemed to echo the new Obama administration line during a stopover in Istanbul on his way home from Iraq.

During a lengthy meeting with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Biden was reported to have urged the prime minister to repair Turkey’s “badly frayed” relations with Israel following Turkey’s attempt, aborted by the Israeli navy, to offer humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza.

There were no public disclosures about any specific suggestions, now that Turkey has become a key American ally since its long-desired membership in the European Union has been shelved. Turkey is slowly emerging as a respected pace-setter for many neighbouring Arab states.

Turkey’s involvement, seen as a step to assert its leadership in the Arab world, will open the way for Arab governments to follow the footsteps of Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AK Party), a centre-right political group which holds a majority of the seats in the non-sectarian Turkish parliament.

Since it shares a long border with neighbouring Syria, Turkey has joined the ranks of the 22-member Arab League in combating the Bashar Al Assad regime.

European, American and Turkish officials were reported to be confident that “Syria’s economic troubles could prove the undoing” of the Syrian regime, “which to date has managed to maintain the allegiance of the business elite”. Syria is known to be “heavily reliant on Turkey for trade, which more than tripled between the two countries to $2.5 billion in 2009, from $795 million in 2006,” reported the New York Times. “Before the recent souring of relations, it was forecast to reach $5 billion by 2013.”

It is very likely the Turkish model would be an attractive one to follow in the Arab world, as seems likely in Egypt. Ahmad Tharwat, a professor at the University of St Thomas in Minneapolis and host in a local Arab-American community television programme BelAhdan told Suzanne Manneh on New America Media that religious differences have always been an issue in Egypt, “but always in a civil liberties context”.

Furthermore, he said, the religious conflict perceived in Egypt today is less a product of the current revolution than it is “a remnant of the Mubarak regime”.

George S. Hishmeh is a Washington-based columnist. He can be contacted at ghishmeh@gulfnews.com

via gulfnews : In Turkey’s footsteps.
December 10, 2011
Turkey acts as mentor, model to Islamist groups

Istanbul: As Islamist groups emerge triumphant in Tunisia, Egypt and Morocco, Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party or AKP) under Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan seems set to act as their mentor — and to throw its weight behind the Syrian opposition seeking to oust President Bashar Al Assad, a former ally.

Ankara’s evolving response to the upheavals of the Arab Spring is broadly in harmony with its North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) and European Union (EU) allies, who had balked at the AKP’s previous “zero problems with the neighbours” policy, that indulged Syria and its ally Iran, and which some derided as a neo-Ottoman turn away from Turkey’s long-standing Western ties.

Both Turkey and its Western allies now hope the success of the AKP in transiting from Islamist roots to a sort of Muslim version of Christian Democracy, and in running a dynamic economy that has doubled the income of its people, will be an attractive model to Arab Islamist parties now coming to the fore.

“I think the AKP hope is that they will be really an example for the Islamists of the region and they will moderate themselves and become parties like AKP which respects Islamic values, but mainly focuses on economic development and doesn’t support a radical agenda,” said Mustafa Akyol, author of the recent book Islam without extremes: a Muslim Case For Liberty.

On a triumphant tour in September of Tunisia, Egypt and Libya — the three countries that successfully overthrew their dictatorships this year — he pointedly defended Turkey’s model of a secular state as a shield that defended the beliefs of all, including Islamists.

Tunisia’s Al Nahda party has publicly embraced the AKP as a source of inspiration, while the new generation of the Muslim Brotherhood, especially in Egypt, look to the AKP as an example. “They want to be a mentor to all these Islamist groups in Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia,” says Soli Ozel, a prominent academic and commentator in Istanbul.

Islamists did not instigate the Arab uprisings that have shaken Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria and Yemen, but in the last two months, Islamist parties have come out top in parliamentary elections in Morocco and post-revolutionary Tunisia. Egyptian Islamists, who have won a first round of elections, want to emulate those triumphs, but it is unclear how much influence the previously toothless legislature in Cairo can wield while the generals remain in power.

Sinan Ulgen, head of the Center for Economics and Foreign Policy Studies or Edam, an independent think-tank in Istanbul, said the Arab Spring offered Turkey an immense opportunity because it allowed the AKP to engage the new emerging political actors on the ground.

“There is a political factor that is at play here. There is a good opportunity for years to come for the AKP to start to chaperon these parties in the region. It will be a demand driven dynamic rather than supply-driven,” he added, emphasising that Ankara would be careful to avoid reviving memories of Ottoman domination of the region or playing “Big Brother”.

This year’s upheavals across the region have nevertheless brought new pressures to bear on Turkey’s ruling government.

Worried that the conflict in neighbouring Syria is taking a sectarian turn as the minority Alawite rule of the Al Assads tries to paint its opponents as Sunni fundamentalists, the mainly Sunni AKP, whose natural sympathies lie with Syria’s Sunni majority, has adopted a resolutely non-sectarian line, evident in its dealings with all parties in fractious multi-confessional states such as Lebanon, Iraq and even Bosnia.

Coming into the centre of society

The experience of Turkey, where the AKP was built from the debris of several failed and proscribed Islamist parties, but widened to include centre-right elements and nationalists, suggests Islamism can be synthesised with secular norms and that there is a middle way between the extremes of despotism and Islamic radicalism, argues Mustafa Akyol, author of the recent book Islam without extremes: a Muslim Case For Liberty. “In the past century the Middle East has been doomed by those secular dictators suppressing opposition, including Islamist groups, and those becoming more radical. I call them the two extremes. The middle way is something now represented by the AKP: It restores respect for religion, it is run by pious Muslims, but it does not envision a theocratic state. It creates room for Islamists to come to the centre of society,” he added.

via gulfnews : Turkey acts as mentor, model to Islamist groups.

December 10, 2011
From Zero Problems to Cok Problems

by Steven Cook

Turkey’s Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu talks to the media during a news conference in Ankara (Umit Bektas/Courtesy Reuters).

INSTANBUL — With the sharp deterioration of Turkish-Syrian relations over the last two days, some Turkish and Western observers have declared Ankara’s “zero-problems” foreign policy dead and buried. This sentiment has been building for some time, especially among critics of the ruling Justice and Development Party, but the denouement of the Erdogan/Davutoglu investment in Bashar al Assad—a signature policy—seems to have signaled the end of what has been billed as Turkey’s transformative diplomacy. The facts are hard to ignore. In an era when Ankara aspired to know problems with its neighbors, it actually has cok problems: Syria, Israel, Armenia, Iran, Cyprus, and the EU to name just a few.

To be fair, Ankara’s neighbors have not exactly cooperated, but at the same time, it is not all that much of a surprise that zero problems has not delivered as promised. For all of Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu’s many talents, his signature policy was not all that visionary. In fact, it was downright conventional. Stripped of all the romance about Turkey being a role model, zero problems was based on the central hunch that drives economic determinism: If people are getting richer and happier, they will accept the status quo because they will develop an economic interest in said status quo, in turn, providing incentive to avoid any problems for fear it might undermine people’s newfound wealth and ipso facto, presto—zero problems.

In ways, this was a potentially genius way of dealing with Turkey’s Kurdish problem. Drop trade barriers, visa requirements, and invest in Syria and Iraq and the economic and political benefits to Turkey’s southeast would be enormous. By making Kurds richer and happier, Davutoglu assumed they would be less inclined to make cultural and national demands on the Turkish state. It hasn’t exactly worked out that way. Regionally, the weakness at the heart of zero problems was that it had no commitment to any particular kind of government. As a result, it was bound up in the Middle East’s old political order.

While AKP was driving democratic changes at home, the prime minister and foreign minister were courting nasty Middle Eastern leaders. Assad, to take an example, is the opposite of Erdogan. The Turkish prime minister owes his power and success to an appealing vision for Turkish society, the ability to deliver socio-economic benefits to Turks, and a whole lot of charisma. These factors have consistently returned him to office with ever-larger percentages of the popular vote. The Syrian president is the son of a brutal dictator who remains in power through his willingness to spill the blood of his own people. The same stunning irony was clear in Turkey’s relations with Qadhafi’s Libya. Once these regimes faltered, which, again in all fairness to Ankara hardly seemed inevitable, zero problems was likely to look like a bad bet. Once the game was up, revealing Turkey to be no different from any other major power in the region all too willing to do business with unseemly characters, Erdogan and Davutoglu were forced to tack hard against their own policies. Zero problems is now dead because it became unsustainable as Qadhafi massed forces against Tripoli or Bashar al Assad cranks up the violence to save his regime.

The combination of deft public relations, the help of some parts of the national press all too willing to engage in national self-aggrandizement, and an emerging consensus among international foreign policy elites about the benefits of the “Turkish model,” has rescued the AKP’s foreign policy from the gap between Ankara’s principles and its actual conduct in the region. There are exceptions to this, of course. Erdogan has been consistent in his position on Gaza, which has won him widespread admiration in the Arab world. Still, for those who bother to look critically, zero problems and its demise reveal that like the United States, the EU, and other global powers, Turkey only became a champion of human rights and democracy in the Middle East world after Arabs took matters into their own hands and began bringing down Ankara’s friends.

via Steven A. Cook: From the Potomac to the Euphrates » Turkey: From Zero Problems to Cok Problems.

November 19, 2011
Islamist parties in Turkey

Some look to the Muslim Brotherhood to do for Egypt what ErdoganÕs party did for Turkey; yet the two are very different, in goals and means, writes Azmi Ashour*

It has become increasingly common to regard Islamist groups, and the Muslim Brotherhood in particular, as one of the moderate political forces that could reliably steer the transition to democracy in Arab societies in the event that circumstances catapulted them to fore as the alternative to dictatorial regimes. This trend began not just since the onset of the Arab Spring but nearly a decade ago and it was aided by numerous factors, not least of which was the former regime’s systematic propaganda against the Muslim Brothers at a time when they were rapidly expanding their political and grassroots influence and developing into a formidable opposition force. The regime’s campaign only added to the appeal of the officially banned Islamist organisation which succeeded in rallying beneath its banner large segments of disaffected educated youth who were keen to become socially and politically active but who found all legitimate avenues for political involvement blocked due to the restrictions on political party life and the corruption that prevailed in political processes in general. The Muslim Brotherhood demonstrated its growing presence tangibly in the 2005 parliamentary elections when its members (running as independents) won 20 per cent of the seats.

Scholars and politicians in the West took this unprecedented victory as a sign that the Muslim Brotherhood could leverage itself into a position of power through the democratic process which, in turn, generated widespread speculation as to whether a political faction with an Islamic frame-of-reference could lead the process of political reform and democratisation in Egypt. Opinions varied, but most came down in the Muslim Brotherhood’s favour. The prohibition against it, the periodic clampdowns on its members and their activities, and the imprisonment of many of its leaders in the period preceding the 2010 elections won it considerable sympathy not only in Egypt but abroad. More and more it was viewed as a political faction that was forced to pay for its beliefs by prison sentences and other forms of self- sacrifice, regardless of whether or not the clampdowns were part of a subtle and long-standing game between the Muslim Brotherhood and the regime, and despite the fact that the Mubarak regime’s campaign against the Muslim Brothers was not so much driven by the fear of them but by the desire to portray them in a way that inspired alarm in the public in Egypt and among Western powers. In an international climate dominated by the spectre of terrorism, the regime was keen to establish itself in the eyes of the US and the West as the only available bulwark against radical Islamism and, hence, as a regime that needed to be perpetuated. Perhaps because the ruse was so transparent it did more to enhance the image of the Muslim Brotherhood at home and abroad than it did to damage it.

When the revolution erupted and succeeded in toppling the regime, the organisation that had built its legitimacy on its opposition to that regime soon revealed its true nature. When it returned to the fray and suddenly found no one to oppose it, it was temporarily disoriented and its positions were often conflicting. Still, for the most part, it acted in ways consistent with its original ideology and long-range political aim, which is to establish an Islamic theocracy in Egypt. It is little wonder, therefore, that it struck common cause with the Salafis and Al-Gamaa Al-Islamiya on many of the controversial issues that have arisen since the revolution. Nevertheless, because the Muslim Brotherhood is so frequently cited as the candidate for implementing the “Turkish model” in Egypt, it is important to consider whether its experience and outlook are really as similar to those of the Justice and Development Party (JDP) in Turkey as some claim.

The success of the JDP in Turkey stands not as an affirmation but as a refutation of the creed and ultimate aim of the Muslim Brotherhood, which is to come to power with the purpose of establishing “God’s Law” as interpreted by them. The JDP came to power and exercises power in a secular climate and in accordance with a democratic system, in spite of its Islamic frame of reference. The modern foundations of the Turkish state that were laid 90 years ago were the soil that enabled the emergence of the JDP and its natural development in the framework of the institutions of the modern state. The party, therefore, saw no contradiction between its religious background and outlook and the secularist state, which continues to serve as the party’s primary frame of reference. Islamist parties in Turkey did not acquire this modernist spirit overnight; it evolved over several phases as did the modern Turkish state itself, which experienced three military coups (in 1960, 1971 and 1981) aimed at rectifying the course of the state without direct involvement in government. In like manner, Islamist parties, which first appeared in Turkey in the 1980s, gradually readjusted and revised themselves in their attempts to accommodate to the institutional framework of the Turkish state, with the JDP eventually emerging as the party that proved most adept in the process of acclimatisation. Therefore, in the course of its struggle for power within the framework of the Turkish system, the JDP did not seem an anomaly. It may have had an Islamist outlook, but in essence it comported itself in every way as a normal modern political party, one that fully understood the rules of the democratic game, that appreciated the value of the Turkish secular state and, hence, made the preservation of this state and the promotion of its welfare among its foremost priorities.

The modernist consciousness of the JDP can not be viewed in isolation from the socio-cultural capital that was inaugurated by Ataturk and subsequently developed in Kemalist Turkey, which in the course of 90 years ultimately generated a new Turkish personality that differed markedly from the Ottoman one, at least with respect to its attitude towards modernist values. Since the JDP is very much a native product of this legacy, it has no less a faith in and commitment to democracy than any of its political party peers that arose from the same secularist soil and cultural consciousness.

In contrast, the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood developed, especially during the last 60 years, in a totally different climate and socio-cultural framework. It emerged from an exclusionist autocratic context both in terms of its own outlook and that of the regime that fixed it in its crosshairs, and it has yet to shed itself of the attendant ills and weaknesses that are inherent in that type of consciousness and that were reinforced by the confrontation with a dictatorial order. The duality between the regime and the Muslim Brotherhood worked to reproduce the type of individuals who believe solely in their own views and who can entertain no opposing opinions. Indeed, this exclusionist culture has long been the chief flaw in the mentality of the Muslim Brotherhood elite who not only identified the ruling regime as their enemy but also everyone else who did not stand squarely on their side.

This is the chief weakness that was glaringly exposed in the wake of 25 January when the Muslim Brotherhood lost the antagonist that aided their rise to prominence. This weakness now presents them with their most critical test. Will they merely fall back old habits and create another enemy to replace the old? Or will they bow to new realities and act in accordance with laws that stipulate that they are one of many differing political forces who are bound by a set of rights and obligations within the framework of a legal and institutional order in which the prevailing frame of reference is not that of the Muslim Brotherhood or any other such ideological group but rather that of the modern Egyptian civil state which has been evolving over the past 200 years? If the Muslim Brotherhood and the Islamist parties are to meet this challenge, they will first need to shed the dictatorial exclusionist mind-set in which they were bred and take genuine strides towards the principles of freedom, plurality, tolerance and acceptance of the other.

* The writer is managing editor of the quarterly journal Al-Demoqrateya published by Al-Ahram.

November 19, 2011