bout de papier, Vol. 29, No. 1 (2015), pp. 8–11
correspondent for CNBC-e, Firdevs Robinson tc
contemporary Turkish political scene. Written in bi
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Despite its global stature, Turkey’s current leadership and politics are poorly understood beyond its borders. bout de papier interviewed Ms Robinson for the latest on how President Tayyip Erdogan is breaking with the secularist and pro-Western paradigm of the modern country’s founder, Kemal Ataturk, as he endeavours to create a highly centralized, Islamist successor regime. Turkey’s uncertain future has profound implications for the West. That implies the need for an objective review of our relations with Turkey and a close scrutiny of old assumptions about shared values and goals.
Robinson’s “FirdevsTalkTurkey” blog for June 25 captures much of the confusion and ambiguity about Turkey’s motives and actions under today’s leadership and provides a good starting point for discussion — the curiously evolving relationship of our NATO ally and ISIS, now overtly adversarial:
Thursday’s simultaneous offensives by ISIS near the border crossing between Kobane and Turkey, in the northern city of Hassakeh and in city of Deraa in southern Syria have shown, once again, that ISIS still has momentum. Five months after they were driven out by Kurdish forces and just as their capital Raqqa has seemed to be under threat, ISIS militants have managed to inflict serious losses in and around Kobane.
Thursday morning’s suicide car bomb attack and killing of civilians in Kobane neighbourhoods also put Turkey on the spot. Soon after the explosions, there were allegations of collaboration from the Turkish side.
Syrian state TV claimed that ISIS fighters had entered Syria from Turkey.
Figen Yüksekdaë, the co-leader of the Kurdish-affiliated Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) talked about the “high probability” of the attackers entering Kobane from Turkey. Journalist and Syria analyst Mutlu Civiroglu (@mutludc) wrote on Twitter that his sources said five separate groups of ISIS entered Kobane from Turkey, blowing vehicles, entering houses and shooting civilians.
The co-president of the Democratic Union Party (PYD), Salih Muslim was more specific. He was quoted as saying that there was every sign to suggest the militants infiltrated from and returned to Turkey.
Redur Xelil, the YPG spokesman was more measured. “So far, we have no confirmed news, if this group entered Kobane though the Turkish borders or not. The primary information and the eye witnesses say that they entered from Turkey but officially we don’t have confirmed information yet,” he said.
Turkish authorities issued strongly worded denials, calling the allegations black propaganda. A statement by the governor of Urfa, the province bordering Syria said the militants reached Kobani through the Syrian town of Jarabulus. However, several sources from the area say it is impossible to use the Jarabulus route as it is impassable.
Syria has become the world’s most dangerous country for journalists and at times like these, it is extremely difficult to uncover the truth. There are too many propaganda machines, disseminating false information and not enough independent confirmation of claims.
I do not know if the allegations against Turkey are true or false. If Turkey was a country where key institutions, independent of partisan interests and influences existed, I would have given the authorities the benefit of the doubt. After all, Turkey is the world’s largest refugee-hosting nation, opening its doors to close to two million people from Syria. Yet, it is easier to doubt than trust.
After the latest attack in Kobane, the Diyarbakir Bar Association called for an urgent investigation into allegations of complicity. If we had forgot what had happened to others for daring to probe suspected illegal shipments of arms for rebels fighting Syria’s government before, we would have been more patient for the truth to emerge. However, based on previous experience, we can only expect further news blackouts, new conspiracy theories and even loud calls for intervention in Syria – not to stop ISIS – but to prevent Kurds getting the upper hand, pushing ISIS away from Turkey’s borders.
The rest of the world may puzzle over how a NATO member Turkey has ended up as a pipeline of arms and volunteers into Islamist opposition in Syria. They may ponder why ISIS is still expanding, entrenching. They may question what else needs to be done to stop it.
No such questioning, self-doubting for Turkey. Hours after the ISIS massacre in Kobane, Foreign Minister Mevlüt Cavusoglu boldly declared that Turkey’s foreign policy was the envy of the world. “The US is sad that they had not heeded our advice on Syria” he said, adding “our policy of zero problems with
neighbours will continue”.
BOUT: Your blog underscores how much difficulty the West seems to have in understanding Turkish policy and motives on ISIS, on how far Turkey has evolved away from its pro-Western and secular past. Why, when and how did it happen?
FR: Turkey was never well understood by the West. To complicate matters, it has changed fundamentally in recent years, notably since Prime Minister (now President) Tayyip Erdogan and his AKP (or Justice and Development Party) party first formed a majority government. While some of those changes to past authoritarian Kemalist practices are not a bad thing, both as a democrat and as a woman I find many others very alarming.
When Kemal Ataturk established the modern Turkish Republic in 1923 he built on western-oriented reforms already introduced in the Ottoman Empire. However, it took another year to abolish the Caliphate and many more years to establish a secular state. He encountered significant resistance and had to be heavy handed to get major reforms accepted, notably the right to vote for women. I know of no Islamic country that has sought to become a western-style secular state without some dictatorial measures.
Ataturk created a hybrid secular state. Islamic law was replaced with civil law taken largely from Switzerland and Italy but he replaced the Caliphate with “state religion” through the High Directorate for Religious Affairs (which replaced older institutions like Muslim brotherhoods and controls matters such as the Friday sermon). Also, as the Lausanne agreement that ended the war with Greece in 1922 called for the continued special status for minorities in Turkey so to be a “Turk” was based on a Muslim identity (that included ethnic Turks, Kurds and Alawites).
He encountered significant resistance and had to be heavy handed to get major reforms accepted, notably the right to vote for women. | Know of no Islamic country that has sought
to become a western-style secular state without some dictatorial measures.
Turkey’s Religious Affairs Directorate today remains a very important institution. In recent years, it has become an ideological tool of the government. Its budget grew by 176% from 2002 to 2012, exceeding the growth of the education and health budgets.
Turkey’s move toward greater piety is part of a global trend. There has been a lot of Saudi and other Gulf money coming in to Turkey to support it, among other things by building new mosques and setting up cultural centres. However, other factors also have played a role. In the 1980s the military government encouraged greater piety and religious practices as a counterbalance the left-right political conflicts of the day. It was the 1982 Constitution that made religious education mandatory. The nationalist CHP, the presumed successors to Ataturk, themselves opened many more imam training schools, now the backbone of secondary education in Turkey. That said, no one has been more effective and efficient in promoting the religious agenda than the current government.
BOUT: Are imam hatips the “backbone” of secondary education? That seems extraordinary.
FR: In the last 10 years much of the secular system Ataturk established has been eliminated. Some of that was overdue such as the ban on headscarves on women in university that effectively denied them the right to higher education, but since 2011 (when the government won a third consecutive victory with an increased majority in parliament), it is putting a lot of pressure on people to become more religious. The message is clear that if you are not a practicing and preferably Sunni Muslim you are not a proper citizen. How far President Erdogan is prepared to go with this Islamist ideology is hard to predict but he has stated that there is no such thing as “moderate Islam, there is only Islam”, and considers Kurdish nationalism on the Syrian border a greater threat than ISIS.
Whether by choice or as a result of social pressure, Muslim practices are far more in evidence than they used to be in Turkey. Nonetheless, I would estimate that 50 percent of Turks remain committed to a secular system, something the government ought to respect. While conflicts such as we saw in the Gezi Park protests in Istanbul (triggered by Erdogan’s plans to convert one of the last green spaces and open gathering places in the city into an Ottoman-style commercial centre and mosque complex) reflect the oppression of secular liberals by the government, secularists themselves have become more tolerant of those who practice their religion. They sometimes find common cause with them against some of the more extreme practices of the government. The polarization of Turkey over issues of religion seems neither necessary nor inevitable.
BOUT: Is Ataturk’s revolution truly dead (President Erdogan had gone so far as to insist on the inequality of women whom Ataturk emancipated), or is this just the swing of the political pendulum?
FR: Ataturk’s revolution has been seriously dented but Turkey has gone a long way towards being integrated into the world system. The Turkish economy has grown considerably in recent years and economic reality will always play a very big role in the country’s politics. However, I am very worried about the status of women and we have clearly seen the country moving backwards across a wide range of issues beginning with the declining role of women in the economy.
In my view, the high profile debate on religion and its practice in Turkey masks an even deeper problem: the rule of law no longer really exists and the checks and balances in the system are nearly almost all gone. All the key institutions of the state are politically manipulated and controlled by the government. State universities have lost their independence. The military’s back is broken (which is not necessarily a bad thing given our history), and has little influence on key security issues such as the war on the border with Syria. The structure of the judiciary was turned upside down in a quite unconstitutional way (judges are fired when they make independent decisions). Sharia has not yet made inroads in Turkish law constitutionally as yet, but in practice we see it in decisions. A man who kills his wife may be released within a year, a woman who kills her husband in self-defence will get life with no chance of early release.
There were no checks against the Prime Minister when Erdogan occupied that post and none in his capacity as President. The parliament does not function and political parties are unable to operate properly. Issues are not debated, members vote as they are ordered to by the President, and extremely contentious legislation gets buried in omnibus bills that often are passed in the dead of night. Civil society is too weak to protest effectively and media censorship and fierce intimidation of journalists through litigation and incarceration ensure that the public remains ill informed about what is actually going on. In other words, there is no one left to defend the public interest.
Officials in the international community have registered growing concern over the erosion of the rule of law in Turkey (including the US, the EU, the European Parliament among others). However, aside such gestures, the international community turns a blind eye to what is going on. It seems that the status quo serves their economic interests best. One thing is certain about this issue: it will be extremely difficult to restore the rule of law, to put it right.
Civil society is too weak to protest effectively
and media censorship and fierce intimidation of journalists through litigation and incarceration ensure
that the public remains ill informed about what is actually going on. In other words, there is no one left to defend the public interest.
I do not think that we are witnessing a simple swing of the pendulum in Turkey. Education is the key to the future and now even scientific universities include much questioning of evolution and give space to creationism. The Head of the country’s government-based scientific research institute (purged of professional evidence-based scientists a few years ago) was quoted recently making the extraordinary claim that experimenting with the Hydron collider is to propose an alternative to Allah, the ultimate apostasy. The statement was carried by major independent newspapers but later proved to be a hoax. It is symptomatic of the country’s tense political climate that reputable media fell for the hoax and perhaps equally telling that people protesting the imposition of fundamentalist religious beliefs on science need to resort to the subterfuge of a hoax to express their concerns. In fact, officials in the Ministry of Education in key positions often lack necessary qualifications, were selected on partisan and religious grounds, and their long term impact on education is extremely worrying. Incidentally, much of that took place when Abdullah Gul was President and it goes to show that although he cuts a much better figure diplomatically, he shares the same Islamist ideology and background as Erdogan.
BOUT: Is the struggle for Turkey’s soul still between the secularists and Erdogan’s “Sunni chauvinists” or is it more accurately between Islamist factions (like the US-based Gulen movement) with competing visions of a Turkish Islamic state?
FR: The struggle, as I see it, is between those who want a robust democracy, the rule of law, respect for human and civil rights, and freedom of the press; and, those who like authoritarian governments and leaders, who benefit from the economic conditions the government has helped create, and who, as social conservatives, support entrenching religion in daily life. I would also point out that there are old style secularists, some Kemalists, who have no time for a free press, civil rights or for the Kurds.
This struggle is complex and one should not underestimate President Erdogan’s charisma as a strong leader or his rhetorical skills that put other Turkish leaders to shame. Although not supposed to participate in partisan politics as President, Erdogan campaigned vigorously in the June 7 parliamentary elections, eclipsing AKP Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu. His only real competition as an orator came from Selahattin Demirtas, the young and urbane leader of the HDP (a Kurdish affiliated party). Demirtas’ ability to pull together the conservative Kurdish protest vote and appeal to young liberal voters country-wide propelled his party beyond the crucial 10 percent threshold for representation in Parliament.
The fact that Erdogan’s party still got over 40 percent of the vote indicates that he remains quite popular, notably with socially conservative women and with religious and conservative business leaders (especially in central Anatolia) who have benefitted handsomely from his rule. Younger people in big cities are also very vulnerable to Islamist ideologies so Erdogan’s and the AKP’s appeal is certainly not restricted to an older demographic. Younger people are also struggling to find employment and in Turkey, like many other countries, connections to people in power matter.
BOUT: How do the latest elections play into Turkey’s current political evolution and President Erdogan’s ambitions for an authoritarian Islamist state under his rule? Was it a reversal or just a setback to his ambitions?
FR: I think many observers underestimate the role of social conservatives in the outcome of the recent elections.
In the Southeast Erdogan overplayed his hand when he campaigned, waving a Koran in Kurdish. Conservative Kurds are still Kurds and to backtrack on promises made to them while manipulating religious sentiment struck many as just too blatant. Throughout Turkey many honest, decent and pious Turks, who otherwise would have voted AKP, were sufficiently unhappy with growing allegations of corruption in the AKP and with the political manipulation of religion to cast their ballots for others.
Corruption is a big issue and will be extremely difficult to root out. There is a lot of rent to be gained in Turkey today for many interested groups and parties. They have a vested interest in keeping corruption going and the more they are compromised by it, the more they are likely to use every means available to avoid accountability.
At its core, Turkey’s fundamental problem is the authoritarian mindset of its leaders, whether it was the Kemalists of the past or the current government. The difference between them is that in today’s Turkey the authoritarian mindset is reinforced by religion making the country doubly oppressive for secular people, liberals and especially for women who care about their civil rights.
The centrist and secularist CHP or the Republic Peoples’ Party, (led by Kemal Kilicdaroglu) which sees itself as the successor to Kemal Ataturk’s legacy, still harbours some of the mindset although it is tempered by contemporary political realities. However, it failed to capitalize on its potential popularity and garnered only 25 percent of the vote in June’s elections. In many ways the leader of the other opposition party that did well in the elections better epitomizes the authoritarian mindset. Devlet Bahceli of the right wing MHP or Nationalist Movement Party (which got just over 16 percent of votes) is staunchly opposed to the accommodation of Kurdish nationalist aspirations. Using increasingly xenophobic language, Mr. Bahceli has ruled out any kind of coalition the pro-Kurdish HDP might take part in or supports from the outside.
Were the recent elections a disaster for Erdogan or just a setback? I think they are certainly a setback in his campaign to legitimize the further concentration of powers in his hands as an all-powerful President. But he is one of the most clever political players in Firdevs Robinson modern Turkish history. He also has acted as the all powerful President in the recent elections and did so with no constraints although his behaviour was clearly unconstitutional, so what is really going to stop him now?
More than a month after the elections, President Erdogan has signaled that he would not want to work with a coalition that would insist on changes to Syrian policy and attempt to hold his administration accountable for alleged corrupt practices. He seems to be banking on politicians’ failure to form a workable coalition and for the electorate to turn to him to show the way out.
Corruption is a big issue and will be extremely difficult to root out. There is a lot of rent to be gained
in Turkey today for many interested groups and
parties. They have a vested interest in keeping corruption going and the more they are compromised
by it, the more they are likely to use every means available to avoid accountability.
The suicide bomb attack in the town of Suruc, on Turkey’s border with Syria on July 20 brought the violence right into Turkish towns. Both the HDP and The Republican People’s Party (CHP) have pointed the finger at the AKP government for its foreign policy and its sympathetic treatment of radical Islamists. After the Suruc attack, demonstrations in towns and cities across Turkey were again met with police violence, but it will not be easy to ignore the anger this long-expected spillover from the crisis in Syria has created in the country.
The government’s response to this horrific explosion in Suruc was to call for national unity. However, without some recognition by the AKP government and the President of the shortcomings of their past policies, I doubt very much the opposition would be willing to take on the responsibility of dealing with the danger we face now. Mr. Erdogan and his prime minister may yet try to exploit the situation for their political ends but they will be taking a huge gamble.
Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 29, No. 1 (2015), pp. 8–11. Read the rest of this issue →
