USA Turkish Times - The secularist hype in Turkey is a fact-free paranoia

The secularist hype in Turkey is a fact-free paranoia

If secular freedoms are really under threat in Turkey because of the ‘moderate Muslim’ AKP government, why many secular liberals (some of whom are atheists or agnostics) think that the real threat is the ultra-secularist mindset?

MUSTAFA AKYOL
Nowadays many people say that there is a division in Turkey between “Islamists” and “secularists.” But that's wrong. There is indeed a division, but the sides are rather different. On one side, there are Islamic conservatives (not “Islamists”) and secular liberals whose motto is “democracy.” On the other side, there are illiberal secularists whose motto is “the Republic.”

You can ask what the big difference between democracy and republic is. Both terms vaguely mean “rule by the people,” but in Turkey, there is more than what meets the uninitiated eye.

The American Republic is traditionally defined as “a government by the people, for the people, of the people." For the Turkish Republic, the formula has been different: during its first quarter (1925-50), the regime was defined as a government “for the people, in spite of the people.” The two main segments of the society that the Republic acted “in spite of” were practicing Muslims and Kurds. Both groups were suppressed, humiliated, and some of their leaders were executed or imprisoned. Muslims got their religious institutions destroyed, Kurds got their language and identity banned.

Not surprisingly, both of these alienated groups had a hard time in digesting this undemocratic republic, and instead hoped for a democracy through which they could realize their longing for freedom. In the first free and fair elections in 1950, they brought the Democrat Party in power, whose motto was, “Enough! The nation has the word.” The first thing the DP did was to set the Muslim call for prayer (the daily “ezan”) free, and to ease the burden in Kurdish areas. It also brought some suppressed Kurdish leaders to the parliament. Moreover it put Turkey into NATO, accepted the Marshall Plan, and brought in Western capital, which many “Republicans,” who had socialist views, saw as “imperalism.”

The democratic honeymoon did not last long, tough. In 1960 the military staged a coup, closed down the DP, and, after a notorious show trial similar to those of Stalin, executed Prime Minister Adnan Menderes and two of his ministers. (Menderes' son, Aydın Menderes, used to be a friend and ally of the current Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan, who is threatened by some of the hardest “Republicans” nowadays with “the same fate with Menderes.”)

If Trotskyites can turn conservative…:

The iron hand of “the Republic” led some Kurds to initiate a terrorist war against it (carried out by the bloody PKK and its forerunners), but the reaction of the practicing Muslims has been peaceful. After all, Turkey does not have a tradition of Islamist violence and there is a synthesis of Islam and democracy that goes way back to the Ottoman Empire, which was a constitutional monarchy in its final decades.

Thus, instead of fighting against “the Republic”, practicing Muslims have preferred to vote for conservative parties that would soften its autocratic nature. Some of them hoped to bring an “Islamic rule” via elections, while others only demanded a democratic rule which would respect their religious freedom. The former movement was led by Necmeddin Erbakan, and the incumbent AKP's current leaders were his protégés from the 70's to late 90's. But their experiences showed them that Islamism is the wrong way to go and all the religious freedom they want is already available in Western democracies. So why should not they opt for the latter? With that in mind, former students of Erbakan such as Tayyip Erdoğan and Abdullah Gül denounced his views and broke away from his party to form the AKP in 2001, only to come to power with a sweeping election victory in 2002. (By the way, Erbakan still holds the Islamist line with his miniscule party, the Saadet, and accuses the AKP with “treason.”)

Today I know many alarmist Turks who quote some Islamist remarks Erdoğan or Gül made in the 90's, and argue that the leopards do not change their spots. Well, actually they can. I know quite many former Trotskyites who are now very right-wing and “conservative.” (They are also called “neo-cons.”)

The reasonable thing to do is not to engage in endless speculations about whether the AKP leaders could have really changed, but to look at what they have actually done in the past 4.5 years, during which they governed Turkey: they took the county closer to the EU than all the previous governments did. They liberalized many laws and attracted a great deal of foreign direct investment. They did not try to impose “shariah,” and did not interfere with the lives of secular citizens.

Indoctrinated minds:

That's why many secular liberals, who hope to bring more freedom to Turkish society, sympathize with the AKP government and find the secularist fears about it totally irrational. For example consider Metin Heper, the dean of Bilkent University's Social Science Department, and one of the most respected social scientists of the country. As a very secular person, he has given an interview to a very secular journalist (Neşe Düzel) of a very secular paper (Radikal), and said: “The AKP people do not aim to destroy the secular order and Islamize Turkey… They are religious people, but they follow a secular policy.”

Prof. Heper also noted the mindset behind the AKP-phobia:

“There is a ‘known fear' in the country represented by the CHP. If a person is a Muslim, if he acts like a Muslim, if his wife wears a headscarf, if he refers time to time to some values coming from Islam, it is assumed that this person cannot possibly follow a secular policy. He will (it is assumed) inevitably try to lead the society to a state based on religion. That is the sort of education we have had in Turkey. As one Israeli scholar recently noted, Turkish people have been educated with the notion that if someone has something to do with religion, that person cannot be progressive and think rationally. He is automatically regarded as a backward-minded person who will take republic away from its principles.”

In other words, the AKP-phobia is a manifestation of Islamophobia, which is much more deeply entrenched in some Turkish minds than those of the Westerners who started to buy into the idea after 9/11.

Whose life style is not tolerated?:

Another secular liberal who agrees with that view is Gülay Göktürk, who, in her column in daily Bugün, argues that the fear of the secularists — that the AKP will destroy their life style — is pure paranoia. The situation is rather the opposite, Göktürk notes: the secularist cannot stand to see people with a different life style becoming prominent in society.

If I had given a list of secular liberals (some of which are atheists or agnostics) who think like Dr. Heper or Mrs. Göktürk, this column would take pages long. One striking difference between these liberal seculars and the opposing illiberal secularists is that the former depend on political facts and social studies which indicate that Turkish society has no inclination towards Islamic rule. The latter, on the other hand, engage in quote-mining from the AKP's past and rely on conspiracy theories about “moderate Islam” and how it supposedly serves the interests of the “imperialists,” at the expense of their beloved “republican values” such as isolationism and quasi-socialism.

But here is a thing to note: While the secularist paranoia is a fact-free hysteria, it is a fact in itself. Therefore the government needs to calm it down. Announcing early elections and taking further steps to ease the fears of Turkey's ultra-secularists is necessary. People with irrational fears can't be treated as normal: they need some extra care and medication.

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