Political Islam and the Secular State in Turkey

Democracy, Reform and the Justice and Development Party

Evangelia Axiarlis

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9780857737984
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Human Rights
• Index: Politics & International Relations

How safe is Turkey's liberal democracy? The rise to power in 2002 of the right-leaning Islamic Justice and Development Party ignited fears in the West that Turkey could no longer be relied upon to provide a buffer against the growth of Islamic fundamentalism in the Middle East. Once hailed by the West as a model of secularism and moderation in the Muslim world, Turkey is now seen to be under the influence of the 'creeping Islamisation' of the JDP (or AKP as it is known in Turkey). Yet to what extent has this affected the lives of Turkish citizens? Evangelia Axiarlis here explores the contribution of the JDP to civil liberties and basic freedoms, long suppressed by secular and statist Kemalist ideology, and how this has remained unexamined despite more than a decade in government. In this - the first detailed study of the policies and ideology of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdo?an's government - the author examines the extent to which the JDP has worked to improve civil life in Turkey and critically addresses whether a government built on Islamic principles can champion political reform.
Exploring how Islam and democracy are neither monoliths nor mutually exclusive, this is a timely contribution to the wider understanding of political Islam.

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

The Turkish Republic was inaugurated in 1923 by Mustafa Kemal, a former strategist and field commander in both World War I and Turkey’s War of Independence. Kemal was instated as the first president of modern Turkey and introduced a host of far-reaching social and political reforms, which sought to modernise Turkey, embrace Western ideals of secularism and democracy, and adopt European political and bureaucratic institutions. The new Turkish Republic was forged on the ruins of the Ottoman Empire, and great effort was exerted by Kemal and his cadres to completely dissociate the fledging state from its Ottoman (and Islamic) legacy. The principles espoused by Kemal and his associates would come to be known as the ideology of Kemalism. It is this ideology, and the obedience to it, that has governed the Turkish political landscape for 90 years.

Kemalism, for the purposes of brevity, can roughly be translated into a manner of secularism particular to Turkey. Despite the widespread characterisation of Turkey as a secular democracy, the Turkish state may give rise to a host of problems and inconsistencies regarding classification. Geographically, Turkey sits astride two continents, Europe and Asia; the country is often considered to be the link between the East and the West, both physically and in terms of dialogue between these two entities. Nonetheless, the Turkish Republic fits neatly into neither the Western nor the Middle Eastern civilisational paradigm, and is, in fact, a singular and inexplicable amalgam of both. This dichotomy has fostered the polarisation of Turkish society and has led to ongoing repercussions for the problematised cultural identity of its citizens. This has, in turn, played into the hands of civil and parliamentary actors who are keen to exploit the issues surrounding Turkey’s complex and multifaceted identity politics. Officially, Turkey is a secular democratic state: one committed to the rule of law, a signatory to various international conventions and respectful of the fundamental human rights of its citizens. In recent times, however, the secular state has come under criticism for infringing the rights of Turkish Muslims and suppressing the capacity for religious expression. Muslims in Turkey make up approximately 98 per cent of the population, so it may come as no real surprise that even in a self-declared and staunchly secular democracy, pro-Islamic forces should assume a political voice.

Commentators have often regarded the emergence and subsequent success of Islamist parties in Turkey as a reaction against the dominant Kemalist paradigm, which has persistently and actively sought to control religion in the country. The Kemalist project of modernising the Turkish state and its institutions is quite distinct from the Westernisation of Turkey’s society and culture. It has been suggested that the latter undertaking in particular, carried out in earnest by Turkey’s founding fathers, was an ambitious and ultimately self-defeating project. The rapid social and cultural reforms that swept through and revolutionised Turkey in the 1920s, at the behest of Mustafa Kemal and his mission of modernisation, necessitated the subjugation of religion. Religion was not only considered to be obsolete, but also an obstacle to real progress. The process of eliminating the religious element from Turkey’s political and official spheres was not a gradual one, however. It required the expulsion of religion and its ‘machinery’ from the public sphere, and the imposition of the Kemalists’ own version of religion and religious practice. This subsequently facilitated a policy of intrusion of the ‘secular’ state apparatus into the affairs of religion and the subscribers to religion.

An Islamist or Islamic political party is one that, by virtue of its association with the religion of Islam, endeavours to defend the interests of that religion and its devotees. It may or may not also seek to implement in the political realm policies that are derived from its religious world view. Islamist or pro-Islamic parties in Turkey appear to have emerged as a response to its aggressively secular polity and the constraints on the free exercise of religious practice by Turkish citizens instituted by the Kemalist state. Turkish Islamist parties have employed a diversity of strategies and approaches in representing the needs of their constituents, and yet, invariably, they have reacted against the Kemalist regime. Islamist parties in Turkey, irrespective of their idiosyncratic policy positions and methodologies, are motivated principally by the desire to alleviate the effects of the hard-line Kemalist administration. Paradoxically, then, Islamist parties in Turkey exist because of the staunchly secular system, or, in other words, the staunchly secular system is prone to producing Islamist parties. This situation goes some way to explaining the rise of Turkey’s current ruling party.

In what was a landslide victory during the 2002 Turkish elections, the Justice and Development Party (or Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi in Turkish, henceforth referred to as the AKP) assumed the office of government on the premise that it was the first conservative democratic party in Turkish political history. Despite its undeniable Islamist origins, the current government was keen from the outset to detach itself from its Islamist identity and forge instead a new party built on a fresh ideology, that of ‘conservative democracy’. Despite the efforts of the party leader and other high-profile members of the AKP, however, the party has struggled to successfully rid itself of its ‘Islamist’ legacy. Notwithstanding the fact that the party has embraced the concept of democracy, and even submits to and endorses the principle of secularism, it has continued to encounter criticism and suspicion from Turkey’s secular political institutions. Many secular officials have alleged that the AKP is still an Islamist party, intent on introducing Islamic policies with the ultimate view of establishing Shari’a (Islamic law) in the secular state of Turkey. In a defining moment, on 14 March 2008, Abdurrahman Yalçınkaya, Turkey’s chief public prosecutor, applied to the country’s constitutional court to have the AKP banned on the grounds that it was attempting to subvert the principle of secularism enshrined in Turkey’s constitution. The eponymous court, charged with protecting Turkey’s secular constitution, accepted the application and subsequently launched a campaign to have the democratically-elected AKP party closed down and outlawed from politics. The AKP managed to evade the challenge, unlike its predecessors the Welfare (Refah) and Virtue (Fazilet) parties, which were banned by the court, having succumbed to similar charges.

Despite the repeated assurances made by government officials, the reservations about the AKP’s ‘real agenda’ held by the Kemalist elite are not entirely superficial or unwarranted. Once in government, the AKP attempted to introduce legislation that would have criminalised adultery, has acted to close down licensed venues serving alcohol during the month of Ramadan and increase taxes on alcohol, and has been responsible for segregating various Turkish beaches to allow men and women separate access in an effort to discourage mixed bathing. Perhaps the AKP’s most controversial and publicised ‘pro-Islamic’ policy is its vocal and protracted campaign to have the ban on headscarves in Turkish universities lifted. These policies, and others, are, for the Kemalist elite, resounding proof that the AKP is harbouring a covert agenda to Islamise the Turkish state and society. For the AKP, conversely, these measures are an important means to satisfy its constituency. The government asserts that these so-called ‘religious’ or ‘anti-secular’ policies actually fulfil an important democratic function, as they address the needs of members of Turkey’s conservative circles, which have historically been the subject of undemocratic restrictions.

Within the matrix of the conflict between the Turkish secular state and political Islam, one needs to examine the nature of the AKP’s ‘conservative democracy’ and analyse the party’s attempts to reconcile Islamic values within the overarching secular system through its adoption of this ideology. One may ask: to what extent can the AKP, a party rooted in Islamist thought, reinforce democracy in Turkey? Through its ‘conservative democracy’ ideology, the AKP seeks to accommodate two seemingly irreconcilable aims and philosophical world views, those of secularism and of Islam. The primary vehicle for the reconciliation of Islamic identity within the staunchly secular Turkish state is the AKP’s dedication to the democratic ideal; through it, the party is liable to serve both secular and Islamic principles. By committing itself to democratic practices and policies, the AKP government does not undermine the secular establishment, and, despite numerous obstacles and a recent slump in its reform programme, has the potential to further consolidate Turkey’s democratic project. Throughout its decade in power, when considered as a totality, many of the AKP’s policies have assumed more of a liberalist than an Islamist hue. This is despite an unmistakable and increasing tendency towards authoritarianism on the part of the dominant party, which is largely the result of its electoral calculations and the petty politicking surrounding domestically divisive issues rather than being indicative of a covert Islamist plot, as claimed by its detractors. It is wrong, therefore, to label the AKP an Islamist party. Its espousal of an ostensibly more ‘liberal’, as opposed to ‘Islamic’, agenda goes a long way towards the resolution of the decades-old conflict between the Turkish secular state and political Islam.

One of the most perilous aspects associated with a study of this nature is the problem of classification. Subjectively defined terms, which may emerge in the field of political commentary and analysis, are often taken for granted without due consideration, and can lead to inaccurate conclusions. For instance, the terms Islamist and Islamic, when describing political parties and actors, are often used interchangeably. For the purposes of the present work, however, a clear distinction needs to be made between the two. The Islamist individual or party aims to achieve what are fundamentally political, as opposed to religious or ideological, objectives. To this end, the Islamist will employ ostensibly religious and/or ideological rhetoric. The Islamist therefore politicises Islam. Islamism is the ideology whereby the sacred (the religion of Islam) enters the secular public realm and becomes political. By promoting an Islamic identity and advocating unequivocally Islamic ideals (to the exclusion of all others), the Islamist perennially threatens to hijack the religion of Islam in order to serve what are essentially non-religious, secular or political aims. Islamists are therefore more susceptible to the adoption of a subversive political agenda, a radicalised public discourse and revolutionary ideals. The Islamist party tends to naturally undermine the secular status quo, as it agitates for change through the use of provocative language and policies. An Islamic party, by contrast, possesses an intrinsic affinity for the religion of Islam. Its members themselves may be devout Muslims and their policies will, in a general sense, not contradict the fundamental principles of the Islamic faith. An Islamic party is therefore fundamentally pro-Islamic, in that it empathises and identifies with the religion. Its policies and rhetoric, however, may not necessarily be explicitly Islamic, or even based on religious principles. In this way, an Islamic party distinguishes between the public and private spheres. Unlike Islamist parties, Islamic parties do not seek to introduce the sacred into the secular public sphere, or establish Islamic policies on an official level; they are content to retire Islam to the private realm of individual experience. An Islamic party does not of necessity undermine the secular order, and as a consequence of its not employing religious language in politics is almost secular in its approach.

Secularism is a term that denotes the absence of the sacred in the public sphere. Specifically, secularism is the institutionalised paradigm that ensures religious elements are proscribed from informing or influencing the affairs of state or governmental policy. There are various manifestations of secularism in different states around the world, and a general distinction may be made between the twin poles of passive and aggressive secularism – with every other version falling somewhere along this continuum. Passive secularism accepts that the political institutions of a state are not founded upon, or in any way subject to, religion. The State, for its part, will not interfere in the affairs of religion. That is, the State is consigned to a position of a passive and neutral bystander with respect to religion, its appendages and its devotees. Passive secularism hence promotes the separation of the public and private spheres. Aggressive secularism, contrariwise, is characterised by the interventionist nature of the State vis-à-vis religion and religious practice. An aggressively secular state imposes secularism on citizens by limiting the scope for religious observance or enforcing its own alternative to religion. An aggressively secular state controls religion and makes it subject to the State’s whims. Aggressive secularism therefore dissolves the boundary between the public and private spheres. Turkey’s preponderant Kemalist ideology disguises an aggressive form of secularism. Kemalism is the cardinal ideology of the Turkish state, and it is based on the principles of the republic’s founder, Mustafa Kemal. The Kemalist doctrine is based on six ‘arrows’ or ‘foundations’. These are: Republicanism (Cumhuriyetçilik), Nationalism (Milliyetçilik), Populism (Halkçılık), Statism (Devletçilik), Laicism (Laiklik), and Revolutionism/Reformism (Devrimcilik). A simplistic rendering of Kemalism depicts it as purely a secularist ideology. Although Kemalism does encompass notions of secularism and the strict monitoring and even containment of religion, it does not seek to do away with religion altogether. In fact, the Kemalist ideology is an awkward fusion of secularist principles, Turkish nationalism and elements of Sunni Islam, which has been promulgated chiefly by the Turkish armed forces.

Notwithstanding its unconventional political role, the Turkish military has long been regarded as a vehicle for progress, and the preserver of the status quo. It defends its political role by citing the need to safeguard the reforms undertaken by Mustafa Kemal, if necessary by force. It routinely equates modernisation and Westernisation with its aggressive brand of secularism, and has not, to date, permitted a discussion of an alternative interpretation of the term in the republic. The AKP government has challenged the strict version of secularism promoted by the military. The competing definitions of secularism in the Republic of Turkey have become a flashpoint of conflict between the government and the armed forces. In challenging the military establishment, the AKP government has attached itself to a sympathetic benefactor, the European Union (EU).

With the view of harmonisation of the Turkish system with European standards and the ultimate adoption of the EU acquis communaitaire, the AKP government has implemented far-reaching reforms based on the Copenhagen criteria, which spell out the necessary preconditions for any aspiring member. The road to the EU has not been easy or straightforward, nor has it followed a consistent pattern. The AKP has encountered numerous setbacks in its bid for EU membership, and this has led to periods in which it has downplayed its EU obligations. This is not to say, however, that the party has abandoned the goal of eventual membership entirely; the government appears to attach more importance to the ongoing process of the EU accession negotiations than to eventual membership itself. Its appropriation of the EU enterprise and its affirmation of liberal democracy are not typical of Islamist parties.

The trend against the promotion of an explicitly Islamic agenda, as was customary practice for previous Islamist parties in Turkey, places the pro-Islamic AKP in potentially uncharted waters. The present situation, which sees the Islam-friendly AKP government operating within a staunchly secular Turkish establishment, raises the question of how political Islam can challenge (or even threaten) the secular status quo. In this case, rather, the reverse is true. The AKP has made what many regard as compulsory revisions to its policy and agenda in order to remain politically viable. Unlike previous Islamist parties that preceded the present government, the AKP is not, in practice or in rhetoric, opposed to the secular system, nor does it seek to usurp or in any way undermine the principle of secularism, which it considers to be a mainstay of the Turkish state. The AKP has adapted in order to conform to this secular system. The concessions made by it in terms of downplaying, or even neglecting, its Islamic policy agenda render it a more successful actor in secular Turkish politics.

Despite the recent acknowledged slowdown of the AKP’s reforms, the party’s apparent victory over the old regime, and the continuing retreat of the Kemalist establishment from Turkey’s political life has, by and large, resulted in the gradual civilianisation of the Turkish polity. The AKP’s increasingly visible supremacy over the Kemalist state symbolises the consolidation of democratic forces in the republic, and the triumph of a civilian government over an elite statist regime. The greatest challenges for the party in government will be how it manages its growing political dominance and, more importantly, how it treats legitimate opponents and critical voices. Will it remain the humble elected representative of the Turkish people, respectful of diversity and dissent, or will it employ a heavy hand to silence and eliminate any critique of its policies? Lately, the AKP has countered claims accusing it of adopting an increasingly authoritarian discourse. The power transfer has altered the status quo and brought the traditionally invincible custodians of the Kemalist ideology to heel. The real test for democracy in the Turkish Republic revolves around the issue of whether or not the AKP government, whose remarkable success and popularity among Turkish voters has helped it to single-handedly transform the atmosphere of the republic, can resist the temptation towards authoritarianism as it consolidates it political influence.

CHAPTER 2

A GENERAL CRITIQUE OF TURKISH SECULARISM

A Brief History of the Republic

Turkey has long been regarded as a bastion of secular democracy in the Middle East, a dependable Western ally, a bulwark against Islamic extremism and a role model for other Muslim-majority states.

In the West, the classic image of Turkey has long been misleading: a secular country, a democracy, an unshakeable friend of {the West}, a nation whose strategic outlook conforms with {Western} interests in the region {. . .} a model to all Muslims. During the past 50 years, most of these descriptions have not corresponded to reality, presenting mainly a comforting but unexamined myth (Fuller 2004; 51).

The basis of the West’s endorsement of predominantly Muslim Turkey is the latter’s perceived commitment to the principle of secularism and to a democratic model of governance. The narrowly defined and strictly enforced form of secularism in Turkey is largely unchallenged in the West, and the circumstances surrounding its introduction at the Republic’s inception and its interpretation and application in the modern day have, to date, not been questioned by most Western statesmen, policy makers or scholars – until very recently.

Since the fall of the defunct Ottoman Empire, the West has been content to appease the Kemalist Turkish state, and ignore fundamental questions of democracy and human rights, so long as Ankara continued to serve the West’s geopolitical and strategic interests in the region. In order to understand why this is the case, one needs to travel back into history and consider the circumstances surrounding the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, in which the newly-established Republic of Turkey was granted international recognition. The peace conference held at Lausanne in Switzerland commenced in November 1922 and culminated in the ratification of the peace treaty by the new Turkish Republic on 23 August 1923, followed soon after by Greece, Italy, Japan and, in 1924, by Great Britain. The Treaty of Lausanne replaced the earlier Treaty of Sevres, which was imposed by the Allies and signed by Sultan Mehmed Vahdettin, but subsequently rejected by Mustafa Kemal’s rival Turkish National Movement. The nationalist victory over the Greeks and the expulsion of the sultan during Turkey’s War of Independence placed Kemal’s government in a stronger position to request a renegotiation of the previous Treaty of Sevres with the Allied powers.

The Lausanne Peace Conference, attended by all previous signatories to the Sevres ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• About the Author
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• 1. Introduction
• 2. A General Critique of Turkish Secularism
• 3. The Challenge to Kemalism
• 4. The AKP’s Conservative Democracy
• 5. The AKP’s European Union Membership Bid
• 6. The AKP and the Turkish Military
• 7. A Slowdown of Reforms
• 8. Conclusions
• Bibliography