“I see Turkey's future as being in Europe, as one of many prosperous, tolerant, democratic countries.” Orhan Pamuk
I had the idea writing this short article after a debate about the future of Turkey with someone I know very well. During the discussion I realized how deeply fissured the Turkish society appears to be in contemporary times.
Turkey: Muslim country, European country, Asian country, Central Asian country, secular country, Middle Eastern country, Near Eastern country, Balkan country, Caucasus country, democratic country, country of immigration, a multi-cultural country.
Where is Turkey situated? Which spirit holds Turkey together? What is the identity of the Turkish people? To begin with: answering these questions would mean to slip in a robe of a fortune teller. We cannot offer a solution. Probably the future will do. No other nation in Europe can change from one role to another so easily as Turkey does and is placed so pre-eminently in geostrategic matters in its region. But all blessing contains a curse: perhaps no other state does not know which way it should follow in the future. As Samuel Huntington rightly noted in his famous publication “The clash of civilizations”, Turkey can be described as a torn country between cultures, regions and civilizations.
What we instead can grab easily is that Turkey finds itself in a state of permanent transition since the Tanzimat reform in 1839. A time which had the aim of bumpy europeanization and still did not end. However will it come to an end? Is Turkey ready for the European Union (EU)? Are the Turks prepared for the fact that 65 percent of the laws will be passed in Brussels? For the nationalist part of the population a bitter pill to swallow.
Turkey belongs to the most interesting countries in the world, because something is occurring nobody could imagine twenty years ago: the roll-back of Kemalism.
Since the end of the First World War Kemalism had been implemented as the dominant ideology in Turkey. A secular and laical state with a political system which was rooted in the western European tradition.
Unfortunately here we have the first anomaly of this system. The Lausanne Agreement of 1923 which was negotiated through Ismet Inönü - a close companion and successor of Kemal Mustafa Atatürk – showed that the removal of Greeks and Turks were initiated on the basis of religion and not on the ground of nationality: A Muslim Greek was forced to emigrate to Turkey and vice versa. Although their families lived since centuries on the respective soil.
As a matter of fact Turkey developed into a nearly complete Sunni-Islam-State. The Sunni-Islam provided the entrance ticket to become a first class citizen. This policy and polity was linked with the concept of Turkish nationalism. The Kemalists connected nationalism with Islam the last time after the military coup in 1980 willfully. With the Turkish-islamic synthesis they tried to get rid of the left-wing-forces with the result of strengthening religious politicians like Necmettin Erbakan.
Although many people immigrated to Turkey since the demise of the Ottoman Empire there existed officially only ethnic Turks. Kurds had been signified as mountain turks till the 90s of the last century. Impossible to become a member of parliament, a minister or a chief of police as a christian, an armenian or greek descendant (what was common during the time of the Ottoman Empire). Till today religion is marked in Turkish identity cards and passports. All this expresses everything apart from secularism or laicism according to western standards.
Since 2003 Turkey is changing its image. Kemalism is on the retreat. A so called elite-change occurs. The old Kemalist strata including the military and their party CHP were thrown to the opposition banks through the AKP party under Recep Tayip Erdogan as its leader and prime minister. Further conservative and socialdemocratic parties evaporated within the last ten years through corruption scandals or on the basis of a 10 percent hurdle in national elections to enter the parliament. The AKP never denied its religious attitude but stressed simultaneously to be a conservative party on the european scene.¹ The persons in charge underlined to continue the way towards the EU without hesitation. Since 4th of october 2005 Turkey and the EU are negotiating about full membership in the supranational organization. On 12th of september 2010 Turkey changed the constitution by a referendum adapting to the democratic criterias of the EU in the knowledge that additional changes must occur in the future.
But can we trust the AKP? Are Erdogan and his comrade-in-arms a kind of religious wolves in sheep's clothing who wanted to bring Turkey down through a sharia-system or a second Iran? As long as the AKP wants to go the European way there is no danger of a political system change. Put it different: The roll-back of Kemalism will be the precondition for a full membership to the EU. It will also facilitate Turkish foreign minister Ahmet Davutoglu's multidimensional and zero-problem-neighbour foreign policy to states as Armenia or Syria. Turkish foreign policy with a strong EU in the background would be more weighty as in former times.
Who can manage Turkey's problems?
The AKP has a good chance to manage Turkey's problems and challenges in the next years. It is really an irony in Turkish temporary history that a more or less religious party goes west.
After World War II the old kemalist elite in Istanbul cried “en büyük Türkiye (Turkey is greatest)”. But what was Turkey for them? Just Istanbul, Ankara, Izmir and Antalya. They never went to Diyarbakir or Kayseri and talked conceitedly about Tokat or Sivas as an area of backwardness. There was no economic investment or financial transfers from the west to the east. On the contrary: many people put the money into their own pockets.
Today we observe a change as I mentioned above. Step by step the old kemalist elite is on the retreat or shares power with other political and economic strenghts. Those did not see the changing signs after the end of the cold war. The CHP party claims to be secular but in reality they are talking about the good old times. With concepts as nationalism or “all the power to state institutions” it brought itself to ruin. Unfortunately many members of the old elite think that they can do it alone, without allies or without a policy of good neighbourhood. Their statements relating to a full membership to the EU are more than slippery. In the age of globalization one cannot rule a state with values of the 20s of the last century, that is to say with an anti-individual and holy-state-ideology notion. Sometimes it seems that the adversary to the AKP is the single source to define their existence.
Kemalism never fitted to the Turkish traditions and Turkish culture. Genesis and implementation of the ideology included a construction fault: it was a process from up on the roof (you have to be secular, you have to be western) to down to the cellar. An organic democracy goes always the opposite way as in France (French revolution), Great Britain (Bill of Rights, Magna-Charta, depowerment of the crown, power to the parliament) or the United States of America (Declaration of Virginia, American revolution). People should claim for individualism and democracy and not a small elite from above.
Since the financial crisis in 2001 Turkey went an excepcional way in economic terms. Istanbul gathers the most millionaires in the world, the economic growth reaches 10 or 11 percent, the highest growth in Europe. New investments can be observed in the east. The economic relations to its neighbors are improving from year to year. At the moment Turkey ranks 6th in Europe with a real chance to overtake Spain and Italy in the next thirty years. Cities as Kayseri are listed with an unemployment rate of nearly zero percent. Turkey also came out best of the financial banking crisis in Europe. All these impressive developments were managed without the old elite (more or less). If Erdogan is smart, he claims to be the successor of Turgut Özal and do not point to Erbakan or other dubious personalities with his fingers. Özal, former prime minister, president and a freemarket influenced turkish politician, opened Turkey's frontiers in economic relations and laid the foundations for negotiations with the EU. A religious path of the AKP government would surely destroy the impressive economic development.
Let me mention another reason why it is very unlikely that the AKP government would initiate a system change in Turkey. Since 150 years Turkey can be signified as a country which attracts a large number of immigrants. With different identities and political as well as social designs. It is nearly impossible to introduce a totalitarian system to (over) them. The AKP knows that. The AKP probably filled besides a religious also a social and political gap which the old elite did not want to see. I remember exactly how they started in the Gecekondus (slum area) in Istanbul where many closed their eyes about this misery. The Kayseri-elite told me the following: Religion is a tool to be honest and to work hard. If you are successful you are obliged to give a part of your wealth back to the society. No one heard such a thing from the old elite. By the way, it is the same philosophy as in the United States. The former Calvinists in Holland and in Switzerland had a similiar approach. And last but not least: A deeply religious Turkey a la Iran could not match with the criterias of the EU.
In October 2010 we observed a further step weakening the old order: the ban of headscarves was relaxed once again by the university authority YOK. But the headscarfe issue is just a secondary theatre and has nothing to do with a menace of an Iran-like-regime. On the contrary: In the last two years the number of headscarves went down in the Turkish public.
No alternative: Europe
What a sign to the muslim world would a full EU membership Turkey's be? As if to say: you can make it if you want, it lies in your hands. Against the clash of civilizations, against different religious attitudes or societal norms. A perfect win-win-situation because the influence of the EU will exert stronger leverage on regions as the Near and Middle East. A full membership would also rob muslim countries the argument that the Western world were just a captive club where they had no chance to work with.
The AKP would be stupid to change its political course provoking a grave internal conflict. Turkey should go West and get rid of these evils called nationalism and extreme religiousness. It has no other choice! Turkey's process of permanent transition since the beginning of the 19th century had an end and Orhan Pamuk would be happy: Turkey as a normal European state!
¹ Nobody would accuse the Christian Democratic Parties in Europe to transform their countries into religious entities.
