Secularism Alone!

First one needs to understand where this debate comes from. Anyone who follows Turkish politics will note that there are circles within Turkey who think that secularism is the outmost principle and democracy can well be sacrificed for its sake. This means that, for example, if people elect a parliament and government that is not secular enough, the Turkish Armed Forces can stage a coup. Or softer measures can be used, such as the usurpation of political power by the judiciary and other bureaucratic institutions. (And when I say “not secular enough,” I don't mean an Islamism such as that of the Taliban; in Turkey a wife with a headscarf is simply enough of a heresy according to the standards of official illiberal secularism.)

However there are other proponents of secularism in Turkey, including myself, who think that secularism is only meaningful when it is supplemented by democracy. These people also note that it is not a danger to secularism if people with deeply rooted religious beliefs come to power. This view is generally referred to as the “liberal secularism,” whose adherents generally don't see any problem with Prime Minister Erdoğan and his government with respect to the “principles of the republic.”

Secularist tyrannies of the world

Now let's come back to Hitler… Mr. Erdoğan is obviously right: Hitler's monstrous regime was a secular one. The Nazi ideology took its inspiration from Friedrich Nietzsche's radical atheism, and other secular theories of the day such as Social Darwinism. The Nazi's hatred towards Judaism was supplemented by their distaste with Christianity — which they saw as an offshoot of the former. When they came to power, they tried to replace Christian symbols with pagan ones — and Jesus Christ with the Fuehrer.

And of course there have been many other secular tyrannies in the world. The Soviet Union, Red China, the Khmer Rouge's Cambodia, or Enver Hoxa's Albania were as secular as they could be.

So when Turkey's ultra-secularists claim that they are dedicated to keep the country as “a fully independent secular republic,” they are not presenting a terribly attractive political vision. North Korea, after all, is a fully independent secular republic! (It even has a cult of personality not too dissimilar to the one prevalent in Turkey.)

Therefore it is completely justified for Mr. Erdoğan or anybody else to refer to secularist tyrannies to argue that secularism is a blessing only when it is supplemented with democracy, human rights and individual freedoms.

Let Them Dance, Not Pray!

Mr. Bekdil notes that conservatism — the ideology of the AKP— is not “a miracle panacea” either. He is right. But Mr. Erdoğan and his party don't argue that it is! They have never said, “we need conservatism, not democracy.” They actually emphasize that they embrace secularism, too. They just want to bring a more liberal secularism which respects religious freedom.

But even that is too much for Turkey's ultra-secularists. Türkan Saylan, the president of the Çağdaş Yaşamı Destekleme Derneği (The Society for Supporting Modern Life) was on the news yesterday with her comment, “we want to see our children doing ballet dancing, not performing prayers.” In other words, she wants to see no sign of religiosity in society. That's precisely the sort of secularism one could find in the Soviet Union, and not, for example, the United States. (Mrs. Saylan also called her comrades to join the rally that will be held in Ankara on May 14 against the possible presidency of Mr. Erdoğan. His children, after all, perform prayers but not ballet dancing: they fail to comply with the criteria of our secularist nomenklatura.)

Nazism and Turkey

Mr. Bekdil also argues, “Even a schoolchild can guess that the prime minister wanted to draw a parallel between ‘Turkish secularism' and ‘Hitler's fascism'.” Well, I am sure whether the prime minister wanted to do that. But, anyway, I have another point: I think even a schoolchild can SEE parallels between “Turkish secularism” and “Hitler's fascism”.

Don't get me wrong; the two regimes are actually very different. But there were indeed some striking parallels between the official Turkish ideology of the 30's and the Nazi weltanschauung. For example, both regimes bought into the rising pseudo-sciences of the day, such as biological racism. In the famous (or, perhaps, notorious) Congress of Turkish History held in Akara in 1932, under the auspices of Atatürk, papers about the distinctive and superior features of the "Turkish race" were presented and applauded cheerfully. Anthropologist Şevket Aziz Kansu argued that Turks were the ancestors of Aryan races based on his analysis of the “Turkish skull.” These ideas would silently pushed under the carpet later, when racism lost its impetus in the world.

Social Darwinism, a hallmark of Nazi ideology, was also popular in the early republican Turkey. Minister of Foreign Affairs Tevfik Rüştü (Saraçoğlu) claimed in 1931:

“As far as the situation of Kurds is concerned, their cultural levels are so low and their mindsets are so underdeveloped that.. they will lose the struggle that they have with Turks who are more advanced and intellectual… Most of them could migrate to Iran or Iraq, the remaining ones will be subject to destruction which is inevitable for the weak in the struggle for life.” (David McDowall, p. 200)

During those years, some prominent figures of the CHP (Republican People's Party), such as the long-time general secretary Recep Peker, were openly admiring Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany for their “discipline.” (That might also give us a historical background to understand why the CHP's current leader, Mr. Deniz Baykal, is steadily transmuting into an ultra-right wing demagogue.)

Nazism as democracy?!

Another interesting claim in Mr. Bekdil's piece is his depiction of the Nazi regime as, “democratic.. even more ‘democratic' than Mr. Erdoğan's Turkey.”

Of course everybody has a right to try his chance in historical revisionism, but I have to remind that it is a Political Science 101 sort of knowledge that Nazi Germany was not a democracy. It is indeed considered as the antithesis of democracy, because it was a dictatorship which steadily silenced and even destroyed all the dissidents in society.

It seems that the only reason that leads Mr. Bekdil to count Nazi Germany as “democracy” is that Hitler came to power with popular support. From that fact, he moves on to draw a parallel between Mr. Erdoğan and the German dictator. It is a sort of a tactic of turning Mr. Erdoğan's argument on its head.

This is clever, but not very convincing. Because:

1.Mr. Erdoğan's worldview and ideology have simply no resemblance to Nazism.

2.Neither him nor his party aim at closing down opposition parties and establishing a “single party regime.”

The last point can lead us to rethink Mr. Bekdil's argument and actually turn that on its head. If Mr. Bekdil wants to picture in his mind a regime on Turkish lands which will come to power with popular support, then close down all opposition parties, even execute some of the political dissidents, and therefore establish a true a dictatorship, he actually needs to look back to the 20's and 30's. That's exactly what happened in this country during that period.

Thank God, Turkey's future looks much brighter than all that. The reason is that we are indeed moving away from the mindset of dictatorial regimes and heading towards democracy, liberalism and pluralism. And our self-styled secularism will be meaningful only when it is enriched by those values.