« Kemalist Science and Its Perpetual Motion Machine | Main | Sexual Abuse alla Turca »
December 29, 2007
Reflections On The Devolution In France
[Originally published in Turkish Daily News]
Chou En-Lai, the late prime minister of communist China, was once asked what he thought about the French Revolution. He declined to comment, and explained, “It's too early to tell.”
That was in the early 1960s. Perhaps today it is a little bit less early to comment on whether the French Revolution really was a good idea. That seminal event – which inspired not just the French but also many other revolutionaries in many countries all around the world, including Turkey – has borne some notable fruits by which we might judge their political roots.
The Next Sick Man of Europe?
To be blunt, today France is on a slippery slope toward becoming the next sick man of Europe. Its economy is in bad shape, in particular compared with its historic rival, the United Kingdom. French society is growingly nationalist, protective and even xenophobic – evidenced by its obsessive reaction to Turkey's European Union membership process. (Again, compare that to the Britain's self-confident and all-embracing attitude.) In world politics, the influence of France is in continuous decline, and has become not a creative but a reactionary force in the face of Anglo-Saxon supremacy. No wonder that the man who promises to restore France's good-old days, Nicolas Sarkozy, tries to do that through Anglo-Saxon ways.
Even French culture, of which virtually all Frenchmen are proud, is in acute crisis. Several weeks ago, Time magazine's cover story was titled, “The Death of French Culture.” “Once admired for the dominating excellence of its writers, artists and musicians,” the story noted, “France today is a wilting power in the global cultural marketplace.” This has something to do with the protectionist, statist and socialist attitude so prevalent in the country. “There is a strain in the national mind-set that distrusts commercial success,” Time noted. “Success is considered bad taste."
French Enlightenment Revisited
But why? Why does the common French mind prefer statism to free-markets, nationalism to globalism, and, moreover, despair and melancholy to hope and joy? According to historian Gertrude Himmelfarb, the answer lies in the foundational ideas of French society. In her book, The Roads to Modernity, she contrasts the French Enlightenment with that of the British and the American.The former, according to her, “was excessively preoccupied with reason and insufficiently concerned with individual liberty.” (Hence the tyranny of the Jacobins and the guillotine.) In contrast, “the British Enlightenment was underpinned by ideals of social virtue; compassion, benevolence and sympathy.” British thinkers were also “tolerant and pragmatic.”
Attitudes toward religion were also a fundamental divide. According to Himmelfarb, the French Enlightenment saw religion as “the enemy” while the Anglo-Saxons regarded it as “ally” in modernization. Unlike the French, the American and the British did not wage wars on churches and the clergy. Instead, they drew spiritual support from religion for individual entrepreneurship and social reform.
Probably no one foresaw the doomed destiny of France as clearly as the Irish statesman and philosopher Edmund Burke (1729-1797. In his most famous work, Reflections On The Revolution In France, published in 1790, Burke argued that the revolution was not a signal of a representative, constitutional democracy, but rather a violent rebellion against tradition and proper authority, and an experiment disconnected from the complex, natural (and divinely ordained) realities of human society. In the face of French obsession with “reason” as a constructive and autocratic force, Burke defended tradition, liberty and evolutionary change.
The France in Turkey
Burke was right. Today his genius is manifested not only in the supremacy of Anglo-Saxon ways over those of the French, but also in the utter failure of imitations of the latter. In that regard, Turkey is a perfect case study. Right from the beginning of the republic, the Turkish state and the elite emulated all the ideas of the French Enlightenment and tried to impose them on society. The veneration of “the Republic” as if it is an end in itself; the obsessive hatred toward traditional religion and the conception of secularism (laïcité) as an alternative faith; distrust toward freedom and free markets, and a deep-seated belief in protectionism and “statism”, are all ideas that the Turks borrowed from the French and made far worse.
But of course – and thank God – not all Turks bought into the same ideas. Some of them have found an alternative road toward modernity, a one that is similar to that of the Anglo-Saxons. Turkey's center-right politics, best represented by the governments of Adnan Menderes (1950-60) and Turgut Özal (1983-93), have corresponded to that. This political line defended freedom and tradition in the face of an authoritarian and ultra-secularist establishment. Menderes paid the price by being executed by the military in 1961. Özal was abhorred, and continuously blocked, by the Kemalists.
During the 2000s, the AKP has done a great job by moving away from the Islamist line to the conservative/liberal tradition of Menderes and Özal. By doing so, it has started to transform Turkey's conservative Muslim masses, who have always despised their Jacobin rulers (for good reasons) and held modernity to be the problem. With the AKP experience, these masses have started to realize that the problem is not modernity itself, but rather a specific way of attempting to get there.
Meanwhile the Turkish champions of that specific way are growingly insecure, reactionary and xenophobic — a devolution which parallels the experience in its motherland, France, and which signifies that the French Revolution was a lot less progressive than its protagonists assert.
Alas, Burke should have lived to see all this.
Posted by Mustafa Akyol at December 29, 2007 9:39 AM
The America that promulgates the free-market you cherish exists thanks to support from sympathetic French revolutionaries.
Modern France has its problems but it's changing. Sarkozy exhorts his citizens to “work more, earn more”. To call France's destiny "doomed" is such an exaggeration I can assume it's in jest. It's a shame because you make some valid points.
You are conflating France's economic policy with their social order.
Posted by: emre at December 29, 2007 3:59 PM
This article is too "scientific" to be true! I will not dare to criticize it. The Algerian masses saluting President Sarkozy (during his recent visit to Algeria) give the necessary response to the Author. How innocent was Mr.Zorlu is better understood after this historical visit.
Posted by: Murat Aygen at December 29, 2007 4:18 PM
Reason is nothing more than a self-serving buzzword in French grandiose speeches. Its materialization in pragmatism and rationality is much more an Anglo-Saxon characteristic than a French one. Inidividualism was not opposed to reason, but was a consequence of its application in the UK.
France's success is a result of an elite driven industrialization and colonial empire. What might have pushed those elites in that direction was nearby geographical competition perhaps. In any case, as it is today, France is living unproductively on that capital.
On the other hand, contrary to the statist elite policies that circumstancially built France, the UK's (and more generally Anglo-Saxon) grass root individual, rational, driven policies are more structural in nature and therefore would probably bring benefits for a long time still.
Posted by: Chahine at December 30, 2007 6:12 PM
The talk is not about France once upon a time helping America, nor it is saying Sarkozy isn't unpopular with the Algerians!
Mustafa Akyol is trying to explain fundumental differences between the Anglo-Saxon = Libertarian values and "French"="continental"=statist=socialist values logical culmination of which is fascism="Turkish secularism".
Long live Adam Smith! Down down Marx!
Posted by: Behruz Himo at December 30, 2007 11:06 PM
You can't go from Sharia to libertarianism overnight. French/Turkish-style secularism (aka laicite) is a necessary stage in Turkey's social development that rolled back the assumed privileges of the majority to put them on a more level footing with minorities. Libertarianism comes about when people have a modicum of tolerance. Turkey could not have successfully followed a bottom-up approach since the people had a distinct distrust of people unlike themselves, exacerbated by the Ottoman Empire's collapse. Thus, we took the top-down approach; laicite.
Today we find the path to social progress blocked by jingoism, not anticlericalism. Jingoism is what leads people to murder (Samast) or prosecute (Kerincsiz) "for the honor of state". The reasons for its existence are historical, as I alluded to above. Tolerance can grow only when there is freedom of speech. Not just in the legal sense, but in people's minds. At the same time, tolerance does not extend to condoning acts or beliefs that would undermine itself. If the establishment believed that some conservatives were not intent on undermining this freedom, they would not apply pressure. I realize this is a circular problem, but no-one said it would be easy!
Posted by: emre at December 31, 2007 6:19 PM
Dear Emre,
Please do not put so much emphasis on ideologies and doctrines - they are all devised for the well-being of the mankind. But I always prefer an honest mullah to a corrupt professor and vice-versa.
Regards,
Murat
Posted by: Murat Aygen at January 1, 2008 8:45 PM
Emre,
I agree that at some stage Kemalist-style secularism (I differentiate "Mustafa Kemal-style" from the "Kemalist-style" as the latter is quite different from what the founder of the Turkish Republic would want or do) was necessary as clericalism had become a reactionary force during the last years of the Ottoman Empire. There are many examples, such as Al-Afghani's ideas converted into educational reforms by the Ottoman Caliph and the Mufti issuing fatwa calling teaching maths and sciences in madrasahs bid'a (innovation)!?
However oppression of Kurds by Mustafa Kemal's policies cannot be legitimized by any argument.
While I totally disagree when you claim that “Turkey could not have successfully followed a bottom-up approach since the people had a distinct distrust of people unlike themselves” – Turks and Muslims have been living with “people unlike themselves” since the very existence of Islam. I think it has become such a widely known fact that I need not to tell you a long story of Muslims living with non-Muslims for 1400 years!
Indeed, it is the establishment that is undermining the freedoms in Turkey and converted secularism to “jingoism”. While AKP has been trying to protect minorities and stop the paranoia of some Turks against the freedom of speech you cherish so much – BBC, CNN, Al-Jazeera and other non-Turkish media are also part of the freedom of speech!
And again, may blessed be those who choose Adam Smith’s ideas and reject those of Marx, Freud, Darwin and Bin Laden!
There probably is a nice fiery caste in hell for the latter four :)
Khudo hofiz!
Posted by: Behruz Himo at January 1, 2008 10:19 PM
Burke’s idea of what you call ‘tradition and proper authority’ was the ‘divine right of kings’ (sic) and the excessive power of the church – precisely the things that led (quite properly and inevitably) to the French Revolution (it was the appalling behaviour of the Catholic church in France prior to the revolution that led to religion being seen as the enemy).
Thomas Paine and ‘The Rights of Man’ is far better than Burke on all of this (see Christopher Hitchens’ biography of Paine – yes, THAT Christopher Hitchens).
And why might ‘reason’ and ‘individual liberty’ be in opposition?
Posted by: Duncan Marr at January 8, 2008 2:30 PM
Since this is a serious discussion, you could be interested by an article in the Financial Times (edition january 11, 2008) which indicates that France's economy is now -since 2006-bigger than the UK, by 4 % to be prcise.
France the sick man of Europe, really?
Best regards.
Posted by: glamorgan at January 15, 2008 4:06 AM