tag:www.thewhitepath.com,2008://1 2008-05-08T11:27:45Z The writings of Mustafa Akyol — on Turkey, Islam, modernity and more Movable Type 3.33 tag:www.thewhitepath.com,2008://1.226 2008-05-08T11:25:57Z 2008-05-08T11:27:45Z

[Originally published in Turkish Daily News] Ishak Alaton is one of the most prominent names in Turkey’s tiny Jewish community. He, as the boss of the well-established Alarko Holding, is not just a very successful businessman, but also a...

Turkish Daily News] Ishak Alaton is one of the most prominent names in Turkey’s tiny Jewish community. He, as the boss of the well-established Alarko Holding, is not just a very successful businessman, but also a man of intellect who comments on social and political problems. As a self-defined social democrat, Mr. Alaton believes in social responsibility – not as a public relations strategy, but as a value in itself. ]]> ’Patriots’ in Ankara Mr. Alaton was specifically referring to two examples: Israeli businessman Sammy Ofer, a zillionaire, wanted to invest in Turkey, but he was repelled by “the bureaucracy and the media which worked hand in hand against him… for simply that he was Jewish.” And, decades ago, an oil-rich Armenian businessman, Mr. Gülbenkyan, had tried to set up a museum in Istanbul, but was “forced back with sticks in hand by the ‘patriots’ in Ankara.” Thirdly Mr. Alaton was pointing to the recent decision by Turkey’s Constitutional Court, which made it illegal for foreigners to buy real estate in Turkey. (Our lovely Constitutional Court, when it is not busy with cracking down political parties, takes decisions that will keep Turkey isolated from the global economy.) After his letter in Referans, Mr. Alaton soon gave an interview to journalist Nagehan Alçı from daily Akşam. When asked about the origins of anti-Semitism in Turkey, Mr. Alaton went right back to the days of Atatürk and said this: “I met Atatürk. We saw him when we were kids. There was no such discrimination at his time. At, least there was no such thing in his mind. But some of the people around Atatürk had a fierce reaction against us, i.e., the ‘others.’ That’s why special instructions were sent to governors in order to make our lives difficult. This, over time, turned in to a state policy.” Mr. Alaton did not go into details about what “the people around Atatürk” did to Turkey’s Jews, but one of their deeds, the Wealth Tax of 1942, is worth mentioning. The government of Şükrü Saracoğlu, a Kemalist, a Nazi sympathizer and a proud “Turkist,” issued this notorious law, which was an arbitrary levy imposed on wealthy non-Muslim minorities, and especially the Jews and Jewish converts. Those who were unable to pay were sent to a labor camp in Aşkale, a district of the Eastern city of Erzurum. The first and only Jewish labor camp in these lands, in other words, was established in the heydays of Kemalism, our untouchable state ideology. Let’s go back to Mr. Alaton’s interview. When asked about the current government, formed by the AKP (Justice and Development Party), he spoke positively and he said he trusts the “sincerity of Prime Minister Erdoğan” in his efforts to democratize Turkey. The problem is elsewhere, he noted. “Anti-Semitism is not in the neighborhood,” he emphasized. “It is in the system.” The term “neighborhood” might need explanation here. In the recent years, the word has become a token for conservative districts in which most women wear the headscarf and very few, if any, consume alcohol. In the secularist jargon, “the neighborhood” is the symbol of obscurantism, backwardness, and a pleasure-free life. There might be some truth in this perception, but it is also true that the rising fascism and xenophobia in Turkey is a product of not the conservative “neighborhood,” but the secular citadels. There have been numerous examples of this phenomenon. When the Israeli tycoon that Mr. Alaton mentioned, Sammy Ofer, wanted to invest in Turkey in 2005, it was mainly the secular nationalists who rallied against him, while Prime Minister Erdoğan supported Ofer and criticized the former for “racism of capital.” (Similarly, Mr. Erdoğan welcomes Arab capital, too, and he champions the golden rule of capitalism: “Money is free from creed or race.”) For this reason, and for his pro-EU policies, Erdoğan and his colleagues at the AKP have been depicted by a series of Kemalist bestsellers as crypto-Jews who serve “the Elders of Zion.” The Islamist Side But are these secularist nuts the only anti-Semites in Turkey? No, not at all. There are, of course, also the Islamists, who echo the nasty anti-Semitic rhetoric and literature that have pervaded the Middle East since early 20th century and especially the founding of Israel in 1948. Yet you have to be careful about who these Islamists are. Secularist media will label all Muslims who are serious about their faith as “Islamists,” while it might be much more appropriate to call some of them “Muslim democrats.” The AKP represents this latter point of view, although the vestiges of its former Islamist line surface once in a while among some of its less open-minded members. On the other hand, democratic-minded Muslim movements in society, such as the three to five million strong (according to the New York Times) Fethullah Gülen community, are not only free from anti-Semitism, but they also stand against it via efforts of inter-faith dialogue and cooperation. In short, those who threaten Turkey’s Jews with their anti-Semitic stances are secular fundamentalists, Islamic fundamentalists, the ultra-nationalists who somehow combine these somewhat contradictory trends, and, in the words of Mr. Alaton, the “system.” And it is no accident that all these forces have formed a peculiar alliance in the recent years. They, all together, are standing against the EU accession process. No big surprise. A Turkey which has become a member of the EU and thus has turned fully democratic is the nightmare of all these fear mongering xenophobes. But it is, to be sure, the bright future for the rest of us. ]]> tag:www.thewhitepath.com,2008://1.224 2008-05-03T12:02:37Z 2008-05-08T11:28:57Z

[Originally published in Turkish Daily News] On May 1, Istanbul was like a city ruled by martial law. Drones of policemen tried to “protect” Taksim Square from workers and left-wing groups who had been craving to “celebrate” Workers’ Day in...

Turkish Daily News] On May 1, Istanbul was like a city ruled by martial law. Drones of policemen tried to “protect” Taksim Square from workers and left-wing groups who had been craving to “celebrate” Workers’ Day in this crucial spot, which had become the area of tragic deaths in 1977, in those heydays of Turkish communism and anti-communism. The tensions between the police and demonstrators turned into a street war conducted by tear gas, rubber bullets and pavement stones.]]> Islamic Versus Nationalist This is not what I want to talk about today, though. What I have found particularly interesting in this whole May Day war was the rhetoric used by some officials. The AKP (Justice and Development Party) government, which itself is currently under the threat of our all-powerful state, praised “state authority” in the face of workers. “The state will not accept being challenged,” declared Justice Minister Mehmet Ali Şahin. “No, the state does not allow being challenged.” And two weeks ago, Prime Minister Erdoğan had created a controversy by arguing, “The foot should not mess with the head.” He had sounded as if he were one of the classical Ankara bureaucrats who look down upon the unwashed masses. I believe Erdoğan must be sorry with what he said. But this whole Taksim affair, along with other signs such as the much-debated decline in AKP’s reformism in the past two years, tell us something. My sense is that a process, which can be called the "Ankara-ization" of the AKP, is at work. The party, which actually represents Turkey’s “periphery,” is coming to the “center” and internalizing some of the latter’s illiberal attitudes. The belief in “state authority” starts to ascend over social and individual liberty. It might be worthwhile to recall Ibn Khaldun here, the medieval Muslim scholar who is sometimes considered as the forerunner of sociology. One of Khaldun's famous analyses was about the barbarians of the desert who conquered sophisticated coastal cities. Before their conquest, and right after, these barbarians had a strong zeal and impetus. But once they settled and became masters of the cities whose elites they had overthrown, they started to internalize the established habits. Then, eventually, the former barbarians were conquered by a new set of barbarians, who would repeat the process. I am in no way likening the AKP to Khaldun's barbarians. I am just saying that conquering a system often transforms the conquerors. This might be a good thing, a bad thing, or a hybrid. In AKP’s case, it seems to a hybrid, but a one which tends to have more negative effects than positive ones. And what is striking is that the negative sides come from not the customary Islamic identity of the AKP, but its newly emerging “Turkishness,” which implies a more nationalist and illiberal stance on many issues. Ömer Taşpnar, the co-director of the US-Turkey project at the Washington-based Brookings Institution, had captured this brilliantly in his column in Today’s Zaman early this year. In his piece titled “Nostalgia for the old AK Party,” (Jan. 21, 2008) he noted the following: “The philosophy of the [AK Party] was never Islam pure and simple. The core ideology of the AK Party was the famous Turkish-Islamic synthesis of the 1970s. Since the July 2007 election, however, the balance between Islam and Turkishness is rapidly changing in favor of the latter. In other words, the party is becoming less Islamic but more nationalistic. This is bad news for liberals who support the AK Party for reasons connected to the European Union. I have personally begun to develop a sense of nostalgia for the old AK Party, the one with Islamic proclivities instead of nationalist tendencies.” Of course the “Islamic proclivities” of AKP would be hardly impressive if they were an extension of Milli Görüş — the Islamist line of the Erbakan tradition, that AKP had in fact denounced. They were rather the expressions of a synthesis between Islamic values and liberal politics, which has a history in Turkey dating back to the late Ottoman Empire. In politics, it was Turgut Özal who put this “Islamo-liberal” synthesis in action between 1983-93. And after ten years in the wilderness, the same tradition had come back to life with AKP’s incumbency in 2002. Stick to The Right Idea Therefore those who are asking from AKP to de-Islamize its value system and replace it with the orthodoxy of Ankara are dead wrong. That would make AKP just another dry, boring, and reactionary party. The people who love such parties already go for the CHP or the MHP. Why would they prefer a quasi-illiberal AKP to the fully illiberal ones? Moreover, it is obvious that the real citadel of illiberalism, the state establishment, will never like the AKP folks no matter what they do. It is just an unnecessary effort to try to become a part of their club — as evidenced by the closure case. So, the only way out is to change the definition of the club, and even disband it. Thus the AKP folks indeed should keep their distance from the Ankara orthodoxy, but make sure that their commitment is toward the Islamo-liberal synthesis, not to Milli Görüş. This means that the party should be more open-minded in issues relating to the rights of Kurds, Alevis, Christians and other cultural minorities. They also need to be bolder in their stance for the freedom of speech, and they should prove that they are in favor of pluralism in the media. If that turns out to be the case, the party will continue to be Turkey’s best hope. Even if the Constitutional Court decides to close it, it will go on with another name, and with a different team. As often said, nothing is as powerful as an idea whose time has come. And the AKP just needs to make sure that it sticks to the right idea. ]]> tag:www.thewhitepath.com,2008://1.225 2008-05-01T12:06:41Z 2008-05-03T12:11:46Z

[Originally published in Turkish Daily News] Once in a while, a righteous judge steps forward in Turkey and makes a speech that bravely defends democracy and freedom – which are heretical concepts for the majority of their colleagues. Sami Selçuk,...

Turkish Daily News] Once in a while, a righteous judge steps forward in Turkey and makes a speech that bravely defends democracy and freedom – which are heretical concepts for the majority of their colleagues. Sami Selçuk, for example, who was then the chief judge of the Court of Appeals, had made a series of remarkable speeches at the turn of the century, in which he rigorously argued for a more democratic and liberal system. A similar vision was presented last week by Haşim Kılıç, the chief judge of the Constitutional Court, in his address given at the 46th anniversary of his institution. It was, as a Turkish Daily News columnist and pre-eminent diplomat, İlter Türkmen noted, a very “refreshing speech.”]]> Impartiality of The Judiciary This is a crucial point, because in Turkey what is often emphasized is the “independence” of judges, not their impartiality. In fact, their impartiality is disapproved, because it is always argued that judges must protect “the founding principles of the Republic,” which constitute, in fact, the political ideology of the Republican People's Party (CHP). This is a well-established tradition. In the 70's Bülent Ecevit, the then leader of the CHP, had proudly declared, “The judiciary is at the hand of the revolutionaries.” The revolutionaries, a.k.a. the Kemalists, are, of course, only a faction of Turkish society. Therefore the judiciary is not neutral; it supports one group of the society against the others. Thus the impartiality that Mr. Kılıç argued for is in fact against the very nature of the Turkish judiciary, and, actually, the Turkish Republic itself. In an even more striking comment, Mr. Kılıç turned the basic logic of the Turkish state upside down. “The fundamental duty of the Constitutional Court,” he said, “is to protect the rights and liberties of the individuals from institutions that exercise state power.” This is the exact opposite of the orthodox Ankara mindset, which is all about protecting state institutions from the rights and liberties of the individuals. (In case you haven't noticed, all the guardians of the regime, from CHP leader Deniz Baykal to Chief Prosecutor Abdurrahman Yalçınkaya, are constantly speaking about the need to “protect the Republic.” Protecting from whom, you might ask. From the citizens, of course!) Another notable emphasis in Mr. Kılıç's speech was the way he described human dignity. “The respect to human honor,” he said, “requires that the human being should be able to decide what he will be, and how he will be so.” This is again a heretical thought for Turkey's official ideology, which claims to have the authority to decide what the Turkish citizens will be and how they will be so. That is actually the basic idea of the whole republican project. The famous 10th Anniversary March, which is a sort of Kemalist anthem, includes the famous line, “We have created 15 million youngsters in 10 years.” 15 million was the roughly the population of Turkey at the time, i.e., 1933. So the idea was that the whole nation was “recreated” by the state. And all these newborns were “young” regardless of their age, because they, supposedly, had been cleansed from the values and judgments of the Ottoman "ancien régime". The ones who proved to be indoctrinated would soon be defined as “internal enemies.” Therefore what Mr. Kılıç seems to suggest is that all citizens – including the “internal enemies” who constitute at least half of the nation – has the right to decide “what they will be how they will be so.” This is, for sure, a very strange idea in these lands. The Guardians Strike Back It is of course very refreshing to know that Mr. Kılıç is the head of the Constitutional Court, a key institution that will soon decide upon the fate of the government. But, unfortunately, this liberal judge represents the minority view there. Over the past years, and months, the court proved to be dominated by the illiberal judges. The ratio is 3 to 8, or 4 to 7 at best. On the other hand, the self-appointed guardians of the republic wasted no time to take on Mr. Kılıç. Vural Savaş, the former Chief Prosecutor of the Court of Appeals, spoke the other day at a panel held at the Akdeniz University, whose rector, like Mr. Savaş himself, is a die-hard Kemalist. In his speech, Mr. Savaş severely criticized Haşim Kılıç for his liberal speech. He especially disagreed with the notion of impartiality. “Judges can't be impartial when it comes to the secular Republic,” he reminded. “The impartiality mentioned in this speech,” Mr. Savaş underlined, “is not acceptable for the judges of the Turkish Republic.” With their opposing points of view, the two men, Mr. Kılıç and Mr. Savaş, seem to be the icons of two contradictory schools of thought. For the former, the people have sovereignty over their lives, and over the state. For the former, the sovereignty rests with the state, and its ruling elite, who can dictate to the people how they shall live. I find the first view righteous, and the second one unrighteous, and I know that these are normative, value-loaded terms. So be it. I do judge people, and systems, based on values such as justice, rights, and freedoms. I think these are the first things, and second things – such as the state, the republic, or secularism – are worthy of respect only when they serve the first things. But for others, second things are come first. At the core of Turkey's political wars, there lies this clash of values. And when you have such opposing values, it is really hard to find common ground. ]]> tag:www.thewhitepath.com,2008://1.222 2008-04-26T11:23:34Z 2008-04-29T13:53:11Z

[Originally published in Turkish Daily News] One of the interesting and tell-tale controversies of the past week was the fuss over the recent remarks of Hakan Şükür, Turkey’s famous football star and a pious Muslim. In an interview with daily...

Turkish Daily News] One of the interesting and tell-tale controversies of the past week was the fuss over the recent remarks of Hakan Şükür, Turkey’s famous football star and a pious Muslim. In an interview with daily Zaman, he warned the supporters of his team, Galatasaray, and the other big one, Fenerbahçe, about the impending match between the two. In Turkey, football matches, especially such key derbies, often turn into orgies of violence. But that is very much against the morals of Islam, Şükür noted. And, he added, it would be especially bad to swear and attack fellow human beings during the “week of the holy birth,” that of Prophet Muhammad, in which this match will be played. He reportedly said:]]> Hakan Şükür’s Blasphemy Thus saith the football star, and all hell broke loose... Secularist media put his remarks in the headlines and presented it as “anti-secular propaganda.” Daily Vatan wrote critically about how Şükür “tries to insert religion into football.” In daily Milliyet, sports columnist Ercan Güven made the following comment: “If this country faces much bigger troubles one day, if brothers become the enemy of brothers, if the regime tumbles and the nation falls, make sure that Hakan Şükür will have lots to do with all this.” Like-minded people on Şükür’s team, Galatasaray, were also outraged. Former presidential candidate of the club, Adnan Öztürk wrote a letter to the current president, Adnan Polat, in order to denounce Şükür. “Our club has always been a symbol of secularism and modernity, and such remarks do not match with our values,” he wrote. He also asked for “the necessary measures to be taken,” which implied that Şükür should be punished or even expelled from the team. Fatih Altayl, another of prominence in the ultra-secular Galatasaray universe, asked for an “investigation” into Hakan Şükür. I think this whole episode nicely presents a fundamental problem in Turkey. Quite many people in this country, especially those who consider themselves to be the elite, suffer from a sort of neurosis that can aptly be called thephobia. That term refers to the irrational fear from, and disgust towards, anything that relates to God and religion. It is, as American writer Tony Snow puts it, “the absolute, frenetic, run-away-from-Godzilla panic that afflicts some people when they hear the ‘G’ word.” For them any reference to, or symbol of, religion is simply horrifying. That is what lies beneath the bizarre notion of secularism that the Turkish Republic and its masters subscribe to. In the free world, secularism is a democratic principle that gives people the right to live according their beliefs or disbeliefs. In Turkey, it is the principle that is used to suppress religion, marginalize believers, and ridicule their practices. That is why Turkey’s self-styled secularism is often at war with democracy, and the Constitutional Court declares that “secularism will not be sacrificed to freedom.” But why are so many Turks theophobes? Well, that is the way that the “education” system and the official ideology have indoctrinated them for decades. The average “white Turk” – the one who thinks he is Westernized – believes that religion must be forcefully pushed to the corners of society for us to be a “modern” nation. The die-hard Kemalists are, of course, the most devout believers in this dogma, but others, including even some “liberals,” have been influenced by it to a great extent. They can doubt the official ideology in matters relating to matters such as the Kurds question, but they very much they share its theophobia. Revisiting Islamism The way the term “Islamist” is used in this country, as I have noted in a previous column, is a manifestation of this trouble. In the free world, “Islamist” often refers to one who wants to impose Islam as a state ideology. But in Turkey, anybody who takes Islam seriously and speaks about it is labeled as an “Islamist.” Hakan Şükür, for example, is depicted as such these days because of this abovementioned remarks. Which brings me to a recent piece by my fellow columnist Burak Bekdil. In his April 23 column titled “Who is an Islamist? Who isn't?” he apparently revisited my distinction between Islamists and Muslims. Among the several descriptions he offered for the former, there was this interesting line: “[An Islamist is]… someone who has a desire to see an increase in the number of observant Muslims.” Mr. Bekdil can, of course, give any description he wants, but since he defines Islamism as a threat to democracy – which I would have agreed on another definition – we should be careful here. The fact is that, Muslims, of course, can “have a desire to see an increase in the number of observant Muslims.” They can even work hard to make that happen. That is just fine. Both Islam and Christianity are universalistic faiths, and their believers do have a wish to see the spread of their faith, which they see as the path to salvation. The crucial point is whether they impose their faith, or simply propose it. The former is a threat to freedom, but the latter is entirely justified in a democratic system. Forced conversion is not acceptable, but missionary work is. Indeed, in an open society, every creed has the right to publicize itself as much as it can. What the theophobes want to do is to deprive religion of this right. They want to make believers shut up so that they can’t mention God or Scripture in the public square. Only One Idea… Their psychology is driven by theophobia, to be sure, but they also use a seemingly rational argument. “If we allow a bit of religion,” they say, “how can we be sure that it won’t dominate the whole society?” Well, I can ask the same question for virtually every creed or philosophy. If we allow dialectical materialism to have a say in society, how can we be sure that we won’t soon have a communist revolution? If we allow nationalist ideas to flourish, I can similarly ask, how can we be sure that we will not turn into a fascist state? Despite the convictions of theophobes, almost every point of view has extremes and carries the potential to go there if all other options are suppressed. "Nothing is more dangerous than an idea,” as Alain Chartier put it, “when you only have one idea." The threat to democracy, in other words, is not religion or some other idea. It is the lack of pluralism. If you don’t believe me, just look at contemporary Turkey and see how the dominance of one idea, i.e., Kemalism, threatens the whole democratic system, religious freedoms, minority rights, the EU process, and the economy. While the theophobes are freaked out about religion and how it will deprive us from modernity, it is the very ideology fed by their paranoia that is doing that. ]]> tag:www.thewhitepath.com,2008://1.223 2008-04-24T19:48:28Z 2008-04-27T19:50:55Z

[Originally published in Turkish Daily News] WASHINGTON - Every country has its own towering figures of intellect, and as a nation torn between several conflicting political philosophies, Turkey has quite many of them. There are prominent liberals, conservatives, socialist, or...

Turkish Daily News] WASHINGTON - Every country has its own towering figures of intellect, and as a nation torn between several conflicting political philosophies, Turkey has quite many of them. There are prominent liberals, conservatives, socialist, or nationalists. Even the official ideology, i.e., Kemalism, has distinguished supporters, and quite a few of those figures would be as erudite and sophisticated as the eminent law professor, the 79-year-old Mümtaz Soysal.]]> Notes From a Jacobin Heart I had the privilege of speaking at the same panel with Prof. Soysal a week ago at the Brookings Institution in the U.S. capital, and thus had the chance to get a grasp of his “Jacobin heart,” as he called it. It was interesting and revealing. Jacobins were, of course, the leading and the most radical party of the French Revolution. Yet more recently their name has become a household term in Turkey in order to define the political cadres and intellectuals who believe in authoritarian ways to “modernize” the nation. It is actually the conservatives or the liberals who call these autocrats “Jacobin,” while they prefer to define themselves as “Kemalist” or “Atatürkist.” Prof. Soysal was, however, apparently unreserved about the imported term. The crust of his argument was that the Turkish Republic had an “enemy” from the very beginning, and thus a “war” was inevitable. He was also quite frank about the identity of this enemy: The religion of Islam, which “has insisted on its claim to influence this world, as well as the next.” Had Islam undergone a “reform,” Prof. Soysal added, there would not be any problem. It would be a religion with only spiritual claims, and thus would not interfere with the works of the Republic. The insistence of Turkey’s conservative Muslims to assert their faith in “this world” was, according to Mümtaz Soysal, the root of the problem – and the Republic had all the right to fight against this “enemy.” The headscarf, a symbol of religious observance, was the most visible symbol of this religion-that-defies-limits, and Turkey’s incumbent Justice and Development Party (AKP), by trying to set the headscarf free in the public square, had gone too far. “It is only natural that the Republic will protect itself from threats,” Prof. Soysal confidently reminded. “If AKP is a threat, it will be closed down.” A War With The People? Another way of putting Prof. Soysal’s argument is that the threat to the Turkish Republic is about a half of the Turkish people. That is roughly the political support that the AKP has. Moreover, if we recall the public polls which show that about 80 percent of society believes that headscarves should be free in universities, the “enemies” of the Republic will amount to four out of every five citizens – most of whom are, ironically enough, taxpayers who finance this interesting political system. Here lies the fundamental dilemma of the Turkish Republic. On one hand, it calls itself “democratic,” which implies a rule by the people. On the other hand, it is at war with its own people. That’s why the Ankara establishment has actually no sympathy for real democracy, and it would hardly approach it if international dynamics did not force it to do so. All this might sound a bit odd to foreigners, but it is quite reasonable and justified for Turkish Jacobins. “This is a war that will go on for a very long time,” Prof. Soysal noted at Brookings. “And it is a healthy war.” I tend to disagree. I rather think that the war between the Turkish Republic and its “internal enemies” – the citizens who doubt the official ideology – has been disastrous enough. It has traumatized many lives and has set us back as a nation. We really need to give peace a chance. To be able to do that, our Jacobins should reconsider their doctrine, especially with regards to religion. Their demand, that Islam should stop “influencing this world,” is actually ridiculous. Almost all religions, especially the Abrahamic ones, aim at influencing this world, and there is nothing wrong about that. The crucial question is the way this influence will be exercised. By trying to establish a religious tyranny that will impose its truths on people? Or by acting as a civil force that will promote its truths in society by democratic means? The former leads to theocracy, which is a horrible form of dictatorship. But the latter leads to the formation of a dynamic and open society, in which all creeds and worldviews can exist and compete. The Invisible Reform Alexis de Tocqueville, a remarkable French thinker that our French-inspired and French wannabe Jacobins hardly know about, once brilliantly explained this constructive role of religion in his masterpiece, “Democracy in America.” Interestingly the democracy in Turkey is following a somewhat similar route, because Turkey’s Islamic communities are growingly in demand of not an Islamic state, but a secular one which, unlike ours, respects religious freedom. They are, not too surprisingly, also in favor of the European Union process. In other words, Prof. Soysal and his comrades are wrong to expect a formal “reform” which will detach Islam from “this world.” A reform as a social process is already taking place in Turkey, as its devout Muslims integrate into modernity without abandoning their values and practices. “The headscarf catwalk,” is not a token of “the way back to the Middle Ages,” as our secularists suspect. Quite the contrary, it is a sign of a way forward. Unfortunately the official grand narrative of the Turkish Republic seems to be too rigid to accept that. That’s why even its most brilliant and erudite representatives, such as Prof. Soysal, reject to consider a different point of view. And that’s why the Republic’s war with its own people regrettably goes on. ]]> tag:www.thewhitepath.com,2008://1.220 2008-04-20T12:31:55Z 2008-04-28T00:38:46Z

[Originally published in Turkish Daily News] Did you know that the U.S. government is a part of a big conspiracy to destroy Turkey's secular regime and, instead, establish a “moderate Islamic republic”? I have been totally unaware of that heinous...

Turkish Daily News] Did you know that the U.S. government is a part of a big conspiracy to destroy Turkey's secular regime and, instead, establish a “moderate Islamic republic”? I have been totally unaware of that heinous plan, and I suspect that even the top officials of the US government itself have been as clueless as I am. But there are extremely smart people in the world, from whose eyes no trick escapes. They discover the hidden truths behind all stones, and they detect all the covert conspiracies that most mortals fail to see.]]> The Secret Plan for The Middle East I am all serious. And, apparently, the chief prosecutor is, too. In the indictment he submitted to Turkey's Constitutional Court on March 15, he has the following paragraph: “The accused party has eroded Turkey's image in the international community as a secular country… Turkey has started to be perceived as a ‘Moderate Islamic Republic.' This perspective has especially been reflected in the relation with the United States of America, and even in the official rhetoric. Former U.S. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, and many other US officials, have ignored the fact that Turkey is a secular, democratic and social state of law, and rather defined our country as ‘Moderate Islamic Republic.' It is obvious that they have taken this offensive audacity from the rhetoric of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who very often reiterates that he is the co-president of the ‘Broader Middle East Project', which is a U.S. project aimed at ruling the related countries via moderate Islamic regimes.” This is quite a gem, and a testimony to the wisdom of the chief prosecutor. He is obviously a close follower and a refined analyst of not only Turkish politics, but also world affairs. Yet he seems to have made a few factual mistakes: 1) There is simply nothing that can be called as the “Broader Middle East Project” and can be defined as a “US project aimed at ruling the related [Middle Eastern] countries via moderate Islamic regimes.” President Bush spoke about a “Broader Middle East Initiative” in 2005, which was all about supporting democratic processes in the region. One can assume that the democracies that Bush had hoped for would also be better for US interests, but this not some sort of empire-building as the chief prosecutor believes. Moreover, that initiative seems to be quite ineffective by now, as the U.S. foreign policy had gradually shifted to a more “realist” paradigm. 2) The U.S. officials never spoke about, and even dreamt of, establishing a “moderate Islamic Republic” in Turkey. What has led Turkey's paranoid secularist to this totally bizarre idea is the fact that US officials sometimes noted, with positive terms, that Turkey, as a country with an overwhelmingly Muslim population, is also the home of a working democracy. (Well, we would actually have had a much more meaningful democracy if the chief prosecutor and his friends had left us alone.) The real problem is that Turkey's secularists are so obsessively hostile to religion that they can't stand to hear the words “Islam” and “Turkey” in the same sentence. When they hear that, their secularism detectors start to signal red alarms and they look for someone to blame. (Their ideological cousins in France recently got furious when President Sarkozy dared to mention the role of Christian values in the making of France. Yet they at least don't have secularist coups d'etat in France — at least since the golden age of the guillotine.) 3) The most amusing thing in the chief prosecutor's stunning paragraph on the “moderate Islam” conspiracy is that he refers to Prime Minister Erdoğan as “the co-president of the ‘Broader Middle East Project'.” Now, since there is no such thing as the Broader Middle East Project, what can our eloquent chief prosecutor be talking about?.. Well, after some meditation, I figured it out. What he is talking about is something totally unrelated: Erdoğan is the co-president of the “Dialogue of Civilizations” project, whose other partner is Spanish Prime Minister Zapatero, and which is one of the many cultural efforts to overcome the chilling idea of “clash of civilizations.” This Turko-Spanish cultural effort, of course, has nothing to do neither with the U.S. government nor establishing “moderate Islamic regimes” in the Middle East. Very High Judiciary To make a long story short, the chief prosecutor has in fact no idea about what he is speaking about. He probably heard all these confusing terms — Broader Middle East, Dialogue of Civilizations, moderate Islam, blah-blah — and placed all of them in a totally fictional conspiracy theory. This might give you a sense of the high standards of Turkey's high judiciary. Of course there is some variation there, and the chief prosecutor might not be representing the whole. But he definitely represents quite many. The problem with these people — who are no doubt patriotic, decent, and principled — is that they have very little understanding of the contemporary world. They are seeing everything through the lens of a stagnant ideology that was formed in the 1930s, and they resist any change, because that ideology been turned into a sacred dogma. And the fantasies of the adherents of that dogma is the only realm in which a plot to overthrow the Turkish Republic, whether by the U.S. or by the AKP, exists.]]> tag:www.thewhitepath.com,2008://1.221 2008-04-17T12:57:39Z 2008-04-20T13:00:25Z

[Originally published in Turkish Daily News] First, congratulations to the head of the EU Commission, Mr. Jose Manuel Barroso and EU's Commissioner for enlargement, Mr. Olli Rehn, for the excellent job they have done by giving bold support for Turkish...

Turkish Daily News] First, congratulations to the head of the EU Commission, Mr. Jose Manuel Barroso and EU's Commissioner for enlargement, Mr. Olli Rehn, for the excellent job they have done by giving bold support for Turkish democracy. The vision that they presented in their recent trip to Ankara and Istanbul is the best hope that this country can really have: Continuing with EU reforms, strengthening democracy, and accepting “democratic secularism,” as opposed to the unabashedly authoritarian one that we have. ]]> Our Bloody Internal Affairs' The huge mental gap between the European friends of Turkey and the Turkish enemies of democracy is what makes the latter enraged with the former. I don't know whether you have noticed, but in the past few weeks they have been very angry with Barroso, Rehn, and other European officials who have criticized the ongoing judicial coup d'etat, i.e., the closure case against the incumbent AKP (Justice and Development Party.) Baykal and his men, and all other ultra-nationalists and secular fundamentalists, some of which are in the media, have been constantly attacking this “foreign meddling with our internal affairs.” No big surprise. Turkish autocrats have always hated “interference” by the West in our wonderful ways of governing – such as our well-established state tradition of imprisoning, torturing or killing our dissenting citizens. For decades, the Europeans and the Americans have told the masters of our state not to do such horrible things. The implicit response was something like this: “Why don't you just mind your own business? These are our subjects. We damn well know what to do with them.” And now, the masters of the Turkish state are planning to trample on the political will of 52 percent of their subjects – the sum of the voters of the AKP and the pro-Kurdish DTP, which are both in the Constitutional Court's death row. And the same old message is given to foreigners who dare to speak against our exclusive ways: “Why don't you just mind your own business? This is our autocracy. We damn well know how to rule it.” The fact that the autocrats and their supporters in Turkey are referring to the principle of “independence” should not mislead anybody. That principle is actually an invaluable one: It grants a nation its national sovereignty, which forms the basis for democracy. But independence loses all its meaning when used by a tyranny in order to defy the international standards of democracy and human rights. North Korea, for example, is obsessed with its “independence,” because that principle allows the “Dear Leader” Kim Jong Il – the son of the “Eternal Leader” Kim Il Sung – and his nomenklatura to run the country like family business. That sort of “independence” is the first refuge of all despots, and is the biggest threat to Turkey these days. If this country becomes more “independent” in that North Koreanish sense, it will, for sure, be a much more unpleasant place for the majority of its people. Democracy will be crippled, human right abuses will peak, and freedom (of thought, religion, and the markets) will be severely suppressed. That's why Europeans, Americans, any anybody else who cares about Turkey, should feel not just free but also morally obliged to “interfere” in our internal affairs in order to stand by our democracy. America The Confused? Unfortunately, Washington does not have a terribly impressive record on this issue, especially when compared to that of Brussels. About a year ago, when we were going through yet another limited coup attempt, that time by the military, a spokesman of the U.S. State Department had notoriously declared, “We don't take sides.” To date, some (not all) officials at Foggy Bottom, or elsewhere around the Potomac, seem to have this strange belief that the military and the autocratic judiciary are parts of a “checks and balances” system in Turkey. This is, of course, ridiculous. Checks and balances take place within democracy, not between democracy and autocracy. The problem in Turkey is that the military and the judiciary often extend their constitutional powers in order to usurp the authority that belongs to the elected representatives of the people. What would the Americans think if the Supreme Court was considering closing down the Republican Party because President Bush is too godly? What is happening to the AKP and Prime Minister Erdoğan right now is not too different. Don't some American officials really get that? I don't know. But I want to know. I also want them to get a better perspective on Turkey – which is one of the reasons why I am on a plane right now that is heading to Washington. While you are reading this column, I will be at a panel at the Brookings Institute to discuss the AKP's closure case with two prominent professors of law, Mümtaz Soysal and Levent Köker. I think I will profoundly disagree with Professor Soysal, the arch-Kemalist, and it will be an interesting debate. More on that will be coming soon. ]]> tag:www.thewhitepath.com,2008://1.219 2008-04-12T12:01:14Z 2008-04-12T12:03:37Z

[Originally published in Turkish Daily News] One of the interesting episodes in Turkey’s past week was a quarrel between Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Diyarbakır Bar President Sezgin Tanrıkulu. In a gathering of NGO’s and government officials, Mr. Tanrıkulu,...

Turkish Daily News] One of the interesting episodes in Turkey’s past week was a quarrel between Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Diyarbakır Bar President Sezgin Tanrıkulu. In a gathering of NGO’s and government officials, Mr. Tanrıkulu, an ethnic Kurd, asked from the prime minister “not only economic, but also political reforms” for Turkey’s southeast, including the right to “Kurdish education.” Erdoğan didn’t like the idea and, instead, replied with an argument: “Education in a mother tongue does not exist anywhere in the world!”]]> From Babel to Paris In the beginning, mankind had a single language. Or, at least, the Bible says so. According to the Book of Genesis, it was God who first gave a single language to humans. But then, after the Tower of Babel affair, He created other tongues. “That is why it was called Babel,” says Genesis, “because there the LORD confused the language of the whole world.” Therefore, from a Judeo-Christian point of view, the existence of multiple languages was simply a result of divine will. Islam, not too surprisingly, confirmed the same wisdom. “Among [God]’s Signs," the Koran declared, “is the creation of the heavens and earth, and the variety of your languages and colors.” Perhaps that was one reason why different languages and tongues co-existed in the pre-modern, religiously-defined era. Both in Christian Europe and in the Islamic Middle East, native languages were regarded as a part of the divinely ordained natural order. Things started to change with modernity. The modern mind was a constructivist one – it aimed at re-creating the natural order as it willed. Yet some moderns, especially the British ones, decided to carry out this construction in harmony with pre-existing forms. They, after all, respected the natural (or, say, divine) order. Other moderns, especially the French ones, preferred to destroy all existing traditions and re-construct everything right from the beginning. They were, as they proudly declared, revolutionaries. Native languages would be one – only one – of the many victims of the revolutionary modernists. Actually in the early stages of the French Revolution – that bloody archetype of revolutionary modernism – liberty of language was declared for all citizens of the French Republic. Yet soon, this policy was abandoned in favor of the imposition of a common language aimed at destroying local tongues. The ideology was expounded in the “Report on The Necessity and Means to Annihilate The Patois and to Universalize The Use of The French Language,” written by a Henri Grégoire and presented to the National Convention on June 4, 1794. From that point on, the French Republic initiated a long war against the “non-French” languages and cultures – a policy which lasted until very recently, and whose traces arguably still survive. The basic idea behind “national education” in France has been the eradication of plurality. After 1918, the use of German in Alsace-Lorraine would be outlawed. In 1925, Anatole de Monzie, minister of public education, declared, "For the linguistic unity of France, the Breton language must disappear." Only in 1964 the French government would allow Breton on regional television – and only for one and a half minutes. Yet even in 1972, President Georges Pompidou would autocratically announce, “There is no place for the regional languages and cultures in a France that intends to mark Europe deeply." France might have been the inventor of forced assimilation, but it was not its monopolist. “In the 19th and 20th centuries, most European states conducted politics of forced assimilation against their ethnic and linguistic minorities,” reminds Wikipedia. Even Norway, a beacon of peace and good life, carried out a “Norwegianisation process” on its ethnic minorities such as the Sami and the Kven – well up to the 1970s. (1972, by the way, was the year that homosexuality was decriminalized in Norway.) Outgrowing Nation-Building So, when Europeans criticize Turkey’s mistakes about its Kurdish citizens, they should be a little bit restrained. Yes, Turkey has taken huge missteps on this issue, and it needs fundamental reforms. But the mindset that led Turkey to the denial and forced assimilation of Kurds was not homemade. It was invented and first implemented in Europe. Alas, before the arrival and dominance of that idea – i.e., revolutionary modernism – the Kurds existed in these lands and nobody forced any assimilation on them. The Ottoman State was a multi-ethnic and multi-religious empire. Pluralism, if you will, was the hallmark of the Ottomans. Then came the Turkish Republic, whose founders were, unfortunately, inspired by the French way of nation-building. Hence started the Kurd’s drama. Today, the bright future of Turkey lies in its capacity to outgrow that early revolutionary modernist paradigm. We should not cease being a modern nation-state, to be sure, but we have to make it more liberal and pluralist. Europeans, of course, should help Turkey’s walk on this thorny path – but do this humbly and patiently. They just should keep in mind how long their liberalization has lasted, and how recently their illiberalism ended.]]> tag:www.thewhitepath.com,2008://1.218 2008-04-10T09:07:38Z 2008-04-10T09:11:31Z

[Originally published in Turkish Daily News] Political terms can be misleading, especially when used to serve ambitious agendas. For Senator Joseph McCarthy, for example, even a slight of touch of social democracy was “communism” in sheep's clothing. During his heyday...

Turkish Daily News] Political terms can be misleading, especially when used to serve ambitious agendas. For Senator Joseph McCarthy, for example, even a slight of touch of social democracy was “communism” in sheep's clothing. During his heyday in the U.S., it was very easy to de-legitimize a political actor by simply labeling him as “red.”]]> The Nominals versus the Practicing The West needs to be extremely careful to make this distinction, because there are forces that deliberately try to blur it for their own interests. Take the tyranny in Uzbekistan, for example. Its ex-communist-and-actually-still-communist dictator Islam Karimov loves to depict all his opponents as Islamic fundamentalists. (Some of them really are, but not all.) Just a little to the north, there is the Russian autocracy, which wants to put the whole blame for the bloodshed in Chechnya on Islamic fundamentalists, in order to hide or justify its own brutal tactics. Similarly, China, one of the world’s leading human rights abusers, is ranting about the “Islamic militants” in its Xincang region, in which it has viciously oppressed Muslim Uyghurs for decades. The "Islamic threat" is now the most fashionable bandwagon for secular tyrants to jump on. Turkey’s secular autocrats follow a similar route. For a long time, they have been depicting their Muslim-minded rivals as dangerous Islamists who want to overthrow the secular system and establish a theocratic regime. They are not totally unsubstantiated, because there have indeed been such groups and movements in Turkey. But the latter are growingly marginal. The political line that came closest to that position, the “Milli Görüş” of Erbakan, is now represented by the Saadet Party, which gets 2 percent of the votes. A few days ago, I received an e-mail from a list that apparently supports Milli Görüş. It was a very strong critique of the incumbent Justice and Development Party (AKP), for it had “allowed the opening of pig farms and slackened the bets on horse races.” Both complaints refer to sins in Islamic law – pork and gambling are “haram,” i.e. prohibited. For the Saadet followers, by allowing these “un-Islamic” phenomena, the AKP had become just too secular. Yet if you listen to Turkish secularists, you will hear nothing but “Islamism” about the AKP. Even in these pages, my fellow columnists confidently use that label. Burak Bekdil routinely bashes “Turkey’s Islamists,” who are supposedly in power. Yusuf Kanlı freely uses the term “political Islam.” The AKP, on the other hand, right from the beginning, has rejected that it is an Islamist party and has defined itself rather as “conservative democrat.” Where does this gap in terminology come from? First, it comes from the point I noted above: These days it is trendy to stand up against the “Islamists.” But there is more: In Turkey, the term in fact has a unique meaning. Here, an “Islamist” is not necessarily a person who wants to establish a political order based on Islam. The term simply means someone who really believes in this religion and takes it seriously. Interestingly this comes from the oft-repeated truism that “99 percent of Turkish citizens are Muslims.” Culturally speaking, yes, they are. Moreover, the “secular” state wants to keep them as such – and thus it hates the Christian missionaries – because it believes that cultural homogeneity is necessary for political stability. But quite many of the “99 percent,” especially most of the urban ones, are not too interested in religion. They can visit their grandmas on the “bayrams” (religious feast days) and share cookies, but that’s it. They are nominal Muslims – not practicing ones. These nominal Muslims definitely have all the right to think and live as they wish, but some of them don’t show much tolerance to their practicing co-religionists. They see themselves as the ideal, “enlightened” citizens, while depicting the practicing Muslims as pre-modern, narrow-minded and uncivilized ignoramuses. But since everybody is somewhat “Muslim,” then the Muslims who take their faith seriously need a different, and derogatory, name. That’s why they are called “dinci” (religionist) or “İslamcı”(Islamist). My Personal ‘Islamism’ Recently, I too have been labeled an “Islamist” by secularists both in Turkey and abroad. Therefore I felt the need to clarify the ambiguity. If “Islamist” means someone who believes in Islam and who takes it seriously, yes, I would wear that badge with pride. But in my political language, Islamism refers to a political ideology that aims at creating an “Islamic” political system – a project that I reject and criticize. I rather believe that the best political system is the one that is free from, but tolerant to, all creeds. In that sense, no, I am definitely not an Islamist. I notice that people also speculate about whether I am a member of any sort of Islamic group, especially the popular Fethullah Gülen movement. No, I am not. I know that movement, I share their values, and feel sympathetic to their works, but I am a stand-alone figure. I have, in fact, engaged with some of the Islamic trends in Turkey over the years, but, finally, I decided to be “a freelance Muslim.” A balance of Scripture, reason, and tradition – a good formula by Edmund Burke – is something I hope I can figure out by myself, for myself. So, as you see, using the right terms to define the right phenomena is important because we are constantly being bombarded with misleading terms. Consider, for example, the irritated calls coming out of Turkey these days to our European and American friends to respect our “rule of law.” Those who say this are, in fact, cheerleaders for our ongoing judicial coup d’état. To get what they really mean, you should correct the term “rule of law.” What they actually refer to is the rule of tyrannical law. And what that deserves is not respect but condemnation. ]]> tag:www.thewhitepath.com,2008://1.217 2008-04-05T11:58:13Z 2008-04-05T12:04:33Z

[Originally published in Turkish Daily News] I just saw "Fitna," the new controversial film produced by Geert Wilders, head of the Dutch Freedom Party. The 17-minute video shows acts of violence, and expressions of hatred, by Muslims against “infidels.” Heads...

Turkish Daily News] I just saw "Fitna," the new controversial film produced by Geert Wilders, head of the Dutch Freedom Party. The 17-minute video shows acts of violence, and expressions of hatred, by Muslims against “infidels.” Heads are cut off, bodies are blown apart, children are taught to denounce Jews as "apes and pigs," imams call for world domination, and protesters hold signs that read, "God Bless Hitler." What makes all this disturbing scenery even more provocative, and, in a sense, more meaningful, is the way they are connected to the Koran. After each instance of ferocity, “Fitna” quotes a passage from the Muslim Scripture which, apparently, presents a justification.]]> Koran and the Book of Joshua No, not really. Things are actually much more complicated. And Wilder’s film presents them in a highly prejudiced, or even a fanatical fashion. The film actually does not lie or cheat. Such violent or angry Muslims do exist, and so do the belligerent passages in the Koran. What the film does is to cherry-pick them. There are also many messages of tolerance, compassion, and peace in the Koran. Using the same method of purposeful selection, one could also make a movie titled “Islamic Agape,” which would include the scenes of smiling Muslims and benevolent verses. Moreover, one can use “Fitna”s selective method to propagate against most other religions – such as, say, Judaism. Actually if you focus on the radical groups among the Jewish settlers in Israel, you can find a very similar language of hatred, and even acts of terrorism such as the mosque massacre perpetrated by Baruch Goldstein in Hebron in 1994. It is also remarkable that such fringe Jewish fundamentalists, like the followers of the late radical Rabbi Meir David Kahane, use passages from the Hebrew Bible in order to justify, and even amplify, their fervor. Actually certain parts of the Old Testament, and most notably the Book of Joshua, would overshadow any sura (chapter) of the Koran in terms of militancy. But the overwhelming majority of the world’s Jews know that the Book of Joshua, which tells the war of the Israelites against the pagan Canaanites, is a historical record which does not address today’s realities. Similarly, when they read Koran’s chapters about Prophet Muhammad’s war with pagan Arabs, most Muslims regard them as historical anecdotes. But a worrying number of Muslims, such as the ones that “Fitna” has captured, think differently. What makes them believe in a scripture-driven militancy is the same thing that influences radical Jewish settlers: They are in a sociopolitical context which radicalizes them. They believe that their values, identities and very lives of their children are in danger – and they conclude they are fighting the same existential war that Joshua or Muhammad fought centuries ago. Therefore the right thing to do in the face Islamic militancy is not to ask for revision in the Koran – as “Fitna” naively does – but to try to save the Muslims from the idea that they are under attack and humiliation. This idea might be stemming from real troubles – such as wars, conflicts or dictatorships in the Muslim world, or the sense of alienation felt by Muslims in Europe. Or it might be stemming from imaginary ones – beliefs in conspiracy theories about “the Elders of Zion,” or “the global war on Islam.” In any case, the solution is the stabilization and modernization of Muslim societies and communities. If the global jihadist battle cry, “Islam is under attack,” loses its steam, then, in the eyes of Muslims, the passages in the Koran that relate to jihad will become less and less literal. What Needs to Be Done? Well, this is what I would like to say about “Fitna,” at least in a nutshell. But there is also another issue, which is what Muslims should do about this film. Should we protest it, ask for its banning, and even threaten Wilders and his team? No, I don’t think so. The fanaticism of a movie would not be a reason to ban or censor it. Moreover, one could even argue that Mr. Wilders has done us a favor by presenting how some non-Muslims in the West perceive Islam. That perception, although highly biased, is a fact that we Muslims have to face and think about. Angry rantings, let alone violent protests, in the face of “Fitna” would actually be a confirmation of the film’s argument – that Muslims are, by nature, uncivilized people. Quite the contrary, I think this film, and all similar cases of anti-Islamic propaganda, should be countered by Muslims with dignity and civility. We can choose to ignore them, but if we will respond, it should be done politely, reasonably and scholarly. And, interestingly, that would be response which would find its justification in the Koran. “Repel the bad with something better,” verse 41:34 reads, “and, if there is enmity between you and someone else, he will be like a bosom friend.” For my part, I would prefer to chat with Mr. Wilders rather than bullying him. If he ever hits Turkey, I will be most glad to buy him coffee — a real Turkish one — and tell him about how I understand Islam as a believer. I could even take him to one of the magnificent mosques of Istanbul, in which men, women and children praise God and find moral inspiration. “Fitna” in the Islamic sense, which means “strife on Earth,” would be the very last thing these people would sympathize with. Quite many of them, unlike Mr. Wilders, even believe in a Europe in which Muslims and others can live together in peace. ]]> tag:www.thewhitepath.com,2008://1.216 2008-04-03T11:31:01Z 2008-04-03T11:33:16Z

[Originally published in Turkish Daily News] Maximilien Robespierre was the architect of the Great Terror of the French Revolution, and the behind-the-scenes killer of Georges Danton, who was sentenced to death by a revolutionary tribunal in the year 1794....

Turkish Daily News] Maximilien Robespierre was the architect of the Great Terror of the French Revolution, and the behind-the-scenes killer of Georges Danton, who was sentenced to death by a revolutionary tribunal in the year 1794. While accusing Danton with all the bizarre crimes, Robespierre had frankly put the logic behind such show trials. "When the Republic is at stake,” he proudly noted, “we can do anything."]]> Respectful, But Not Stupid I am speaking about the case to close down the ruling AKP (Justice and Development Party), and to ban its leadership from politics. It is a show trial, because, as I have noted in my previous columns, the indictment that the chief prosecutor launched last month and the Constitutional Court accepted last Monday is totally unsubstantiated. The “crimes” of the AKP are simply the statements or acts by its leaders toward broader religious freedom. And that very fact gives some observers the hope that such nonsense will be rejected by the country’s top judges, as it should be. I am not that optimistic, or naïve. I indeed see it as almost certain that the Constitutional Court will decide upon the closure of the AKP, if things continue in the current mood. The four opposing votes in the group of 11 judges that emerged during the discussion on President Abdullah Gül actually prove that not all court members are blind supporters of the chief prosecutor’s cause. But seven out of 11 is precisely the number of judges that is enough to politically execute the AKP. We should really note that the Turkish judiciary, along with its sister institutions, is enacted not to serve democracy. It is rather enacted to protect the system from democracy. In the past, in 1961, a similar high court decided upon the execution of Prime Minister Adnan Menderes and two of his ministers. During the course of that notorious show trial, Menderes had complained to the prosecutor about the unfairness of the whole process. The prosecutor, Salim Başol, had responded with a famous line: “Well, this is what the power that put you here demands.” Today’s differences lie not in the mindset of the Turkish revolutionaries, or the purpose of their show trials, but in their reduced ability to execute their goals. Turkey’s integration with the world, thank God, has unsharpened their swords. Yet, as you see, they are still alive and kicking. So what needs to be done?… There are some commentators who advice the AKP, and the rest of us, to “respect the legal process.” Well, we might be respectful, but we are not stupid. Everybody knows that this is a political attack, not a legal case. If we “respect” it, it will probably crush what we know as Turkish democracy. That’s why I think that the AKP should go on the “offensive,” and take the initiative to counter this assault. They should fix what Mr. Olli Rehn, the European Commissioner for Enlargement, rightfully described as “a systemic error in the Turkish constitutional framework.” They have enough seats in Parliament in order to initiate a constitutional amendment which will make it impossible to close down a political party unless it supports violence. Then they would have to take this amendment to a referendum, which is all the better, and which I bet they will win. Then the plot to overthrow Turkey’s popularly elected government will be popularly overthrown. Some commentators argue that such legal arrangements don’t work in the retrospective, and thus the case against the AKP would go on as is. No!.. In Turkish legal system, changes in laws affect all the ongoing processes. Abdullah Öcalan, the leader of the terrorist PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party), was put on trial in 1999 and the prosecutor had asked for his execution. But in the course of the trial, due to the EU-driven reforms, Turkey abolished the death penalty. Hence Öcalan is still safe and sound in his prison cell. Tanks in The Streets? Some Turks fear that a constitutional amendment by the AKP, which will render the “judiciary coup” ineffective, might drive “the Republic” even more insane, and its guardians might attempt to launch a military coup – a real live one: tanks in streets, bodies in torture chambers. Now, I concede that there is some risk, but a very minor one, and it is perhaps worth taking. How long will the coup makers be able to sit there, while all the world and much of the people will be against them? They will soon turn into something like the “State Emergency Committee” who tried to save the Soviet Union by a final attempt during the last days of Michael Gorbachev. They will fail. Now, a final word for my colleagues who have started to rant about “the mistakes of the AKP” these days, and have taken a “middle position” between the government and the coup makers. Yes, the AKP has zillions of mistakes, and I can lecture you about them all day long. Political parties do make mistakes, and it is our job to criticize them. But the current attack on the AKP cannot be justified by any of those arguments. Mistakes within democracy do not validate the attacks on democracy. Turkish pundits should realize that there is really no moral half way between democracy and tyranny. When you try to create such a midpoint, you don’t become an objective commentator. You just become an unprincipled one. ]]> tag:www.thewhitepath.com,2008://1.212 2008-03-30T01:05:32Z 2008-03-30T01:13:00Z

[Originally published in Turkish Daily News] For centuries “the divine rights of kings” was the justification for autocracy. Absolutist monarchs ruled their subjects with an authority they allegedly received from God. It took some time for those subjects to realize...

Turkish Daily News] For centuries “the divine rights of kings” was the justification for autocracy. Absolutist monarchs ruled their subjects with an authority they allegedly received from God. It took some time for those subjects to realize that this was simply an illusory rationalization of arbitrary political power. When the latter realized that no king has blue blood in his veins and divine blessing on his shoulders, they started to favor democracy. It was time for people's power to replace that of the monarchs.]]> Reason instead of God Interestingly, the modern autocrats used a justification akin to that of their pre-modern predecessors. There was a crucial difference, though. The divine rights of kings were replaced by undivine but still very powerful and even somewhat holy rights of the revolutionaries. For the Jacobins, the source of these rights was Reason – with a capital R. In fact, they even gave Reason a sacred status by enacting the statue of the Goddess of Reason on the high altar in Notre Dame de Paris. For the Bolsheviks, legitimacy came from “Scientific Socialism,” or, simply, “Science” itself. Their regime would also be empowered by cults of personalities created around Lenin and Stalin. These supposedly all-knowing leaders, whose statues filled Soviet streets and whose names renamed cities, became the source of the unquestioned rights of the communists. Now, to be frank, something similar has been ongoing in Turkey since the late 1920s. Our official textbooks love to tell us how our revolution saved us from the Sultan – whose regime was, by the way, a constitutional monarchy, not an absolutist tyranny – but they deliberately fail to explain what really happened afterwards. Turkey, of course, never experienced a dictatorship as harsh as that of the Bolsheviks, but our revolutionary cadre soon established an authoritarian state tradition, which would allow democracy only in a very limited sense. The way our revolutionaries claimed legitimacy has been curiously similar to their French and Bolshevik counterparts: An abstract concept called Enlightenment, and the cult of personality created around Atatürk. The Kemalist narrative in Turkey really depends on these two pillars. If you have spent time here, I am sure you must have seen that cult of personality with your own eyes – it is hard to miss, right? But one needs to examine the texts and words of the Kemalists in order to see how they justify their war on democracy by referring to the Enlightenment. Chief Prosecutor Abdurrahman Yalçınkaya, for example, in his indictment in which he asks for the ban of the “Islamist” ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), refers to “the philosophy of enlightenment” five times. He defines it as the “effort carried out against the hegemony of religion in all areas of social life, and which has ended with the ascension of human conscious.” And he accuses the AKP of trying to set the headscarf free in a way “which rejects all the achievements of mankind during the process of enlightenment.” Which Enlightenment? Now, I am no enemy of Enlightenment, but I am quite distasteful of nonsense such as above. Enlightenment is a heavily loaded philosophical concept, and there are many ways to understand, interpret and criticize it. I very much suspect that the chief prosecutor has any clue on the zillions of critical works on this topic. I very much doubt that he has read, or heard of, books such as Gertrude Himmelfarb's “Roads to Modernity: The British, French and American Enlightenments.” (Himmelfarb notes that the French regarded religion as an obstacle to modernity, while the Anglo-Saxons rather saw it as a source of inspiration.) I am, in fact, quite sure that what the chief prosecutor knows about these matters is limited to a few basic Kemalist tracts and monologues. But even that is irrelevant. Here we are speaking about a philosophical issue, but the man, the chief prosecutor, is trying to close down Turkey's largest political party. For him Enlightenment is actually only a justification to do away with democracy. It is really not too different from the way the Jacobins referred to Reason and the Bolsheviks referred to Science. That's how the Turkish version of the Animal Farm works. Its masters legitimize their autocracy by asserting that they have special rights to rule over the people. And we will not have a real democracy until they accept the fact that they are actually not more privileged, let alone smarter, than the rest of us. ]]> tag:www.thewhitepath.com,2008://1.214 2008-03-27T22:13:48Z 2008-03-31T12:18:52Z

[Originally published in Turkish Daily News] NEW YORK – Peter Berger, one of the world’s leading authorities on sociology of religion, put in a nutshell what all secularists, and especially Turkey’s fuming ones, should get. “Modernization does not necessarily secularize...

Turkish Daily News] NEW YORK – Peter Berger, one of the world’s leading authorities on sociology of religion, put in a nutshell what all secularists, and especially Turkey’s fuming ones, should get. “Modernization does not necessarily secularize societies,” the Boston University professor noted, “it rather pluralizes them.” ]]> The Future of Freud’s Illusion Religion’s significance might be turning into common wisdom today, but it was not so a century ago. Most intellectuals of the early 20th century actually believed that religion was a pre-modern myth which would soon expire thanks to modernization. In his book “The Future of an Illusion,” Sigmund Freud, who defined religious belief as some sort of neurosis, predicted its impending doom. “All thinking men,” argued one of Freud’s contemporaries, Ernest Hemingway, “are atheists.” Today we know not just that quite many of the thinking men are actually theists, but also that quite many of the atheists have not been very helpful with their thinking. (Just remember the achievements of late celebrities such as Stalin or Mao, and their millions of followers, and their millions of victims.) We also know that modernization does not necessarily detach people from the divine. The rise of the autonomous individual does not mean that he or she will be devoid of faith. That is indeed one possible route, but there is also the very opposite one, which Dr. Berger had aptly defined as “de-secularization.” This diversity is what makes modern societies pluralistic. Since individuals, and the communities they form, go in all sorts of directions, they end up in creating a colorful heterogeneity. If the political order, and the culture, of the society cherish that reality, then this is an open society in which different ideas attitudes and lifestyles co-exist, compete and sometimes mingle with each other. The open society presents a powerful challenge to the two types of fundamentalisms that we have — the religious and the secular. Both of these bitterly opposing views actually share a common ground in monism: Bothclaim that their truth should be followed by all people, and that if those people don’t get that, they must be either stupid or evil. (I am sure you must be familiar with religious fundamentalism. If you would like to see the secular one, come to Turkey, I will show you.) Open society is defined by neither religion nor irreligion. “Open society must be secular and religious, dogmatic and free,” notes Walter Russel Mead, senior CFR fellow who, in his recent book, “God and Gold: Britain, America, and the Making of the Modern World,” forcefully demonstrated a much overlooked fact: Religion not only has a right to exist in the open society, it also contributes to its making. Protestantism, in particular, has inspired entrepreneurialism and social change. (Mark C. Taylor explores the same topic in his fresh book, “After God,” with a special emphasis on Lutheranism, something he suggests that might be overshadowed by the Weberian stress on Calvinism.) The Theological Base One might wonder whether what worked with Protestantism, and which soon incorporated Catholicism as well, could work with Islam, too. Can Islam be compatible with, and contributory to, the open society? Or do the Islamist fundamentalists have a point when they claim that their totalitarian goals are simply what God wills? It is certain that a fresh reading of Islamic texts in the light of modern realities allow us to develop a Muslim vision for a democratic and pluralist order. First of all, there is the right to disbelieve. Unbelief and sin are things that God speaks about in the Koran; so they must be out there in the actual world. Passionate believers sometimes have a tendency to overlook this fact, and that’s why the very first passionate believer of Islam, Prophet Mohammed, was warned in the Koran. “If your Lord had willed, all the people on the earth would have had faith,” a verse reminded him, and rhetorically asked: “Do you think you can force people to be believers?” (10/99) Another Islamic theological basis for the open society would be the fact only God is omniscience and thus no mortal human being can claim to have monopoly over knowledge. Tradition shows that even Prophet Mohammed’s wisdom was questioned by his followers. “Is this your personal opinion, or a revelation from God,” was a question the prophet faced after some of his decisions. If no revelation was involved, then the issue would become a “secular” matter on which everybody had the right to offer views. The Turkish Experiment Such theological views in favor of a pluralist, democratic Islam are advanced by Muslim theologians and thinkers for quite sometime, but the more important question is whether Muslim societies are embracing them. In that regard, the Islamic revival and transformation in Turkey during the past two decades have been quite noteworthy. Despite all the setbacks and bumps on the road, Turkey’s Muslims have been able to develop a political vision which favors democracy and pluralism over the totalitarian vision of Islamism. It is no accident that the majority of Turkey’s Kurds, Armenians and even secular liberals (which are at odds with secular fundamentalists) voted for the Muslim democrat AKP (Justice and Development Party) in the elections of 2007. In today’s Turkey, some marginal elements left aside, Islam is a force which is in favor of, and not against, the open society. The only bad news is that Turkey’s secular fundamentalists, who have been watching all this in horror, have just decided to crush the Turkish experiment with Islam and democracy. Had Karl Popper lived, he probably would add them to his list of “enemies” of the open society. They would even top the list. Fascism is dead and communism is gone, and there are really not too many autocrats around besides the ones in Ankara. ]]> tag:www.thewhitepath.com,2008://1.211 2008-03-26T21:48:00Z 2008-03-26T21:57:52Z

[Originally published in Wall Street Journal] Who would you expect to be zealous enemies of "moderate Islam"? Islamic fundamentalists? You bet. From Osama bin Laden & Co. to less violent but equally fanatic groups, Islamist militants abhor their co-religionists who...

Wall Street Journal] Who would you expect to be zealous enemies of "moderate Islam"? Islamic fundamentalists? You bet. From Osama bin Laden & Co. to less violent but equally fanatic groups, Islamist militants abhor their co-religionists who reject tyranny and violence in the name of God. But they are not alone. In this part of the world, there is another group that holds a totally opposite worldview but shares a similar hatred of moderate Islam: Turkey's secular fundamentalists.]]> This secular hatred comes, most recently, in the form of a stunning attempt by judicial means to shut down the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and ban its top 71 members, including Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, from politics for five years. Even President Abdullah Gül, a former AKP minister, is on the to-ban list of the country's chief prosecutor, Abdurrahman Yalcinkaya, who submitted his indictment to the Constitutional Court in Ankara on March 14. The court is expected to decide this week whether to take up the case. It is, needless to say, the first time that a ruling party, which won 47% of the vote less than a year ago, is threatened with judicial extermination. In the past, pro-Kurdish parties have been closed down due to their links with the outlawed PKK (Kurdistan Workers Party). Yet the AKP is under threat simply because of its political views. It's a judicial version of the military coup d'etats that Turkey has experienced four times in the past half century. Yet what are those political views of the AKP which, according to the chief prosecutor, require its banning? The 53,000-word indictment gives a clear answer: The AKP folks are too religious, they speak about God and religion in the public square, and they want more religious freedom. The major "crime" of the AKP that is emphasized in the indictment, and which provoked the whole process, is the recent constitutional amendment that opened the way for female students to wear Islamic head scarves in Turkish universities. This ban was enacted in 1989 by a Constitutional Court decision. Since then thousands of young girls have been forced to choose between their beliefs and a university education. Some have gone to European or American colleges. Others have tried to wear wigs on top of their scarves in order to enter Turkish campuses. The indictment also presents lengthy quotes from Prime Minister Erdoğan that demonstrate his "antisecular views and activities." These include his remarks in June 2005 to CNN's Wolf Blitzer: "My daughters can go to American universities with their head scarf. There is religious freedom in your country, and we want to bring the same thing to Turkey." In another "criminal" statement, made in London in September 2005, Mr. Erdoğan said, "my dream is a Turkey in which veiled and unveiled girls will go to the campus hand in hand." During a February 2005 interview with Germany's Welt am Sonntag, his "crime" was to note, "We Turks prefer the Anglo-Saxon interpretation of secularism to the French one" -- for the former grants more religious freedom to its citizens. For the chief prosecutor, these all prove that Mr. Erdoğan and his party aim to dilute and then overthrow secularism. Actually there is some truth to this claim, because Turkey's official secularism is fiercely illiberal and shows limited respect for religious freedom. Any religious expression or symbol in the public square is considered an infringement of secular principles. For Ankara's old guard, the public square should be dominated by what former President Ahmet Necdet Sezer proudly defined as "the state ideology." According to Princeton historian Sükrü Hanioglu, this ideology is rooted in the "vulgar materialism" of late 19th-century Germany, which heralded a postreligious age of "science and reason." This philosophy, which was emulated by some of the Young Turks and inherited by most of their Kemalist successors, has been openly endorsed by the Constitutional Court. "The secularism principle," Turkey's top judicial body argued in a 1989 decision, "requires that the society should be kept away from thoughts and judgments that are not based on science and reason." A similar secular fundamentalism is propagated in the West by popular thinkers such as Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens -- but there it is one of many competing ideas. In Turkey secular fundamentalism is the official ideology, and it is eager to crush any alternative. Besides their ideology, Turkish secularists also use a seemingly realist argument. If religion is given even a little bit of space in public, they argue, it will soon dominate the whole system. This doctrine of pre-emptive intolerance guides, and misleads, Ankara's establishment on virtually every issue. If we allow the Kurds to speak in their mother tongue, the establishment has argued for seven decades, we will have a Kurdish problem. But today they have a much bigger problem precisely because they have suppressed the Kurdish language and culture. Despite their presumptions, it is repression, not freedom, that feeds political radicalism. Turkish secularists also portray the AKP as part of the radical Islamist movement. For them, there is no difference between the Gucci-wearing, head-scarved woman in Istanbul who wants to study business and the chador-wearing woman in Tehran who cries, "Death to capitalism!" But the Muslim-democrat AKP is quite different from the Islamists of the Middle East. That's simply because Turkish Islam is a unique interpretation of the global faith. Since the Ottoman reforms of the 19th century, Turkey's observant Muslims have been widely favorable toward democracy. And since the 1980s, thanks to their engagement in globalization and capitalism, they have become much more Western-oriented than much of the secular elite. That's why the secularists constantly accuse the AKP and the supporting "Muslim bourgeoisie" of serving "American imperialism" and "Zionism." The same paranoia is reflected in the chief prosecutor's indictment. In it he notes, apparently in all seriousness, that Colin Powell and other U.S. officials have praised "moderate Islam," and he connects Prime Minister Erdoğan to "the American Broader Middle East Project which aims at ruling countries via moderate Islamic regimes." The U.S. should indeed encourage Turkey not to enact a "moderate Islamic regime" -- a project that exists only in the fantasies of Turkish secularists -- but to achieve a real democracy in which the sovereignty of the people overrides the ideology of its bureaucrats and army officers. What the latter threatens these days is not only the most popular and successful political party of Turkey, but also this country's democracy. tag:www.thewhitepath.com,2008://1.210 2008-03-22T13:30:37Z 2008-03-22T13:41:42Z

[Originally published in Turkish Daily News] The latest assault on the elected representatives of the Turkish people, as you might have noted, has come in the form of a judiciary coup d'état attempt. Turkey's chief prosecutor filed a case...

Turkish Daily News] The latest assault on the elected representatives of the Turkish people, as you might have noted, has come in the form of a judiciary coup d'état attempt. Turkey's chief prosecutor filed a case against the incumbent Justice and Development Party (AKP). He wants to close the party down, and ban 71 of its top members, including Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, from politics.]]> Speaking Too Much! As for the AKP, there is, of course, nothing whatsoever about terrorism, violence, or even a hate speech. The party is under threat simply because of its political views. The state establishment holds different views, and it simply wants to eliminate those who disagree. But what are those views? The chief prosecutor has done a good job on that and collected quite many quotes from AKP leaders, and especially Mr. Erdoğan. These quotes, he thinks, are enough to prove that this party is anti-secular and thus deserves eradication. I have not seen an English translation of the chief prosecutor's indictment yet, so I decided to translate some of the “criminal” remarks of Mr. Erdoğan. They include these: - “A democratic country should grant religious freedom. This includes the right of the citizens to express their beliefs, but of course with respect to the laws. The headscarf ban is not liberal.” - “Banning [the headscarf] is a method practiced by the French. We Turks rather appreciate the Anglo-Saxon interpretation of secularism. We think it is ridiculous to have such bans in the 21st century.” - “My daughter had passed the exams to go to Boğaziçi University, but she could not go there. Her points were lowered because she is a graduate of the imam-hatip [religious] high school. We, as a family, have suffered from this situation. Actually this problem needs to be solved through the consensus of all political parties. I do not want to solve it alone, because that creates tension.” - (In an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer:) “My daughters are going to college in the United States [with their headscarves]. There is that freedom there, but not in my country. I only bear this pain right now in order to avoid a social tension in my country. I think we will suffer for sometime… But I believe that in the end justice will prevail.” - “[While approving Turkey's ban on headscarf] the European Court of Human Rights should have asked the opinion Islamic scholars as expert witnesses on whether this veil is an ideological, sociological or religious thing… They should have asked and then make their own decision. We will respect their decision.” - “My biggest wish is [to see] a country in which our veiled and unveiled girls go hand in hand to university. We are working toward that goal. Solving this [problem] is my greatest passion.” - “99 percent of our country is Muslim. Thus this is a Muslim country… But being an Islamic country is different from being an Islamic state.” I do not know what you think about these quotes from Mr. Erdoğan, but all of them sound reasonable to me. You might find them unreasonable, of course, but probably not criminal. Actually even the chief prosecutor does not argue so. But he has an amazing line of thinking. After listing dozens of such quotes by the prime minister in his indictment, he said: ”For the actions of a political party to require its closure, these actions do not necessarily have to be defined as crimes in the penal code… It is enough that these actions have become public and include a particular topic.” So there is no criminal action that the prime minister or his party has taken, but they simply spoke too much on a “particular topic” that the chief prosecutor and his comrades did not like! The Antithesis of Justice That particular topic is the nature of Turkish secularism. Many uninitiated Westerners perceive this as separation of church and state – which is great principle, by the way – but here things are different. In the eyes of the Turkish establishment, secularism means that citizens can practice religion only in their private lives. Any social movement inspired by religion, or any religious symbol in public, is considered to be a violation. This, of course, requires the suppression of religion by authoritarian measures. That is why Turkish secularism has no parallels in the free world. Even the French secularism, which is said to be a source of inspiration for Turkey, is much more liberal. And the “crime” of Mr. Erdoğan is to try to liberalize this fiercely illiberal system. One of his predecessors, Prime Minister Adnan Menderes, paid the price by being executed by the military in 1961. Now, in post-modern times, it is the chief prosecutor who wants to execute him – but this time only politically. Will that plot against Turkish democracy succeed? We will see.... If justice will really prevail as Mr. Erdoğan hopingly said in one of his “criminal” remarks, then the prosecutor must lose. He just has become the very antithesis of justice. ]]>