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Turkey: a divided country

Do the Europeans really understand what the fighting in Turkey at the moment is all about, or are they blind in their judgment of the current political developments? Günter Seufert with voices from the Bosporus.

"The Europeans are blind” writes Ahmet Altan, Turkey's most-read contemporary novelist after Orhan Pamuk. Since women and youths in Ankara and Istanbul, in Samsun and in Ismir took to the streets in masses to demonstrate against the Muslim conservative government, people in Europe believe once again that the fight in Turkey is about secularism or religion.

The flags of the founder of the Turkish Republic, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, during a pro-secular demonstration in Turkey.
Photo: AP

For Ahmet Altan, however, it's about military control or democracy; about war with Iraq or peace with the Kurds; about Turkey's bonds to the western world or a reorientation towards Russia, China and Iran.For Altan believes (and he's not the only one) that the army in Turkey is today divided into two camps, one of which seeks a clean break with the West and its democratic rules. What unsettled the soldiers was the presidential election. In Turkey the president has a great deal of authority, and if a candidate gets elected who removes himself from the influence of the military then the generals will eventually have to leave politics. This is the reason for the military memorandum, according to Altan, not the politics of the governing AK (Justice and Development) Party - this although Altan is not a R. Tayyip Erdogan party-man, but a libertarian author with little tolerance for bigoted Muslims.

The same goes for Nilüfer Göle, who today teaches at the Paris Ecole des Hautes Etudes et en Sciences Sociale. She also says, however, that the AK Party hasn't renounced the (social) consent for secularism. Why then, are so many people taking to the streets? For one thing, according to Göle, because the elite and the middle class have to share their status symbols with the devout for the first time: concert halls, skiing regions, positions in bureaucracy and at universities. For another, we have been indoctrinated to fear the abolition of (Atatürk's) reforms since childhood. In reality, one half of the population fears the other and intellectuals rely on the military. Nilüfer Göle describes this as the "childhood disease of the Republic”. This childhood disease recurs when middle-class women and soldiers march shoulder-to-shoulder, she claims, and calls the general's memorandum and the demonstrations led by women a 'feminine coup'.

Baskin Oran was taken to court last year as chairman of the Minority and Cultural Rights Commission and is a democrat. He can understand the fear that drives women to such an alliance, but that doesn't mean he considers them innocent. The politics professor claims that the secular women are afraid that "the religious” will one day force them to wear a headscarf, in the same way that "the laicists” force the pious women who want to go to uni to remove their headscarves.

Oran says that since the demonstrators only want religious freedom for themselves it's not about laicism for them, at least not when laicism means the separation of State and religion, and a state which is neutral in religious issues is the goal. Sure, the most common slogan was "Turkey is and will remain laicist”, but what does that actually mean? How do Turkish politics come across regarding religion?

On the one hand, Turkish religious politics project Islam in a bad light, and on the other it finances Sunni Islam. Sunni Islam is a compulsory subject in schools, the state trains Imams and prayer leaders, pays their salaries and manages the mosques. In fact, the state supports Sunni Islam, and is afraid of it at the same time. In comparison, the Alewite minority, also Muslim, is systematically excluded. There are no schools or training for them and their churches are not recognised. Worse still: the state did not intervene in three pogroms carried out against this religious community in Anatolia in 1978, 1979, and most recently in 1993 (in Sivas, eastern Anatolia).

As far as other religious groups are concerned: in the last hundred years Turkey's got rid of nearly all of its non-Muslim citizens. In 1915 Armenian life in Anatolia was extinguished, in 1923 the orthodox Greeks of Turkey were made to return to Greece and the Greek Muslims to Turkey, and in 1934 the Jews of Thrace were forced to resettle in Istanbul. In 1936 religious minority foundations were partially expropriated, in 1942 a special tax was imposed on Jews and Christians, in 1955 the government provoked pogroms on the Greeks of Istanbul, and nine years later deported those Greek citizens living in Istanbul. The fact that Sunni Islam is unrivalled today and can be perceived as a threat to the secular Republic is the result of such politics. Do the protesters want to continue in this manner?

"If somebody demonstrates for laicism and against political Islamism”, writes Baskin Oran, "one would expect that he criticises this artificial unity and welcomes religious pluralism as a counterweight to Sunni Islam”. Rahsan Ecevit, honorary chairwoman of the Democratic Left Party (DSP) however, who also called for demonstrations, sees Turkey's religious unity threatened! Professor Alparslan Isikli, from the Atatürk Thinking Association which organised the demonstration in Ankara, said at the demo that the "christian missionaries do what they want” in today's Turkey, and was incensed "that free bibles are being distributed”. This causes Baskin Oran to ask "where else in the world are there laicists who attack the minority religions with the aim of weakening the dominant religion?”.

The answer to the riddle lies in the fact that in Turkish laicism, a state-defined and "laicist” Sunni Islam is part of the citizen's cultural "baggage”. One version of the religion for all is considered to cement the unity of the nation, and those who want a variety of religions and their interpretations are observed as mistrustfully as those who talk of rights for the Kurds. For only when one ideology is equally binding for all are all ideologically controllable.

This national ideology is reaching its limits today. Kurds and Alewites are speaking up; liberal Muslims are discovering the rights of the individual in Islam; and the EU calls for the protection of religious and language minorities. At the same time, the parliamentary majority wants to elect a new president whose allegiance to the old national elite is questionable. In this situation the military releases a memorandum and huge Republic demonstrations occur. The participants demand not only the protection of laicism, but also "absolute independence” and shout slogans against "western imperialism”. The appropriate slogan is "Neither EU or USA”. This slogan has nothing to do with the desire for more democracy. On the contrary, democracy and pluralism are seen as instruments with which to split the Turkish nation and its fatherland.

The leader of the Opposition, Deniz Baykal, whose Republican People's Party (CHP) also called for the demonstrations, claims: "Of late Turkey is being forced to give up its national development, which began with the Republic and is not yet complete. At times this is carried out in the name of democracy”, continues Baykal, "at times with a weapon in hand, as in the case of the PKK, and at times in the name of the EU”. Yasar Büyükanit, Commander of the Turkish Armed Forces is also of the opinion that some of the European Union's demands primarily serve the PKK and lead to the division of Turkey.

It's no wonder that the demonstrations, despite the large number of women and youths, are serious cause for concern for some liberal intellectuals. The politilogist Ayse Kadioglu finds parallels between Germany during the Weimar period and today's Turkey, and says that when the authoritarian state experiences mass approval from below it smells like fascism. That didn't mean that the protesters were fascists - after all, the Germans from Weimar hadn't known where the current of national frenzy led to.

Baskin Oran wants to be elected into parliament as an independent candidate from Istanbul against the national left of CHP and DSP. He criticises the demonstrations, while at the same time attempting to win over the participants. He says: "The participants of the demonstrations are marching to get rid of their fears whilst the organisers want to stir up people's fears”.

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