Issue No. 612
Opinion
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14 - 20 November 2002 Issue No. 612 Opinion |
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Recommend this page | ||
Turkey's new experiment
Is Turkey witnessing an experiment in reconciliation between Islam and the West? asks Mohamed Sid-Ahmed
It is probably premature to talk about Turkey's future only ten days after parliamentary elections resulted in a sweeping victory for the Islamic Justice and Development Party (JDP) under the leadership of Recep Tayyip Erdogan. What is certain, however, is that we are facing an event out of the usual which can have long term effects on Islamic movements throughout the Middle East and, possibly, all over the world.
The Justice and Development Party is the third and most moderate in a sequence of political parties which have risen from the ranks of the Islamic movement. Despite winning only one third of the vote, it has secured a two-thirds majority in parliament (363 of 550 seats). With only four extra seats, the JDP would have had enough votes to be able to change the Constitution without help from any other party.
Until 4 November, Turkish politics seemed set on a course very different from the one the electorate called for at the polls. With a well- established Western orientation, Turkey is a friend of the United States and a candidate for membership in the European Union, despite the fact that 95 per cent of the population live in Anatolia, which is part of Asia not Europe. It is a member of NATO and, although it is an Islamic country, it has a strong secular tradition in conformity with the teachings of Kemal Ataturk. Moreover, in a bid to counter-balance the weight of the Arab world, Ankara has developed close relations with Israel.
But the traditional Turkish buildup was suddenly shaken by what has been described as a political earthquake. Turkey's electoral system allows a representation in parliament when a party receives at least 10 per cent of the vote, a requirement 16 of the country's 18 accredited parties failed to satisfy. The idea behind the 10 per cent threshold is to ensure that the legislative assembly does not fall prey to the filibustering tactics of small parties. However, the electoral law ended up producing just the opposite of the desired result in the latest elections, with 45 per cent of the electorate unrepresented in parliament, while, with only one third of the vote, the JDP got two-thirds of the seats. As to the party led by outgoing Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit, it got a paltry 1.3 per cent of the vote. In an area of southeast Anatolia, the Turkish Kurds, more numerous there than elsewhere, got only 6.2 of the votes and, as such, remained -- nationwide -- outside Parliament.
Erdogan's first statement after being elected was that his party is committed to upholding secularism and accelerating Turkey's integration into the European Union. This did not sit too well with all the members of his party, however, who fear the JDP's Islamic identity is being sacrificed on the altar of expediency.
But Erdogan perceives the JDP as the Islamic counterpart of the Christian-Democratic parties in Europe. Before his election, he served a four- year term as mayor of Istanbul, where his personal rectitude and anti-corruption drive set him apart from the majority of Turkish politicians. The country's political life is plagued by endemic corruption and a deeply-entrenched bureaucratic tradition. By breaking out of the mold, Erdogan managed to build himself a popular power base that served him well in the elections.
However, despite his reputation, Erdogan cannot himself become prime minister, having been banned from running for office by a 1998 court ruling for reading out a poem the court said incited religious hatred. He is thus obliged to nominate somebody else for the post, a dichotomous power-sharing formula whose consequences are difficult to predict. There is also the danger that the military, which was instrumental in ousting an Islamist party from power five years ago, will intervene once again to return Turkey to the secular path, even though Erdogan has been careful to allay their fears. Indeed, some observers believe that Erdogan's declared intention to speed up Turkey's integration into the EU and his pledge to uphold secularism are designed to reassure the country's powerful military establishment and prevent it from meddling in the affairs of civil society.
Also according to analysts, the surprise victory of the JDP is less indicative of a desire on the part of the Turkish electorate to install an Islamic party in power than of a desire to punish the traditional parties which formerly governed Turkey and are responsible for the sorry state of the economy and the unprecedented level of corruption. Radical problems require radical solutions; hence the electorate's rejection of the entrenched political establishment in favour of an untested centre-right party in the hope that its Islamic ethic could effectively fight the corruption many blame for Turkey's devastating economic crisis.
With over two million members of the country's workforce unemployed, the economic crisis is fast acquiring the features of a full- fledged political crisis. Erdogan has his work cut out for him even without pressure on the domestic front from the military or secular establishments. The United States is poised to attack Iraq, Turkey's neighbour; the situation in Palestine has never been worse; the problem of Cyprus has acquired new urgency, with Greece threatening to veto the expansion of the European Union unless Cyprus is admitted and the European Union unwilling to admit the island while it is still divided. Last Tuesday, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan came forward with a plan to reunify the island, which must be approved by the Greek and Turkish governments. These are highly volatile issues which face Erdogan with a formidable challenge.
On the question of how he will react to an American attack against Iraq, Erdogan announced that he will defer to the decision of the Turkish military, which enjoys close relations with the American military, perhaps hoping the latter will intervene to prevent the Turkish military from meddling in the country's civilian affairs.
All the statements Erdogan has made since his party swept to power have been moderate and conciliatory, pressing home the point that enmity between the military/secular establishment and the new government is not inevitable, despite the JDP's Islamic identity. Although as mayor of Istanbul Erdogan pursued an Islamist agenda, he declared that he will now adopt a broader approach based on a commitment to secularism and the rule of law. His party has taken in secular conservatives and nominated many women and he is obviously trying to avoid any clash with the military. The clear message he is conveying is that Islam and democracy are not incompatible, and has succeeded in convincing European leaders that the Turkish experiment "should be given a chance". The EU's foreign policy commissioner, Xavier Solana, has announced that Europe "will judge the new Turkish government according to its acts, not its pronouncements, and the most important test for the European Union is how the JDP will act with respect to the IMF".
However, voices have been raised, from both the Right and the Left in Europe, opposing Turkey's integration into the European Union. Former French president, Valery Giscard d'Estaing, has been the most vocal of all. His main argument is that 95 per cent of Turkey's population lives in Asia Minor and that admitting Turkey could encourage other non-European countries, like Morocco for example, to apply for EU membership.
Whether or not Turkey achieves its dream of joining the EU, the victory of the JDP is of enormous significance, not least because for the first time a Muslim country with an Islamic party in power is pleading for reconciliation with, not hostility towards, the West. If the experiment is successful, it will prove that secularism can be liberal and that democracy can flourish in an Islamic environment. It would also go far towards refuting the contention that Muslim countries and the West are doomed to remain separated from one another by impenetrable "civilisational walls". The international community has every interest in ensuring that the Turkish experiment succeeds in breaking down those walls.
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