Austin American-Statesman (Texas)
July 22, 2007 Sunday
Final Edition
Of mosque and state
by Margaret Coker INTERNATIONAL STAFF
IZMIR, Turkey – In the past few weeks of a hotly contested election
campaign, ads have popped up across Turkey with an ominous message.
A stark image shows a black ballot box and a Muslim woman in full
facial veil superimposed on it. "Do you know what’s coming?" the ads
ask.
Today, Turks go to the polls for a parliamentary vote that has become
a battle over Turkey’s strict separation of Islam and state, an
official secularism that has distinguished this Muslim republic since
its founding in 1923.
Turkey has long debated the role of Islam in society, but this
current round of soul-searching has increasingly high stakes. A
country of 71 million people, Turkey is a member of NATO, hosts a
significant American military presence and borders such trouble spots
as Iran, Iraq and Syria. If pollsters are correct, Turks will
re-elect by a large margin the ruling Justice and Development Party,
known by its Turkish acronym AKP, a political movement whose leader
has been jailed in the past for his connection to Islamic
fundamentalists and who vows to undo laws banning religion from
public life.
To many pillars of Turkish society, especially the military and
judges, the rise of the AKP is another example of Islamic radicals
trying to topple the established order in the Middle East. Others see
support for the party as a reflection of a deep transformation under
way in Turkish society, in which new classes of voters are
challenging the country’s dominant, and at times authoritarian,
elite. The AKP offers stability, they say, without giving up the
country’s commitment to democracy.
"People try to say that this election is about head scarves, but that
is wrong," said Nukhet Hoter Goksel, a female professor who is
running for re-election as an AKP deputy. "The issue is democracy.
The Turkish system is based on secularism and an elite that
discriminates against large portions of society. That is what we are
trying to change."
President Bush has called Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip
Erdogan, the 53-year-old leader of the AKP, a force for moderation in
the Middle East. Erdogan’s free-market economic reforms and attempts
to integrate with Europe have been warmly received in Washington.
The relationship is important to American foreign policy goals.
Turkey is a key logistical link to the U.S. mission in Iraq – 75
percent of supplies are flown to American troops via the Incirik Air
Base in southern Turkey – and Turkish troops are part of the
multinational force based in Afghanistan.
But the opposition in Turkey argues that curbing the AKP’s political
influence is vital for national security.
"Those who say the AK Party is a moderate Islamic force are naive.
They want to send us back to the Middle Ages," said Oguz Oyan, a
deputy secretary general of the Republican People’s Party, which was
created by modern Turkey’s founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.
The party, known as the CHP, is expected to take second place in
today’s election.
Ataturk carved the Republic of Turkey from the tatters of the Ottoman
Empire after World War I. He declared religion to be a backward force
that contributed to the Turks’ defeat in the war and he changed the
country’s identity from Islamic to secular. Turkish law bans
students, teachers, judges and state employees from wearing head
scarves to work or class or exhibiting religious symbols in public
buildings.
That legacy has fostered a Turkish sense of nationalism divorced from
Islam, with Turkey’s military seeing itself as defender of the
secular order. The military has staged four coups in the past 40
years, suppressed political dissidents and, in 1982, imposed a new
constitution on the country.
In May, the military issued a veiled threat to overthrown Erdogan’s
government after the prime minister nominated Foreign Minister
Abdullah Gul, a party member whom Erdogan described as a "religious
man," to become president. Opposition lawmakers boycotted the
parliamentary vote on the nomination, arguing that Gul’s election
would remove the last obstacle to an Islamic takeover of the
government.
Turkey’s top court, which is secular, then intervened and declared
the process invalid. The crisis, which prompted the Bush
administration to warn the military against staging a coup, ended
with Erdogan rescinding Gul’s nomination.
The Gul affair galvanized those opposed to the AKP and massive,
pro-secular rallies were held in major cities. Opposition lawmakers
accused Erdogan of slyly embracing democracy while secretly intending
to make Turkey the next Saudi Arabia.
Filling a vacuum
Turkey’s last military coup occurred in 1997 after the Welfare Party
– the Islamic movement in which Erdogan and Gul cut their political
teeth – won general elections.
The military outlawed Welfare. The party’s leaders were jailed and a
secular party won the next election that the military allowed to be
held.
These events marked the first major break between Turkey’s citizenry
and the state, according to analysts.
"The state proved itself unable to listen to the needs and voices of
the people," said Bulent Tanla, a political scientist and CHP member.
"The AK Party has not sprung out of nowhere. It is filling in the
vacuum."
Erdogan, after being released from jail, refashioned himself,
shifting away from his previous role as an Islamic visionary to
become a more pragmatic social modernizer.
A popular mayor of Istanbul for four years, he started the AKP in
2002 as a way back into national politics. That year, the party won
33 percent of the national vote, thanks largely to support from
working-class Turks and the urban poor, and he formed Turkey’s first
single-party government – one formed without the need of a coalition
– in decades.
In the current campaign, Erdogan has tried to sidestep the religion
question by sticking to talking points about his government’s
economic and social achievements, which include a doubling of per
capita income from $2,600 a year to more than $5,000, a reduction in
interest rates and an overhaul of the national health insurance
system.
The AKP’s contentious relationship with the military, however, has
left it open to attacks from smaller right-wing parties that it is
soft on terrorism. Turkish soldiers, although not fighting in Iraq,
are dying almost daily along the Turkish-Iraqi border in ambushes set
by Kurdish separatists who are hoping to create their own state on
Turkish, Iraqi and Iranian territory.
It is a message that plays well in places such as Izmir, Turkey’s
third-largest city and a shipping hub known for famous naval battles
won by Ataturk.
In the 2002 elections, the CHP won 16 parliamentary seats from Izmir.
The AKP won eight, one of its worst showings in Turkey’s 81
provinces. This year, the Nationalist Movement Party, or MHP, is also
expected to do well in Izmir, a result that pollsters say could be
repeated in other large metropolitan areas and will offer a measure
of how well Erdogan and his party are received across society’s
spectrum.
Women’s rights
In Izmir, Hotar Goksel, a self-described secular Turk who favors
linen pantsuits and diamond earrings, and wears her light-brown hair
straight down her back, heads the AKP’s list of candidates. She spent
20 years teaching social policy at Izmir’s leading university before
accepting Erdogan’s offer to join his team.
Elected to parliament in 2002, she is a member of the party’s
executive committee, which meets weekly with Erdogan to shape
legislative policy.
Erdogan’s government has become known for furthering women’s rights
more than any other after Ataturk pushed for a woman’s right to vote
in 1925. Husbands are no longer officially heads of households, and
wives do not need their consent to work. Laws that used to dismiss
rape charges if the man married his victim have been rewritten.
Goksel says supporting religion is not anti-Turkish. If re-elected
today, she plans to push for an end to the head scarf ban in
universities. Such a move, she said, will increase the number of
women seeking higher education, especially from rural areas.
"We represent all faces in Turkey," she told voters gathered at a
recent campaign meeting.
In a way, the AKP’s biggest problem could come if it is too
successful. If the party wins two-thirds or more of the 550
parliamentary seats, it will have the power to select a new president
and amend the constitution. Then, Turkey might find itself back in
the same standoff with the military that it saw in May.
For many Turks, tanks in the street pose a bigger threat than head
scarves on college students.
"The army is a bully that can take sides when it wants, bend the
rules whenever it suits them," said Tarhan Erden, the head of
Istanbul’s Konya research center who has studied each of Turkey’s 15
elections. "What we have missing in society is the will to rein them
in."
Turkey in facts and figures
Geography: 297,200 square miles (slightly larger than Texas) in
southeastern Europe and southwestern Asia. Bordered by Bulgaria and
Greece to west; Georgia, Armenia and Iran to east; Iraq and Syria to
south.
Population: 71 million.
Culture: Predominantly Muslim. Turkish is official language;
Kurdish, Arabic, Armenian and Greek are also spoken.
History: Modern republic created in 1923 after collapse of Ottoman
Empire following World War I. Strongly secular foundations laid by
national leader, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. Military sees itself as
guardian of secularism.
Politics: Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Islamic-rooted party
came to power in 2002. In today’s election for the 550-seat
parliament, secular parties will attempt to wrest power from Erdogan,
whom they accuse of trying to impose religion on society. Turkish
democracy has been interrupted several times by military coups.
Insurgents from minority Kurdish population are fighting for autonomy
in the southeast.
Economy: Recovering from an economic slump in late 2000, the country
has enjoyed a growth rate of about 7 percent in the past several
years and a rise in per capita income. Unemployment, however, remains
high.
Foreign relations: Turkey, the only Muslim member of NATO, began
European Union membership negotiations in 2005. Has territorial
disputes with Greece in Aegean Sea; divided island of Cyprus also is
source of tension.
Source: Associated Press, CIA World Factbook