FUNDAMENTALLY SECULAR
Alfred Stepan
Guardian
March 25, 2008
UK
Turkey’s ruling party does not represent a threat to the tenets of its
constitution, and the chief prosecutor is wrong to suggest otherwise.
The chief prosecutor of Turkey’s high court of appeals recently
recommended to the country’s constitutional court that the ruling
Justice and Development party (AKP) be permanently banned. Only last
July, the AKP was overwhelmingly re-elected in free and fair elections
to lead the government.
The chief prosecutor also formally recommended that prime minister
Recep Erdogan, president Abdullah Gul, and 69 other leading political
figures be banned from politics five years.
Clearly, banning the AKP would trigger a political crisis that would
end Turkey’s efforts to join the EU in the foreseeable future and
threaten its recent strong economic growth. So the chief prosecutor’s
threat should not be taken lightly, all the more so given that the
constitutional court has banned 18 political parties (including the
AKP’s predecessor party) since the current constitution was introduced
in 1982. Indeed, the recent call to ban the AKP is directly related
to its efforts to change Turkey’s constitution.
The underlying charge in the chief prosecutor’s indictment is that
the AKP has been eroding secularism. But the origins of the current
constitution, and its definition of secularism, are highly suspect.
Turkey’s existing constitution was adopted in 1982 as a direct
product of the military coup in 1980. The five senior generals who
led the coup appointed, directly or indirectly, all 160 members of
the consultative assembly that drafted the new constitution, and they
retained a veto over the final document. In the national ratification
referendum that followed, citizens were allowed to vote against the
military-sponsored draft, but not to argue against it publicly.
As a result, the 1982 constitution has weaker democratic origins
than any in the EU. Its democratic content was also much weaker,
assigning, for example, enormous power (and a military majority)
to the National Security Council.
While the AKP has moderated this authoritarian feature, it is
difficult to democratise such a constitution fully, and official EU
reports on Turkey’s prospects for accession repeatedly call for a
new constitution, not merely an amended one.
With public opinion polls indicating that the AKP’s draft constitution,
prepared by an academic committee, would be accepted through normal
democratic procedures, the chief prosecutor acted to uphold the type of
secularism enshrined in the 1982 constitution, which many commentators
liken to French secularism. Yet the comparison with what the French
call laicité is misleading.
In Turkey the only religious education that is tolerated is under
the strict control of the state, whereas in France a wide variety of
privately supported religious education is allowed, and since 1959
the state has paid for much of the Catholic church’s primary school
costs. In Turkey, Friday prayers are written by civil servants in the
70,000-member state directorate of religious affairs, and all Turkish
imams also must be civil servants. No similar controls exist in France.
Similarly, until the AKP came to power and began to loosen
restrictions, it was virtually impossible in Turkey to create
a new church or synagogue, or to create a Jewish or Christian
foundation. This may be why the Armenian patriarch urged ethnic
Armenians in Turkey to vote for the AKP in last July’s elections. Here,
too, no such restrictions exist in France.
What really worries some democratic secularists in Turkey and elsewhere
is that the AKP’s efforts at constitutional reform might be simply
a first step toward introducing sharia law. If the constitutional
court will not stop a potential AKP-led imposition of sharia, who will?
There are two responses to this question. First, the AKP insists that
it opposes creating a sharia state, and experts say that there is no
"smoking gun" in the chief prosecutor’s indictment showing that the
AKP has moved toward such a goal. Second, support for sharia, never
high in Turkey, has actually declined since the AKP came to power,
from 19% in 1996 to 8% in 2007.
Given that the AKP’s true power base is its support in democratic
elections, any attempt to impose sharia would risk alienating many
of its own voters.
Given this constraint, there is no reason for anyone, except for
"secular fundamentalists," to support banning the AKP, Erdogan, or Gul,
and every reason for Turkey to continue on its democratic path. Only
that course will enable Turkey to construct a better constitution
than it has now.
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