TURKEY’S ISLAMIST DANGER: ISLAMISTS APPROACH EUROPE
by Bassam Tibi
Middle East Quarterly
Winter 2009
Since their electoral landslide victory in November 2002, Islamists
within Turkey’s Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkinma
Partisi, AKP) have camouflaged themselves as "democratic Islamic
conservatives."1 The AKP claims to be the Muslim equivalent of the
Christian-Democratic parties of Western Europe. Such an analogy
is false, however. What the AKP seeks is not "Islam without fear,"
to borrow the phrase of Trinity College professor Raymond Baker,2
but rather a strategy for a creeping Islamization that culminates
in a Shari’a (Islamic law) state not compatible with a secular,
democratic order. The AKP does not advertise this agenda and often
denies it. This did not convince the chief prosecutor of Turkey who,
because of AKP efforts to Islamize Turkey, sought to ban the party
and seventy-one of its leaders. While the AKP survived a ban, the
majority of justices found that the AKP had worked to advance an
Islamist agenda and undermine secularism.3 Nevertheless, the AKP
enjoys the backing of the United States and the European Union as
well. Through its support for institutional Islamism in Turkey,
the West loses its true friends: liberal Muslims.
ADVANCE OF SECULARISM
The processes of secularization predate the Kemalist revolution and
trace back to the Tanzimat reforms, which Ottoman sultans began in
the mid-nineteenth century. However, it was the Kemalist revolution
that established real secularism in Turkey. Today, Turkey is the
only one of fifty-seven majority Muslim states in which secularism
is constitutionally enshrined. After establishing the republic,
Mustafa Kemal Ataturk abolished the caliphate, Shari’a courts, and
other aspects of the Islamic legal system and religious order. The
problem remains, however, that while the state is secular in terms
of its full adoption of the Swiss legal code, such secularism does
not extend to civil
1 Ihsan Dagi, "Turkey’s AKP in Power," Journal of Democracy, July 2008,
pp. 25-30.
2 Raymond William Baker, Islam without Fear: Egypt and the New
Islamists (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003).
3 BBC News, July 28, 2008; Los Angeles Times, July 31, 2008.
society, at least in terms of "open society."4
Constitutionally, Turkey is a secular state but, in reality, both
Turkish civil society and its institutions are weak. In this sense,
Turkey does not meet the democratic standards prevailing in the member
states of the European Union. Turkish law guarantees neither freedom
of religion nor freedom of speech. In 2005, Turkish authorities
sought to prosecute prominent Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk for his
remarks regarding the World War I-era deaths of Armenians.5 The AKP
has legislated a variety of reforms, but these remain more cosmetic
than real.6 Serif Mardin, a political science professor at Sabanci
University who is sympathetic to the AKP, argues that "Civil society
is a Western dream…[It] does not translate into Islamic terms."7
Still, Turkey is democratic. Despite coups in 1960, 1971, and 1980,
Turkey has had thirteen competitive, national elections in the past
half-century and more than twenty changes of ruling party. Next to
Mali and Senegal, Freedom House ranks Turkey the freest majority
Muslim country.8 But, even if it compares favorably to other majority
Muslim countries, Turkey is not a fully democratic state. Its national
security council, Milli Guvenlik Kurulu (MGK), was long run by the
military and is still dominated by the military.9 While not the
most democratic institution–the MGK could, in practice, overrule
parliament–the organization has secured the secular character of
Turkey much as Iran’s Council of Guardians intervenes to ensure that
country’s Islamist character. Ironically, even as European officials
applauded reforms that in August 2004 bestowed a civilian head and
civilian majority upon the MGK, Turkey has become less democratic.
Today, the AKP party with almost a two-thirds majority in parliament,
rules Turkey like a one-party state. The party ignores the opposition
and has abandoned efforts to reach out to any constituency beyond
Anatolian Islamists. It awards state positions, for example, almost
exclusively to Islamists.10 Still, even as Ankara backslides away
from democracy, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and President
Abdullah Gull leverage the European Union accession process to create
an illusion of tolerance and reform.
TURKEY’S APPROACH TO EUROPE
In a sense, the e AKP’s Islamism and European outreach illustrate
a paradox in the way Muslims approach Europe: Either they favor
Europeanization of Islam or Islamization of Europe.11 With reform and
accommodation, Islam can be compatible with democracy, but Islamism
cannot. In the world of Islam, Islamism aims at reversing the process
of cultural modernization. Today, acculturation and secularization
are reversed into re-traditionalization, de-acculturation, and
de-secularization. The ongoing de-Westernization in Turkish society
is clear. There have been three Islamist parties since the 1970s
with a real chance of acquiring power. All three were judicially
invalidated–the Milli Selamet Partisi in 1980, the Refah Partisi in
1998, and the Fizelet Partisi in
4 Fatma Muge Gocek, Rise of the Bourgeoisie, Demise of Empire, Ottoman
Westernization and Social Change (New York: Oxford University Press,
1996); Niazi Berkes, The Development of Secularism in Turkey (London:
Hurst, 1998).
5 Tagesanzeiger (Zurich), February 5, 2005; Spiegel Online (Hamburg),
December 16, 2005.
6 Turkey 2006 Progress Report (Geneva: European Union: European
Commission, November 8, 2006), pp. 25-8.
7 Serif Mardin, "Civil Society and Islam," in John Hall, ed., Civil
Society (Cambridge, U.K.: Polity, 1995), pp. 278-9.
8 "Combined Average Ratings: Independent Countries 2008," Freedom in
the World (Washington, D.C.: Freedom House, 2008), accessed September
11, 2008.
9 Turkey 2007 Progress Report (Geneva: European Union: European
Commission, November 6, 2007), p. 9.
10 See Turkish Daily News (Ankara), August 7, 2008.
11 Bassam Tibi, "Europeanizing Islam, or the Islamization of Europe,"
in Timothy Byrnes and Peter Katzenstein, eds., Religion in an Expanding
Europe (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 204-24.
2001 –for the threat they posed to secularity in Turkey.12
Each of the Islamist leaders pursued different strategies. Necmetten
Erbakan who, as Refah leader, became Turkey’s first Islamist prime
minister, combined Islamism with neo-Ottomanism–an ideological revival
of Ottoman glory–and pan-Turkish outlooks. The Erdogan generation of
Islamists, in contrast, presents itself in European terms, but its
commitment to both Europe and democracy is instrumental. As Hudson
Institute scholar Zeyno Baran explains, the AKP’s commitment to
democracy rests not on philosophical agreement with its principles
but rather because "democratic elections…[have] proven to be the
easiest and most legitimate path to power."13
Europeanized Islam embraces the values of cultural modernity,
pluralism, and secular tolerance. Secularism and religious tolerance
have, in many ways, provided the basis of European cultural
development. Despite its Christian roots, Europe has been secular
since the Renaissance and Enlightenment. Polemics that insist that
the European Union is reluctant to accept an Islamic country into its
fold are false. Europe was Europeanized through "the spread of one
particular culture."14 There is no reason why Turkish assimilation into
Europe could not Europeanize Turkey just as the EU has Europeanized
Spain, Greece, Poland, and in part, Romania. Turkey, after all, is
contiguous with Europe and shares a common Byzantine heritage with
much of southern Europe, including not only the Balkan states but
also much of Greece.
Ottoman modernity, however, never accepted the spirit of Europe. It was
based on the adoption of European instruments and technology but the
rejection of European values. Such instrumental Europeanization did
not stabilize the Islamic-Ottoman rule but rather contributed to its
downfall. The Kemalist revolution arose from the failure of the Young
Ottomans and Young Turks. Ataturk’s agenda was the Europeanization
of Turkey, not only technologically but also with the adoption of
cultural outlooks based on modern values and norms. The Kemalist
revolution sought to give Turkey a civilizational identity defined
not by religion but rather by cultural values shared with Europe:
secularism, individual human rights, civil society, and the rule of
law. The problem with Ataturk’s Europeanization of Turkey was that
the process was a revolution from above, imposing
12 Marvine Howe, Turkey Today. A Nation Divided over Islam’s Revival
(Boulder: Westview, 2000), pp. 1-10, 179-94; Sueddeutsche Online
(Munich), July 31, 2008.
13 Zeyno Baran, "Divided Turkey," The Journal of Democracy, January
2008, pp. 56-7.
14 Robert Barlett, The Making of Europe (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1993), p. 269.
innovations on society without providing the necessary cultural
underpinning. By focusing on urban centers, it left the countryside
barely affected. The result was a bifurcation of society: a European,
urban culture in Istanbul, Ankara, and Izmir, and a rural society
deeply rooted in Islamic tradition.15
The AKP, however, does not accept Europeanization. Rather, AKP leaders
pursue a double strategy: They verbally dissociate their party–and
themselves–from political Islam while simultaneously embracing Islamic
identity politics and, like many Islamist parties across the globe,
also engaging in anti-Christian polemics.l6 The AKP uses education as
its major instrument to further Islamist identity politics, introduce
reinvented Islamic values, and de-Westernize society. And while
the AKP claims secular credit for pursuing Turkey’s EU membership,
it defames Europe as an exclusionary "club of Christians."17 Since
its November 2002 accession, the AKP has engaged in a "creeping
Islamization."18 The AKP has sought to further this through politics of
cultural Islamization, especially in education and media. Erdogan has
worked to expand Anatolian culture in the cities, helped by internal
migration. The slums and shanty towns have become the AKP’s chief
base of support.
NEEDED: ISLAM’S EUROPEANIZATION
The problem of both Turkey’s entry into the European Union and the
Turkish diaspora in Europe is not Islam itself but rather how to
encourage the Turkish diaspora’s Europeanization. If Turkey were to
become a secular, European-style democracy, it would face no obstacles
to European Union accession, nor would such a strong boundary exist
between Turkey and Europe if Turkey’s religion were a more civil
Islam.19
What Turkey needs is not simply a laundry list of civil reforms but
Europeanization of Islam. There is nothing European about the ghettos
of Turkish migrants living in Islamic enclaves in Berlin suburbs such
Neukoln and Kreuzberg. These "Muslim enclaves"–including the Turkish
ones–are "in the West, but not of it."20 The AKP encourages such a
division, though. In February 2008, Erdogan labeled assimilation of
Turks a "crime against humanity."21 The Turkish diaspora in Europe
remains antagonistic to their new home. The two major Turkish mosques
in Germany–in Pforzheim and Bremen–are named Fatih (conqueror)
after Ottoman Sultan Mehmet the Conqueror who, in 1453, captured the
Byzantine capital of Constantinople, modern day Istanbul.
Most Turks in Germany are not integrated into civil society. If Turkey,
as the AKP sees it, enters the European Union, it would resemble
more the Kreuzberg and Neukoln enclaves than the European parts of
Istanbul or Ankara. While Erdogan says his decision to guide Turkey
toward Europe is firm, declaring, for example, that "Turkey has no
other alternative than the full membership of the EU,"22 it is less
certain whether Europe could absorb a country ruled by Islamists.
The question of whether Turks can or will adopt a Europeanized Islam
is crucial because demography and migration suggest that Europe will
be dealing with Turkey for years to come. Turkish migration westward
is not simply a twentieth and twenty-first century phenomenon but
part of a larger pattern that began almost a millen-
15 Ellen K. Trimberger, Revolution from Above (New Brunswick:
Transaction Books, 1978), p. 112.
16 Ursula Spuler-Stegemann, ed., "Introduction," Feindbild Chrislentum
im Islam (Freiburg: Herder, 2004), pp. 7-11.
17 Agence France-Presse, January 26, 2008.
18 Baran, "Divided Turkey," p. 69.
19 Bassam Tibi, "The Quest of Islamic Migrants and of Turkey to Become
European," Turkish Policy Quarterly, Spring 2004, pp. 13-28.
20 John Kelsay, Islam and War (Louisville: John Knox Press, 1993),
p. 118.
21 FAZ.net (Frankfurt), February 10, 2008.
22 Welt Online (Berlin), February 11, 2008.
nium ago.23 Many Turks joined Ottoman incursions into southeast Europe
for opportunity and adventure.24 Turkey’s European Union accession
would lead to a similar movement of population. The European Union’s
living standard and generous welfare system will attract Turkey’s rural
population, which suffers from an unemployment rate between 20 and 30
percent, and where many do not receive welfare benefits.25 Indeed,
some Turkish politicians have suggested that this migration should
make Turkey more attractive to Europe arguing that Turkey can offer
Europe, with its aging and declining populations, a young Turkish
population. There is something to this. Turkish population figures
have doubled since 1970 while Western European states have a shrinking
population due to low birth rates and an aging population.26 No doubt,
migration would be an advantage for Europe, as much as it has been
for the United States, provided that Europe, like the United States,
assimilates its immigrants.
Given the AKP’s instrumental approach to EU accession, it is ironic
that while the European public largely opposes Turkey’s accession,
European diplomats still push the Turks to undermine the three pillars
of the secular republic–the military, judiciary, and educational
system–purportedly to make Turkey fit into the European Union. While
European officials couch their prescribed reforms in the language
of transformational diplomacy and democracy promotions, they ignore
that Islamists only accept democracy as the rule of the majority,
not as a culture of pluralism. At the World Economic Forum in Davos
in 1999, the late prime minister Bulent Ecevet responded to European
criticism of the imbalance of power between the parliament and the
MGK by explaining, "In your countries, the political culture [of]
secularity is well established, and therefore, there is no need for
a guardian to protect it. In my country, Turkey, secularism still
lacks firm foundations and can always be threatened, therefore the
need to protect it."27
The Turkish writer Murat Cakir described
23 Lord Kinross, The Ottoman Centuries. The Rise and Fall of the
Turkish Empire (New York: Morrow Quill, 1977), pp. 15-7.
24 Metin Kunt and Christine Woodhead, Suleyman the Magnificant and his
Age. The Ottoman Empire in the Early Modern World (London: Langman,
1995), p. 10.
25 Serhat Salihoglu, "Welfare State Policies in Turkey," South-East
Europe Review for Labour and Social Affairs, October 2002, pp. 21-6.
26 Daten, Fakten, Trends zum demographischen Wandel in Deutschland
(Wiesbaden: Bundesinstitut fur Bevolkerungsforschung und statistisches
Bundesamt, Bevolkerung, 2008), p. 31.
27 World Economic Forum, Davos, Switzerland, February 1999.
the Islamists as "pseudo-democrats," who use democracy as a cover
for the promotion of Islamization whether in Turkey itself or among
the Turkish diaspora in Europe.28 He observes that Ankara does not
contribute to Europeanizing the Turkish Muslim diaspora. Mosques,
built and administered by the Turkish state through the Diyanet Isleri
Baskanligi (directorate of religious affairs), are not European even
if they are moderate in comparison to the more militant Milli Gorus,
mosques.29 The difference between the Diyanet and Milli Gorus mosques,
however, has eroded since AKP accession led to its control of the
Diyanet.
The secular commitment to democracy and to its values does not register
in the Islamist model of an Islamic state (din-u-devlet), which the
AKP’s actions show it accepts. Why then have Western policies toward
Turkey not changed under AKP rule? Part of the problem is that Europe
does not have a clear awareness of its civilizational identity. In
contrast, migrants and Turkey itself strongly cultivate civilizational
awareness in their own identity politics. The Islamist challenge and
the potential of Islamization are based on facts, but they are not
well understood in Europe. The Turkish diaspora in Europe, as well as
the population in Turkey itself, is caught between Europeanization and
Islamization. The European decision-makers have proven in the past to
be incapable of designing policies to address challenges arising from
ethnic-cultural diversification of the population. European officials
neglect or simply ignore cultural issues such as the identity of
Europe and Europeanization.
THE AKP ABANDONS COMPROMISE
Compromising and power sharing are an essential part of democratic
politics. Repeated experience with Islamists show that they go to
the ballots but fail to compromise when they win. The AKP is no
exception. Erdogan wanted to promote his foreign minister, Abdullah
Gill, to the presidency in 2007, and he did so at the expense of a
traditional process of consensus-building among opposition parties
and so
28 Murat Cakir, Die Pseudodemokraten. Turkische Lobbyisten und
Islamisten (Dusseldorf: GDF Publikation, 2000), pp. 101-76.
29 For more on the Milli Gorus, see Lorenzo Vidino, "The Muslim
Brotherhood’s Conquest of Europe," Middle East Quarterly, Winter 2005,
pp. 25-34.
sparked a political crisis. While the AKP won subsequent parliamentary
elections, its victory had as much to do with the weakness of the
secularist parties as with satisfaction with the AKP. The 2007
election win enabled the AKP to retrench, sending Gul to Cankaya
palace as the first non-secular president of Turkey.
With its majority solidified and no longer fearing the veto of
a secular president, the AKP accelerated its de-secularization of
Turkish society. Here, the head scarf is especially important. Among
Islamists, the head scarf is not just an article of clothing but an
icon of civilizational divide. Islamists view the head scarf as a
provision of the Shari’a.30 It has become symbolic of the tension
between Europeanization and Islamization. In a 2004 ruling, the
European Court of Human Rights found the right to a head scarf not
to be a human right, thus dismissing an Islamist lawsuit.31 Upon
their reelection, though, the AKP decided to provoke secular elites
with legislation enabling female university students to w’ear a head
scarf on campus and in classes. On June 5, 2008, the Turkish Supreme
Court deemed the AKP’s law to be unconstitutional on the grounds that
it eroded Turkey’s secular character.32 Soon after, the London-based
pan-Arabic daily Al-Hayat quoted Erdogan as stating, "We are going to
shut down the constitutional court."33 Many Europeans have cheered
Erdogan and condemned court actions in Turkey. AKP partisans in the
Turkish press and proponents of Turkey as a model of moderate Islam in
the United States and Europe labeled Turkish secularists as "fascists"
and accused them of undermining "democratic" Islamists.34 Zeyno Baran
observed that such an artificial dichotomy "inadvertently strengthens
hard-line Islamists."35
As the West sides with the Islamists, the opposition, feeling
abandoned, has become more anti-Western. Again, Baran explains, "The
opposition’s anti-Western stand is more like that of a lover with
a broken heart…[they] fear that Europeans push them to undertake
reforms that will make Turkey more Islamic, and then will tell them
that they are too Islamic to join a Western club."36
The crisis continued into the summer as the Constitutional Court heard
arguments that the AKP had violated the principles of a democratic and
secular Turkish republic.37 Had the court dissolved the party, it would
have toppled the government and plunged the country into political
turmoil.38 The court wanted to avoid this outcome as it would have
ended the AKP but not the Islamist challenge. The AKP could simply have
transferred its assets to another party and reemerged under a new name,
just as the AKP had emerged from the ashes of Fezilet. The court did
not acquit the AKP, however, but instead gave it a strong warning to
stop steering Turkey away from the secular order that the constitution
mandates towards an Islamic one. Court president Hasim Kilic stated,
"There is no verdict on closure…However, in this ruling a serious
warning has been issued to the party [AKP], and I hope this conclusion
will be elevated and will be taken accordingly."39
SECULARISM ABANDONED
Western politicians, scholars, and opinion leaders barely understand
what is going on in
30 Nilufer Gole, The Forbidden Modern: Civilization and Veiling
(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996).
31 "Case of Leyla Sahin vs. Turkey," European Court of Human Rights,
application no. 44774/98, November 10, 2004; "Grand Chamber Judgment:
Leyla Sahin v. Turkey," European Court of Human Rights, press release,
November 10, 2005.
32 The New York Times, June 6, 2008.
33 Al-Hayat, June 11, 2008.
34 See, for example, Mustafa Akyol, "The Threat Is Secular
Fundamentalism," The International Herald Tribune, May 4, 2007.
35 Zeyno Baran, "Illiberal Democracy? Fighting for Turkey’s Soul,"
The International Herald Tribune (Paris), June 11, 2008.
36 Ibid.
37 BBC News, July 28, 2008; Los Angeles Times, July 31, 2008.
38 The International Herald Tribune, July 30, 2008.
39 The International Herald Tribune, July 30, 2008.
Turkey. Too many Western pundits depict Turkey’s increasing Islamism
as fortuitous. The Rand Corporation’s Stephen Larrabee, for example,
wrote, "Under the AKP, Turkey has emerged as an important diplomatic
actor in the region…without the AKP…the United States would lose
an important partner in trying to stabilize this volatile region…At
the same time, banning the party could undercut efforts to promote
reform and democracy in the Middle East."40 Such views infuriate
secular Turks. It is ironic that the intra-Turkish debate on the
pernicious nature of Islamism has been more open than the Western one.
In the name of democratic reforms, as European diplomats have observed,
the AKP has reduced the secular impact of the army, defamed judicial
defense of the constitution as a "judicial coup," expanded the Imam
Hatip religious schools and equated them to secular schools, and
fired university presidents. Too many in the West praise the AKP as
"moderate Islamic." The only difference, however, between moderate and
jihadist Islamists is the use of the ballot box instead of violence to
come to power. It may be important to include Islamists in democracy
but certainly not with the Western naive notion that inclusion will
tame Islamism. This is the lesson that should be drawn from Hamas in
Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and certain Islamist parties in Iraq.
Hamas and Hezbollah may be represented in parliaments, but they have
kept their militias that represent the antithesis of democracy. They
show how their embrace of the democratic game is only a tactical
step. The AKP may be better than Hamas and Hezbollah since it has no
militia although its dominance and use of the police force and secret
services have become nearly as abusive.
The proper solution for crisis-ridden Turkey is neither the tacit
Islamic law of the AKP nor a coup by the Turkish secularists. Rather,
the European Union and the United States should encourage the
strengthening of civil society by making the weak institutions of
Turkish democracy stronger. Moderate Islamists want to Islamize,
not democratize.41 They are committed to the procedure of democracy
but not to its pluralistic and peaceful political culture. Political
Islam in Turkey is an important issue for Europe. Turkey not only has
close relations to the West, but it also has a diaspora of more than
four million in the European Union.42 While many moderate Muslims
seek to Europeanize Islam, the Islamism practiced by the AKP is an
ideology of cultural divide, tension, and conflict, despite all of
the pro-Europe rhetoric in which Islamists in Turkey engage in their
pursuit to exploit the European Union for their agenda of Islamization.
40 Stephen Larrabee, "Turkey’s Broadening Crisis," The International
Herald Tribune, July 25, 2008.
41 Bassam Tibi, "Islamist Parties. Why They Can’t Be Democratic,"
Journal of Democracy, July 2008, pp. 43-8.
42 Bevolkerung und Erwerbst tigkeit. Bevolkerung mit
Migrationshintergrund. Ergebnisse des Mikrozensus 2006 (Wiesbaden:
Statistisches Bundesamt, 2008), pp. 5-13, 60; Internationales
Statistisches Jahrbuch (Wiesbaden: Statisitisches Bundesamt, 2006),
p. 241.