SOCIOLOGIST GöLE: TURKEY THE ‘OTHER’ IN EUROPE’S ENCOUNTER WITH ISLAM

Today’s Zaman
June 8 2009
Turkey

Sociology Professor Nilufer Göle, who has been exploring Europe’s
encounter with Islam, has said walls fall down as hierarchies disappear
in today’s world but that proximity and equality lead to anxiety,
confrontation and violence rather than dialogue and multiculturalism,
making Turkey the "other" for Europeans.

"Natives of Europe fear they no longer feel ‘at home’ with the
invasion of migrants, foreign to their cultural norms," she said,
pointing out that migrants wish to make their cultural and religious
difference more visible by constructing mosques, wearing headscarves,
following halal — religiously permitted — dietary norms, etc.

She said Turkey’s role is critical in this world and that US President
Barack Obama’s speech in Turkey, in which he backed Turkey’s membership
in the European Union and praised Ankara’s central role in achieving
major US foreign policy goals, is a sign of recognition and invitation
to partnership. "But Turkey needs to be recognized by Europe as well,"
she said.

Turkey’s bid to become a member of the EU is facing obstacles in
some European countries, where the public believes overwhelmingly
Muslim Turkey does not belong in Europe and that it’s culturally
different. The opposition to Turkish accession in the EU has
intensified during campaigning for European Parliament elections, which
were concluded across the 27 EU member countries on Sunday. Proponents
of the Turkish accession, including President Obama, say Turkey’s
membership will be a key step in bridging divides between the Muslim
world and the West.

For Monday Talk, Göle also questioned whether Turkey will become the
illustration of the "clash of civilizations" thesis and the separation
between the Islamic and Western world or a country where there will
be space for pluralism and individualism.

"We need to overcome local stress points: religion versus secularism,
Kurd versus Turk, nationalist versus pro-European. We need to rise
above our own clashes, chase out our demons, learn cultural tolerance
and domesticate violence if we want to not miss our appointment with
history," said Göle. Excerpts from the interview with Professor
Göle are as follows.

A debate was stirred in Turkey recently after Prime Minister Recep
Tayyip Erdogan described the Turkish Republic’s past policies of
"kicking out" citizens of different ethnic origins as a "fascist
approach." What is your reaction to this?

Turkey has begun to engage in self-criticism. It’s good that the
prime minister himself is doing this. We have had so many taboos —
be it the Kurdish issue, the Turkish-Greek relations regarding the
population exchange or relations with the Armenians. There seems to be
a need to change the ethnic description of Turkish nationalism. The
prime minister’s initiative in that regard is a mature approach
and it shows that relations with non-Muslim minorities should be
re-evaluated. If this initiative moves forward, it will lead to a
positive change in mentality. Self-reflection adopted by the civil
society, intellectuals, historians and democratic movements is a sign
of a maturation, considering the fact that the republic sees itself
as a "young" republic that needed to be protected and defended. We
can now be self-critical without it meaning the end of the republic
is nigh, but rather its maturation and democratization.

You have been defending the thesis that the Justice and Development
Party (AK Party) has been transformed and at the same time is
transforming itself. How do you put the development we just discussed
in that context?

The AK Party has a difficult task. It finds itself as a political
party that is transforming Islamic movements that sprang up
in the 1980s while playing the game according to the rules of
Parliament. Furthermore, it has to reform the country’s legal system
to prepare it for accession to the European Union. And now there is a
third act, which is even more difficult: Turkey as a global actor. Will
Turkey be a country with space for pluralism and individualism,
where the thesis of a "clash of civilizations" fails or will it be
an example of this thesis and the fault line between the Islamic and
Western world?

Is the Western world united?

Since the war in Iraq, Turkey has found itself on the border between
the two Wests: the United States and Europe. Turkey’s rejection of a
motion to back the US military’s invasion of Iraq represents a turning
point. It meant a break from Turkey’s role as an unconditional ally
of the United States. Yet European countries, although opposed to
American politics and war, did not support and embrace Turkey. They
failed to see the presence of a vital civil society struggling for
peace and its influence on Parliament. Not only that, the democratic
process and its procedures were not acknowledged. Furthermore, a
Turkish invasion of Iraq was feared. But Turkey distancing itself
from American politics has made it gain respectability in the Arab
world and enabled it to be recognized as an autonomous actor and a
potential mediator. US President Barack Obama’s talk in Turkey is a
sign of recognition of this new role that Turkey potentially occupies
and an invitation to partnership. But Turkey needs to be recognized
by Europe as well. Turkey needs to be even more autonomous.

What would you say about the domestic challenges that Turkey faces
in that regard? Can Turkey become an autonomous world player without
obtaining a local consensus on divisive issues?

Indeed, we need to overcome local stress points: religion versus
secularism, Kurd versus Turk, nationalist versus pro-European. We
need to rise above our own clashes, chase out our demons, learn
cultural tolerance and domesticate violence if we want to not miss
our appointment with history.

Walls segmenting Turkey falling down

As you said, one of the main issues is the Kurds. We saw that the
government tried to address the matter before but seemingly got
nowhere. Are there reasons to be hopeful this time around?

There are many conflicting facts and tendencies. The hope of bringing
the Kurdish issue to Parliament has not yet been fully realized. The
political realm seems to be more rigid, if not lagging behind the
cultural scene. Ajda Pekkan, the icon of white Turkey, and Kurdish
singer Rojin singing together in Kurdish was a forceful sign. The
walls splitting Turkey up — ethnicities, languages, people — are
falling down. The boundaries are becoming porous. But I think the
cultural realm is moving ahead, artists are leading more so than
politicians. The political domain is open to violent ideological
national backlashes. Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink’s tragic
assassination is such a backlash on the Armenian issue. Armenians
living in Turkey who had to be silent about their past have now lost
hope for their security and their future. History does not change in
a linear and progressive way. We need to be much more audacious to
countervail backlashes, to avoid atrocities.

Turkey is trying to open up and break its taboos. It is trying to
reconcile with its "others." However, when looking at Turkey from
Europe, Turkey is the "other." Do you think Europe is going to be
able to open up when it comes to Turkey?

We live in closer proximity to one another, but without knowing how
to frame it. Progressive intensions such as multicultural politics,
dialogue between civilizations and universal rights do not capture
the attention in our contemporary world. On the contrary, politics
of exclusion, a discourse of binary opposition, "us" and "them,"
clashes, fundamentalisms and violence seem to form the rhythm of
our lives. We are living in a world where boundaries and walls fall
down, where hierarchies and hegemonies disappear but where proximity
and equality lead to anxiety, confrontation and violence and not
automatically to dialogue and multiculturalism. Europe is the site
for this new experience. Turkey indeed plays a role of Europe’s
other against whom Europe is trying to differentiate its identity,
search for its spiritual religious roots and address its frontiers.

What are the Europeans’ fears?

Natives of Europe fear they no longer feel "at home" with the invasion
of migrants, foreign to their cultural norms. Migrants wish to make
their cultural and religious difference more visible by constructing
mosques, wearing headscarves, following halal dietary norms and the
like. We see in some cases Europeans testing the limits of tolerance
of Muslim migrants by films such as "Fitna" in the Netherlands, the
cartoon controversy in Denmark and the headscarf ban in France. In
Italy, some locals brought in pigs to roam in an area where a mosque
was to be constructed. But in Cologne, Europe’s biggest mosque
is under construction. All these issues provoke confrontation,
testing each other’s tolerance. We need to see from both sides, not
only from the point of view of Muslims or natives of Europe, though
giving up violence is a precondition for politics of recognition and
reconciliation. The assassination of Dutch intellectual Theo Van Gogh,
the producer of the film "Submission," which dealt with issues facing
Muslim women, in the streets of Amsterdam in broad daylight exemplified
the failure of tolerance and reminded of the issue of violence in
Europe. Demanding religious rights and respect for dignity is not
enough. The ways Muslims react to what they consider attacks to their
dignity, to their beliefs and their norms is paramount. Violence,
the threat of violence and intimidation should be openly rejected.

Muslim Europeans’ experiences differ

Is this why Islam is the most exciting topic in Europe, as you once
put it?

Muslim Europeans’ experiences differ from those of Muslims living
in Muslim-majority countries. This brings new issues to the agenda
and new questions for imams who had not had to address these issues
in their home countries. For example, Muslim girl flirting with a
non-Muslim classmate: Is this illicit or not? The debates around the
construction of mosques show mutual borrowings and adaptations. The
transparency of the architecture is stressed in a European context so
that the fear of the unknown or fundamentalism will be dissipated. The
esthetic value of the mosque is also a focus of attention so that the
mosque will become part of the common landscape and be made part of
the patrimony for both Muslims and Europeans.

Is it possible for Europeans to learn from the Turkish experience in
that regard?

It is not easy. We have been seeing ourselves, Turkish Ottomans and
Turks for centuries, in the mirror of the West. And now, it is not
easy for the self-pride of the Europeans to think about their own
society and values in the mirror of Islam. This is also the case with
feminism. They think secular feminism is in advance, so they cannot
understand the headscarf issue. For now, they can only defend the
headscarf in the demarcation of culture. But maybe Muslim women have
something different to say in relation to the disciplining body. We
cannot explicate today’s Islam using old conceptual tools. It is
complicated. The headscarf issue is still there between Islam and
the West. Yet it is not the "other" in a sense that these girls
are totally different. They are much more French or German than the
first generation Algerian or Turkish women. They are not the exotic
"other," they are not the "erotic, oriental" women. They are within
the contemporary world, in the secular spheres of life. Yet they are
also religious. This creates much ambivalence.

Once you said that an imam’s daughter now wants to be a teacher…

Yes, I said it was not the imam but the imam’s daughter who wants to
be a teacher with a headscarf that creates a problem in our eyes. It
neither follows religious norms nor secular modern imagery. Images
are changing and we need to change our vocabulary accordingly.

When it comes to these borrowings, which do you think are easier to
comprehend and which are more difficult?

I have experienced that the "mahram" didn’t travel, but "fitna,"
"Shariah," "fatwa" and "imam" travel easier than "mahram."

What will happen when "mahram" also travels?

It might bring a new way of looking at the modern conditions of
life in a more critical way. Maybe modern life is overly based on
transparency, the exposition of self and an identity anchored in our
bodies and appearances. Maybe we need some abstraction. Maybe the
"mahram" is the secrecy and abstraction related to the body. It
reminds us of more secrecy and a sacred kind of privacy — a kind
of protection of the self without being purely in conformity with
commercial, global trends and values that we are all surrounded with.

Nilufer Göle, distinguished professor of sociology Currently teaching
at L’Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS) in Paris,
she is the author of "The Forbidden Modern: Civilization and Veiling"
(1997), which has been published in several languages. She works on
the new configurations between Islam and modernity and explores the
emergence of Islam in different public spheres. Her sociological
approach has also produced a broader critique of Eurocentrism with
regard to emerging Islamic identities at the close of the 20th
century. She has explored the complexities of the encounter and
interpenetrations between Europe and Islam in "Interpenetrations:
L’Islam et l’Europe" (2005), which was recently published in Turkish
by the Metis publishing house.