Hurriyet, Turkey
March 19 2010

Unveiling ErdoÄ?an’s real face

Friday, March 19, 2010
Mustafa AKYOL

Prime Minister ErdoÄ?an said something just terrible. As a reaction to
the international pressure on Turkey to recognize the ethnic cleansing
of Ottoman Armenians in 1915 as genocide, he threatened the illegal
Armenian immigrants in Turkey with deportation. `If necessary,’ he
said to the BBC, `I am going to tell these 100,000, `come on, back to
your country’.’

As terrible as this statement was, the pattern that it reflects was so
typical of ErdoÄ?an: He is a man of strong words, and while two out of
three things he says is pretty good, the third one messes things up.

Just last year, for example, he had criticized the `fascist mentality’
that considers minorities as a threat. Just two days before the
now-infamous deportation statement, he met with members of the Roma
community in Turkey and embraced them in a way that no Turkish prime
has ever done.

Similarly, on one hand, he is the prime minister who realized some of
the most extensive liberalization reforms in Turkey. On the other
hand, he is one of most intolerant politicians towards media
criticism.

The half glass:

Why ErdoÄ?an is so erratic is a good question to ask. His ideological
enemies often find the answer in his `secret agenda.’ The argument
here is that ErdoÄ?an is actually craving for an Islamist dictatorship,
but is hiding this behind a façade of democratization, liberalization
and EU-orientation. But once in a while the mask falls apart and
ErdoÄ?an’s `real face’ unveils itself.

I think that the reality is less cartoonish and more complex. And
ErdoÄ?an’s `real face’ is the total sum of all those contradictory
positions.

To begin with, I believe that the AKP’s transformation from Islamism
to a post-Islamist `conservative democrat’ party is genuine. So is
ErdoÄ?an’s wish to make Turkey a member of the EU, or something similar
to an EU member state. But there are three factors which hinder this
evolution.

The first is ErdoÄ?an’s personality and background. He is an archetypal
man of `KasımpaÅ?a,’ the Istanbul neighborhood of underdogs and machos.
This makes ErdoÄ?an bold and brave, but also confrontational and
imposing. It also makes him quite pragmatic, yet incoherent.

The second factor is the residual effects of his Islamist background.
This, as I have written before, comes out mostly in foreign policy and
in the form of `Muslimism’ ‘ an emotional affinity to our `Muslim
brothers’ regardless of what they do. I actually like and support the
great bulk of the AKP foreign policy, but some of its excesses, such
the whitewashing of the Sudanese regime’s atrocities in Darfur, falls
into the `Muslimism’ tendency that I criticize. (By the way, this
tendency is not a direct outcome of being a good Muslim. The latter, I
rather believe, requires the upholding of rights and justice against
anybody, including our `Muslim brothers.’)

The third factor which taints ErdoÄ?an and his party is what I have
called `Ankara-ization’ ‘ their adaptation of some of the
old-fashioned discourses of the Turkish state. Their recent tone on
the controversy over the tragic fate Ottoman Armenians is the perfect
example. But this `Ankara-ization’ stems not only from the dusty
corridors of the Turkish capital but also the deep-seated norms of the
Turkish society. Nationalism is the most common value in Turkey, and a
government which goes directly against its main pillars (such as the
rejection of the G word for 1915) can probably not survive the next
election.

But if Turkey is so trapped in nationalism, and if even the AKP ‘ the
least nationalist one among major parties ‘ succumbs to its pressures,
is there simply no hope for the evolution of a more open-minded and
self-critical mainstream political movement?

The hope for change:

No, no, things are not that bad. And the best hope comes from nothing
but what created the full half of the AKP glass in the first place:
Muslim liberalism. Etyen Mahcupyan, Turkey’s most prominent Armenian
intellectual, was making this very case in his column in daily Taraf
last Wednesday. `It will be surprising to many that religion can play
a liberalizing role,’ he first noted:

`But if the main pillar of an authoritarian regime in a country is the
suppression of religiosity, it should not be surprising that the
emancipation of religiosity from authority has a liberating effect.’

Then, pointing to the recent tendency in the pro-Islamic media to
question the official narrative on the fate of Armenians, Mahcupyan
also wrote:

`Most people look at the reformism of the AKP, compare it with other
parties, and give the government more credit than what it deserves.
But the AKP is a result of liberalization [among Muslims] rather than
being its driving force. On the other hand, it has the blocks,
worries, fears, and the state reflexes caused by its position as the
governing party in Turkey. That’s why its attitude on the Armenian
issue is increasingly falling behind the ethical norms of the Muslim
camp¦ [Yet] as Turkey’s Muslims build the self-confidence to face
themselves, the dullness of the party which represent them will also
decrease.’

Well said, Mr. Mahcupyan. Well said