Daily Times, Pakistan
July 9 2005
COMMENT: Will the real Turkish model please stand up?
– William B Milam
What I see in Turkey is a democratically elected civilian
government, moderately Islamic, running the show. Are the generals
back there, behind-the-scenes, pulling the strings? I don’t see any
sign of that
I remember hearing much, and reading some, about the `Turkish model’
while I resided in Pakistan from mid-1998 to mid-2001. I always took
this as part of the argument supporting the involvement of the
Pakistani military in the politics of Pakistan. It was used most
often when advocating a National Security Council in which, it was
argued, the military should have veto power over policy decisions
affecting `national security,’ however that was defined.
After doing some coincidental reading on Turkey, however, I find that
there are several Turkish models which might be relevant to Pakistan.
I wonder which Turkish model its proponents have in mind.
There is, for example, the nation-building model that Turkey’s
founding father, Kemal Ataturk, used to make a polyglot country of
many ethnic minorities into a nation. It began with the concept of
`Turkishness’. Ethnic identities were supposed to be cast aside and
citizens of the state were to be considered Turks. A national history
was developed and taught in all the schools that helped define `Turk’
inclusively.
There are three points to emphasise in this regard. First, Ataturk’s
determination to build a national identity in Turkey sprang from the
times the Muslims of the Ottoman Empire had lived through as the
empire slowly collapsed in the 19th century and the early years of
the 20th century. They were traumatised by the continuing and growing
losses of territory as well as the interference in the Empire because
its religious minorities increasingly looked to outsiders for
protection. In other words, national identity became an imperative
because of the external threat.
This is not to ignore that the Empire’s treatment of religious
minorities deviated progressively further from the ideals of Islam as
the pressures upon it intensified. This is exemplified by the
slaughter of Armenians between 1915 and 1919. The external threat
peaked when the western powers attempted to divide Anatolia, the
Turkish core of the empire, after the First World War.
A second point is that most citizens of the new country accepted with
alacrity this new Turkish identity. The Muslim minorities
-descendents of immigrants from all over the former Empire who had
retreated to the Anatolian core as the empire’s former conquests were
retaken – accepted the Turkish national identity readily for the same
reason that their leaders pushed the concept – to avoid being divided
up by hostile outside powers.
The final point here is that Ataturk and the governments of Turkey’s
early years emphasised education for forming a national identity. Not
only did the children learn the national history that Turkey
developed, but they learned a common language and common Turkish
characteristics, habits, and mindset.
A common religion was not among the factors chosen by Ataturk and his
colleagues in the 1920s to use as a binding thread of Turkish
nationality. They were, of course, aiming at a secular state, and
believed that Islam and modern development were, if not incompatible,
at least not enthusiastic partners.
This does not seem like the Turkish model that any Pakistani
government, pre- or post-1971, has ever aspired to. Certainly, the
use of education – and I mean universal education – as a way to
create and strengthen national identity does not seem to have
occurred to any Pakistani government since 1947. Otherwise national
literacy would not still be around only 50 percent of the population.
And while Pakistani governments have often been driven by the
perception of external threat to search for a national identity, they
have, as often as not, looked for Islam to provide the glue. That
this has not worked is evident from the 1971 debacle.
Using religion as the core of national identity can be perniciously
counterproductive in a country of many minorities. While Turkey has
tried to make its national identity an inclusive one, Pakistan has
become less inclusive and tolerant as Islamism gained strength in the
past 25-30 years. This not only involves excluding other religions
from the national identity definition, but even Muslim minorities –
those not following the script laid out by the Islamists as the only
path to virtue. Minorities, even Muslim minorities, have less and
less reason to want to be part of a Pakistani identity.
Now, before the e-mails start which accuse me of historical amnesia,
I know – in fact everybody knows – that the Kurds were not happy
campers in the new national identity that Ataturk pushed on his
countrymen and women. The Kurds were there before the Turks and
resented being designated as Turks. This has led to separatist
sentiment and rebellion for several decades, usually put down by
force costing many lives.
Using force to settle political problems with minorities is also a
Turkish model that Pakistan has occasionally followed in the past,
but perhaps both countries have learned their lesson. The Musharraf
government seems to have concluded that a political solution is the
only viable one in Balochistan; the Erdogan government in Turkey is
making moves to reach out to Kurds and eliminate some of the major
reasons for their bitterness, including legalising use of the Kurdish
language and releasing hundreds of Kurdish nationalists from jail.
This is a model that both governments should follow assiduously, and
it involves learning to work with minorities to accommodate their
needs, not just steamroll over them because they are in the minority.
On reflection, I guess that the Turkish model that I heard so much
about in Pakistan is the one I mentioned at the beginning of this
piece – a model of government that allows the military ultimate
authority on policy. But is that really the case in Turkey? I leave
it to the experts, which I am definitely not, to answer that
question.
But what I see in Turkey is a democratically elected civilian
government, moderately Islamic, running the show. Are the generals
back there, behind-the-scenes, pulling the strings? I don’t see any
sign of that, but perhaps they are.
Or is the real Turkish model one in which the military is receding
(or has receded) from a political role and the civilian politicians
are (or are becoming) really in charge. How refreshing it would be if
that is the model my Pakistani friends are talking about, and the one
the military intends to follow.
William Milam is a former US ambassador to Pakistan and Bangladesh.
He is currently at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington DC