Turkey: A DemocraticSuperpower in the Middle East

REZA ASLAN is the author of No god but God:The Origins, Evolution and Future of Islam.

istanbul —A political party espousing a commitment to what it calls “Islamic moral

values” has brought Turkey closer to a full-fledged democracy than it has ever been.

Last week, 30 years after a military coup overturned the democratically elected

government of Suleyman Demirel, Turks voted overwhelmingly for constitutional

changes pushed through by the moderate Islamists of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip

Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (known by its Turkish initials AKP).

The reforms strengthen the rights of women, children and the handicapped, pro-

vide greater freedoms for Turkey’s Christian and Kurdish minorities (both of whom

have been repeatedly persecuted and marginalized by previous governments), relax

Turkey’s restrictive labor laws, curtail the role of the military in political affairs and

allow for the creation of more democratic institutions throughout the country. More

crucially, the reforms reorganize the structure of the court system, providing greater

legal protections for ordinary citizens while stripping the military of its immunity

against prosecution in civilian courts.

Opponents in the constitutional referendum argued that it ceded too much

power to the president and parliament, particularly when it comes to appointing

judges. Yet such arguments failed to persuade voters, nearly 60 percent of whom

voted for the package of reforms that the AKP presented as a necessary step toward

Turkey’s membership in the European Union. (Interestingly, even as enthusiasm for

EU membership has deteriorated in Turkey—support has dropped to 54 percent

from 68 percent in 2005—the economic and political changes have proved so popu-

lar that they seem no longer to be dependent on what Europe wants from Turkey, but

on what Turks want for themselves.)

A political party espousing a

commitment to what it calls

“Islamic moral values” has

brought Turkey closer to a

full-fledged democracy than

it has ever been.

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Since coming to power in 2002, the AKP, which models itself on Europe’s con-

servative Christian Democratic parties, has steadily chipped away at the military’s self-

ascribed role as the protector of Turkish democracy. Instead, the AKP has provided

Turks with a model of governance that reflects a commitment to constitutional

democracy and the rule of law, but without the need to forcibly repress the country’s

religious identity.

Not only has Turkey become a freer, more liberal, more inclusive and more dem-

ocratic country under the AKP, it has also become a more dominant global power and

has experienced an unprecedented period of economic growth. Indeed, the Turkish

economy has come out of the global recession stronger than ever, posting a 10.3 per-

cent growth in GDP in the second quarter of this year. That makes Turkey the third-

fastest-growing economy in the world behind Singapore and Taiwan.

And yet the AKP continues to face the same tired rhetoric from Turkey’s main

opposition parties that it is undermining the “secular foundations” of the state by, for

example, allowing girls to go to school while wearing a simple scarf over their hair.

One hears similar criticisms in the United States, where there has been a lot of

hand-wringing lately over Turkey’s increasingly assertive foreign policy, its deepening

ties with Iran, Syria and Iraq, and its overt criticism of Israel’s treatment of the

Palestinians. Some have even suggested that Turkey, the only Muslim member of

NATO, is turning away from its strategic alliance with the West and instead building

an “Islamic axis” against America’s interests in the region.

This is nonsense. It is not Islam that drives the AKP’s foreign or domestic policy

but rather its economic and national security interests. If Turkey has been focusing its

diplomatic efforts on the Middle East, Central Asia and the Persian Gulf, it is because

that is where its economic growth is coming from, not from Europe or the US.

Further, Turkey’s more robust foreign policy and its attempts to insert itself as a

mediator in the region’s conflicts are the result of its revived sense of national confi-

dence. Turkey is no longer willing to be subordinate to the US but insists on being

treated as an ally and equal, with its own proposals and policies for dealing with the

region’s problems.

That is a good thing, because Turkey’s interests in the region—whether regard-

ing a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, or building stability in Iraq

and Afghanistan, or keeping Iran from developing nuclear weapons—align with those

of the US In fact, it is no exaggeration to say that Turkey is now America’s most

important strategic ally in the Middle East.

More significantly,Turkey has provided the peoples of the Middle East with a more

authentic example of Islamic governance than one finds in the secular dictatorships of

It is not Islam that drives the

AKP’s foreign or domestic poli-

cy but rather its economic and

national security interests.

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Egypt, Jordan and Syria or the religious authoritarianism of Iran and Saudi Arabia.The

AKP has proved that there need not be any contradictions between Islam and democ-

racy, that a party committed to Islamic values can be equally committed to human

rights, constitutionalism, pluralism and the rule of law. And with the passage of the

constitutional reforms, Turkey took another step toward solidifying its position as the

new superpower of the Middle East: the shining model of what a modern, Muslim-

majority democracy can achieve if given the opportunity.

s

With the passage of the consti-

tutional reforms, Turkey took

another step toward solidifying

its position as the new super-

power of the Middle East.

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