turkey- between atatürk’s secularism and fundamentalist islam - harold rhode

8/9/2019 Turkey- Between Atatrks Secularism and Fundamentalist Islam - Harold Rhode

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Vol. 9, No. 24 9 May 2010

Turkey: Between Atatrks Secularism and Fundamentalist Islam

Harold Rhode

! From the remnants of the Ottoman Empire, Atatrk founded a modern democratic stateby forging the entirely unprecedented notion in the Islamic world of a secular Turkishidentity. Moreover, this identity was to be based on the Western notion of loyalty to ageographic entity rather than religious solidarity.

! Today there is an internal battle among Turkish Muslims between forces that want to bepart of the Western world and those that want to return Turkeys political identity to bebased primarily on Islamic solidarity. But it isnt Ottoman Islam that these Islamist Turksseek to revive. Their Islam is more in tune with the fanatically antiWestern principles of Saudi Wahhabi Islam.

! It is not clear whether the present government of Turkey really cares to be part of theEU. Thus, when European leaders insist that Turkey has no place in Europe, they may beplaying into the hands of the Islamist forces in Turkey who can say, in effect, The EU isa Christian club which will never accept us, so we need to look elsewhere, to our Muslimbrothers.

! In addition, American involvement has not always proven helpful. The U.S. attempted toreach out to radical leaders in a mistaken belief that they were forces of moderateIslam, thus inadvertently granting them legitimacy.

! If a moderate form of Turkish Islam is to be revived, it must stand up to the onslaught of Wahhabism and the temptations of Islamism.


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Inventing the Modern Turkish Identity

In the nineteenth century, Ottoman Turks borrowed the Arabic word watan , to signify loyalty tothe geographic entity called the Ottoman Empire. Until that time, the word at most conjured inpeoples minds the very local place where someone was born. The definition of identify defined

by place and language is a European concept not an Islamic or Middle Eastern one. In theMiddle East, identity is defined by religion and then by genealogy, which can become ethnicity.The Ottomans were attempting to instill the Western concept of loyalty to a geographic entityinto the minds of the people under Ottoman rule. It was Mustafa Kemal Atatrk, the founder of the Republic of Turkey, who created a Turkish identity a loyalty to a land from the remnantsof the Ottoman Empire. It is he and his associates who set Turkey on the road to democracy.

After the Turkish war of independence, which ended in 1923, arguments ensued about what tocall the new country. By choosing to call the country Turkey and its citizens Turks, whowere clearly the most numerous ethnic group in this country, Atatrk and his followersunwittingly created a problem for nonethnic Turks the most numerous of whom were theKurds in that new country. Atatrk and his colleagues wanted the word Turk to mean acitizen of that country irrespective of ethnicity or religion. But the word Turkwas also used to describe an ethnic identity which made other nonethnic Turks unsure of theirposition in the state. Since they were not ethnic Turks, the confusing and double meaning of the word Turk now to mean both ethnic and national identities made some nonethnicTurks wonder whether they could be full citizens of this new republic.

Had Atatrk named this new country Anatolia, the geographic/nonethnic name for that area,this problem would probably not have arisen. (A similar problem existed in the UK. The Britishsolved this by separating political from ethnic identity. They use the word British to connote thepolitical identity of the country, and the terms English, Scottish, Welsh, and Irish forethnic identity.)

The Role of the Military in Turkey

Unlike other Western countries, the military has a unique role in Turkish society. Its job is toprotect the secular and democratic republic created by Atatrk. That means that when theprinciples of secularism are threatened or when the country descends into chaos, it is the roleof the military to step in and restore order. This has been enshrined in every Turkish

constitution since the founding of the republic. So it should not be surprising that every timethe secular republic came under threat, the military stepped in. There have been three militarycoups in Turkey, but, unlike other countries, after the military acted to restore order asrequired by Turkeys constitution it then returned to its barracks. Curiously, when TurkeysIslamist Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan went too far in the late 1990s, the military issued anewarning demanding his removal maybe the worlds first postmodern coup. The militarysees its role as to protect the republic, not to rule.


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The Struggle Between Political Islam and the State

Changing the way the people of Anatolia understood themselves was truly earthshattering. It istherefore not surprising that tensions developed between the countrys Islamic identity and the

Turkish national identity. This is a battle among Turkeys Muslims, between people who want tobe part of the Western world i.e., emphasizing their Turkish nationalist identity, and theIslamists who want to emphasize their Islamic identity as their most important political identity.But their Islam is not the Ottoman Islam that the Islamists seek to revive. It is a version of Islambased on the principles of Wahhabism and the ideas of the fount of Wahhabism the fanaticalmedieval scholar Ibn Taymiyya.

To understand the difference between the relatively tolerant Ottoman Islam and Wahhabism,imagine that the Ku Klux Klan took over Texas and harnessed the states oil wealth to promoteits radical brand of Christianity. Thats what Wahhabism is to traditional Islam. But its preciselythat brand of Islam which is being promoted throughout the Muslim world, and which isincreasingly evident in Turkey. Islam isnt the problem; Islamism is the problem.

In the 1980s, before I was the Turkish desk officer in the Office of the U.S. Secretary of Defense,I served as an advisor on Turkish affairs to the Assistant Secretary of Defense for InternationalSecurity Policy, Richard Perle. We would visit Turkey and I would go to the bookstores of theMinistry of Religion where I would marvel at the beautifully produced, cheaplypriced books onsale there. These books were in Turkish, but many were viciously antiWestern, antiAmerican,and antiIsraeli. The government didnt have the money to produce such books, so it is clearthat the money came from elsewhere. With time, it became clear that the funding was largelyWahhabi. But since they were in Turkish, a language few Westerners could read, Westerndiplomats either had no clue about what was being sold in these government bookstores or, if they did, chose to ignore the problem.

When the present Turkish government took power in November 2002, some of its advisors,when dealing with Americans, would tell us what we wanted to hear, and in our obsession withfinding moderates, we allowed them to do so. One of the prime ministers advisors insisted,We have no Wahhabi money coming into this country. So I asked him, Why are all thesegorgeous mosques being built all over the country in very poor areas? He replied that localcommunal organizations had built them. I responded, In the Muslim world, Wahhabi money isabsolutely everywhere. You say that Turkey is one of the most important countries in the

Muslim world. Isnt it curious that Turkey is the one country that is not awash with thatmoney?

Political Islamification

The troubling political Islamification of Turkey has several dimensions. First, there is the matterof religious discrimination. To take but one example, between a quarter and a third of Turkeys


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citizens are not Sunni Muslims but Alevis. (The term Alevi derives from the name Ali, theMuslim prophet Muhammads cousin and soninlaw, whom the Shiites and other MiddleEastern groups revere.) Alevis worship in assembly houses they call cemevis , not in mosques.The Turkish Ministry of Religion funds mosques but not cemevis , even though the Alevis usecemevis to pray. Why is the government discriminating against a quarter to a third of its

citizens? When asked, senior government officials have argued that cemevis are not religiouscenters and therefore are not funded. Is the Sunni government trying to deAlevify the Alevisand turn them into Sunnis? These same officials also claimed that Alevis engage in immoralacts. Interestingly, this is exactly what the Ottoman Sultans said about the Iranians, to whomTurkeys present government is trying to cozy up.

Second, the EU has acted as a vehicle for the present Turkish government to advance theprocess of Turkeys political Islamification. As long as Turkey retains a hope that it could be partof the EU, the military and the secular establishment are restrained from taking any action toprotect the republic from the Islamists, knowing that Europe will condemn them for doing so.However, it is not clear whether the present government of Turkey, whatever it says overtly,really wants to be part of the EU. Thus, when European leaders declare that Turkey has noplace in Europe, they may be unwittingly playing into the hands of the Islamist forces in Turkeywho can say, in effect, The EU is a Christian club which will never accept us, so we need to lookelsewhere, to our Muslim brothers.

Third, American involvement, well intentioned though it is, has not always proven helpful. Forexample, in the early 1990s, the leader of the Islamic fundamentalist party, Necmettin Erbakan,was overtly and viciously antiWestern, and very closely allied with some of the more radicalforces in the Middle East. In our eternal quest to identify moderate Muslims, the Americanambassador at the time decided to publicly meet this man, inadvertently signaling that Americaconsidered Erbakan a legitimate, moderate Muslim. That is because in Turkish culture, the factof the meeting matters more than what is discussed at the meeting. Like it or not, the meetingwas understood by the Turks to mean that the U.S. conveyed legitimacy upon Erbakan. Thesecular establishment in Turkey and the military were livid. That is why so many passionatesecularists in Turkey felt betrayed by the West, by Europe, and by the United States.Unfortunately, our attempts to reach out to what we in the West mistakenly believe are forcesof moderate Islam have alienated those most committed to Western values.

Erbakan eventually became prime minister, though with tremendous restraints. His blatantattempts to politically Islamicize Turkish society failed and his party was banned on the grounds

that it sought to overthrow the secular republic that Atatrk had established. The current primeminister, Recep Tayyip !"#$%&'()&)*+,' protg of Erbakan, learned from that experience thatonly a gradualist approach had any chance of success.


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Islamist Governmental Tyranny in Turkey

The present Turkish government is methodically taking over every aspect of society, includingevery branch of government, businesses, schools and newspapers. How has this affected thecitizens of Turkey? Natan Sharansky has posed what he calls the village square test. Can a

person go out in the village square and say he does not like the government? Can you talkfreely? Ive been visiting Turkey regularly since 1968. People were always prepared to talkabout politics but no longer. Today, the Turks are obviously afraid of something. It saddensme to see this taking place in an industrious country that was in the vanguard of moving Islaminto the modern world.

The battle for Turkeys identity is far from over. The forces of secularism are waiting right belowthe surface. There are a lot of passionate, if disorganized, secularists. Yet if a moderate form of Ottoman Turkish Islam is to be revived, it must stand up to the onslaught of Wahhabism andthe temptations of Islamism.

If matters continue as they are, both in Turkey and Iran, then one plausible outcome mighteventually be that Turkey and Iran switch places. Iran, after its Islamist experience, may rejointhe community of nations, while Turkey may turn toward Islamism and become a driving antiWestern force throughout the Islamic world. How sad for Turkey; how sad for one of the mostinteresting and industrious peoples in the Islamic world; how dangerous for the world.

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Dr. Harold Rhode joined the Office of the U.S. Secretary of Defense in the Pentagon in 1982 asan advisor on Turkey, Iran, and Iraq. Since then he has served as the Turkish desk officer in theOffice of the Secretary of Defense and as advisor on Islamic affairs on the Pentagons policyplanning staff. From 1994 until his recent retirement, Dr. Rhode served in the Pentagons Officeof Net Assessment. He is now a Senior Advisor at the Hudson Institute, New York. This

Jerusalem Issue Brief is based on his presentation at the Institute for Contemporary Affairs inJerusalem on March 4, 2010.

This Jerusalem Issue Brief is available online at:http://www.jcpa.org

Dore Gold, Publisher; Yaacov Amidror, ICA Chairman; Dan Diker, ICA Director; Mark AmiEl, Managing Editor. JerusalemCenter for Public Affairs (Registered Amuta), 13 TelHai St., Jerusalem, Israel; Tel. 97225619281, Fax. 97225619112, Email: [email protected]. In U.S.A.: Center for Jewish Community Studies, 7 Church Lane, Suite 9, Baltimore,MD 21208; Tel. 4106537779; Fax 4106538889. Website: www.jcpa.org. Copyright. The opinions expressed hereindo not necessarily reflect those of the Board of Fellows of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.

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turkey- between atatürk’s secularism and fundamentalist islam - harold rhode

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