Eighty years ago Ataturk transformed Turkey into a secular state — ending the centuries-old caliphate, and requiring Turks to change the hats on their heads and the script with which they wrote. Last week the AK party won a great victory in Turkish elections with 45 percent of the vote, which amounted to an endorsement or at least acceptance of Turkey’s gradual movement away from the rigid secularism installed by Ataturk.
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Before the election millions of Turks had come out to the streets to rally against a perceived threat to the secular regime from the ruling AKP. Clearly only a minority of the voters shared those concerns — particularly in view of the success of the AKP administration and the failure of secularists to unite to provide an attractive alternative. Nevertheless because of Turkey’s strategic importance many outsiders are concerned about the possibility of a major change in Turkey’s role in the Middle East.
The central issue in thinking about the current conflict in Turkey is the difference between “Islamic” and “Islamist,” the code word for Muslims who favor expanding intolerant and aggressive Muslim movements, and particularly those who support violent jihad against the U.S. and the West. Since most Muslims are not Islamist, and even some secular Muslims support jihad, it isn’t clear how much concern one should have about the growing power of Islamic groups and the Islamic governing party, the AKP. But the bottom line for many people is that while more respect for religious Muslims in Turkey may be highly deserved, advances for Islamic political forces must not be allowed to lead to Islamist success.
So long as the political balance between Islamic and secular forces is near where it is now, no one need care about exactly how the Turks work out their internal differences. The only significant danger is that one side will gain too much power and go too far. While the political struggle is closely balanced each side is led by “moderates.” But one must be concerned about what would happen if one side gained significantly more power.
There are two arenas of struggle in Turkey. One is internal, concerning the power of Islam or of secularists to control the behavior of Turks in relation to religion — reducing the religious freedom of ordinary Turkish citizens by forbidding or requiring observance of Muslim law and religious symbols in the public space. The other arena is external, concerning Turkish support for jihad or for the war against jihadi terrorism.
Observers today tend to ask whether Prime Minister Erdogan and the AKP “really” intends to turn Turkey into an Islamist power. But this is the wrong question to ask. The motives of current leaders are not the decisive question. What counts is what would happen if they gain greater power. The classic revolutionary pattern — whether in France or Russia or Iran — is for the initial “moderate revolutionaries” to find themselves overtaken by events — either losing power or being forced to support much more radical measures than they originally favored.
Incidentally, it should be noted that in the Turkish context “secularist” does not have the connotations that it does in the U.S. or in the West. Many Turkish “secularists” have very strong commitments to their Muslim identity, even those who drink wine and don’t fast during Ramadan. Most “secularists,” would feel insulted if accused of not being Muslim.
It is also a mistake to judge the conflict by asking what is “fair” or “right.” Just because you think that forbidding headscarves in public places is an improper restriction on a woman’s religious freedom does
not mean that you should favor those trying to remove such restrictions. In the middle of an emotional political controversy on fundamental political issues it is naïve to consider only the immediate issue in dispute rather than its political context.
The current controversy in Turkey should be looked at very differently than if it had arisen in, say, 1975. At that time the Muslim world was essentially quiet; jihad was not on any public agenda. But in the last 30 years the Iranian efforts to spread their Islamist revolution and the Saudi 100 billion dollar campaign to spread Wahhabi dogmas of hatred and intolerance around the world have made profound advances. Although at home in Saudi Arabia the government for the last few years has been fighting hard against the local agents of the thinking they are still propagating around the world.
This delicate balance in much of the Muslim world for or against jihad, which may well tip one way or the other in the next few years, interacts in two ways with Turkey. First, the current emotional momentum of jihadi-like thinking in Islam increases the danger that a movement toward Islam in Turkey could get caught up in temporary international Muslim triumphalism. Second, an Islamic victory today in Turkey could increase the danger that international Islam will tip in the jihadi direction. This danger in the broader world did not exist 30 years ago and may well be a much smaller concern in ten years.
In view of the complexity of the Turkish situation and the difficulty of knowing how to move toward the correct balance, one approach is to ask “which error is more dangerous?” Never mind whether a bad result from too much secular success or a bad result from too much Islamic success is more likely, which would be worse? This approach may lead to being willing to postpone the just claims of religious Muslims in Turkey for a few years. Because it is clear that if Wahhabi influenced Muslims came to power in Turkey it would be a disaster for Turkey and for the world. On the other hand, if excessively secular elements came to power in Turkey, even if they had a quite objectionable nationalist/authoritarian tinge, the harm would be limited. Moreover, the prospects for soon moving back to the center would be good as there is no emotionally compelling international movement of authoritarian/secularists to sustain and reinforce such a Turkish group, nor is there an international secularist movement stirring up the Turks in the way that Saudi-financed Wahhabis are.
While Turkish Muslims can find ample Islamic sources of support for moderation, some of the most dynamic elements in the current Muslim world support and encourage extremism and violent jihadi ideas, which are also deeply embedded in Islam. No comparable pressure and temptation toward extremism exists on the secularist side, although history certainly contains plenty of secularist extremists.
Most of these arguments lead to at least temporarily preferring the secularists; one reason for uncertainty, however, is that it is possible that leaning too strongly toward secularists could lead Muslims to become so disillusioned by the results of playing more or less by democratic rules that they will use other measures to secure fair treatment. In other words, even if the big danger is from the Islamic side it might be that the prudent way to prevent that danger is to move a little way in their direction.
Clearly Turkish secularism has abused the religious feelings and rights of Turkish Muslims, and democracy is weakened if the army intervenes in fundamental political decisions, and even removes or compels an elected government. But it is possible that, in the current international context, outcomes that one would normally reject may be the least dangerous for Turks and for the world. Unfortunately, even in hindsight it will be difficult to judge which outcome will turn out to have been for the better.
— Max Singer is a fellow at the Hudson Institute.
