Islamists Approach Europe - Turkey's Islamist Danger Part I

 

by Bassam Tibi

1^st part of 2

Since their electoral landslide victory in November 2002, Islamists within Turkey's Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP) have camouflaged themselves as "democratic Islamic conservatives."[1] The AKP claims to be the Muslim equivalent of the Christian-Democratic parties of Western Europe. Such an analogy is false, however. What the AKP seeks is not "Islam without fear," to borrow the phrase of Trinity College professor Raymond Baker,[2] but rather a strategy for a creeping Islamization that culminates in a Shari'a (Islamic law) state not compatible with a secular, democratic order. The AKP does not advertise this agenda and often denies it. This did not convince the chief prosecutor of Turkey who, because of AKP efforts to Islamize Turkey, sought to ban the party and seventy-one of its leaders. While the AKP survived a ban, the majority of justices found that the AKP had worked to advance an Islamist agenda and undermine secularism.[3] Nevertheless, the AKP enjoys the backing of the United States and the European Union as well. Through its support for institutional Islamism in Turkey, the West loses its true friends: liberal Muslims.

Advance of Secularism

The processes of secularization predate the Kemalist revolution and trace back to the Tanzimat reforms, which Ottoman sultans began in the mid-nineteenth century. However, it was the Kemalist revolution that established real secularism in Turkey. Today, Turkey is the only one of fifty-seven majority Muslim states in which secularism is constitutionally enshrined. After establishing the republic, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk abolished the caliphate, Shari'a courts, and other aspects of the Islamic legal system and religious order. The problem remains, however, that while the state is secular in terms of its full adoption of the Swiss legal code, such secularism does not extend to civil society, at least in terms of "open society."[4]

Constitutionally, Turkey is a secular state but, in reality, both Turkish civil society and its institutions are weak. In this sense, Turkey does not meet the democratic standards prevailing in the member states of the European Union. Turkish law guarantees neither freedom of religion nor freedom of speech. In 2005, Turkish authorities sought to prosecute prominent Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk for his remarks regarding the World War I-era deaths of Armenians.[5] The AKP has legislated a variety of reforms, but these remain more cosmetic than real.[6] Şerif Mardin, a political science professor at Sabancı University who is sympathetic to the AKP, argues that "Civil society is a Western dream … [It] does not translate into Islamic terms."[7]

Still, Turkey is democratic. Despite coups in 1960, 1971, and 1980, Turkey has had thirteen competitive, national elections in the past half-century and more than twenty changes of ruling party. Next to Mali and Senegal, Freedom House ranks Turkey the freest majority Muslim country.[8] But, even if it compares favorably to other majority Muslim countries, Turkey is not a fully democratic state. Its national security council, Milli Güvenlik Kurulu (MGK), was long run by the military and is still dominated by the military.[9] While not the most democratic institution—the MGK could, in practice, overrule parliament—the organization has secured the secular character of Turkey much as Iran's Council of Guardians intervenes to ensure that country's Islamist character. Ironically, even as European officials applauded reforms that, in August 2004, bestowed a civilian head and civilian majority upon the MGK, Turkey has become less democratic.

Today, the AKP party with almost a two-thirds majority in parliament, rules Turkey like a one-party state. The party ignores the opposition and has abandoned efforts to reach out to any constituency beyond Anatolian Islamists. It awards state positions, for example, almost exclusively to Islamists.[10] Still, even as Ankara backslides away from democracy, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and President Abdullah Gül leverage the European Union accession process to create an illusion of tolerance and reform.

Turkey's Approach to Europe

In a sense, the AKP's Islamism and European outreach illustrate a paradox in the way Muslims approach Europe: Either they favor Europeanization of Islam or Islamization of Europe.[11] With reform and accommodation, Islam can be compatible with democracy, but Islamism cannot. In the world of Islam, Islamism aims at reversing the process of cultural modernization. Today, acculturation and secularization are reversed into re-traditionalization, de-acculturation, and de-secularization. The ongoing de-Westernization in Turkish society is clear. There have been three Islamist parties since the 1970s with a real chance of acquiring power. All three were judicially invalidated—the Milli Selamet Partisi in 1980, the Refah Partisi in 1998, and the Fizelet Partisi in 2001—for the threat they posed to secularity in Turkey.[12]

Each of the Islamist leaders pursued different strategies. Neçmetten Erbakan who, as Refah leader, became Turkey's first Islamist prime minister, combined Islamism with neo-Ottomanism—an ideological revival of Ottoman glory—and pan-Turkish outlooks. The Erdoğan generation of Islamists, in contrast, presents itself in European terms, but its commitment to both Europe and democracy is instrumental. As Hudson Institute scholar Zeyno Baran explains, the AKP's commitment to democracy rests not on philosophical agreement with its principles but rather because "democratic elections … [have] proven to be the easiest and most legitimate path to power."[13]

Europeanized Islam embraces the values of cultural modernity, pluralism, and secular tolerance. Secularism and religious tolerance have, in many ways, provided the basis of European cultural development. Despite its Christian roots, Europe has been secular since the Renaissance and Enlightenment. Polemics that insist that the European Union is reluctant to accept an Islamic country into its fold are false. Europe was Europeanized through "the spread of one particular culture."[14] There is no reason why Turkish assimilation into Europe could not Europeanize Turkey just as the EU has Europeanized Spain, Greece, Poland, and in part, Romania. Turkey, after all, is contiguous with Europe and shares a common Byzantine heritage with much of southern Europe, including not only the Balkan states but also much of Greece.

Ottoman modernity, however, never accepted the spirit of Europe. It was based on the adoption of European instruments and technology but the rejection of European values. Such instrumental Europeanization did not stabilize the Islamic-Ottoman rule but rather contributed to its downfall. The Kemalist revolution arose from the failure of the Young Ottomans and Young Turks. Atatürk's agenda was the Europeanization of Turkey, not only technologically but also with the adoption of cultural outlooks based on modern values and norms. The Kemalist revolution sought to give Turkey a civilizational identity defined not by religion but rather by cultural values shared with Europe: secularism, individual human rights, civil society, and the rule of law. The problem with Atatürk's Europeanization of Turkey was that the process was a revolution from above, imposing innovations on society without providing the necessary cultural underpinning. By focusing on urban centers, it left the countryside barely affected. The result was a bifurcation of society: a European, urban culture in Istanbul, Ankara, and Izmir, and a rural society deeply rooted in Islamic tradition.[15]

The AKP, however, does not accept Europeanization. Rather, AKP leaders pursue a double strategy: They verbally dissociate their party—and themselves—from political Islam while simultaneously embracing Islamic identity politics and, like many Islamist parties across the globe, also engaging in anti-Christian polemics.[16] The AKP uses education as its major instrument to further Islamist identity politics, introduce reinvented Islamic values, and de-Westernize society. And while the AKP claims secular credit for pursuing Turkey's EU membership, it defames Europe as an exclusionary "club of Christians."[17] Since its November 2002 accession, the AKP has engaged in a "creeping Islamization."[18] The AKP has sought to further this through politics of cultural Islamization, especially in education and media. Erdoğan has worked to expand Anatolian culture in the cities, helped by internal migration. The slums and shanty towns have become the AKP's chief base of support.

Bassam Tibi

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