Week In Review: Commentary and Analysis, 97-06-20

By Chris P. Ioannides <ioan@hri.org>

TURKEY IN CRISIS:

WASHIGTON'S DILEMMA OF ISLAM VERSUS SECULARISM IS FALSE.
DEMOCRACY IS WHAT IS NEEDED

By Dr. Chris P. Ioannides
Sacramento, California, June 20, 1997

There is an ongoing and intense debate in Washington these days about the crisis in Turkey. Last Wednesday, June 18, the army forced the resignation of Necmettin Erbakan, the country's elected Prime Minister. As the specter of yet another military coup lingers over Turkey, President Suleyman Demirel, who has been overthrown twice by the military, is attempting to find a political way out of the crisis. The State Department and the press including special reports on the National Public Radio, present the American people with the following picture of the current situation in Turkey: There is a political crisis in Turkey that revolves around the rising "Islamic fundamentalist" forces of the ruling Refah party of Erbakan and the opposing secularist forces led by the army and supported by several political parties. Erbakan and his Islamic movement represent reaction and darkness, we are told, while the secularists represent progress and guarantee a pro-western orientation for Turkey. In other words, it is Islam versus secularism. With very few exceptions, an occasional article in the New York Times, this is how the debate about Turkey is being carried out in the Unites States. Such debate, however, presented in terms of (bad) Islam versus (good) secularism is not just misleading, but represents gross distortion of the situation in Turkey.

The Turkish military has been trying to find out ways to get rid of Necmettin Erbakan and his Islamic Refah party since he came to power a little over a year ago. There has already been a mini coup in Turkey at the end of last February, when the army-dominated National Security Council issued an ultimatum to Erbakan to stop the Islamization of Turkish society. Certainly, in a real democracy the army does not issue ultimatums to the elected government, but this is necessary we are told, because in Turkey the army is the guarantor of the country's secular orientation.

Of course, secularism and democracy do not necessarily coincide. Still, official Washington, most of the media and the so called pundits, when it comes Turkey, suffer a mental block and fail to understand that secularism and democracy are not identical. For one thing, Marxism is the epitome of secularism. Beyond this, and in the case of Turkey, Washington considers Kemal Ataturk's ideology of secularism as the only way to salvation for Turkey. Secularism however, or strong doses of it, happen to be the ideology of several Arab regimes. Both Saddam Hussein in Iraq and Hafez al Assad in Syria are followers of the Baathist ideology, a mixture of secularism, Arab nationalism and socialism. Iraq and Syria, however, are hardly qualified as democracies just because they follow a secular ideology, which, one should add, has been increasingly accommodating Islam. But there is deliberate confusion in Washington over Turkish secularism and for some time now, the Clinton Administration is trying to convince itself and the rest of us that Turkey is a democracy. At the same time, the Turkish ruling elite led by the military likes to call Turkey a "secular democracy" but democracy in Turkey has been moving backwards for several years now. There are enlightened Turks however, who realize that the country is in regression and who call the prevailing system of government "semi-democracy" at best.

The record is quite clear that notwithstanding certain elements of political pluralism- competing political parties and elections, the country's armed forces and their security agencies are the ultimate arbiter in politics. The judiciary is not independent but an instrument of the state, an omnipotent state that is. Hence the failure to advance the building of a civil society that respects individual freedom, secures freedom of the press and freedom of thought. The systematic violation of human rights in Turkey is well documented and beyond dispute. The human rights record of the new democracies in Eastern Europe is superior of Turkey, a NATO member for over four decades. Even Russia, despite all its problems, has more respect for the basic human rights of its citizens.

If one thinks seriously about Turkey and the Middle East however, he or she understands that Turkey is a society with an Islamic ethos, whatever one might call its political superstructure. The great majority of the Turkish people follow Islamic customs and traditions. One wonders if that what bothers Washington is not so much the fact that Erbakan is promoting Islamic principles, but that his type of Islam is not so friendly to the West. Certainly, being an Islamic society does not disqualify a country from being an ally of the United States. Oil-rich Saudi Arabia and the sheikdoms of the Persian Gulf are no secular democracies. They are ruled by the shari'a, the law of Islam. Indeed, Saudi Arabia is a fundamentalist country but a pro-western one. The United States went to war in 1992 to protect all these anti-secular Islamic regimes against secular Saddam Hussein.

Thus to present the debate about Turkey in terms of Islam against secularism is quite misleading for it implies two things: First, that Islam and the Refah party of Erbakan are threatening democracy, while in reality democracy in Turkey is critically ill. And second, that Islam is inherently anti-western and the US cannot live with it, which is clearly not the case.

What is left out of the debate in Washington and most of the media, is why the Islamic movement in Turkey has been gaining ground. This is essential to understand if the United States wants to avoid another disaster a' la Iran. Certainly, Erbakan and his Islamic Refah party lack the revolutionary characteristics of Khomeini's Islamic movement. Refah came to power not through revolution, but playing by the rules of Turkish politics. Moreover, Turkey's Sunni Islam is different than Iran's Shia Islam. There is a basic similarity, however, between the Shah's Iran and present day Turkey. Backed by the United States, both the Shah and the Turkish generals have followed a policy of militarization of their respective societies. They attempted to solve the deep crises faced by their societies through increased repression and militarism. In the process, the masses of the dispossessed turned to Islam as the only alternative to express their aspirations and grievances.

The most serious of the multifaceted crises faced by Turkey today, is the Kurdish question. Rather than accommodate the legitimate aspirations for human and cultural rights of 14 million Kurdish citizens, the Turkish government has opted to solve the Kurdish question by force. The last three years alone, Turkey spent over 20 billion dollars fighting the Kurdish separatists. For over a month now, 50,000 Turkish troops have invaded Iraq and are engaged in fighting Kurdish guerrillas. This 13-year-old civil war between the Turkish army and the Kurds has become Turkey's Vietnam. Its staggering cost already exceeds 50 billion dollars and is dragging down the Turkish economy. There is also the tragic human dimension of this civil war. There are over 23,000 dead. The Turkish army has razed to the ground over 2,000 Kurdish villages and about 2 million Kurds were removed forcibly from their homes and submerged into utter poverty into shantytowns across Turkey. These Kurdish refugees, have no hope and no means to express their aspirations politically. Kurdish political parties are suppressed and their leaders, some members of Parliament, are in jail.

The civil war is compounding Turkey's other problems. There is a population explosion that exacerbates runaway unemployment, with 4 out of 10 young people unemployed. This in a country of 62 million where 70 per cent of the population is under 30 years of age. Inflation this year was 35% and eats away the income of the workers. In addition to Kurds who are forced to come to urban centers, large numbers of peasants leave the countryside in search of better life in cities. They bring with them their Islamic customs. The absence of infrastructure and jobs for these uprooted peasants, is reflected in the shantytowns spreading in major Turkish cities.

These problems combined, lave led to a crisis atmosphere and have created an enormous vacuum into which Islam and the Refah party enter, promising the dispossessed of Turkey social justice and an opportunity for a better life. The growing failure of Turkey's ruling military and political elite to address these fundamental problems, is the main reason causing more and more Turks to seek salvation in Islam and Erbakan's Refah party.

The reaction of the Turkish military, instead of promoting democratic and social reforms and a political settlement of the Kurdish conflict, was to follow a policy of further militarization of Turkish society. Internally, the repressive mechanisms of the state have been reinforced while externally, Turkey has become even more aggressive against its only democratic neighbors, Greece and Cyprus. These two democracies offer a convenient target for the Turkish military to divert attention from the domestic crisis. In Cyprus, Turkey is continuing its 23-year-old occupation and its gunboat diplomacy against this tiny island republic. It has flooded the occupied northern part of Cyprus with settlers from Turkey. Today these colonists, between 80-90,000 exceed the number of Turkish Cypriots who have been immigrating in increasing numbers. On top of this, there is 35,000 strong Turkish occupation army, the true ruler of the occupied territory. The barbed wire dividing Cypriot capital Nicosia since the Turkish invasion of 1974, stands as cruel reminder of the Berlin wall.

Turkey's policy towards its other democratic neighbor, Greece, has been one of increasing military threats aiming at territorial revisionism. The territorial status of the Aegean Sea has been settled long time ago. Since 1974, however, and especially over the last five years, Turkey is demanding that this status quo is revised at the expense of Greek sovereign rights recognized by international agreements. In March 1995, under American pressure and as good will gesture, Greece lifted its veto and the European Union approved a customs union agreement with Turkey. Instead of reciprocating, Turkey escalated its demands in the Aegean. To enhance its claims, Turkey has been violating Greek air space and territorial waters massively and systematically. In January 1996, Greece and Turkey came very close to war when Ankara disputed Greek sovereign rights over the Greek islet of Imia. Last fall, Turkey disputed the sovereignty of the Greek Island of Gavdos near Crete and 240 away miles from the Turkish shore.

While Turkey is following a policy of repression internally and expansionism externally, it claims at the same time that it desires to be full member of the European Union. The latter, however, is becoming increasingly reluctant to accept a country that its practices violate the fundamental rules of democracy and international law. It is high time that the United States sends the appropriate message to Turkey as well. Moreover, Washington should abandon the policy of moral equivalence between Greece and Cyprus on the one hand and Turkey on the other. For Greece and Cyprus are true democracies while Turkey is not.

As for the domestic situation in the country, its is also time that Washington faces the naked truth that Turkish society is undergoing a profound crisis. Eric Rouleau, the former French Ambassador to Turkey and one of the most authoritative observers of Middle Eastern affairs wrote a prophetic article a year ago entitled "Turkey: Beyond Ataturk." In this seminal piece, Rouleau who writes sympathetically for Turkey, provides an anatomy of the Turkish crisis. He writes, "...sickness is eating away the (Turkish) republic. More than seventy years after its establishment by Kemal Ataturk, the republic is in desperate need of an overhaul....what is certain is that the Kurdish conflict is among the factors contributing to the remarkable revival of Islam in Turkey." It is prudent that the Clinton administration abandons the pseudo-dilemma of Islam versus secularism as the defining question about Turkey. What is needed rather, is redirection of Turkish resources away from militarism and expansionism--costing the country tens of billions of dollars--and towards domestic reforms. Turkey does not need more armaments. What it desperately needs is more democracy and more respect of the human rights of all Turkish citizens irrespective of ethnic origin. This is the only way to resolve the crisis that leads inevitably to the further strengthening of the Refah party domestically and to military adventures externally. This kind of message from Washington to Turkey, will be welcomed by many Turks who are thirsty for democracy and social justice.

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