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Turkey Marks 80th Birthday Amid Rows Over Secularism
Sibel Utku
Agence France Presse, Arab News
ANKARA, 27 October 2003 — Turkey is marking its 80th birthday this week, but celebrations are mired in growing hostility between a belligerent secularist elite and Islamist-leaning rivals of increasing political strength.
A government led by former members of a banned Islamist movement was hardly part of the future Mustafa Kemal Ataturk envisaged on Oct. 29, 1923 when he proclaimed the republic on the ashes of the Ottoman Empire and moved to transform it — with an iron fist — into a secular Westernized nation. Crushing all opposition, he purged religion from the state and education system, placed religious activities under control, replaced the Arabic alphabet with the Latin one, granted civil rights to women and even changed the way Turks dress, banning the fez, the traditional red, soft-felt cap.
Eight decades on, his legacy remains the dominant ideology of a country which has come closer to the West than any other Muslim nation. Turkey is today the sole Muslim member of NATO and is bidding to join the European Union. But Kemalism is increasingly challenged by Islamic-leanings forces, like the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) as well as by liberals who argue that its authoritarian and nationalism impedes democratization of the country.
The army-led establishment, which fears that any deviation from stringent secularist norms will one day destroy Ataturk’s republic, has used all means — political, judicial and military — to thwart the revival of political Islam and calls for broader religious freedoms since the 1970s. Since AKP’s stunning election victory last year, the battle has shifted to a highly symbolic field — the ban on women wearing the Islamic headscarf in universities and public offices.
President Ahmet Necdet Sezer seized on the republic’s 80th anniversary as an opportunity to deliver a tough message. In an unprecedented move which has caused public uproar, Sezer, who will host a reception on Oct. 29, snubbed the headscarf-wearing wives of MPs, inviting only spouses who are not veiled. “This was to show that challenges to the current understanding of secularism will be resisted,” political scientist Ilter Turan said.
The controversy came atop already high-running tensions over educational reforms planned by the government, which many see as a bid to help Islamist supporters win university degrees and then obtain prominent jobs in the public sector. Despite disavowing his Islamist past, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan remains closely watched by the army, which in 1997 ousted from power Turkey’s first Islamist government to which Erdogan and his aides belonged. Erdogan, who in 1998 was jailed for “inciting religious hatred,” says he now favors secularism, but one that respects democracy and religious freedoms.
According to Heinz Kramer, a German author on Turkey, Erdogan’s crushing election victory against corruption-tainted secularist parties shows people will no longer put up with big-brother-knows-best attitudes. “One cannot, on the one hand, advocate modernization and democracy and, on the other hand, forever try to establish these ideals by means of ‘guided’ or ‘controlled’ democracy,” Kramer told AFP from Berlin.
Turan said that abandoning secularism in favor of a religion-based system was no longer likely in Turkey. “But the way secularism is practiced can change. Until 1948 this country did not have a divinity faculty and religion lessons were introduced in schools only after the 1950s. This shows that the interpretation of secularism is changing,” he said. But any slowing down in democratization will have a bearing on Turkey’s bid to join the EU, which is seen as the ultimate prize toward Ataturk’s vision of Westernization. “Any effort at preserving Turkey’s secular character is welcomed by Europeans. Still, there is a growing conviction that the self-declared guardians of Kemalism have become a real impediment to further democratization,” Kramer said.
On the other hand Europe is not fully convinced of the democratic credentials of the AKP either, he added.
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| Earth, a planet hungry for peace |
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03). |
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03). |
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