Egyptian Elections and the Turkish Model
May 23, 2012 § 3 Comments
For anyone who spends their time thinking and writing about the Middle East, today’s big news item is the Egyptian presidential election. While I spend most of my (non-dissertation) time on Turkey and Israel these days, my original academic interest was in the Arab world and I follow it generally, and Egypt specifically, very closely. Lots has been written over the past year about the “Turkish model” and whether it is applicable to Egypt, and indeed a recent Brookings poll indicates a preference among Egyptians to emulate Turkey. There is no need for me to rehash the specific reasons that Egypt may or may not be a good place to replicate the Turkish model, since plenty of smart people who know Egypt far better than I have already done so. I would only quickly note that based on the Brookings poll, Egyptians don’t actually know how Turkey is governed, as 54% of the respondents listed Turkey as the country that best reflected their aspirations for the role of Islam in politics while 66% of Egyptians support basing their laws on sharia. Even allowing for the 83% that say sharia should be adopted to modern times, a majority of Egyptians appear to believe that Turkish law is based in some loose way on sharia, which is not the case.
Instead of getting into the weeds on Egypt, I’d like to discuss why no country, Egypt included, should be looking to replicate the Turkish model. To be clear, when I talk about the Turkish model I don’t mean the military being the arbiter of secular politics or guardian of the state, but an ostensibly Islamic party governing through secular state institutions without imposing any religious dictates. To begin with, the synthesis of Islam and democracy in Turkey has taken a very long time. The fact is that the Turkish model has only emerged in the past ten years after decades of instability, military coups, varying degrees of authoritarianism, and a complete lack of vertical accountability. When Mustafa Kemal Atatürk founded Turkey out of the remnants of the Ottoman Empire, he did so with clearly thought out ideas about how his new state should be organized and what goals it should seek to attain. Furthermore, unlike in other states where an ideology may be adopted after the institutions of the state are already in place, Atatürk built Turkey’s political and social institutions at the same time that he was installing Kemalism as the state’s official ideology. This enabled him to create structures and rules that were explicitly designed to strengthen and enable Kemalism, meaning that any challenge to the state would unmistakably be a challenge to Kemalism as well.
Since ideology was so wrapped up and intertwined with the state itself, it meant that Turkey was unable to convert first order battles over ideology into a lower grade conflict even after the first successful transition to democracy after WWII. Any ideological wobble away from Kemalism precipitated a crisis, particularly given the fact that the most important and powerful state institution, the military, saw itself as the ultimate guardian of Kemalism irrespective of which party was in power. That the AKP was finally able to emerge out of the ashes of the Refah Party, win multiple elections, and govern without completely dismantling the state is the culmination of a long process of ideological softening on both sides. The overarching point here is that this process took 75 years to play out, and took 50 years after Turkey’s first democratic election. Democracy does not happen overnight under the best of circumstances, and Egypt is far from being an ideal staging ground. There are many things to contend with: a strong authoritarian legacy, social cleavages, a pending economic crisis, disputes over religion and what the state should look like, just to name a few of the big ones. Aiming for a synthesis of Islamic politics and secular government is a fool’s errand in the short run, and while Egypt may be able to eventually pull it off successfully, it will be years before that happens.
Another primary reason why the Turkish model cannot be replicated is that, as Steven Cook points out in Ruling But Not Governing, Turkey adapted for a specific purpose, which was joining the EU. The EU process made future military interventions more unlikely while also forcing the state to become more democratic, but at the same time it made the non-secular AKP soften any tendencies it might have had to weaken state secularism. When joining the EU is the ultimate goal, there is zero chance of adopting any type of sharia law or religious compulsion, and while I do not fall in the camp of those who think that the AKP actually desires to do this anyway, it would never happen while the EU negotiating process is underway. Egypt, and all other majority Muslim countries, do not have this structural constraint to contend with. If the Muslim Brotherhood is in power in Egypt and decides that it wants to legislate according to religious dictates, there is no comparable outside incentive to slow that down. The Turkish model did not emerge in a vacuum, but out of a highly specific context that does not exist elsewhere.
Finally, the specific electoral rules used in Turkey contribute to a unique situation in which extremist views on the poles of political thought are kept at bay. One need only look at the op-ed on Indonesia in the New York Times yesterday to get a sense of how this works. In Indonesia, the government coalition includes a number of extremely conservative Islamist parties, which in turn leads to restrictions on religious minorities and religiously motivated violence that the state ignores. In Turkey, however, the vote threshold for parliament is 10% of the vote, which means that smaller and more extremist parties get left out. This in turn has made the AKP a big tent that includes religious conservatives, merchants, the middle class, and some of the new urban elite. Such a party cannot afford to alienate religious minorities or condone any Islamist-led violence, and thus the AKP largely keeps its religious piety confined to personal behavior and governs over a secular state. Erdoğan’s lecture to the Muslim Brotherhood on his trip to Egypt about the vital need for secular governance was not an act; say what you will about him, but he practices what he preaches.
If Egypt is able to get to a place down the road where it embodies Alfred Stepan’s twin tolerations of the state being free from the yoke of religion and religion being free from the yoke of the state, it will be an amazing accomplishment. If it is able to replicate the Turkish model, it would be a positive development for its citizens and governing institutions. Nobody should fool themselves, however, on the likelihood of this happening. The Turkish model emerged out of a confluence of events playing out over decades with some unique structural constraints weighing on the entire process, and it is folly to imagine that this might happen elsewhere in what is in historical terms the blink of an eye.
Distinguishing Fact From Fiction
May 22, 2012 § 3 Comments
Over the past few weeks, and then again even more intensely over the past few days, there has been a flood of stories surrounding Turkey and Israel, some of which ring truer than others. The various reports also paint a muddled picture as to what is going on between the two countries; on the one hand, Israel and Turkey are on the verge of reconciling, and on the other they are just as far away as ever. I thought I’d run down the list of what has been reported to try and cut through the fog a bit and figure out what is actually going on.
NATO Summit
This is the story that got the most attention after it was reported that Turkey, and specifically Foreign Minister Davutoğlu, had vetoed Israeli participation in the NATO summit that took place in Chicago over the past two days. On the face of it, there is no reason to doubt this report’s veracity. Turkey has been consistently ratcheting up the pressure on Israel in order to force an apology and compensation for the Mavi Marmara, and blocking Israel from the NATO summit would certainly be consistent with this pattern. On the other hand, the State Department said that Israel was never going to be invited to the summit in the first place and Israel confirmed that it had no plans to go anyway. This makes sense in light of the fact that Israel is not a part of NATO and to the best of my knowledge has never attended a NATO summit before, not to mention the fact that this particular meeting focused on the security situation in Afghanistan, which is not an issue that involves Israel in any way. I have also heard rumors that Davutoğlu did not actually veto Israel’s participation and that the story was leaked as misinformation. It’s hard to know what to make of all this, but the sum total of the evidence suggests to me that Israel was never going to be invited to the NATO summit having nothing to do with Turkey.
Israeli Violations of Northern Cyprus’s Airspace
Last week, Turkey accused Israel of flying into Northern Cypriot airspace after it scrambled jets to intercept the Israeli plane. This is part of the ongoing tension between Turkey on one side and Cyprus and Israel on the other regarding the natural gas reserves in the eastern Mediterranean, and it is a thorny situation that is unlikely to be resolved anytime soon. Israel and Turkey were certainly never in danger of exchanging fire over the Israeli plane, and it would take a huge screw up of massive proportions for that to ever occur. Chalk this one up to the omnipresent tensions that exist between Israel and Turkey at the moment, although I can’t help but note the oddity of Turkey scrambling jets and accusing Israel of violating the airspace of a country that nobody else recognizes but Turkey and that Turkey claims is its own sovereign state.
Israeli Troops in Cyprus
This one wins the prize for stretching all bounds of credulity. It has been reported that Israel is planning to station 20,000 troops in Cyprus in order to protect a gas terminal that it will build. First, it seems a bit out of proportion to deploy 20,000 soldiers to protect 10,000 construction workers, particularly given that this gas terminal is being built in Cyrpus, not in Afghanistan or Somalia. Second, the notion that Cyprus or the EU would allow Israel to base 20,000 troops in Cyprus (for comparison’s sake, the Cypriot military has only 10,000 active duty soldiers in total) is so laughable that it is barely even worth discussing. Suffice it to say that the Israeli Foreign Ministry must have thought that the reporter asking for a comment on this worked for the Onion.
Heron Drones
It was reported a couple of days ago that Israel, which sold Heron drones to Turkey and under the terms of the sale was responsible for repairs to the aircraft, has fixed the drones and returned them to the Turkish military. This is a good development by all accounts, particularly since I am of the view that good relations between the two militaries is much more important than a full restoration of amicable political ties. Obviously this was a political decision too, so it’s an encouraging sign that cooperation between Ankara and Jerusalem is still possible. The news did, however, make we wonder what Davutoğlu has to say about the issue now after denying in January that any Herons were sent to Israel for repairs.
Erdoğan’s Emissary to Netanyahu
Finally, there was the news reported by Israeli Channel 10 that Prime Minister Erdoğan sent a personal envoy to meet with Prime Minister Netanyahu in an effort to mend relations, but that Turkey will not be able to move forward absent an official apology. I have no way of knowing whether this report is accurate or not, although given everything that I know about Turkish domestic politics and Erdoğan himself, I am highly skeptical. The account has not been confirmed by any other source aside from Channel 10, and while Turkey would have plenty of incentive to keep such a thing quiet, Israel does not. The only thing that gives me pause is that Turkey desperately wants to buy U.S. drones (so much for Turkey’s own Anka drone, which is scheduled to be delivered in 2014) which Congress will never agree to sell until Turkey’s relations with Israel improve, so perhaps Erdoğan is starting to think a little more strategically for the long term. In any event, I’d still be surprised if a meeting between his emissary and Netanyahu actually occurred.
So what’s with all the misinformation and bogus reports? Assuming that the NATO story was actually inaccurate and combined with the ridiculous report about troops in Cyprus, it says to me that there is a group of government officials in Turkey that do not want to see any progress made on an Israeli-Turkish reconciliation, and are doing whatever they can to keep the pressure on. There is clearly value in this tactic from a domestic politics standpoint, as Turkish nationalism is always popular and Israel is considered by some to be a true enemy of the Turkish state. Leaking stories about Turkish efforts to punish Israel – whether true or not – and concocting up scare stories involving Israeli actions in Cyprus (another convenient Turkish bogeyman) makes it more difficult for any progress on rapprochement to be made behind the scenes, as it risks making it appear as if Turkey is selling itself short and gins up public pressure to maintain a hardline position. Let’s hope that if Israel and Turkey are indeed any closer to settling their differences, misinformation in the press won’t throw a wrench into those plans.
Why It’s Good To Know About A Topic Before Writing On It
May 21, 2012 § Leave a comment
Paul Alster had a column yesterday in the Times of Israel predicting a reconciliation between Israel and Turkey. Seems like a reasonable enough proposition, particularly in light of the news that Israel has repaired and returned four Heron drones belonging to Turkey after agreeing to fix them over a year ago. Sure, there are other factors to weigh, such as the Turkish warning to Israel just last week not to violate Northern Cyprus’s airspace or the reports of Turkey vetoing Israel’s participation in this weekend’s NATO summit, but let’s assume that Paul Alster is a glass half full kind of guy. Reasonable people can differ on this issue, and for every sign that the freeze between the two countries is only getting deeper, there are signs of thawing in the relationship.
On the other hand, the specific arguments made by Alster in support of the proposition that Turkey and Israel are going to mend their relationship border on the patently ridiculous, and his command of the facts is, to put it charitably, a bit suspect. Let’s look at some representative examples.
Erdogan (who went out of his way to antagonize and inflame relations with Israel at every possible opportunity) seems to have realized what a grave misjudgement he made in allying himself to two of the most despotic leaders on the planet, and by association being tarnished with the very dirty brush that has seen them gain pariah status across the globe.
I hardly think that Turkey has been tarnished with any brush that puts it at risk of becoming a pariah. At the moment, Turkey is being touted as a model by all sorts of Islamist political parties across the Arab world, is increasingly relied upon by the United States as a vital ally in the Middle East, has the second largest military of all NATO members, is once again making some progress on its EU bid, and is universally viewed as one of the most important actors of the coming decades. Does this sound to you like Turkey’s international status has been put at risk in any way? Undoubtedly Turkey waited too long to give up on Assad, but after that initial stumble Turkey’s reputation does not seem very much worse for the wear.
Exactly what was truly behind Erdogan’s posturing is hard to figure, as he had long been pushing for membership in the EU, and his cozying up to Iran and Syria was hardly likely to endear him to Turkey‘s potential European partners. This ill-conceived strategic gamble has clearly backfired and quickly blown up in Erdogan’s face. The prospect of the EU admitting a new member-state that is joined at the hip with two of the world’s most corrupt and authoritarian regimes was never going to prove a vote winner in Brussels; the tactic seeming to reveal a significant flaw in the political maneuvering of a man who has gradually been losing his way, only three years after he appeared to be a major player with growing influence on the international scene.
Hard as it may be to figure out for Alster, let’s see if we can come up with some reason for Erdoğan’s “posturing” in which he tried to develop closer ties with his neighbors. Might it be Turkey’s stated policy of zero problems with neighbors? Guess it wasn’t that hard to figure out after all.
As for this argument with regard to the EU, Turkey was not exactly sailing effortlessly toward EU membership before it consciously improved its relations with Syria and Iran. More saliently, there are a number of reasons why Turkey is having problems with its accession bid, from European cultural bias to worrying government suppression of the press to discredited witch hunts of military officers. Being “joined at the hip” with Iran and Syria is so far down the list of things that EU member states are worried about that to mention it betrays a staggering lack of knowledge about the real issues surrounding Turkey’s EU bid.
A PLAY IN ONE ACT
Herman van Rompuy: Nice to see you again Tayyip. I must say, you have made amazing progress in your efforts to join the EU. Who would have thought that just months after Sarkozy was out of office you would have made your peace with Cyprus and successfully negotiated all 35 chapters needed to gain accession to our club? We have never before seen such singleminded devotion by an EU applicant.
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan: Thank you Herman. My fellow countrymen and I are most excited to take our spots in the European Commission, the European Council, the Council of Europe, and your various other bodies that have such wonderfully differentiated names. So when do I get my official EU membership badge?
Herman van Rompuy: Unfortunately, you made the grave mistake of being joined at the hip with Syria and Iran, which is the single greatest flaw we have ever encountered from a prospective EU member and is the subject of the double secret 36th chapter which you have now violated. As such, you are no longer considered to be a “major player with growing influence” – after all, your credibility with Iran, Pakistan, and Sunni Arab states is worthless to us, as is your rapidly expanding economy and military strength. Please confine yourself to Kadıköy and all points east from now on, as we have voted in Brussels to revoke your Europe visitation privileges.
CURTAIN
In recent months, with Iran becoming increasingly isolated by the international community as a result of its alleged development of nuclear weapons, and the Syrian government continuing to massacre large numbers of its own people while driving many more to seek refuge in Turkey — causing a growing humanitarian crisis within Turkey’s own borders — Erdogan’s government, amid rumors that Ankara is keen to re-establish relations with Jerusalem, has been noticeably short on its previously stinging anti-Israel rhetoric.
Right, I forgot about how popular Israel is among the international community. That BBC poll released just last week revealing Israel to be ranked above only Iran and Pakistan in favorability, and in which majorities in Spain, France, Germany, and Britain viewed Israel negatively, didn’t accurately capture the public relations value in Europe for Turkey of cozying up to Israel following Iran’s isolation and Syria’s horrific massacre of civilians (both of which everyone knows are Turkey’s fault, of course). That is precisely why Turkey’s top officials have in the past six months ceased berating reporters for not focusing on Israel’s nuclear weapons or accusing Israel of not wanting peace with the Palestinians or bragging about isolating Israel and bringing it to its knees. Isn’t it great how that previously stinging rhetoric has just disappeared?
This easing of the tensions in the eastern Mediterranean is surely more down to necessity on the part of the Turks than to a sea change in the attitude of their leader. With the door to Europe slammed in their face, Syria and Iran remaining on the international blacklist, no improvement in their relationship with Greece, and problems on their eastern front with Syrian refugees and Kurdish separatists, Turkey is surely keen to find friends in the region.
Yes, Turkey’s isolation is really terrible. Granted, the P5+1 talks were held in Istanbul last month, and Turkey is fresh off the NATO summit in Chicago, and Turkey’s approval rating in the Arab world is 78%, but Turkey is still desperate for a friend, and that is why it is going to make up with Israel. Not because the world’s superpower is pushing for it, not because it benefits Turkey’s tourism industry and export markets, not because the two countries have a long history of military cooperation, but because Turkey is feeling terribly isolated and lonely. I mean, everyone knows that Turkey is just another term for Iranian/Syrian province, right? And oh, let’s not forget about Alster’s reference to Turkey’s “majority secular population” in which 83% of Turks identify themselves as religious and 55% self-identify as either “extremely” or “highly” religious.
I could go on, but I think you get the point. I do not know what your expertise is, Mr. Alster, but it is clearly not this. Israel and Turkey may very well reconcile, but just as a broken clock showing the right time twice a day is not evidence that it is working, an Israeli-Turkish rapprochement will not be a testament to your analytical skills in the realm of foreign affairs.
60 Minutes On The Gülen Movement
May 14, 2012 § 6 Comments
Another Monday, another post about 60 Minutes. Last night’s segment of interest was on Fethullah Gülen and the Gülen movement, and centered on the growing number of Gülen charter schools in the U.S. The gist of the report was that Gülen is himself a secretive figure whose true motivations cannot be entirely ascertained, but that he preaches a tolerant brand of Islam focused on education and social mobility and that his Harmony Charter Schools are by all accounts doing great work while at the same time stirring up controversy by appearing to skirt immigration laws. On the whole, the segment’s tone was a positive one, and in a lot of ways it painted Gülen as a cleric who fits in well with the general American creed of hard work, education, and capitalist ethos leading to success. The Gülenists, who can be notoriously thin-skinned, have to be happy with 60 Minutes for portraying them in a good light.
Far more interesting to me is not what 60 Minutes reported but what it didn’t report. All Turks of every political stripe would find it inconceivable that a major American network did a profile on Gülen and his followers without one mention of either Prime Minister Erdoğan or the AKP. In fact, someone with no prior knowledge of Gülenists at all would have thought after watching the report that the Gülen movement has little role in Turkish politics and is nothing more than a somewhat shadowy business conglomerate. The reality is that the Gülenists and the AKP have long been intertwined in many ways with their twin rises coinciding with each other, and the AKP’s decade in power has led to Gülenists now filling many high posts in Turkey’s judiciary and police. Gülen and his followers are not easily separated from politics and their many business interests are not the only part of the story. Gülen media organs, such as Zaman, championed Erdoğan’s rise and now consistently back him, and it has been alleged that the Ergenekon investigation is a reward to the Gülenists as a way for them to get back at the military that oppressed them during the 1980s. While recently there have been rumblings of a power struggle between the Gülen movement and the AKP, the fact remains that it is difficult to discuss one without discussing the other, yet this is the very feat that CBS managed to pull off. For someone who studies Turkey, it came off as a very strange omission.
One thing to give 60 Minutes credit for is that it did not give undeserved airtime to those arguing that the Gülen schools represent a secret plot to introduce creeping Islamization or sharia into American society. To begin with, while the Gülenists are controversial in Turkey because they often come off as a personality cult, there is little question that Gülen preaches tolerance, interfaith dialogue, and a distinctly non-confontational brand of Islam. The folks who rail against Gülen and his schools on ideological grounds have a problem with Islam in general and not with anything that Gülen is saying. There is also the inconvenient fact that the schools are all public charters, which means that like any other public school in this country, there is no religious instruction or school-supported religious activity of any kind. Opening a group of public charter schools would be a pretty boneheaded way of trying to carry out a program of religious indoctrination given that there is literally zero space or opportunity for religion to be pushed, and whatever else people may think of Gülen and his followers, stupid is one of the last words that comes to mind.
Most people who saw the 60 Minutes report probably came away with the impression that Gülen is a secretive guy who genuinely believes in promoting math and science education and whose followers are looking for creative ways to come to the U.S. and carry out this message while simultaneously making money. I don’t think this is a bad read on the situation at all, but given the fact that Lesley Stahl went to Turkey to see what was going on for herself, the absence (aside from a few seconds from Andrew Finkel) of any reporting related to the movement’s political activities in Turkey and the intense controversy that it has stirred up surrounding the prosecution of the military and its critics – no doubt Ahmet Şık would have had something interesting to say on the matter – was odd to say the least. Does this mean that CBS and 60 Minutes are naive or guilty of sloppy reporting once again, or is this more fodder for those who conspiratorially proclaim the awesome and secretive power of the cemaat to silence its accusers? Given what we saw from 60 Minutes a few weeks ago, I’d vote for the former, but no doubt the latter explanation will quickly gain currency among those who see Gülen’s hand in everything that goes on related to Turkey.
Opportunities and Pitfalls for The U.S. and Turkey
May 10, 2012 § 1 Comment
The Council on Foreign Relations has a new report out on U.S.-Turkish relations that looks at Turkey’s rising geopolitical role while acknowledging some of the more worrisome authoritarian trends taking place, and calls for growing the U.S. bilateral relationship into more of an equal partnership in order to recognize and take advantage of Turkey’s new position. I was at the report’s DC rollout yesterday where Madeleine Albright, Steven Hadley, and Steven Cook talked about the report’s conclusions and answered questions, and I have some thoughts about some of their comments and the recommendations contained in the report. I think that the report is overall an excellent document with a great assessment of Turkish accomplishments and ambitions, and it is undoubtedly good strategy for the U.S. to deepens its strategic relationship with Turkey and expand it on issues of joint interest. I do worry, however, that too heavy a reliance on Turkey risks putting the U.S. in a bind since there are going to be issues on which the two countries are never going to agree and Turkey’s rising ambitions may get in the way of U.S. interests in crucial areas.
As the report notes, Turkey has recently been an important and helpful ally in many ways, and the U.S. would be smart to deepen the relationship across all sectors of government and the bureaucracy. Either Steven Cook or Steve Hadley (don’t remember which) observed that relations have traditionally been based on defense and military issues but that this is changing and is part of a natural evolution. I actually wonder if defense issues are going to become even more important in the years ahead while the relationship’s foundation broadens. Aaron Stein pointed out to me yesterday that there is a split in NATO over hosting U.S. nuclear weapons, with Turkey and Italy agreeing with the U.S. on keeping nuclear-armed aircraft on their soil and Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands wanting them gone sometime during the next decade. This makes Turkey an even more valuable defense ally than it already is, and makes me wonder whether the combination of the differences within NATO over its future and the fact that Turkey already has the largest military in Europe means that there will be an eventual shift away from U.S. reliance on NATO and more of an ad hoc coalition between the U.S., Turkey, Britain, and other countries. No matter what happens, a real partnership with Turkey is unquestionably in U.S. interests and will only be beneficial since it makes lots of sense to closely align ourselves with the dominant growing power in the region.
What concerns me is a point made by Albright, when she said that people ask her if its a problem that we are too reliant on picking up the phone and calling Erdoğan whenever we need something, and her response to that is that its not and that we should be relying on him even more. On some issues our interests with Turkey align perfectly but on others they don’t, and this notion that the U.S. should be depending on Erdoğan to always advance our interests is a dangerous one. Turkey has its own goals for the region and the world, and on issues from Iran to Israel to Sudan its interests might not be in concert with American ones. Turkey is also madly casting around for ways to solve its growing energy consumption problem and this inevitably leads it to look to Russia, and tighter ties between Turkey and Russia are not necessarily a good thing for the U.S. given recent Russian intransigence on a number of issues and the return of Putin as president. All of this is perfectly understandable on Turkey’s part, but it means that leaning on Erdoğan and Turkey to solve all of our problems has the potential to seriously backfire. Albright’s stance on this appears to be more extreme than that laid out in the task force report, but the report does suggest that better lines of communication might have averted the spat over the Turkey-Brazil-Iran nuclear fuel deal, whereas I am not so sure that is the case. Aligning more closely with Turkey is smart, but farming out parts of our regional policy in the Middle East to Ankara is not.
There is also the fact that Turkey has been displaying some worrying authoritarian tendencies which the report does not at all downplay or whitewash, but that might throw a wrench into developing a genuine partnership. One of the reasons that it has become easy to view Turkey as a real ally is because of its democratic status, but it hints of cynicism to continue deepening the relationship on all levels and relying on the friendship between President Obama and PM Erdoğan while Turkey continues to imprison journalists and even members of parliament at an alarming rate and prosecute officers in trials that have become discredited. It is beginning to cause embarrassing incidents with other countries, and both Erdoğan and Hüseyin Çelik acknowledged yesterday that the February 28 coup prosecutions are beginning to get out of hand, with Çelik worrying aloud about “trouble in the international arena” over the nature of the trials. This suggests that Turkey recognizes that it has a growing public relations problem, although not necessarily that it thinks a solution is required other than speeding up the process. This kind of thing needs to be solved and Turkey needs to move unambiguously in a democratic direction lest it gum up progress on modernizing the U.S.-Turkey relationship.
Two other observations from yesterday. First, much of the discussion got off track and moved away from Turkey and toward the issue of American intervention in Syria, which both Hadley and Albright went on record as supporting (although Albright qualified it by noting that intervention encompasses a wide range of action). I don’t know if this is a harbinger of more intense U.S. involvement down the road, but it’s something to think about. Second, I wonder what Israel’s reaction is to the bipartisan call for a deeper and more equal partnership with Turkey. One of the problems noted by Steven Cook is that stereotypes and negative views of Turkey are more prevalent on the Hill than in the administration which is a barrier that must be overcome, but in my view it will be difficult for this happen while Israel and Turkey are still feuding given the pro-Israel sentiment in Congress. Yet another good reason for Turkey and Israel to resolve their differences…
P.S. Perhaps the best thing about yesterday was Yigal Schleifer suggesting that I find a picture of Ben-Gurion as a law student in Istanbul to use as my blog icon, which I promptly did. So next time you share one of my posts on Facebook, you will be rewarded with the image of Ben-Gurion wearing a tarboosh and looking like quite the Ottoman Zionist.
Religious Minorities and the New Turkish Constitution
May 9, 2012 § 3 Comments
PM Erdoğan caused a stir the other day by giving two speeches in which he called for “one state, one flag, one religion,” which is of course a phrase that does not give comfort to Turkey’s different groups of religious minorities. Hüseyn Çelik and Erdoğan himself both chalked it up as a slip of the tongue, and Erdoğan even called the criticism of him following the remark justified and urged people not to read anything into it, but it is curious that he said it on two separate occasions before two separate audiences. The opposition is going to try to leverage Erdoğan’s comments to raise concerns about his intentions, and the optic of Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu meeting with the heads of Turkey’s non-Muslim religious communities yesterday is bound to keep the story alive for a little longer.
I think it likely that it was a mistake and that a big deal should not be made of it, but it does raise the question of how the new constitution is going to deal with religious minorities in Turkey. It is one of the thornier issues that faces the commission charged with drafting the document, although it is also ironically in some ways one of the least pressing given Turkey’s enormous Muslim majority. The original Turkish constitution made no mention of religious minorities at all in an effort to create a new Turkish identity that would subsume all else, and while the AKP has fought for Muslim majority rights when it comes to things like headscarves, it has a more mixed record on religious minority property rights. Erdoğan’s blatant attempt to diminish Kılıçdaroğlu during the last election campaign by constantly bringing up his status as an Alevi was also not an encouraging sign.
There are three basic possibilities. The new constitution might skirt the issue of religion entirely, it might specifically guarantee religious minority rights, or it might enshrine Islam as the sole official religion of Turkey. Certainly Erdoğan’s comments increase fears that this last option is being considered, but I think it to be highly unlikely. The second option has its pitfalls as well though since it touches upon the issue of enumerated rights vs. unenumerated rights; in other words, can we assume that if a specific right is left out that it was done so on purpose and therefore is not meant to exist, or do we assume that any list of rights provided for in the constitution is not an exhaustive list? If rights are specifically provided for, does that mean that only those rights exist and no others? U.S. constitutional law has run into this problem since ratification, and it might be even thornier in Turkey given that Turkish official recognition of only three minority religions – Greek Orthodoxy, Armenian Apostolic Christianity, and Judaism – has historically led to real problems for Alevis, Shia, and others. Whatever ends up happening, it bears close watching even though it does not have the potential to lead to a complete breakdown of the constitutional process like the issues of a presidential vs. parliamentary system or Turkish identity.
