TURKEY’S FALSE NOSTALGIA
Op-Ed Contributor
By EDHEM ELDEM
Published: June 16, 2013
ISTANBUL – THE demonstrators who have filled the streets of Istanbul
and other Turkish cities for nearly three weeks complain that Prime
Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party, known
as the A.K.P., has adopted an increasingly authoritarian attitude that
threatens basic freedoms. They also resent his tendency to meddle in
the personal lives of citizens – by condemning abortion or trying to
control the sale and consumption of alcohol.
But Mr. Erdogan isn’t the first Turkish leader to have flirted with
authoritarianism and social engineering. This is important to remember,
since many of his opponents tend to hark back to a nostalgic past,
best illustrated by the profusion of Turkish flags and images of the
republic’s founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.
Before claiming that Mr. Erdogan’s moves can be countered by returning
to the foundations of the secular republic, we should recall that
Turkey was not a democracy until 1950; that it was ruled consecutively
from 1923 to 1946 by two unchallenged leaders, Ataturk and Ismet
Inonu, each invested with dictatorial powers; and that its democracy
was “interrupted” three times by military coups or interventions, in
1960, 1971 and 1980, not to mention a failed one in 1997. Moreover,
Turkish “secularism” often marginalized and oppressed those who openly
displayed their beliefs; head-scarf-wearing women were banned from
universities, and few protections were given to religious minorities.
Turkey’s past has little to offer in terms of democratic inspiration.
Ironically, there is hardly any difference between the nostalgia for
Ataturk-era secularism and the A.K.P.’s glorification of the Ottoman
imperial past. Both rest on the reinvention of an imagined golden age –
the former with a secularist emphasis, and the latter with a focus on
Islamic identity. And both look back fondly on authoritarian regimes,
which makes them all the less credible as political models for a
democratic present and future.
The current protest movement isn’t about the past; it is about
today and tomorrow. It started because a new generation wanted to
defend Gezi Park, a public green space, against the violent, abusive
manner in which the government sought to sacrifice it to the gods of
neo-liberalism and neo-Ottomanism with a plan to build a replica of
Ottoman barracks, a shopping mall and apartments.
The real challenge for the protesters, therefore, is to ensure that
this movement is not hijacked by a Kemalist backlash that seeks to
reduce Turkey’s complex social problems to a simplistic dichotomy
between Islam and secularism.
What Mr. Erdogan is currently undermining and destroying isn’t an
imagined golden age of a secular and democratic Turkey, which never
really existed, but rather the “etat de grâce” that followed his
party’s first electoral victory in 2002. For five or six years, the
A.K.P. used democracy as its only defense against the authoritarian
ways of the old guard – the coalition formed by the secular political
parties and the army, long considered the guarantor of secularism.
It is disturbing that Mr. Erdogan, after years of successfully fighting
the legacy of military control, has now chosen to revive precisely
the same methods and strategies that characterized his predecessors’
rule. Banking on the combined power of religion and nationalism in
a country whose population is known for its conservative attitudes
on both counts, he is seeking to do with the help of the police what
previous governments did with the help of the army.
Just as it seemed that the protesters had sealed their victory and
forced the government to recognize their legitimacy, another brutal
police crackdown began on Saturday evening. To make matters worse, Mr.
Erdogan is now inciting and mobilizing his own supporters in a
dangerous game of intimidation and escalation. Unless moderates in
his own party abandon their unquestioning submission to his leadership
and speak out, the situation could deteriorate further.
Turkey has come to a point where the government, setting aside timid
attempts at conciliation, seems intent on waging all-out war against
any opposition to its policies. A crisis that could have been managed
through a democratic process has now escalated to a frightening level
of polarization and violence.
A.K.P. leaders need to understand that true secular democracy is the
only viable way to guarantee the rights and freedoms of all citizens,
including Muslims. And Mr. Erdogan’s opponents must grasp that true
secularism, contrary to its earlier Kemalist incarnation, requires
that the principles of democracy be applied to all members of society.
Unfortunately, the new egalitarian discourses rising from Gezi Park
risk being drowned out in the clamor of an outdated political struggle.
Edhem Eldem is a professor of history at Bogazici University.