The rise of political Islam in Turkey: how the west got it wrong
<
https://www.opendemocracy.net/author/safak-pavey> Safak Pavey
3 November 2014
Only western pundits could have nurtured the hope that someone with strong
loyalties to Sharia would also abide by secular law in Turkey. Turkish
opposition MP, Safak Pavey, says that by now they must be amazed at how
wrong they were.
The end of the Cold War did not free the world of polarised ideologies. Once
the Berlin Wall fell, we hoped a new world would finally move beyond the
conflict ridden past. Yet, not only did we face continuous conflicts but
with the revival of religious traditions, God's role in politics was
rekindled. We thought that the time for belief systems and politics which
derive their legitimacy from God was over. But we were wrong. The current
administration of Turkey, which was lauded as an example of a modern Islamic
democracy, derives a considerable part of its mandate from the belief that
they are carrying out God's mission of revenge against the godless secular
system.
Islamism has hijacked my country, the middle east and the 'Arab Spring', not
only politically, but culturally as well.
Let us take the case of ISIS. It gave the Christians of Rakka
<
http://www.wnd.com/2014/10/isis-document-ids-christians-as-enemy-no-1/>
three options: convert to Islam, remain Christian and pay the protection tax
of the non-Muslim believers and submit to strict rules, or be prepared to
die. The protection tax amounts to 14 grams of pure gold per capita. Some of
the rules include prohibitions on making repairs to churches, wearing the
cross or other religious symbols outside church and ringing the church bell.
Turkey's Islamists have not implemented these restrictive practices and
rules formally because this would still require a major overhaul of the
legal system, and they see ISIS as "uncivilized". But in everyday life
social pressure is exercised in more subtle ways and people are intimidated
through quiet repression on the street.
Our current situation is explained away by western intellectuals who had
nothing but praise for Erdogan ten years ago, and now claim he has
transformed into a tyrant. The latest conclusion of these international
commentators who sing the praises of Islamic democracy is that democracy
befits our culture, but that the problem is with Erdogan's personality.
It would be a mistake to underestimate Erdogan. Ever since he entered
politics at a young age, he aimed to become head of state because he
believed only he could abolish the 'infidel / heretic' social system; that
is how the secular state is perceived by political Islamists. But
attributing the Islamic transformation of Turkey only to him, would be
paying him too generous a compliment.
It would also be wrong to explain this turn of events with reference to
differences between right and left, since these distinctions are far more
complex in Turkey. The biggest chasm between left and right in our politics
now is religion; it all hinges on whether "you are pious or not."
The cosmetic reforms that have been attributed to Erdogan and his
government, bringing him high repute, turned out to be window dressing to
impress the west. Indeed, they all melted away swiftly within the repressive
structure of emerging political Islam. Law came at the top the list of
casualties. Government supporters are granted privileges and are above the
law, while opponents are meted out the harshest sentences. Formal law is no
longer implemented with the purpose of delivering justice but rather as a
tool to deliver punishments to detractors.
It was only his western counterparts and pundits who were hoping that
someone with strong loyalties to Sharia would abide by secular law. By
now, they must be amazed at how wrong they got it.
AKP has transformed Sunni identity into the dominant one in Turkey through
religious references. Addressing the west, the AKP claimed that it was
waging war on deeply rooted nationalism, but all the while it was spreading
a far more insidious ideology. In fact, any scholar who works on Turkey
knows that middle eastern style nationalism has always relied on religious
pillars to survive.
In the course of Turkey's republican history we had the best attempts at
democracy that could have come out of Islamic countries, despite stumbling,
interruptions and the tests of perseverance we had to endure. AKP has been
calling this political system the regime of secular elites who think it is
their right to govern the republic. Yet political Islamists have been
involved in various center-right organizations and parties, and have been
the recipients of many privileges - strengthening their presence
progressively. For example, some of the staff who have served Erdogan
include ministers and high level bureaucrats who have held these positions
ever since they became civil servants decades ago.
However, Turkey's political Islamists were not content with the symbiotic
relations they had created with the center-right parties. They worked
diligently to take over the host organization and reached managerial
positions with a perseverance that is praised and advised in Islam through
the act of taqiyya ( a form of religious dissimulation that permits
believers to conceal the truth in pursuit of their goals)..
So we have come to this situation. The system that protected social rights
and liberties, and was supported by a considerable number of citizens, has
been destroyed by an invisible bulldozer, and the political Islamists now
claim absolute victory. In their eyes, 'the infidel, heretic' secular
republic has been defeated.
The most significant fallout of political Islam is its destruction of
secular education.
This issue is so important to Erdogan that he did not trust even his most
loyal advisors, and instead put his
<
http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/chp-alleges-pm-erdogans-son-religious-foun
dations-design-education-in-turkey.aspx?pageID=238&nID=69952&NewsCatID=338>
own son in charge of the Islamization of education. In 2002, the number of
pupils studying and graduating from the imam-hatip schools set up to train
clerics was seventy thousand, now their number is one million. This number
does not include the pupils who attend schools known as "hidden" cleric
schools that are functioning under the guise of being regular public
schools.
According to legal judicial investigation tapes, Bilal Erdošan has himself
stated that the handful of "the remaining pupils in the secular secondary
education" have been integrated into the hidden imam-hatip cleric schools
"in order for them not to pose a threat to the Islamic regime in the future.
This aim has been achieved by assigning eleven hours of the forty hour week
of lessons to Sunni religious education in state schools and prep schools.
This is because the future generation cannot be left to the guidance of
science; it must be conditioned to collective obedience through religion as
the political Islamists demand.
Yet another policy devised by Erdogan's son has been the creation of a
fraudulent demand for imam-hatip cleric schools through mosques and the
media.
Women's behavior, the
<
https://www.opendemocracy.net/5050/deniz-kandiyoti/no-laughing-matter-women
-and-new-populism-in-turkey> laughter of a young woman, how much beer a
young man drinks, who shares a house with whom and what kind of toilet they
use (whether traditional or modern), all have to be under their
surveillance. Living arrangements outside the prescriptions of the Holy Book
are not crimes, but are considered to be sins to be eradicated. For
instance, AKP politicians have destroyed as many modern toilets as modern
sculptures. Tradition dismisses the comforts of modern life far too easily
and readily.
Islamists define the morality of society in terms of woman's virtue and her
relations with the opposite sex. This is why, in their eyes, girls and boys
have to be segregated. Boys and girls cannot be on the same school grounds,
and this includes university dorms. Students of different gender cannot be
taught in the same building prior to university. Most school grounds have
been gender-segregated in the past ten years.
My cousin has been a physics teacher for twenty years. During the last five
years she was made to hand over her physics classes to a member of an
Islamic tariqat [order]. She was told to remain at the teacher's common room
during her class periods, so that it looked as if physics was being taught
at that hour as stated in the curriculum. For five years those pupils
learned nothing about physics - and all about jihad. She felt incapable of
changing the situation and therefore she resigned.
Unfortunately this hidden policy has been implemented surreptitiously and
frequently over the past ten years, and is now being implemented openly.
Boys are pushed to attend boarding schools, and thus kept away from their
families, and girls are being encouraged to marry young and become
housewives.
Now that Turkey has gone off the rails from its journey towards modernity,
where does that leave us?
The Islamists in Turkey are at the zenith of their power. They can be a
difficult partner and even threaten to become an enemy to the west. Indeed,
hostility towards the west is part of the conspiracy discourse that is
widespread all over the middle east.
Nonetheless there are significant numbers of people in Turkey who are
resisting, and who struggle for the survival of civility and modern life.
And the outcome of our struggle for survival will have much broader global
repercussions than western policy makers would like to think. Can you
imagine a Turkey without its secularists? It would lead to a Europe that is
confined to its continent, and it would turn it into a prison for us.
"No one can leave this woeful story with their head held high" said Dani
Rodrik, an academic at the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton. Not the
so-called secular-military elite that governed the country harshly for
years, that scorned and yet used the Islamists and thus almost
single-handedly guaranteed their reactionary attitudes; not Turkey's western
friends who pretended not to see the colossal infringements of social
liberty; and certainly not the pseudo-intellectuals with their egregious
interpretations of the events that legitimised the butchering of secular law
in the hope that political Islam will produce democracy.
Those who ten years ago expected an Islamic reform from Turkey that would
serve as a model for the world are, at this point, striving to prevent
Turkey from turning into a hostile country model.
To conclude with a sentence from Turkey's political Islamists: "Those who
expect Islam to reform want us to give up our religion. We will not rise to
the bait of the infidel." If this is a clear statement of intent, so too is
the resolve of those of us who intend to resist and struggle in defence of
our freedoms and our human rights.
Received on Mon Nov 03 2014 - 07:16:15 EST