Next month Turkey’s pro-secular president Ahmet Necdet Sezer
will step down. Not only will his successor likely determine the
future of Turkey’s bid to join the European Union, but will answer
the age-old question whether democracy and Islam are
compatible.
Last week about 300,000 Turks sought to make their preference
known (if not their votes count) as they marched through the
streets of Ankara, waving Turkic flags and holding aloft placards
adorned with the stern visage of Kemal Ataturk, the founder of
(mostly) modern secular and democratic Turkey.
In a scene unique to this predominately Muslim nation, marchers
shouted, “Turkey is secular and will remain secular forever,” and
“We don’t want an imam as president!” When soldiers appeared at the
mausoleum of Ataturk for the changing of the guard, many in the
crowd shouted, “Turkey is proud of you!”
The aforementioned imam is current Prime Minister Recep Tayyip
Erdogan, a man widely seen as being pro-Islamic. Erdogan has
repeatedly denied that as president he would steer Turkey toward
Islamic rule, but that is only to be expected in a state where the
strongly secular military has keeps a close watch on political
Islam. In fact, Erdogan’s political party — misleadingly named the
Justice and Development Party — has deep roots in political Islam,
and Erdogan’s first steps as premier seemed calculated to
re-establish sharia or Islamic law. The prime minister’s government
was overwhelmingly elected after Erdogan promised to end Turkey’s
head scarf ban in government offices and schools (Erdogan’s wife
wears the Islamic head scarf). A majority of Turks favor
overturning the ban, although polls paradoxically show that only 9
percent of Turks favor the imposition of sharia law. That hasn’t
stopped Erdogan’s government from its attempts to strengthen
religious institutions, as well as criminalize adultery, a step it
abandoned after pressure from the EU, and, no doubt, the army.
President Sezer has been seen as a counterweight to Erdogan,
using his veto power to stop controversial laws from being enacted.
But with Sezer out of office, Erdogan as president, and an Erdogan
appointee as prime minister, Turks suspect that Ankara will begin
drifting farther from Europe and nearer to Tehran. In fact, the
shift has already begun. As Turkish artist Bedri Baykam recently
told the BBC, “This government is trying to change every law little
by little. It’s as though we were trying to join the Iranian Union,
not the EU.”
Since the 2004 elections the Justice and Development Party has
dominated Parliament; therefore a pro-Islamic president seems
inevitable. Yet that much authority in the hands of pro-Islamists
may prove too much for the military chiefs to bear. The signs are
evident. Gen. Yasar Buyukanit, chief of the military, recently told
the Turkish press, “We hope that someone who is loyal to the
principles of the republic — not just in words but in essence —
is elected president.” His statement was a thinly disguised warning
to Erdogan to step aside.
IT WOULDN’T BE THE first time the Turkish brass meddled in
politics. The army staged three coups to oust corrupt and
incompetent governments and quell leftist insurrections between
1960-1980. A behind-the-scenes (or post-modern) coup in 1997 forced
the pro-Islamic Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan to step down after
one year in office. Indeed, every time Turkey seems to suffer from
economic and political stagnation the military marches in. The
Turks have come to expect this. Yet the knuckleheads in charge
never cease to try the military’s patience. As Ataturk’s colleague
and former president Ismet Inonu warned, “An oppressive regime can
never be sure of the army.”
For many secular Turks, the army alone retains their trust, a
confidence earned when the young Ataturk employed his military
building schools, canals, and mosques across the country. This is
especially the case for liberal Turks, who are the army’s most
ardent supporters, the opposite of the case in the West. And with a
million men, NATO’s second largest army (after the U.S.) is a force
to be reckoned with.
A coup would of course smash Turkey’s bid to join the EU, but
for most Turks a military takeover would be preferable to a
Iranian-style Islamic revolution. But then Erdogan has no intention
of stoking an Islamic revolution — rather he prefers to whittle
away slowly at the secular society.
For now the army states it will intervene only in the case of a
total economic and political meltdown. But that doesn’t mean it
will remain silent, as Gen. Yasar Buyukanit’s recent remarks
demonstrated. So apparently democracy and Islam are not
incompatible — as long as a secular million man military calls the
shots.
