Turkey: Secularism vs. Islamism leads to constitutional crisis Posted on July 3rd
Turkey: Secularism vs. Islamism leads to constitutional crisis
As the op-ed columnist Yavuz Baydar puts it, writing in the Istanbul-based daily Today’s Zaman, there is “[n]ever a dull moment in this country.”
In January of this year, a group of Turkish women in Ankara demonstrated in favor of the lifting of a long-standing ban on the wearing of the traditional Muslim headscarf by women in universities in Turkey; the national parliament overturned that law in February
Baydur refers to the fact that, yesterday, two rather dramatic - and, for some Turks and foreign observers, alarming - developments whose ramifications could be both political and legal took place in Turkey: First, the country’s Constitutional Court decided to accept an indictment against the ruling party of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan (the Justice and Development Party; Turkish abbreviation: AKP) brought forth by Abdullah Yalcınkaya, the top prosecutor of Turkey’s Supreme Court of Appeals; second, government authorities sought out and detained “four retired, high-ranking generals[,]…along with dozens of others” in the latest phase of an ongoing “investigation into an illegal organization” that is believed to have been behind “two failed coup attempts” that were “allegedly devised by currently retired [Turkish armed-forces] commanders against the current government in 2004.” In yesterday’s round-up of supposed anti-government activists, “[t]wenty-one people, including two former army commanders, a journalist and the leader of a business group, were detained in operations in the cities of Ankara, Istanbul, Antalya and Trabzon…as part of an investigation into a powerful and illegal organization” whose goal, Turkish authorities believe, is to overthrow Erdogan’s AKP-led government. (Today’s Zaman news article)
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan: Despite its protestations to the contrary, does his ruling Justice and Development Party really want to Islamisize Turkish society, in defiance of its constitutional obligation to maintain and support a secular state?
Background: Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party has its roots in Turkey’s fundamentalist-Islamist movement, although the prime minister has downplayed its historical, religious affinities. Nevertheless, ever since the AKP came to power in 2002, staunch supporters of modern Turkey’s secular tradition, in which church and state have been kept separate by law, have feared the creeping Islamisization of Turkish society, a goal they believe Erdogan’s party supports. After all, in February of this year, Turkey’s national parliament overturned a long-standing ban on the wearing by women of traditional Muslim headscarves in the country’s universities. At the time, the government “argued that changing the constitution was crucial to ensure all women had equal access to a higher education.” However, many Turkish women “fear[ed] that relaxing the rules on the headscarf [was] a first step towards increasing the influence of Islam on society.” They saw the overturning of the law “as a serious threat to their own non-religious way of life,” a legal move that could “chang[e] the face of modern Turkey.” (BBC)
In presenting his indictment to the Constitutional Court, whose 11 judges accepted it unanimously, prosecutor Yalcınkaya argued that the AKP, in violation of the government’s constitutional requirement to maintain and support a secular state, “had used a strategy of ’social agreement’ to introduce moderate Islam and was aiming [to impose] sharia” on the nation (Islam’s traditional system of religious law, that is). Thus, Yalcınkaya “asked for 71 politicians to be banned from politics for five years, including Prime Minister…Erdogan, President Abdullah Gül, and former Parliament Speaker Bülent Arinc. While there was disagreement on Gül, with 7 [judges] against 4 voting for his inclusion, the other 70 names were agreed on unanimously.” Prosecutor Yalcınkaya, in a 162-page document for the court, argued that Turkey “‘is in more danger than ever before’…and listed eleven different crimes of the [AKP] party.” The prosecutor’s indictment “will…be sent to the AKP, which has an initial period of a month to prepare a preliminary defense. The party will be given more time for [its] main defense” to come. (Bianet)
Symbol and graphics from the official Website of the Constitutional Court of Turkey
The detentions that took place yesterday were part of an effort on the part of Turkish authorities that has become known as the Ergenekon investigation. It began last year, when investigators discovered a house in Istanbul filled with weapons and ammunition. Today’s Zaman reports: “Analysts say the Ergenekon group is part of [a] shadowy ‘deep state’….” That’s their “code for hard-line nationalists in Turkey’s security forces and state bureaucracy [who, it is thought, are] ready to take the law into their own hands to accomplish their own agenda.” The Ergenekon investigation “has significantly increased political tension in [Turkey]. Prime Minister…Erdogan had previously said a closure case against his party on charges of anti-secularism was a response to the government’s determination in the Ergenekon operation, while others have claimed that the government is using the…investigation to suppress its opponents.”
One of the suspects who has been apprehended in the investigation is the head of the Ankara office of Cumhuriyet. Cüneyt Arcayürek, a columnist for that Turkish, daily newspaper, “held a press conference…yesterday to comment on the Ankara bureau chief’s detention, saying, ‘It is in no way a coincidence that such things are happening at a time when the [anti-AKP] closure case is being heard at the Constitutional Court.’” The news article in Today’s Zaman also notes that the Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk, a Nobel Prize laureate “who [in the past] was prosecuted under a law banning insults to Turkish identity, and members of the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party… - [who are] seen by nationalists as a threat to national sovereignty - were reportedly on the Ergenekon [investigators’] hit list.” (Today’s Zaman)
Bronwen Maddox, the chief commentator on foreign affairs for Britain’s Times, observes that “this clash” in Turkey between secularists and those who, supposedly, want to steer the country in an unabashedly Islamist direction “has been brewing” for months - and that it’s a risk-filled confrontation, too.
Maddox writes: “It now seems that the struggle for Turkey’s identity is going to get much worse, while its chances of a liberal, modern future dissolve. Ever since…Erdogan…and his Justice and Development Party…were elected enthusiastically six years ago, the country’s old-guard defenders of its historic secularism have been uneasy….Turkey’s secularism, a fervent refusal to allow religion to shape the institutions of state, has been the heart of the republic founded by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in 1923. It has underpinned the extraordinary position that Turkey has chosen for itself: as the only Islamic member of NATO; as the only Islamic friend of Israel; as a bridge, culturally and diplomatically, between Central Asia and Europe.”
In Ankara, in April, on National Sovereignty and Children’s Day, Turkish schoolchildren read a poem as they held portraits of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the revered founder of modern, secular Turkey
Maddox adds: “The issue on which the [Erdogan] government began to clash with the courts was its move to overturn the ban on women wearing headscarves in universities.” The Muslim headscarf, she notes, is a garment of “huge symbolic significance…in Turkey….” Still, she asks, was the overturning of the ban worth squabbling over to the point of stirring up a constitutional crisis? The news analyst concludes: “Of course, no one would want to be relaxed about any kind of constitutional change that might lay the ground for more Islamic-tinged reforms. But it is unfair to imply that this is the [AKP’s] intention, given its six-year record that has been liberal, more respectful of human rights and interested in joining the European Union. [Turkish] courts have been erratic in their defense of the principle of secularism over the years. The decision by the chief prosecutor to accept the legal challenge of the opposition and to move ahead in seeking to ban the entire governing party - not simply to challenge the headscarf rule - is a disastrous one. It has taken Turkey towards a confrontation that will be hard to defuse, and almost certainly, farther from Europe.” (See also Turkish Daily News)
Turkish newspaper columnist Yavuz Baydar writes: “Expect even stranger days” to come.
Posted By: Edward M. Gomez (Email) |
July 02 2008 at 10:14 AM
Listed Under: Europe, European Union, Human rights, Investigations, Law, Muslim world, Religion, Social customs, Society, Turkey | Comments (0) : Post Comment