Feel for the Turks

I feel for the Turks. They have spent the last eighty five years trying to keep their religious-traditional aspects at bay in order to maintain a secular and reason-based government. Yet the very Europe that they have modeled themselves after isn’t including them in its most exclusive club. To top it all off, they are having a constitutional turmoil over banning the current party in power. The EU opposes the ban though it may be that this sort of autocratic control over the often naughty baby democracy is essential to their secularism.

Turkey has been members of NATO, the Council of Europe and the OECD for decades. And they have been ready to join the EU since the 80s. Despite this track record, the EU chooses to welcome other states that, unlike Turkey, have spent the majority of the last 50 years isolated from Europe. For the Turks, it must feel a bit like being lined up for a promotion and watching someone else get it because she goes to the same church with the boss.

The EU is trying to help Turkey by giving it clear instructions on the various areas it must improve before accession. Some of it, especially the review on gender equality is quite helpful and necessary. But this is all old news because Turkey first put its petition for the becoming part of the EU in 1987 and finally got accepted as a candidate in 1999 and is now in negotiations as of 2005. The process is a bit excruciating. Turkey seems like it has lost its old friends in Europe and doesn’t quite fit in with the Middle East, so it’s hanging out there on its own.

This question of regional affinity is a question of the politics of religion, which, in the meanwhile, is becoming more of an issue domestically. Ten years ago it wasn’t quite like how it is today; the religious side of the country was less visible and less popular.The rise of this new religious persona in the public sphere is in some ways positive, some ways maybe not. It has created opportunities to democratize the more religious elements by bringing them to the forefront. But it has estranged the country from the secularist image that many held sacred for so long. To complicate matters, the ruling religious party (AKP) actually supports and is supported by the EU. So while the religious leanings seem to be a cultural turn-off, the AKP is a turn-on because it has done the most to aggressively pursue the accession.

The growing visibility of the political aspirations of the predominant religion in the country is like a new mole, is it sexy or ugly?

The AKP comes from a line of religious parties that were banned because they weren’t concerned with the interests of their secular friends and other political promises. The AKP was pragmatic; it built a coalition based on the notion that it will not cross the sacred line of secularism and, contrary to its forefathers, it has actively pursued EU accession.
But five years into Erdogan’s time as prime minister and a year into the presidency of Abdullah Gul, there is a question about whether they have started to cross the line. The news about whether the AKP is constitutional is the latest challenge for this budding democracy.

The Turkish constitution insists on secularism in its text. A Supreme Court prosecutor has asserted that the AKP is unconstitutional because it is sneaking sharia into some corners somewhere. But banning a party that was voted into power democratically seems like a very undemocratic thing to do, and the EU wants democracies only. For now the question is still undecided and on the table. As my Turkish friend says “watch us.”

Learning from Turkey for Iran?

And I will because Turkey helps me think about Iran. Turkish scholars distinguish Turkey from the rest of the Middle East for many valid reasons. Turkey’s unified presence of state has controlled for longer than in most Middle East States. They also point to the fact that it is a tax based government, rather than a rentier state. These aspects distinguish it from Iran or Saudi Arabia.

More importantly, Turkey is a democracy while Iran is a theocracy. The Turks have government accountability and secular institutions infused into their skin, something I can’t say for the Iranians. Ataturk, the father of the modern Turkish state was much more effective in incorporating European culture more diffusely into Turkey than his contemporary, the Shah of Iran.

But there are similarities. A population in Turkey reminds me of many elites in Iran before the revolution. These are the people that are secular in public spaces and hold onto the culture of Islam in private spheres. Though I have noticed, comparatively, the secular Turks know much more about Islam than the secular Iranians before the revolution. It’s the difference between secular religion and political religion.

Turkey is full of people that support this type of religion. There is also a population that holds onto a different type of Islam, a political Islam. An Islam that is supposed to inform political and public decisions, if not decide them. And there are all of those people in the middle susceptible to both sides.Erdogan represents a little bit of both but his statement about having the ulema decide about the headscarf indicates his shallow internalization of secular principles and institutions.

This reminds me of democracy advocates in Iran who also have a very superficial understanding of democracy…who espouse elections, but are still on the fence about the role of religion. There is a failure, not in the acceptance, but in the understanding and valuation of the importance of the separation of church and state and other liberal institutions.

Internalization of Democracy

The issue of internalization is important. It reminds me of what one of my Iranian friends explained to me about modernization. She said “you can move a rural farmer to a city, and he will change his clothes and his job, but not his ways or his mind. Only education and experience will do that.”

My litmus test of the internalization of democratic norms is both on a micro level and on the macro level of a society. What I look at on the micro-level is the way families communicate, the teaching of children in classrooms, the way supervisors treat their employees and what are accepted as good practice in these areas.

Individualism is an important ingredient of all of this. Do people value individual opinions and voices? Both Turkey and Iran are very communal societies where concerns for family and community can dominate over the best interests of the individual.

Because of its drive towards the West, the Turks have, in general, more practice being fair and equal in their places of employment, in their education and in their families. Because of its drive away from the West, the Iranian government has shunned “democratic” practices in the public sphere. However, Iranians themselves are incorporating less traditional behaviors into their lives, specifically the younger, more globally curious, generations.

On a macro level, the fact that the representatives of the religious, Erdogan et al, are in the democratic process, reveals an opportunity for internalization of democratic and secular principles that democrats in Iran never have a chance to experience. Instead, they are theorizing and trying to understand democracy in the abstract, without knowing what it feels or looks like in action.

The best way to democratize someone is to put them in a club or community organization and have them witness and experience the rules, the institutions, the modus operandi of working within teams, sharing power, and staying focused on the task or project at hand. Iranian activists that have come to the US express their amazement when they have had to actively engage with these practices.

Checks

The question Turkey leaves me with: are constitutional articles necessary to protect against the illiberal politics dominating over a budding democracy, especially as Islam is growing ever more politicized? Some scholars suggest that if there are no checks, the communal society of Turkey will dominate new liberal institutions resulting in something far from a liberal democracy. For Turkey, the check could be the EU. If Iran were to go democratic today, I am not sure what could keep its democratic institutions safe…