A Turkey without Thanksgiving

When the Ottoman Empire collapsed during World War I, Kamal Atatürk (above left) created what would become a modern and secular Turkey: “In 1921, Atatürk established a provisional government in Ankara. The following year the Ottoman Sultanate was formally abolished and, in 1923, Turkey became a secular republic with Atatürk as its president. He established a single party regime that lasted almost without interruption until 1945… He launched a programme of revolutionary social and political reform to modernise Turkey. These reforms included the emancipation of women, the abolition of all Islamic institutions and the introduction of Western legal codes, dress, calendar and alphabet, replacing the Arabic script with a Latin one. Abroad he pursued a policy of neutrality, establishing friendly relations with Turkey's neighbours.” BBC.co.uk

Modern Turkey lies 97% in Asia, and a tiny 3%, literally across the Bosporus, is technically a part of Europe. Struggling with its Sunni Muslim heritage and a press to join with other modern secular powers in Europe, Turkey flirted with (and technically continues to contemplate), but ultimately was not made a part of, the European Union. Still Turkey is a Western-style democracy surrounded by pressures of the Arab Spring, the Syrian uprising which has definitely spilled across its border and a growing trend of Islamic nationalism that is sweeping the Muslim world at one level or another.

The headlines of late have postured a group of Turkish protestors, wanting to stop the destruction of a local Istanbul park to make way for a restoration of military barracks, against a government with development on its mind. That’s how it started anyway. But the seething dislike of a seemingly autocratic, albeit democratically elected Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (above right), exploded to the surface and became the real reason behind the growing protests. Cries of police brutality, the death of one of the protestors have been met with a general description of the protestors as extremists and looters by government officials. Erdoğan simply refuses to deal with the protestors or their issues.

“Anger and resentment boiled over onto the street over the [at the end of May and in the first days of June], as the police barraged demonstrators with tear gas and streams from water cannons — and as the protesters attacked bulldozers and construction trailers lined up next to the last park in the city’s center… In full public view, a long struggle over urban spaces is erupting as a broader fight over Turkish identity, where difficult issues of religion, social class and politics intersect. And while most here acknowledge that every Turkish ruling class has sought to put its stamp on Istanbul, there is a growing sense that none has done so as insistently as the current government, led by Mr. Erdoğan’s Islamist-rooted Justice and Development Party, despite growing resistance.” New York Times, June 2^nd.

The battle lines are focusing on the seeming de-secularization fostered over Erdoğan’s lengthy term in office: “The swiftly changing physical landscape of Istanbul symbolizes the competing themes that undergird modern Turkey — Islam versus secularism, rural versus urban. They highlight a booming economy and a self-confidence expressed by the religiously conservative ruling elite that belies the post-empire gloom that permeates the novels of Istanbul by Orhan Pamuk, Turkey’s Nobel laureate and most famous writer.

“Mr. Erdoğan’s decade-long rule has dramatically reshaped Turkey’s culture by establishing civilian control of the military. It has broken down rules of the old secular order that now permit the wide public expression of religion, seen in the proliferation of women wearing head scarves, by the conservative masses who make up the prime minister’s constituency. His rule has also nurtured a pious capitalist class, whose members have moved in large numbers from rural Anatolia to cities like Istanbul, deepening class divisions…

“Edhem Eldem, a historian at Bogazici University in Istanbul, has criticized the government for undertaking large-scale development projects without seeking recommendations from the public. ‘In a sense, they are drunk with power,’ he said. ‘They lost their democratic reflexes and are returning to what is the essence of Turkish politics: authoritarianism.’” NY Times. The Turkish currency and stock market have nose-dived over this increasing instability. “[F]or his opponents, [Erdoğan’s] harsh dismissal of the protesters gathering in Istanbul and Ankara as ‘bums,’ and in particular his allowing the police to crack down on what began as a peaceful demonstration against the razing of a park in Taksim Square, is public evidence of a longer slide into authoritarianism. They cite years of intensifying crackdowns on dissent and the news media, and purges of the military officer corps. 

“‘He has a highly majoritarian understanding of democracy,’ said Ilter Turan, a political scientist at Bilgi University in Istanbul. ‘He believes that with 51 percent of the vote he can rule in an unrestrained fashion. He doesn’t want checks and balances…  He has sought to restrict alcohol, has repeatedly held that women should have at least three children and sometimes seems drawn to peculiar topics for pontification: this year, for example, he declared that the ‘era of white bread is over,’ and that Turks should go whole grain.” NY Times, June 3^rd.

When the PM returned from a short diplomatic excursion overseas, addressing the loyal crowds greeting him at the airport, he vowed to crack down hard on the protestors, who he labeled as extremists. Erdoğan represents his religiously conservative constituency almost to the exclusion of anyone else, and it seems pretty clear he is veering away from Western values and dooming any vestige of hope to join the EU. Here’s how the BBC looks at that relationship: “Turkey must investigate the excessive use of force by police against anti-government protesters, a senior EU official has said in Istanbul… EU Enlargement Commissioner Stefan Fuele was speaking ahead of talks on Turkey's ambition to join the EU…In response, Turkish PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan said similar protests in Europe would be dealt with more harshly.” BBC.uk.co, June 7^th.

While Turkey is a NATO power, but relations between the United States and this Islamic nation have been strained of late over Turkish assistance to Hamas extremists in Gaza and Israel’s attacking Turkish vessels with supplies destined to Gaza. However, as the Syrian rebellion again the incumbent Shiite Assad regime has spilled over into Sunni Turkey, Turkey has likewise reached towards its NATO treaty allies for support.

Is what we are witnessing a series of local transitions into a religiously-based Islamic Spring that is slowly escalating into a global clash of civilizations or is this simply an evolutionary step that history is taking, creating a dash of conflict but no longer-term repercussion for relations between the Islamic and non-Islamic world? Myanmar’s seeming cultural bias against Muslims has turned violent, Nigeria seems to have declared war on its ultra-violent Boko Haram Muslim extremists, and there are plenty of hardliners in the Muslim world, Sunnis (e.g., Taliban and al Qaeda) and Shiites (e.g., Hezbollah and Iran), who would love to see the non-Islamic Western and Asian world succumb to Islamic rule and Sharia law.

I’ll deal with the in-fighting between Shiites and Sunnis in a later blog, but simmering has transitioned to boiling all over the Islamic world. Will this just settle down or are there just too many hot spots ready to reignite these malignant tensions? Time will tell, but there is nothing to suggest the answer will become apparent anytime soon.

I’m Peter Dekom, and while we have a litany of our own internal issues, we are hardly isolated from the global impact of events in far corners of the earth.