Turkey Stays in Her Coop

With just under 3% of its land mass in Europe (the balance in Asia), Turkey’s application to become a member of the European Union has been pending for years. Secularists in a nation founded on secularism (the legacy of founding father Kamal Ataturk after WWI) have yearned for closer ties with the progressive West, but as the ultra-conservative and religiously-driven Justice and Development Party (JDP) that controls the Parliament sequentially layers conservative Islamic religiosity into the government and hence daily life, Turkey appears to be pulling away from Europe.

The JDP is also the party of right-wing President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has ruled Turkey for 12 years, slowly vitiating secularism and substituting Sunni doctrines and mandates throughout the land. As a member of NATO, Erdogan’s Turkey has done precious little in the battle against the Islamic State, reveling in IS’ constant battering of Kurds who are defending border regions in Iraq from IS conquest. Kurdish separatists have hounded Turkey over the years, and there is strong suspicion that Erdogan has entered into a secret standstill agreement with the Islamic State, clearly at the expense of Kurds, Iraq and Syria, but also the West in general.

Defensive at recordings seemingly implicating Erdogan and his family in siphoning corrupt money to be placed into Swiss bank accounts, Erdogan has been cracking down on critical journalists, most of whom support a former ally and now US-resident-in-exile opponent, cleric Fethullah Gülen. To rub salt in already searing wounds, Erdogan has also issued an arrest warrant for Gülen, who has been living in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania since 1999. “The warrant would most likely form the basis of a formal extradition request that analysts said the United States was unlikely to act upon.” New York Times, December 19^th. Erodgan’s actions seemed intent on crushing his opposition and imposing his rather imperious, if not absolute, leadership under the guise of anti-terrorism.

“Anti-terrorism police put Turkey’s media at the center of an expanding state crackdown [December 14^th] as they stormed the offices of Zaman, one of the country’s highest circulating newspapers, and arrested its Editor-in-Chief, Ekrem Dumanlı.

“Raids swept 13 provinces across the country, targeting 31 journalists and police officers in the latest development of a protracted political battle between President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Islamist leaning, AK Party and Fethullah Gülen’s opposition Islamic Social Movement… Turkey… [particularly under Erdogan] has a long history of jailing journalists and dissenters. It now appears to be doing so with increasing frequency and Dumanlı’s statement ignited a political spectacle that has embroiled the media.” The Daily Beast, December 14^th.

The journalists were accused of supporting a “parallel state” and trying to take over Turkey. Reaction from the European Union was swift: “Foreign affairs chief Federica Mogherini and the commissioner heading EU enlargement talks said the arrests went ‘against European values.’" BBC.com, December 14^th. It is difficult to envision how Turkey’s rather pronounced drift into a Sunni fundamentalist authoritarian government could possibly lead to acceptance in the EU, and perhaps that is Erodgan’s not-so-subtle agenda. Recent elections have clearly placed him on top for years to come, and he has used that “mandate” mercilessly.

But even secularists in the country are being pushed into religious institutions that threaten their underlying beliefs and practices. The December 16^th New York Times provides an illustration of this dangerous trend: “When Semra dropped off her 13-year-old daughter for the first day of high school, she had to fight back tears as she entered the dimly lit basement classroom, brightened by the red of the girls’ head scarves and the walls emblazoned with Quranic verses written in Arabic script.

“Semra had spent years working overtime at her cleaning job, saving enough to pay for extra courses that she hoped would secure a place for her daughter at an academically rigorous secular school. But after taking the admissions test under Turkey’s system for allocating slots in public schools, her daughter was one of nearly 40,000 students automatically assigned to the state-run religious schools… ‘It felt like someone had tossed a bucket of boiling water over my head,’ Semra said, giving only her first name out of fear that her daughter would be reprimanded at school.

“Education has become the latest front in Turkey’s cultural wars, pitting the country’s tradition of secularism against the religious mores of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Islamist allies. The tensions underscore the way Mr. Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party has gradually injected religion into public life over the past 12 years in an effort to reshape Turkish society…

“But as Mr. Erdogan has expanded his power, removing the military from politics and this year winning election as president, he has moved in a different direction, critics say, cracking down on dissent, intimidating the news media and establishing more control over the judiciary. Along the way, he led moves to restrict alcohol sales and rescind a longstanding ban on head scarves in public institutions.”

A champion of democracy in his early years and once a seeming darling of the West, Erdogan appears to have found religion in his later years and has done everything in his power to move Turkey backwards into the dark recesses of religious intolerance and oppression. EU membership seems unlikely, and there are serious questions of Turkey’s fealty to NATO and its Western allies. While Turkey once enjoyed a decent relationship with Israel, tensions between those two nations have escalated over Israeli seizures of Turkish vessels heading to resupply Gaza. As long as Erdogan and the JDP are guiding the Turkey nation, it seems that the West’s traditionally close relationship with Turkey will simply continue to deteriorate.

I’m Peter Dekom, and in the obvious clash of civilizations pitting the West against Islamic fundamentalism, Erdogan appears to be making a bad choice for us all.