Turkey: what is going on?

[Old Eagle]

Others of you may know better, but the conventional wisdom has always been that the Turkish military is the keeper of secularism. Whenever politics strayed too far from center, the military would stage a coup, impose a government and "do over". The last coup was around 1980, so there is a theory that events are overdue.

Although only anecdotal, my recent contact with Turkish officers seems to indicate a drift in the pro-clerical direction (from earlier datapoints in the 70s and 80s). If the officer corps, the bastion of secularism, becomes more religiously oriented, what might follow? Any other insights?

Likewise, as TIME mag was seeking its "Man of the Century" for the 20th century and asked for e-mail input, Turkish "voters" overwhelmed the tabulators with votes for Ataturk. Of course, TIME does not operate a democracy and Ataturk was not selected. Given the current tension between Islamic countries and organizations and "the west", maybe he should have been. A successful secular Muslim state. Hmmm.

[wm]

The BBC posted this interesting counterpoint to the study about the Islamist shift in Turkey

Turks argue over next president
By Sarah Rainsford
BBC News, Ankara

Mr Erdogan has denied pushing a pro-Islam agenda
The Turkish parliament has begun the process of electing a new president, in what is already proving a highly controversial contest.

More than 300,000 people took to the streets of the capital at the weekend to pressure Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan not to stand.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6558967.stm

[goesh]

I doubt the Kurds will be sacrificed to bolster Turkey's historical pro-West policy orientation. I thought all along that when Turkey refused to let the 3rd ID embark from its soil into Iraq from the north during the invasion the problems were just starting. A precursor to a more Islamic military orientation I would guess. From other posts it almost appears as if Turkey and Iran are in bed togather over the Kurds.

[tequila]

Zaman notes that this latest presser should be viewed in context with revelations that the military may have planned a coup against the AKP government in 2004, as well as the possibility that Erdogan may declare for President soon.

Ten years ago, the Turkish Armed Forces organized a series of press conferences to undermine --successfully as it turned out -- the religious-right and center-right coalition government of Necmettin Erbakan and Tansu Çiller. The military delivered a series of orchestrated criticisms of its own government -- then forced the Cabinet to sign what amounted to a loyalty pledge, a strategy that waggish pundits at the time labeled “the post-modern coup.” This time Gen. Büyükanıt seemed determined to deconstruct not his own government but its uneasy coalition with the government of George W. Bush.

...

In many ways the general’s speech seemed less a foray into the political arena than an attempt to re-polish the military’s image -- tarnished after another leaked news story that senior commanders had seriously considered staging a coup in 2004. There was no record or even a trace of such a plot in the military archives, Gen. Büyükanıt said. He knew, because he had looked.

And for the grand finale. What would the military do if Tayyip Erdoğan succeeded in having himself appointed president and thus military commander-in-chief? He didn’t actually pose the rhetorical question. He did say he knew the procedure for selecting a president was laid out formally in the Constitution but that it was certainly his hope that the new president would not simply pay lip service to the secular nature of the republic but respect its very core.

Eurasianet's analysis of the demo.

The organizer of the April 14 march was an NGO chaired by a retired military police chief rumored to have led two coup attempts against the government in 2004. That link encouraged many to stay away – one prominent intellectual even compared the protest to the march on Rome that brought Mussolini to power in 1922.

Many of the Ankara protesters had nothing to do with either the organizing NGO, or Turkey’s head opposition party, whose leader occasionally makes veiled calls for military intervention. Yet there was something evocative of the tumultuous 1920s about the rally. Ubiquitous images of Ataturk, who died in 1938, contributed to that, as did the participants’ defiant rhetoric. It’s clear that present-day partisans of Turkey’s secularist tradition see themselves as on the frontlines of a culture war over the future direction of the state.

...

"We are today’s mad Turks", schoolteacher Hasan Devecioglu said approvingly, as a speaker on the platform called for the "imperialist" International Monetary Fund, the US and the EU to "get your hands off Turkey."

He was referring to a fictionalized retelling of the Kemalist version of Turkey’s liberation struggle that has barely left best-seller lists since it was published in 2005. The success of Turgut Ozakman’s "Those Mad Turks" stems largely from the fact many Turks see parallels between the dying days of the Ottoman Empire and today.

After the First World War, while the Sultan and his Istanbul government collaborated with British occupation forces, Turkish nationalists prepared to fight from the depths of Anatolia. Today, increasingly anti-Western secularists think, the collaborators are the AKP and the invaders are Brussels and Washington.

[tequila]

Erdogan declines to run for Turkish presidency.

[wm]

The interesting question that comes to my mind is whether his alternative, Gul, is just a proxy/figurehead. They both are allegedly Islamists/Islamic fundamentalists; each man's wife is known for wearing the head scarf.

I imagine there is some interesting talk around the chey house tavla boards.

[tequila]

NYTIMES report.

Turkey’s majority political party today chose a prominent leader with an Islamic background to compete for the presidency, a move expected to extend the party’s reach into the heart of Turkey’s secular establishment — and boost a new class of self-described Muslim moderates — for the first time in this country’s history.

The choice of Abdullah Gul, 56, the affable, English-speaking foreign minister who is Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s closest political ally, is expected to be confirmed by parliament in several rounds of voting that begin on Friday.

Turkey is a Muslim country, but its state, set up in 1923 by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, is strictly secular, and the presidency is its most important office. The selection of Mr. Gul, whose wife wears a head scarf, is not likely to sit well with secular Turks, some of whom worry that their lifestyles — drinking alcohol, wearing miniskirts, and swimming in co-ed pools — could eventually be in danger.

Mr. Gul, an agile reformer who has long been his party’s public face abroad, nodded to those concerns in a press conference in Ankara after his nomination today, saying, “Our differences are our richness.” His candidacy was a minor concession. The choice most distasteful to the secular establishment was Mr. Erdogan himself, who deftly bowed out.

...

“These are the new forces, the new social powers,” said Ali Bulac, a columnist for a conservative, mainstream newspaper in Istanbul. “They are very devout. They don’t drink. They don’t gamble. They don’t take holidays.”

“They are loaded with a huge energy.” he added. “This energy has been blocked by the state.”

That energy has helped drive a spectacular economic boom in Turkey. In the country’s two largest cities, progress dazzles. Shiny new fuel-efficient taxis zip down tulip-lined streets. New parks have opened. The air is no longer polluted. The economy has doubled in size in the four years since the AK party came to power, a growth spurt that was kept on track by its strict adherence to an economic program prescribed by the International Monetary Fund ...

This picture of an AK Party rally surprised me. Not many Arab Islamists feature female background dancers.