Turkey: what is going on?

[Rex Brynen]

As the RAND report correctly notes, Turkey is at a turning point:

The real threat confronting the AKP at the onset of Prime Minister
Erdoğan’s second term is not a direct intervention by the military, but
rather a decision by the judiciary to close down the party.

..and very likely to turn in the wrong direction, with the secular-Atatürkist "deep state" apparatus banning the party and its key leaders. Given the AKP's relatively impressive record of governance (better than any other Turkish party in decades, I would argue), and its very moderate and democratic Islamism, this is indeed a depressing possibility.

It also has broader implications: radical Islamist movements are likely to point to the AKP's fate as proof that electoral participation and moderation are pointless. Even when you win elections, increase your vote share in subsequent elections, promote foreign investment, improve human rights, participate in NATO (and send forces to ISAF), try to join the EU, and mediate Israeli-Syrian peace.... you still aren't allowed to stay in power. Why not then turn to violence?

I've yet to hear Western governments weigh in on this in any significant way. Certainly, EU leverage has declined as EU accession looks increasingly unlikely. It is also hard for outsiders to comment on internal Turkish judicial processes without raising nationalist hackles. Still, it would be a tragedy if the remarkable democratic transition in Turkey was reversed.

[MattC86]

As the RAND report correctly notes, Turkey is at a turning point:





It also has broader implications: radical Islamist movements are likely to point to the AKP's fate as proof that electoral participation and moderation are pointless. Even when you win elections, increase your vote share in subsequent elections, promote foreign investment, improve human rights, participate in NATO (and send forces to ISAF), try to join the EU, and mediate Israeli-Syrian peace.... you still aren't allowed to stay in power. Why not then turn to violence?

I've yet to hear Western governments weigh in on this in any significant way. Certainly, EU leverage has declined as EU accession looks increasingly unlikely. It is also hard for outsiders to comment on internal Turkish judicial processes without raising nationalist hackles. Still, it would be a tragedy if the remarkable democratic transition in Turkey was reversed.

The (potential) parallels here with Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt are interesting. I heard a former DoS official once say, "we really have no idea what the hell they'd be about if they were in power. There's a strong chance that they'd be moderate Islamists, along the lines of the AKP, but no one really knows," and that we should try to find out and then when Mubarak dies press for the whole crappy system (really vestigial Nasserism) to fall on the scrap heap.

I believe that may have some merit - in the long run I just don't see secular moderates winning in the ME, let alone secular liberals. Moderate Islamist groups may be the least indigestible solution; but as the DoS official says, someone needs to figure out what the heck some of these groups would be like in power.

I agree also a military coup is highly unlikely - for one, the recent Islamization of the officer corps (no longer highly secular) and the fact that a move against the AKP and another coup would end Turkey's Europe aspirations forever, as well as damage its status as the reliable and stable ME country. . .

Regards,

Matt

[davidbfpo]

A minor point for this thread. The chances of Turkey joining the EU fully are slim, whatever the diplomats say. Leaving aside Greek and Cypriot objections, there is no public support for this extension (not that the public has much impact on the EU) and the EU has got enough to do without adding a huge member.

I am not convinced accession to full EU membership is what AKP seeks, but the reassurance for maintaining democracy or having a political "comfort blanket" that being part of Europe provides. Very different from the economic aspects.

davidbfpo

[Jedburgh]

I agree also a military coup is highly unlikely - for one, the recent Islamization of the officer corps (no longer highly secular). . .

I concur that a military coup is unlikely - the pending coup is judicial in nature. However, I believe that you overstate the "Islamization" of the officer corps. Not only do overtly Islamist officers continue to be purged, but as a group the Turkish officer corps remains almost virulently secular, and Kemalist ideology continues to be drilled into them from their earliest days to the end of their careers. That doesn't mean that there aren't such elements within the military - but I feel that that those elements are a very long way from having the power to exert any significant influence over internal or external military decision-making.

....and the fact that a move against the AKP and another coup would end Turkey's Europe aspirations forever, as well as damage its status as the reliable and stable ME country.

Here I believe that you understate the determination of the elite secular Turks to preserve their Kemalist ethno-nationalist identity. This would not be the first time that they've cut off their nose to spite their face (refer to issues related to Armenia, Cyprus, the Kurds, etc.). The move against the AKP is ongoing; it is unlikely to be halted at this point. But, as stated above, it is not the Turkish military that will ultimately remove them from power, but the Turkish judicial system.

The supreme irony is that the threat of radical Islam in Turkey will likely increase due to the secularists' attack on the moderate and reformist AKP.

[Jedburgh]

EDM, 1 Jul 08: Turkish Police Detain Senior Retired Generals

Early on the morning of July 1, the Turkish police detained 24 hard-line secularists during a series of raids in Ankara and Istanbul. Those taken into custody included retired General Sener Eruygur, the former commander of the Turkish Gendarmerie; retired General Hursit Tolon, the former commander of the First Army; Sinan Aygun, the head of the Ankara Chamber of Commerce; and Mustafa Balbay, the Ankara representative of Cumhuriyet daily newspaper.

The Turkish media reported that several of the arrests came during police raids on offices belonging to the Association for Ataturkist Thought (ADD), a secularist NGO that was founded in 1989 to promote the ideals of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk (1881-1938), who founded the modern Turkish republic in 1923. The ADD is currently headed by General Eruygur. In the spring of 2007, the ADD was one of the main organizers of a series of mass public protests in which hundreds of thousands of secular Turks took to the streets in an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to prevent the ruling Justice and Development party (AKP) from appointing Abdullah Gul as the country’s president.

It is thought that those taken into custody on July 1 are being held on suspicion of links to a shadowy Turkish ultranationalist group known as Ergenekon. The group first came to public attention in June 2007, when the Turkish police discovered 27 hand grenades and a small quantity of explosives in a house in the Istanbul suburb of Umraniye. Subsequent investigations eventually led to the arrest in January of retired Gendarmerie General Veli Kucuk, the alleged founder and leader of Ergenekon, and 12 associates.....

This should really stoke up tensions between the secularist right and the AKP; and the timing is just right. The prosecutor on the party closure case is making his opening statement today.

[wm]

Here's a link to the English story from Hurriyet. This story suggest the arrests are directly part of the Ergenekon investigation.

And here's the link to the Turkish Daily News story as well.

[Jedburgh]

The Economist, 17 Jul 08: Turkey's Future: Flags, Veils and Sharia

....Yet the biggest boost to religious education came from the army itself, after it seized power for the third time in 1980. Communism was the enemy at the time, so the generals encouraged Islam as an antidote. Religious teaching became mandatory. Islamic clerical-training schools, known as imam hatip, mushroomed.

Another example of how army meddling goes awry is Hizbullah, Turkey’s deadliest home-grown Islamic terrorist outfit. Hizbullah (no relation to its Lebanese namesake) is alleged to have been encouraged by rogue security forces in the late 1980s to fight separatist PKK rebels in the Kurdish south-east. The group spiralled out of control until police raids in 2001 knocked it out of action. But not entirely. Former Hizbullah militants are said to have regrouped in cells linked to al-Qaeda, and took part in the 2003 bombings of Jewish and British targets in Istanbul.

Banning the AKP could strengthen the hand of such extremists, who share the fierce secularists’ belief that Islam and democracy cannot co-exist. If instead the AKP stayed in power, that would bring Islamists closer to the mainstream.....

[Rex Brynen]

Turkey’s Governing Party Avoids Ban
By SEBNEM ARSU and SABRINA TAVERNISE
New York Times
Published: July 31, 2008

ISTANBUL — Turkey’s governing party narrowly missed being banned in a court ruling on Wednesday that released months of pressure in the country and handed a victory to the party’s leader, a former Islamist.

The party, Justice and Development, or AKP, as it is know in Turkish, was kept alive by just one vote — six members of Turkey’s Constitutional Court voted to close it, but seven were required. A ban would have brought down the government, forcing national elections for the second time in a year and pitching the country into chaos.