Turkey: Can the EU believe Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan when he says he supports Turkish secularism

the Erdoğans and the Browns in London

EU-Digest (editorial)

Turkey: Can the EU believe Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan when he says he supports Turkish secularism ? -

Erdoğan, speaking at Oxford Center for Islamic Studies earlier this year said :"I reject attempts to call Turkey the representative of moderate Islam. It is unacceptable for us, because we can't agree with such a definition. Turkey has never been a country to represent such a concept. Moreover, Islam cannot be classified as moderate or not". Erdoğan in his talk also stressed the lack of dialogue between different religions and cultures, which has led to what he calls distressing incidents in world history. But does Mr.Erdoğan actually mean what he says?

Last year Turkey’s top court voted unanimously to hear a case to bar Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan from public life and shut down his party for mixing Islam with politics, threatening to rekindle political turmoil. Charges brought by chief prosecutor Abdurrahman Yalcinkaya to ban the ruling Justice and Development Party were allowed and the trial could proceed. Mr.Erdoğan's AKP party, rooted in an Islamic movement outlawed by the Constitutional Court a decade ago, was accused of trying to introduce Islamic law in the secular Turkish Republic created by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. Erdoğan denied the charges, which would have put him and President Abdullah Gul and about 70 other party officials barred from politics for five years. On July 30, 2008, after deliberating for three days, the court gave its verdict. AKP (Justice and Development Party) was found guilty of becoming the focus of anti-secularist actions. But since it needed a qualified majority of seven out of eleven votes for the court to disband the party, and only six members of the Court voted in favor of the motion, it failed. The Court did however determine the party had undertaken actions that were anti-secular and halved its political funding from the Central Bank as a penalty.

For those not familiar with radical intellectual Islamists’ methods on taking political control of a country, the procedure is based on imposing its imprint at first socially and then applying it through legislation! This is exactly what the AKP party seems to be trying to do in Turkey today. However, in reality Mr.Erdoğan is in charge of a "weak" Islamist government, supported by a minority of about 33% of the Turkish voters. AKP only became a parliamentary majority because of the confusing Turkish electoral laws and the multi-division of the political system. Erdoğan is also opposed by many in academic, intellectual and judicial circles. However, because he continues to have a solid grip over most of the uneducated Turkish masses, who are gullible to the rhetoric of populists and religious opportunists, the AKP party still has a lot of political manouvrability. Also, given Erdoğan's strong machavellian skills he is cleverly able to play out the different forces within Turkey against each other. Mr. Erdoğan did not acquire these skills overnight. He acquired them early on. Born in 1954, he is the son of a coastguard in the city of Rize on Turkey's Black Sea coast. He was 13 when his father decided to move to Istanbul, hoping to give his family which included five children a better life. As a teenager, Erdoğan sold lemonade and sesame buns on the streets of Istanbul's rougher districts to earn extra cash. This provided him with the entrepreneurial and business skills he excels in today. As to his conservative religious beliefs, his indoctrination came when he attended an Islamic school before obtaining a degree in management from Istanbul's Marmara University. He also played professional soccer and was quite good at it.

While attending university, he met Necmettin Erbakan - who went on to become the country's first Islamist Prime Minister - and through him he entered Turkey's Islamist political movement. His political career in the Welfare Party, as the Islamists' party was then known until it was banned in 1998, moved very quickly. In 1994, Mr. Erdoğan became the mayor of Istanbul. In this job even his critics admit that he did good work, making Istanbul cleaner and greener - although his decision to ban alcohol in city cafes did not please most of the citizens. He also won admiration from many who felt that he was not corrupt - unlike most other Turkish politicians. His pro-Islamist sympathies earned him a conviction in 1998 for inciting religious hatred. He publicly read an Islamic poem which included the following lines: "The mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets and the faithful our soldiers..." For this he was sentenced to 10 months in jail, but was freed after four. However, because of his criminal record, he was barred from standing in elections or holding political office. In the meantime disputes between the reformists and the traditionalists in the Virtue Party caused the formation of the Justice and Development Party on August 14, 2001. It was formed by several members who resigned from the Virtue Party, including Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Abdullah Gul, and Bulent Arinc. The AKP of Erdoğan quickly flourished into a major political party.

Opponents say AKP in reality is the reincarnation of the banned Welfare party. They might not be wrong, because the most important growth factor for the AKP in Turkey like with the Virtue Party so far has been its Islamic agenda, and its support by the Gullen's (religious) movement.

When asked, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is ambiguous about the true political direction of his party and says, "AK Party is not a political party with a religious agenda". The majority of Turks do not believe that. As to the EU and the US, they evaluate Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Turkey exactly on what Erdoğan himself rejected at his Oxford's Center for Islamic studies talk - "a moderate Islamic state". Most people we spoke to in and from Turkey say that if it is really the intention of Mr.Erdoğan and his AKP to turn his country into a religious Muslim state he certainly will not have an easy road ahead.

In reality Turks are not devoutly religious. The majority of today’s Muslims in Turkey do not give much thought to being Muslim or the "Hereafter", even though, like people from other religious backgrounds, they might participate in some of the rituals, but mainly enjoy the festivities and food that come with these religious events. Turks certainly are not socially conservative; they love to eat, drink, dance, practice premarital and extramarital sex, even the ladies with the head scarfs indulge, many also enjoy nudism and other kinds of extravagant and exotic experiences in life. Among all those "decadent" hurdles facing Mr. Erdoğan and his AKP, there is one which has not even been mentioned, but nevertheless always present in the background: the Turkish military.