By Mordechai Kedar
Center for the Study of the Middle East and Islam (under formation) Bar-Ilan University
Middle Eastern Insights No. 11
3 September, 2011
http://www.jewishindy.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=15928
(Note: This article was written and published in Hebrew in mid October 2009, more than seven months before the Mavi Marmara (the flotilla) issue. It's first part was updated in June 2011, and believe me, I am not a prophet. MK)
The Turkish elections on June 12, 2011, were held against the backdrop of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s intention of winning two-thirds of the parliamentary seats; had it been achieved, this majority would have enabled Erdogan to rapidly advance the Islamization of Turkey by altering its constitution to position him as its all-powerful president with broad authority. This goal apparently frightened some of the voters so that he won “only” 326 of the 550 seats, a drop of five seats with respect to the outgoing parliament. Interestingly, this majority (almost 60%) was reached despite the fact that his party, The Justice and Development Party, received slightly less than 50% of the valid votes, a percentage that is higher than the 47% in the 2007 elections. The parliamentary majority allows Erdogan to govern without a coalition and to amend the constitution via referendum. Not easy, but possible.
Opposition representatives, combined, won about 40% of the seats: The Republican People’s Party’s strength rose from almost 21% to 26% and it will hold 135 seats; the second largest opposition party, The Nationalist Movement Party, declined from 14% to 13% with 53 seats. It is important to note that this party managed to pass the high 10% threshold. An additional 36 independent representatives, mostly Kurds, were elected; some are in prison for participating in the struggle against the government.
Accordingly, Erdogan will continue for a third, and apparently last, term as prime minister, and his foreign minister – Ahmet Davutoglu – will maintain the foreign policy of the last eight years, aimed at strengthening Turkey’s independent international standing based on the consistent and rapid 8% annual growth rate; the large and loyal army; internal stability (despite the Kurdish opposition); and the good relations with most countries in the region. Without a doubt, Turkey deserves to be called a “regional power”, a title it shares with Iran and, perhaps, Israel. The situation in these three countries is in marked contrast to the ongoing destruction of the crumbling, divided and splintered Arab political collective. Erdogan is currently perceived in the Arab world as the most popular leader, although he himself is not an Arab. Under these circumstances we can assume that the tension with Israel will continue and Turkey’s ties with the Arab and Islamic world will continue to grow stronger.
The question that automatically comes to mind is how did Turkey evolve from a country with a secular constitution to one with an Islamic agenda and “Ottoman” imperial-like tendencies that indicate its intention to return to Islamic hegemony.
(The original article of October 2009 started here. Later additions are now included.)
During recent decades we grew accustomed to seeing Turkey as a close friend of the West and strategic ally of Israel, with training bases for the Israel army and air force; as an important member of NATO; as a modern state with a secular constitution, open media and liberal society; as a world tourist attraction and a welcoming country, especially for the hundreds of thousands of European and American tourists who spent “all-inclusive” vacations there.
Behind the friendship with Israel was the traditional animosity between Turks and Arabs. This stemmed from four hundred years of cruel Turkish control of Eastern Arabia and Arab collaboration with the British during World War One, which led to the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in its war with the European “Christian infidels”. This image of Turkey was true and accurate, but incomplete. We saw that part of Turkey which we wanted to see and ignored the other side, which was less sympathetic towards the West.
Turkey began its modern course during the 1920s when its omnipotent leader, Mustafa Kemal – “Ataturk” (father of the Turks) – forcefully imposed on the country a modern, secular, anti-Islamic and anti-traditional agenda, because he viewed the European style of life as something to emulate and as a means of ushering Turkey into the modern era. He replaced Arabic script with the Latin alphabet, closed Islamic schools (the madrasas), dissolved the Shari’a courts and subordinated the entire judicial system – including personal status laws (marriage and divorce) – to civil law. He required men to take off the traditional tarbush headdress and tried to force women to remove their head covering, the hijab.
Ataturk considered polygamy a sick evil and to fight it, he enacted a law requiring every man and woman to marry by the age of twenty-eight, thinking that if all women were married, none would be available to become someone’s second, third or fourth wife, as Islam permits. The law at the time set the age of eighteen as the minimum allowed for marriage – for both men and women – in order to enable girls to complete high school, which would expose them to higher education and jobs outside the home.
His success in bringing Western culture to the Turkish population was impressive, but was primarily limited to the cities, where the regime was strong and efficient. The picture was almost entirely different in the vast rural areas: Women maintained traditional dress; Arabic script was used for many more years; local courts, based on the Islamic Shari’a, continued to handle personal status issues. The winds of modernity were significantly weaker in the villages than in the city, and the cultural change that Ataturk strived to impose on the country largely bypassed non-urban sectors.
Preachers in city mosques were required to deliver the uniform government sermon every Friday, composed and delivered by the security forces, while preachers in village mosques enjoyed greater freedom in conveying their traditional Islamic message, even if this did not fit in with the regime's secular, modernistic tendencies. Women in cities were able to study in academic institutions and embark on professional careers almost like men. The constitution forbade women from wearing a head covering at universities or government institutions, a prohibition that kept traditional women away from any studies or government job as they refused to be seen bare-headed in public.
The government did its best to encourage Western tourism in cities and resort villages, which offered the European tourist all he or she wanted: restaurants that served food which did not conform to Islamic dietary standards, alcoholic drinks, gambling houses, clothing-optional swimming pools in some hotels and dance halls, despite all this being – and perhaps because it was – contrary to Islam, its spirit and its heritage.
Another important issue that divided modern and traditional circles over the years was family size. Reflecting European trends, modernists searched constantly for ways to reduce the birth rate, primarily by raising the marriage age and encouraging women to have education and jobs, because they considered large families a hindrance to economic and social development. Traditionalists, who saw their offspring as a source of pride and as their economic future and the future of the nation, paid no heed to the low-birth rate tone that prevailed on the modern, urban street.
Thus, over the years, two sectors emerged in Turkey. The first was secular, liberal and western-oriented, held the reins of government, politics and the economy, was protected by the constitution, the army and the supreme court, but persisted in declining demographically. By contrast, the second population was religious and traditionally Islamic, and was politically and economically marginalized; the government tried to perpetuate its marginalization despite the fact that this sector represented a constantly and rapidly growing proportion of the population.
Since the 1950s, Turkish villagers have enjoyed agricultural mechanization, and tractors attached to plows replaced the plow harnessed to the donkey. Machinery was used instead of many working hands, and many farmers began to migrate from the village to the city in search of income. They settled in poor neighborhoods in city outskirts, bringing their traditional culture with them. Mosques were built, madrasas established and the environment in these neighborhoods increasingly reflected Islamic tradition with respect to women’s attire and the food and drink sold publicly.
Throughout the last three decades a significant change has transpired in the civil arena. As a result of the increasing trend towards human rights and civil liberties (due to European pressure stemming from Turkey’s hope to be accepted in Europe as an equal member state), more and more people from the Turkish traditional population began to demand their rights, form political parties and emerge from the political sidelines to exert influence over events in the country. These demands were validated by the widespread corruption among government circles that were intent on enjoying the luxuries attendant to their position, corruption that came primarily at the expense of the masses, the poor and the weak.
The conflicts among the self-satisfied political elite caused turmoil and splits within the secular parties, which disintegrated and disbanded, to the point that the Islamic party in all its variations became the largest party. The latest incarnation of the Islamic party – “The Justice and Development Party” – headed by Recep Tayyip Erdogan, came to power in November 2002 and has since strengthened its hold in social and economic circles, taking control of more positions of political power, of the parliament, the government and the presidency.
Erdogan’s political base is in the villages and poor neighborhoods, whose residents are well aware of the economic growth in recent years. This growth stems primarily from the relocation of factories from Europe to Turkey and the increasing demand for labor in the food, textile, metal, automobile and electrical goods industries, whose products are exported mainly to Europe. Many such products sold in Israel are manufactured in Turkey.
Until recently, two institutions – the military and the Supreme Court – remained outside of the Islamic party’s control, but these two bodies have also undergone far-reaching changes: the secular officer class that controlled the military is gradually being replaced by religious officers, and, last year, Erdogan legislated a constitutional change that allows the political echelons – i.e., the Islamists – to participate in judicial appointments. Thus, the two entities which, in the past, had served as watchdogs of secularism no longer pose a threat to Islamist control of government. The heads of the Islamic party now feel free to do almost whatever they want in the government.
Foreign Policy
The most outstanding feature of Erdogan’s and Davutoglu’s foreign policy is the weakening of ties to the West in general and to Israel in particular, in contrast to the strengthening of relations with the Arab and Islamic world, including Iran. This is the only way to explain Turkey’s refusal to allow the international coalition forces to cross Turkey on their way to fight in Iraq in March 2003. According to the view of its Islamic political elite, Turkey has ceased serving western states who act against Islamic countries. This thinking is not only political, but cultural as well, and encompasses large groups of traditionalists who control positions of power previously unavailable to them.
Turkey’s negative attitude towards Israel was manifested in its cancellation of joint maneuvers in 2009 and 2010; in violent protests against Israel during the Second Lebanon War (2006) and Operation Cast Lead (2008-9); in Erdogan’s public reproach of President Peres at the Davos Congress (2009) and in the Turkish flotilla (2010).
The growing friendship witnessed until recently (March 2011) between Turkey and the Assad regime in Syria was important for both sides. For Syria it acted as an insurance policy guaranteeing the continued flow of the Euphrates from Turkey to Syria (and on to Iraq) without Turkey drawing overly large quantities of water from the river; this was of particular importance to Syria in light of the long drought that had dried up extensive agricultural areas there, causing the migration of hundreds of thousands of farmers, who had lost their source of income, to the cities. Turkey benefited from the strengthening of ties with Syria because Damascus dropped its long-standing demand to regain the Alexandretta region from Turkey, who had received it from France in 1939.
However, because of the recent bloody events in Syria, relations between Erdogan and Assad have seriously deteriorated and the tone of several comments by the Turkish prime minister during the last few weeks leaves no room for doubt regarding his position towards the Syrian ruler: Assad must step down from power because he has lost his legitimacy. Erdogan thus gave voice to his deep-seated Islamic feelings, as he sees the wholesale slaughter of Muslims by the army protecting the ‘Alawis, whom Islam considers infidels.
Turkey is very interested in strengthening its ties with the restored central government in Iraq, in order to bring pressure on the Iraqi Kurds so that they will not declare independence, and in order to prevent the latter from supplying arms to their Kurdish brethren living a life of oppression and humiliation in southeastern Turkey. Iraq’s rehabilitated oil industry beckons Turkey, who would profit greatly from providing passage for Iraq’s oil to Europe.
Turkey and Iran have also drawn closer in recent years, despite the covert competition between the two powers for regional hegemony. Israel must take into account that Israeli weapons and military technology sold to Turkey will fall into Iranian hands, and will be subjected to testing and examination. However, the current bloody events in Syria and the Turkish stand against the activities of the Syrian regime against the Muslim population, put Turkey in covert confrontation with Iran which supports Asad in various ways.
Erdogan has always taken a harsh stand against Israel, and takes one now against Syria as well. He is guided by the Islamic nature of his thinking, which leads to his identification with any suffering Muslim; this, without his noting the ethnic differences between Arabs and Turks and without taking into account the mutual animosity that has traditionally existed between these two nations. In Erdogan’s view, Islam unites all world Muslims in solidarity, and he is unable to restrain himself when seeing media coverage of the suffering in Gaza, Dar’a, Homs, Hamah and Jisr al-Shughour, especially when he is forced to feed thousands of Syrian refugees fleeing in fear from ‘Alawi rule.
In his scathing remarks against Peres and Assad, Erdogan reflects the sympathy for any and all Muslims which has engulfed the traditional public in Turkey, that which elected Erdogan and his party to lead the nation. The fact that the Islamic Hamas movement controls Gaza has also added to Turkish rage when confronted with the horrible sights broadcast endlessly during Operation Cast Lead between the end of December 2008 and January 19, 2009. Not for naught did Turkey add its voice to those states calling to bring Israeli leaders to justice after the Goldstone Report, and it is demanding an apology and compensation from Israel for the events surrounding the June 2010 flotilla.
There might be some diplomatic solution to the tension between Israel and Turkey on the flotilla issue, but the obvious conclusion from all the above is that the crisis in Israeli-Turkish relations is not a passing cloud, but a dark and somber cloudbank, painted in Islamic green, that is covering the skies throughout the Middle East, including Turkey. This situation is the inevitable, perhaps even expected, result of the cultural and social changes Turkey has undergone during the last three decades, during which it has drifted away from the cultural legacy of Ataturk and is returning to the tradition of Muhammad bin Abdullah, founder of Islam. It is good that hundreds of thousands of Israelis have ceased visiting Turkey’s vacation spots each year. It would be even better if some of them would vacation in the bed-and-breakfasts and hotels of Israel in order to strengthen its economy, provide jobs for its unemployed and strengthen the country in the multi-front battle being waged against it, a battle in which Turkey is taking part rather than standing on Israel’s side. (End of the 2009 article)
Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu announced today that following Jerusalem's adamant refusal to apologize over the 2010 Gaza flotilla raid, Ankara will be downgrading its diplomatic relations with Israel and suspending key military agreements.
Mordechai Kedar is an Israeli scholar of Arabic literature and a lecturer at Bar-Ilan University. He holds the Ph.D. from Bar-Ilan University. Kedar is an academic expert on the Israeli Arab population. He served for twenty-five years in IDF Military Intelligence, where he specialized in Islamic groups, the political discourse of Arab countries, the Arabic press and mass media, and the Syrian domestic arena. He is a valued contributor to JewishIndy.
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