Secular Fundamentalism in Turkey

There is a great opinion piece in today's Wall Street Journal online edition by Mustafa Akyol, a Turkish writer on Religion and Democracy issues, titled "Secular Jihad," where he talks about recent efforts by Turkey's secular establishment to abolish the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and ban some of it's politicians. It's an adaptation of a piece that appeared last May in the International Herald Tribune titled "The threat is secular fundamentalism." One of the most interesting aspects of the attacks on the AKP by the secularists has been their criticism of working with U.S. democracy programs and praising Anglo-Saxon models of religious freedom over European ones. Specifically, talking about the recent indictment filed by the general prosecutor to shut down the AKP and ban its politician's, Akyol writes:

The indictment also presents lengthy quotes from Prime Minister Erdogan that demonstrate his "antisecular views and activities." These include his remarks in June 2005 to CNN's Wolf Blitzer: "My daughters can go to American universities with their head scarf. There is religious freedom in your country, and we want to bring the same thing to Turkey." In another "criminal" statement, made in London in September 2005, Mr. Erdogan said, "my dream is a Turkey in which veiled and unveiled girls will go to the campus hand in hand." During a February 2005 interview with Germany's Welt am Sonntag, his "crime" was to note, "We Turks prefer the Anglo-Saxon interpretation of secularism to the French one" -- for the former grants more religious freedom to its citizens. For the chief prosecutor, these all prove that Mr. Erdogan and his party aim to dilute and then overthrow secularism.

Akyol, notes similar sentiments in his International Herald Tribune article from last year as well:

Interestingly, this has led the party's secularist opponents to embrace fierce anti-Westernism. Most ultra-secular pundits speculate about "the alliance between moderate Islam and American imperialism" - and they despise both.

In recent rallies in Ankara and Istanbul, secularist protesters denounced Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul, the AK party's candidate for president, with a pun: "We want no ABD-ullah as president," their posters read. "ABD" is the Turkish equivalent of "USA." In other words, they were calling Gul "USA-ullah."

This anti-Western, anti-religious and anti-liberal ideology lies beneath the current ultra-secularist hype in Turkey.

What is notably absent from Akyol's latest piece is any discussion of the recent arrests and detentions of hard-line secular politicians, businessmen, journalists and former generals accused of planning a secular coup d'etat as part of a criminal gang named after the mythic home of the Turkic peoples, Ergenekon. The detention for questioning of prominent Atatürkist journalist for Cumhuriyet newspaper, Ilhan Selçuk, brought about large protests in front of the newspaper's offices by supporters demanding his release. While Selçuk was released on the condition that he wouldn't leave the country, several others remain in prison, including the leader of the Workers' Party (İP), Doğu Perinçek. In addition to working to bring about a coup, the Ergenekon group is also accused of planning to carry out assassinations of prominent Kurdish figures in Turkey and Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk. Arrests began when a cache of hand grenades was discovered in an Istanbul home. Unfortunately, a court order is preventing reporting on this on-going investigation, but opposition politicians are crying foul and accusing the AKP of heavy-handed tactics to crack down on the secular opposition follwing the indictment submitted to close them down. If true, this is of course a very disturbing development for Turkish democracy. But if the plot by Ergenekon to assassinate politicians and orchestrate a coup d'etat is real, it demonstrates a serious weakening of the secularist fundamentalists position, largely due to the new culture of rule of law and respect for the democratic process that the last several years of AKP rule in Turkey have fostered and continue to bring to maturation. The disruption of this criminal organization could mark the collapse of the heavy-handed secularism of Turkey's past and cement the normalization of the relationship between Islam and democracy in the Republic of Turkey, particularly if common sense prevails and the prosecutor general's indictment against the AKP is dismissed by the courts.