Tension Between Islamists and Secularists Grows in Turkey

by Marvine Howe

As Turkey finally moves to the threshold of Europe, Turkish society appears increasingly polarized between the secular establishment and a renewed, invigorated, unpredictable Islamic movement. Within scarcely a decade, Islam, once relegated to museums, mosques and rural backwaters, has returned to urban center stage, penetrating university campuses, fashionable boulevards, luxury hotel lobbies and people’s consciousness.

Political Islam, crushed by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk’s secular revolution 70-odd years ago, has re-emerged as the most important political force in the country. In Christmas Eve elections, the Islamist Welfare party secured over 21 percent of the vote, to become the largest bloc in parliament, although it was unable to find an ally among Turkey’s secular parties to enable it to create a governing coalition. Many knowledgeable Turks and foreign observers say, however, that if current economic and political conditions and the electoral system remain unchanged, Islamic militants could come to power democratically next time around.

Hovering in the background are two basic questions to which no one seems to have answers: If the Islamists win an absolute majority in the next election, would they move to introduce the shariah (Islamic law code)? And would the Turkish army, guardian of this country’s secular constitution, let them?

While this nation of 60 million does not belong to the club of oil-rich countries, it matters strategically, as a window on its volatile neighbors in the Balkans, the former Soviet Union and the Middle East. During the Cold War, Turkey was the only Muslim country in the Western alliance and was regarded as NATO’s eastern bastion against communism. With the fall of communism, some Western capitals still tend to look at Turkey as NATO’s eastern bulwark against radical Islamic movements and Muslim dictatorships, a role some Turkish officials have not rejected.

After traveling around Turkey recently and meeting with secularists and Islamists alike, I came to the conclusion that Turks and their foreign allies should think more in terms of bridges than bulwarks. The Islamic revival movement, sweeping the world from Morocco to the Philippines, has become a fact of life in Turkey, better recognized than ignored or driven underground. It is a multi-faceted movement and appears to be largely modernist. Of course there are extremists who reject Western materialism out of hand, court martyrdom and look to the Afghan model of jihad (holy struggle). But Turkey’s Islamist politicians and ideologues generally express willingness to play by democratic rules and even student activists show considerable independence and tolerance.

Turkey today is governed by an uneasy coalition of secular parties which finally joined forces after weeks of haggling over political posts and personal prestige. It’s a fragile unity based essentially on a common antipathy to the Islamist party and its agenda to forge closer ties with the Islamic world and distance Turkey from Europe and NATO. Showing statesmanship and political savvy, President Suleyman Demirel gave the leading Islamist party first chance at forming a government. A subsequent brief attempt by the conservative Motherland Party to come to an understanding with the Islamists failed because of secularist pressures. Now political analysts predict the Islamists will hammer away at the government in parliament and in public opinion to force early elections in the expectation of winning an absolute majority next time.

The main loser in the recent elections was former Prime Minister Tansu Ciller, a photogenic, 48-year-old economics professor and leader of the True Path Party, who has proved to be a disappointment, except to Islamists who benefitted from her mistakes. Ms. Ciller did not resolve the economic crisis. Instead, inflation soared to 84 percent last year and the gross national product shrank by 6 percent. Per capita income now is half that of Mexico.

Nor did Ciller live up to promises to end serious human rights abuses and the devastating war against Kurdish separatists.

In mid-December, the European Parliament agreed to admit Turkey into the European customs union. This was seen as an important step toward full membership in the European Union, which Turkey has been trying to join for over three decades. But Europe’s endorsement failed to give the secularist parties the boost they had hoped for. The Islamists openly oppose joining the European club and could block any further moves if they come to power.

Even now, the Islamist party’s 159 deputies can exert a major impact in the 550-seat parliament, which is fractured by personal and political rivalries. These sharp divisions inside the legislative body and pressures from the radical nationalist and Kurdish parties kept out because they failed to garner the 10 percent minimum vote presage increasing instability and early elections.

I lived and worked in Turkey as a correspondent for The New York Times from 1979 to 1983. In those days, most educated Turks looked to Europe and the United States, not the Islamic world. The government openly admired Israel, with which it maintained diplomatic ties despite pressure from Arab states. Trade with the Arab world was only beginning to develop, and there were few Arabic scholars. The generals executed a bloodless coup in 1980 against troublemakers on the extreme left and right, but not in mosques. The Islamists’ party and its leader, Necmettin Erbakan, were considered something of a joke.

The establishment then was solidly Kemalistor at least paid lip service to Kemalism, the religion of secularism conceived by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who founded the modern Turkish Republic in 1923. Kemalism is enshrined in the constitution, which firmly separates mosque and state, bars the creation of religious parties and proclaims equal rights for women and men.

The Islamization of Turkey’s cities and towns actually began in the early 1980s, with the invasion of urban areas by the countryside. Istanbul’s population doubled in this period to more than 12 million, with newcomers bringing their religious traditions and beliefs.

As early as 1983, Islamists became visible in the bureaucracy, education and Turgut Ozal’s ruling Motherland Party. The late President Ozal, with the backing of the military, kept Islamic influences under control while preserving the secular principles of the state. Alarm bells sounded for secularists in February 1994 when the Islamists’ Refah (Welfare) Party won mayoralities in Istanbul, Ankara and 400 other cities and towns, coming in third nationwide with 19.3 percent of the vote.

While Islamists are increasingly visible, there is a great divide between them and Westernized Turkish circles. Most secularists I talked to were troubled by the growing number of mosques, religious schools and people in Islamic dress. Secularists were even more alarmed by ominous reports of Islamic cults preying on young people, vast sums of money spent to recruit Islamist activists, and terrorist acts attributed to Islamic extremists.

Islamists, on the other hand, complained of discrimination and lack of social justice. They blamed the secular government for failed policies and subservience to the West that condoned mass slaughter of Muslims in Bosnia. Preaching a return to Islamic values, they seem confident their time has come.

How did the Islamic revival come to pass in Turkey, the most secular of Muslim countries?Western diplomats, familiar with the Islamic resurgence in such countries as Egypt, say some of the same factors are present in Turkey: widespread public disaffection from a government that is ineffectual in resolving day-to-day economic and social problems, bitterness over the leadership’s close ties to the West that seems increasingly hostile towards Islam, and hope in an Islamic movement which is well organized and provides social services at the local level.

Turkish Specifics

Nermin Abadan-Unat, professor of political science at Istanbul’s Bogazici University, furnished Turkish specifics. When the military regime lifted the ban on political leaders in 1983, they all came back, including Islamists. The Islamist surge occurred after the Gulf war, when religious propaganda was allowed. Deregulation of the media has favored the spread of electronic gospel. The government has encouraged tarikats (religious orders) as a counter-weight to leftists and opened more Imam Hatip schools to appease the religious movement. Refah’s strong showing in last year’s elections, however, was due mainly to divisions among the democratic parties. Islamists benefitted from broad dissatisfaction with Prime Minister Ciller, who has been criticized for arbitrariness, poor management and failure to carry out promises. Many Kurds (one-fifth of the population), alienated by government policies, have turned to Refah, which woos them with social services.

The most dramatic victory of the Islamists took place in “the 10 years war over headscarves,” said Nilufer Narli, a professor of international relations at Marmara University. Early on, Ataturk had banned veils and headscarves for civil servants, including nurses and teachers, as well as students in public schools and universities. Over the years, headscarves almost disappeared in cities, but remained prevalent in the traditional rural society as a symbol of devotion to Islam and female chastity.

In the mid-1980s, however, the Islamic movement turned headscarves into a civil rights issue, winning support from the left. After heated public debates and demonstrations, the Constitutional Court ended the ban on head coverings in universities in 1991. Now, Ms. Narli said, headscarves symbolize cultural identity, political protest, adherence to the Islamist movement, and resistance to the un-Islamic regime and to the West.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan, mayor of Greater Istanbul and possible successor to Refah’s national leader, is a 41-year-old Marmara University graduate in economics and political science, an amateur soccer player, and the picture of an urbane Western gentleman. Mayor Erdogan has alarmed secular constituents with his controversial actions: banning alcoholic beverages in municipal buildings, closing shelters for battered women, allowing members of the fire department to wear beards, painting yellow road signs Islamic green.

“Before we came to office, there was widespread corruption and bribery; now many people are in jail and we have a clean administration,” Mayor Erdogan told me. He spoke at length of other accomplishments: the removal of “hills of garbage”; provision of more seajets and seabuses to ease traffic congestion and work nearly completed on the light rail; refurbishing the city’s water supply; tackling pollution problems by increased use of natural gas and stopping trucks from bringing in poor coal. Soon, he promised, Istanbul’s air would be clean. Asked about the women’s shelters, the mayor said: “Shelters are not good for women; we have alternative places called huzur, relief and support facilities, where they can learn handicraft courses. In our culture, if a woman is badly treated, she goes to her family.”

Refah Headquarters

Refah’s Istanbul headquarters are located in the outlying working-class Topkapi district and look like an exclusive men’s club with wall-to-wall carpeting, comfortable leather chairs, potted plants and not a woman in sight. The party 2's Istanbul leader, Mehmet Ali Sahin, a graduate of the University of Theology and a theological teacher, denied allegations of support from Iran and Saudi Arabia. Noting that under Turkish law parties cannot receive foreign aid, Mr. Sahin said most funds come from members (limited to $1,200 a year), including Turkish workers in Germany, and from religious and social foundations.

If Refah came to power, would it impose the shariah? I asked without hedging. The Refah leader said first it was necessary to change the constitution, eliminating the ban on religious parties. Without referring directly to the shariah, he said that his party would do away with the Swiss legal code, in force since 1926. “We defend our local views and believe we should make our own laws, according to our own circumstances and way of life; why go to Switzerland?”

Contending that a Refah government would be “inclusive and tolerant,” Mr. Sahin noted that Refah mayors have visited churches, synagogues and mosques to give reassurances. Asked about the 12-year Kurdish rebellion that has taken 15,000 lives and devastated hundreds of villages, the party spokesman said the Kurdish problem stemmed from “a long accumulation of mistakes.” He cited specifically the 1926 ban on the Kurdish language, lack of economic development in the area, the government’s failure to differentiate between the Kurdish people and terrorists, and military action to set up a security zone in Iraq.

Equally blunt in his opposition to Ankara’s European policy, Mr. Sahin said the customs union treaty was “not good for Turkey,” because Turkish imports and the foreign trade deficit would increase. “The world is not only Europe,” he said, criticizing the government for failing to consolidate relations with the Black Sea Economic Forum and Islamic countries.

Abdurrahman Dilpak, a gaunt man of 46 years with proper Islamic beard, is a leading Islamic thinker, writer, television debater and member of the Muslim Businessmen’s Association, set up in 1991 to create an Islamic economic system. Dilipak said the rise of Islam in Turkey was like “the river coming back to its own bed.” This was due to what he called “environmental factors”: new national structures in the wake of World War II, the Iranian revolution, the anti-Soviet movement culminating in the Afghan war, the American defeat in Lebanon, and Islam’s loss of its holy places in Jerusalem.

“Unfortunately we have been separated from our own culture,” he said. For the past 70 years, Turks have learned about Western culture, mainly American, and have had contacts with all the neighboring communist movements. European classics have been translated into Turkish but Islamic works were ignored. He does not reject Western civilization per se but thinks one must be “selective.” For example, he likes American computer programs and works with an IBMNotebook and a Macintosh desktop computer.

Questioned about Islamic law, Dilipak said: “Yes, of course I want the shariah,” adding that there were seven court cases against him for saying just that. Under shariah law, he claimed, there would be no pressure on women. They would be free to choose their lifestyle. He specified that any Turks who did not want to live by Islamic rules would have their rights, too.

When I suggested this was not so under the Sudanese theocracy, the soft-voiced Dilipak exploded: “Why do American journalists only talk about Sudan! Why not ask about Bosnia, Chechnya, Ngorno Karabagh!” As the interview was clearly over, I asked if he feared an Algerian-type military intervention should Islamists win a working majority in the next elections. The Islamist’s response was cryptic: “We don’t want the Algerian situation here. If the military acts, we are waiting.”

Most secularists I met believed the armed forces were prepared to step in to defend Ataturk’s legacy, Turkey’s modern, Western, secular democracy…and counted on it. After all, the military have acted to “safeguard” the republic three times in the last three decades, in 1960, 1971, and 1980. I had witnessed the last intervention to put an end to the spiral of extreme left/right-wing violence. The generals restored political stability and retired to their barracks, although the public is still paying the cost in restricted human freedoms.

Turkish colleagues in Ankara with close connections to the military rightly predicted that the armed forces would not move in the wake of the strong showing by Refah in the elections. The military were well aware that under present circumstances the political forces were so splintered, any party would have to give way to coalition partners, thereby reducing the danger of radical governance.

Military intervention would be envisaged only if an Islamist government sought to change the constitution to introduce Islamic (shariah) law, I was told. Former president and chief of staff General Kenan Evren, who engineered the 1980 coup, said as much in 1994: the army would not permit Refah to establish the shariah. Firing another warning shot on the eve of the election, the army announced the purge of 50 Muslim fundamentalists from the officer corps.

But nearly six million voters apparently paid little heed to these admonitions, pinning their hopes on the Islamists. And next time, if the Islamists win an absolute majority, would the armed forces come to the rescue of the secular society? After all, there is the Algerian precedent:three years of bloody civil war for failing to recognize the Islamist victory at the polls. And the Turkish armed forces are a reflection of the broader society; would they not be just as penetrated by the Islamist revival movement?