Turkey's Military Continues Crackdown on Islam in Public Life

By James M. Dorsey

Thirty-year-old Turkan Akbay always thought she could be both Turkish and devoutly Muslim, believing she was part of this secular democracy despite her headscarf and ankle-length coat.

But in May Akbay felt forced to put religion before her country, and protested in one of Turkey's largest demonstrations in decades below banners asking, "Is it a crime to be a Muslim?''

At issue were efforts by Turkey's staunchly secular military to curb the role of Islam in public life, including a crackdown on Islamic education. "There must be religious freedom in education,'' Akbay said at the time, peering out from behind dark glasses and wearing a long headscarf. "We are a democracy.''

Hardened Battle Lines

Since then, the battle lines have hardened, with clashes in Turkey between secularists and Islamists mounting as the country—defined since 1923 by the secular goals of its post-World War I leader, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk—struggles with a resurgence of Islam.

In late July, the clashes erupted into violence in the first major Islamic demonstration since Turkey's military-backed secularist elite forced the resignation in June of Islamist Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan. At least 13 people were wounded and scores arrested in clashes in the Turkish capital, Ankara, between police and thousands of Islamists protesting a government plan to curtail religious education severely in secondary schools.

The clashes evoke the West's worst fears: the threat of Turkey, a key NATO member, splitting into two. Erbakan's military-backed successor, Mesut Yilmaz, a conservative politician who heads a minority left-right coalition, has vowed to continue the anti-Islamist campaign against religious activism launched by the armed forces in February to force the Islamist leader from office.

Educational reform is but one element of the ongoing military-inspired campaign to rid Turkey of what the generals see as the single largest threat to the country's security—and to their own place near the top of its food chain. Investigations of Islamic businesses, efforts to close down Erbakan's pro-Islamic Welfare Party, and measures to curb the role of Islam in public life are other ingredients. Together they leave little room for moderates on either side of the divide.

No one is yet willing to rule out the possibility of a fourth coup.

Yet, the heavy-handed attempt to return the country to the staunchly secular days after World War I when Ataturk carved modern Turkey out of the ruins of the Ottoman Empire as a militantly Westernizing state that viewed Islam as an obstacle to progress could prove equally dangerous for the stability of the country. Many Turks, including committed secularists, worry that the military's effort to turn the clock back to the days of Ataturk's suppression of Islam, which included the imposition of a Western dress code and strict government control of all religious practice, will ultimately backfire.

Ataturk's nationalist and statist philosophy succeeded in resurrecting Turkey as a fiercely independent regional player, but it has been unable to provide satisfactory answers to the country's political, economic and moral needs. Secularists and the Kemalist military believe that development of a consumer society will fill the void in a nation increasingly seeking moral and ethical moorings. For much of Turkey's rural population as well as the residents of its vast shantytowns that may not be sufficient.

"There are two Turkeys,'' says Nilufer Narli, a political sociologist at the University of Marmara. "Everywhere you see this secular&shy Islamic conflict, and it will be a difficult conflict to solve.''

Turkey's political rumor mill rattled this spring with reports of an imminent coup by the military, which has intervened three times in Turkish politics in the past 40 years, as the armed forces made clear that they were not going to allow Erbakan, modern Turkey's first Islamist prime minister, to stay in office. Erbakan's pro-Islamic Welfare Party emerged from elections in December 1995 as Turkey's single largest party with some 21 percent of the vote. Amid expectations that theYilmaz government will sometime next year call another election, which the Islamists could well win again with a considerably larger margin, no one is yet willing to rule out the possibility of a fourth coup.

"If necessary, we will use guns against those who are working to bring down the Turkish republic,'' says General Ismail Hakki Karadayi, Turkey's top military commander. This is hardly comforting to those who think that a republic must also be democratic.

As yet, few Turks dare to oppose the military outright, but even staunch secularists are beginning to fear that Turkey may be sacrificing democracy for the sake of secularism. Says newspaper columnist Sahin Alpay, "Our army embraces secularism, but not all of them embrace liberal democracy. Ironically, now the Welfare Party appears as the champion of democracy."

James M. Dorsey is a free-lance writer based in Istanbul.