Turkey Votes

TURKEY'S REELECTION OF incumbent prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's AKP, or Justice and Development Party, has reenergized the low-level debate in Washington about foreign Islamic parties that claim to respect democracy and secularism. But for the AKP--no less than its rivals in the Turkish military and secular state structures--the positive element lacking in their outlook involves pluralism, more than either politics or prayers.

Turkey is now divided between two forms of intolerance: a secular element that only accepts Islam under strict state supervision, and a religious faction that similarly restricts its approval to Sunnism. Neither respects Turkey's minorities: the heterodox Alevi Muslims, who fear the AKP because it excludes them; the Kurds, whose situation is dangerous for Iraq and the U.S.-led coalition there as well as Turkey itself; the small Greek Orthodox population, which suffers curtailment of its most elementary religious functions, or the Armenians, who still clamor for truth about the deportation and massacres they suffered at the end of the First World War.

Many American commentators would like to see "Islamic democratic" parties emerge across the Muslim world--notably in Egypt, with a presumed option of American accommodation with the Muslim Brotherhood (MB). Both Erdogan's AKP and the Egyptian MB (the latter having been the godfather of Hamas among the Palestinians) talk the talk. They say they opt for ballots over bullets, and since voting and renouncing violence are the words Americans love to hear, the chance at supporting parties representing a "tame" Islamist ideology is attractive to many inside the Beltway.

In addition, the strident rhetoric and militaristic legacy of Turkish secularism seems to blame Islam as a faith for the problems of Turkish politics, which plays well with some sectors of Western opinion, but is a risky conception if the Western democracies intend to defeat radicals inside Muslim countries. Nobody serious on the side of freedom has suggested that the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq should make the eradication of Islam its strategic goal.

And finally, when they mark their ballots, many Turks vote for the AKP because after more than 75 years of enforced secularism, they are aggrieved at those who swore that driving religion from public life, and rooting out the old manners and morals of the Ottomans, would create a modern, efficient nation--but then failed to make good on their promises of accountability and prosperity. Turkey ended up with an army prone to violence, a police known for extreme corruption, and political bloodshed between leftist and rightist nationalists. Worst of all, the Turkish army holds on to its "right" to throw out governments of which it disapproves, which is hardly exemplary from the democratic viewpoint.

Having trusted secularists who delivered little, many Turks want to give religious believers a chance in government. And the AKP, in its electoral propaganda, asks for no more than an opportunity to administer the existing state in a more conscientious and clean manner. Its functionaries and apologists profusely deny any intent to introduce sharia law--a source of literal horror among many Turks--or otherwise expand the role of the mosque in Turkish life.

But will the "Islamic democrats" of AKP walk the walk? The question is acute in Turkey, because that country's combination of unstable factors means that no outcome can be certified as secure.

AKP supporters compare the movement with Christian-based parties in Germany, Austria, and the Netherlands, which have excellent records of fidelity to democracy--but also are products of compromises by and between the churches. The German Christian Democrats and Austrian People's Party arose in response to socialist labor movements, and recognized or adopted many of the programmatic principles of the left. The Dutch religious parties were born of a national reconciliation between Catholics and Protestants.

No such compromise between the AKP, the military, secular civilians, or, most important, religious and ethnic minorities, is in sight in Turkey, and, if anything, the common Turkish nationalist and Sunni-centric habits of both the secular military and the AKP have become more aggravated.

Neither the military secularists nor the AKP will recognize the rights of the large Alevi minority, whose faith combines Shiism, Sufi spirituality, and ancient Turkish culture. Before the AKP came to power the secular Diyanet, or State Administration of Religious Affairs, built mosques and certified imams for the Sunnis, but refused money for the Alevis to build their meeting houses, known as cemevi, or to train their clerics. On that issue there is no difference between the secularists and the AKP.