Republican Turkey and the Erdogan phenomenon (Part Two)
The current Turkish President has favoured a new, mostly Anatolian middle class through neo-liberal policies at the expense of Kemalist statism. in doing so, he has allowed its members to express their religiosity more openly, but has himself also become more authoritarian.
Istanbul (AsiaNews – In order to understand the Erdogan phenomenon and his authoritarian use of power, which is far from any democratic norm, a short excursion into the recent history of Turkey is necessary.
Like other societies, Turkey is a product of its history. Modern Turkey was founded in 1923 by the country’s military, headed by General Mustafa Kemal, known as Atatürk, founding father of the Republic of Turkey.
Heirs to the Ottoman Empire, Turkey’s Armed Forces created the modern state salvaging what was left of the Empire, on the basis of certain pillars – the Armed Forces, a military-controlled justice system, the Foreign Ministry, the Education Minister, and the Religious Affairs Directorate (Dinayet*) – a system that lasted for decades.
This new Turkey inherited the more-or-less efficient Ottoman state apparatus, as well as a profoundly conservative population. The gap between a conservative society and a military regime that sought to impose its ideas of reform resulted in an authoritarian form of governance that lasted from 1923 to 2002 when Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP**) came to power.
The new regime did not have the means to educate the population, i.e. to convince people that their way was better. For this reason, it undertook a form of social engineering, based on hyper-nationalism.
In view of its methods, someone even compared the Kemalist regime to the Soviet Union. It is perhaps no coincidence that the Kemalist regime developed at a time when a number of authoritarian regimes (Soviet, Fascist, etc.) emerged in Europe.
It should also be noted that Kemal Atatürk, and his followers hailed from Balkan countries, with a background different from that of Anatolian Turks. Kemal, who was from Thessalonica, had attended a Dönmeh school (by Crypto-Jews who converted to Islam), and his followers hailed from various Balkan ethnic groups who had embraced Islam, a common practice imposed under Ottoman rule.
This created a major cleavage in Turkish society between Anatolian Turks, traditionally very religious, poorer and much less educated, and the more educated and secularised, and therefore more progressive Turks, of Balkan origin, the so-called White Turks (Tr: Beyaz Türkler) who came to dominate the new Turkish Republic.
Under the new dispensation those who did not fit the new mould came to suffer, most notably the Kurds, who wanted self-determination, the Alevi Muslim minority, and non-Muslim minorities, viewed as pro-democracy or socialism, but also perceived as a danger to the survival of the new state.
The creation of this seemingly secular state was the work of Atatürk’s Republican People's Party (CHP***), the only party allowed until 1950. For decades, the regime, backed by a highly-centralised Education Ministry, prevented and suppressed every democratic development in Turkish society.
After 1950, the United States imposed a multiparty parliamentary system. However, a series of military coups (1960,197,1980,1997) brought the political system back to the right, Kemalist path through purges and the banning of various political groups. During the single-party period, from 1923 to 1950, whenever a political group emerged and found mass support, it was immediately persecuted.
For this reason, the Turkish Parliament has never exercised real authority. Power was always exercised by the Kemalist state apparatus. Unfortunately, as Turkish academic Murat Belge noted, when the westernised Kemalists held sway in the West, the latter failed to see their anti-democratic practices and their suppression of the demands of much of the Turkish population.
The result of the state-building process undertaken by Atatürk and his comrades in 1923 is the lack of a democratic culture. This is why politics in Turkey is about who controls the state, not parliament, since there is no separation between the various branches of government. Exercising power makes no sense if a political party does not control the judiciary, the public service, and obviously the military.
It is important to note that the Turkish state is secular only in name. Basically, the state has never separated itself from religion. In fact, it came to control religion completely through the powerful Religious Affairs Directorate (Diyanet).
What is more, after the coup d’état of 1980, Islamist parties began their march towards power in order to counter the growth of left-of-centre parts. This started with President Turgut Özal, of Kurdish origin, and continued under Erbakan and Erdogan.
It is thus clear that Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s current president, is not destroying a democracy because the latter has never historically existed. He is an Islamist child of the Kemalist period.
Erdogan, who grew up in Kasımpaşa, a poor neighbourhood in Istanbul, studied at an Imam Hatip school, a clerical educational facility. His unpolished language and his party embody the type of Turk that was supposed to develop over the decades according to the Kemalist canon. However, whenever this kind of Turk failed he was despised and marginalised. Erdogan is the classic example of a Soviet- or Fascist-styled experiment.
The current Turkish president represents a new middle class, centred on Anatolia, empowered by neoliberalism, in opposition to Kemalist statism. This class can now express its religiosity. However, for Erdogan this has meant moving towards greater authoritarianism since he is unable to see politics and social life through democratic lenses.
Kemalists tried to stop Erdogan in the Supreme Court in 2007 by preventing his party’s candidate, Abdullah Gül, from becoming president, but failed to by only one vote. After that, Erdogan began to purge the Kemalist establishment until the 2011 election.
That election marked a turning point. By winning more than 50 per cent of the vote, he showed that the Kemalist danger did not exist anymore. Afterwards, he started to show signs of arrogance, vainglory, and paternalism, by interfering in people’s private life and telling them how to behave.
An old Kemalist told me that Erdogan did not impose anything; instead, the people of Anatolia imposed Erdogan on us. Since then, a number of events occurred, like the Gezi park protests, the Syrian crisis, Erdogan’s election to the presidency, as well as his flip flops on the Kurds, the Russians, etc.
The razor thin majority he got in his much-desired referendum on 16 April raises a number of questions:
1. what kind of balance of power will emerge in a country with limited democratic traditions;
2. what impact will have Turkey’s new state apparatus with Erdogan’s entrenched in power following the removal of Kemalists and educated followers of Islamic cleric Fethullah Gülen.
As some Turkey experts note, although Kemalists and Gülenists were not truly pro-Western, at least they followed some Western notion of governance, which cannot be said for those from Anatolia.
In short, will Erdogan be able to control himself after his latest victory, or he will continue to be aggressive because he has no alternatives. Whatever the case, the consequences are worrisome.
Meanwhile, White Turks are buying homes in Greece to get the much desired residence permit valid for Europe.
* Diyanet İşleri Başkanlığı; literally, the Presidency of Religious Affairs.
** Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi.
*** Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi.
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