Turkey : where is fundamentalism ?

Yesterday’s Turkish Daily News had a piece by Mr. Faruk Loğoğlu, former Turkish Ambassador to Washington, titled “The apologists are wrong, dead wrong about Turkey.” The “apologists” included Suat Kınıklıoğlu (of the German Marshall Fund), Fareed Zakaria (of Newsweek), The Economist magazine, and me. And what we “the apologists” have been doing, according to Mr. Loğoğlu, was defending “moderate/liberal Islam” and the “conservative Muslim democrats” of Turkey against its secularist establishment.

It has always been my pleasure to receive rebuttals. Therefore I am deeply thankful to the articulate critique by Mr. Loğoğlu, with whom I had the opportunity and privilege to meet in person once. In return, here is my rejoinder, which I hope he will enjoy, too.

Secular fundamentalism at work

Mr. Loğoğlu’s objection is directed to my recent piece in the International Herald Tribune titled “The threat is secular fundamentalism.” He, of course, disagrees with the notion of “secular fundamentalism,” and thinks that there is no such thing in Turkey.
Yet I can see exactly that in his piece !..

“Secularism has to be comprehensively applied,” he argues, “as a way of life throughout the society.”

That is a crucial statement, which unveils that Turkish secularism, as referred to by Mr. Loğoğlu and the whole secularist establishment, is not only a principle for the state, but “A WAY OF LIFE” that needs to be imposed by the state on its citizens. (It might be worthwhile to mention that the Turkish Constitution does not include such a concept. Article 24, which defines secularism, only decrees that the state should not be based on religion.)

What Mr. Loğoğlu and many others do in Turkey is to extend the state’s secularity to society. And that’s precisely what I call secular fundamentalism. While Islamic fundamentalists try to impose what they regard as “the Islamic way of life,” their mirror image, i.e., the secular fundamentalists, aim to impose what they regard as “the modern way of life.” This implies that devoutly religious citizens need to be de-Islamized as much as possible, and kept away from important public offices at all costs. (In Turkey’s official rhetoric, these devoutly religious citizens are also sometimes referred to as “internal enemies,” by the very bureaucrats who are financed by their taxes.)

Monotheistic religions versus others

But what is the logic of secular fundamentalism ? What is the problem with devoutly religious people ? Why can’t they be regarded as first class citizens ?

In Mr. Loğoğlu’s piece, one can find the answer to those questions — and it is quite an interesting one. It is the “all encompassing” nature of “monotheistic religions such as Islam and Christianity,” according to Mr. Loğoğlu, which makes them dangerous. In the face of that threat, he argues, secularism should act as the “the immune system of democracy.”

The biological term used here is interesting and, to be blunt, rings many bells : if secularism is seen as an “immune system,” then “monotheistic religions,” which it is supposed to keep at bay, have to be regarded as pathogenic. I am sure that Richard Dawkins — the world’s most famous atheist, who calls religion a “virus” and faith-based education “child abuse” — would cheerfully applaud that comment.

But we don’t have to think in the Dawkinsian way. If we just think neutrally on these philosophical issues, there are two points that are hard to dismiss :

1) Although they are “all encompassing” for their believers, monotheistic religions can be interpreted in many different ways. And some of those ways are quite compatible with democracy and freedom. Not all monotheists are autocrats.

2) There can well be secular belief systems that are as “all encompassing” as monotheistic religions. Fascist and communist totalitarianisms of the 20^th century has shown that ideologies can easily become ersatz religions in themselves — with unquestioned truths and deified leaders.

Therefore, if democracies need “immune systems,” then these should not only be alert to fundamentalist interpretations of monotheistic religions, but also the fundamentalist interpretations of secular ideologies. If someone suppresses my freedom, I don’t care whether he does it by referring to the Almighty God, the Great Helmsman or the Supreme Leader.

(If you think what this argument about ersatz religions has to do with Turkey, I suggest taking a look at all the amazing religious terminology used by the proponents of Kemalism. “Let the Ka’aba be for the Arabs,” wrote poet Kemalettin Kamu in early ‘30s, “for us, Çankaya is enough.” More recently, Özdemir İnce, one of the several ultra-secular columnists of daily Hürriyet, declared, “Our Qibla is the Republic.” A newly discovered miracle of this home-grown cult is the “Atatürk silhouette” which supposedly appears in the shadow of a hill near the city of Ardahan, around which celebrations and sightseeing tours are being organized.)

Practicing Islam—as far as the Caesar allows

Let me stop here and give Mr. Loğoğlu his due : he is no Richard Dawkins and he is actually not trying to argue against monotheistic religions. He actually emphasizes that he and many other secularists are God-friendly. “Most secularists are people of faith,” he reminds us, “and many are practicing Muslims.”

He is arguably right. But then how can we make sense of the fact that many of these “practicing Muslims” can’t stand to see anything Islamic in society, and try to impose secularism as “a way of life”?
To answer that question, one needs to understand what level of “practice” is accepted and tolerated by the Turkish state. It is true that in Turkey mosques are all open, people can freely pray in them, visit their relatives during the “bayram”s, and enjoy “iftar” suppers during Ramadan. But they cross the line if they wear a headscarf, indulge in religious education, and try to establish any independent religious movement. All mosques are run and controlled by the state, and communities are not supposed to create their own institutions. Praying five times a day or refraining from alcohol is not socially acceptable in many secularist circles, and is virtually unthinkable among senior officers.

In short, there is a “religiosity threshold,” and anybody who goes beyond that is not welcome. This is not because those who surpass the threshold become violent, radical or reactionary. It is just because the secularist elite believes that there is a problem with the religious mind. A deeply religious person is by definition regarded as ignorant, backward and uncivilized. That’s why the state needs to impose on them what Mr. Loğoğlu calls “the secular way of life.”

What is funny is that those “ignorant, backward and uncivilized” masses of Turkey have reformed themselves to a great extent in the past few decades, and they realize the importance of democracy, free markets, liberalism or the EU process much better than the overconfident secularist elite. Among Turkey’s emerging social phenomena, there are things such as “Islamic feminism,” “Islamic capitalism” or “Islamic liberalism.” Foreign experts and researchers observe these with great interest, whereas the secularist elite only show a deep disgust — and horror.

The creation myth revisited

Now let’s move on to history… Most ideologies have their own versions of the past. And secular religions, just like the monotheist ones, have their own myths of creation. Not surprisingly, Kemalism has one, too, and it is a very simple story : modern Turkey was created ex nihilo in 1920, the myth goes, and we owe everything to its early “single party regime.”
Mr. Loğoğlu apparently believes in that historical narrative. Here is how he puts it :
“Historically, secularism was introduced to Turkey in 1920 when the first national Parliament declared what was to be the founding principle of the Turkish Republic: ‘sovereignty belongs unconditionally to the people,’ meaning that sovereignty emanates from the people, not from a higher or other-worldly authority.”

Well, there are some crucial details that are missing here. The principle of popular sovereignty was proclaimed long before 1920 — by Muslim democrats called “the new Ottomans” in the middle of the 19^th century. That’s why the Ottoman Empire accepted a Constitution in 1876 and opened a parliament in 1909. That parliament was the precursor of the assembly of 1920, which was indeed a real manifestation of national sovereignty, but hardly a secular entity. It included dozens of religious leaders, and was blessed with Islamic prayers.

In other words, democracy took hold in Turkey much before the idea of a secular state entered the scene. We don’t owe democracy simply to secularism — let alone the “secular way of life”. It is indeed the “moderate / liberal Islam” tradition — which Mr. Loğoğlu despises — that forms the basis of Turkish democracy.

1946 revisited

Mr. Loğoğlu’s historical revisionism reaches its high when he argues, “Democracy came to Turkey in 1946… thanks mostly to secularism.”

Really?.. Well, before rushing to that conclusion, one needs to note a few facts that took place before 1946 under the ultra-secular “single party regime.” In 1932, an official history congress was held in Ankara at which the features of the “Turkish skull” were praised, and Turks were proudly declared as Aryans. In 1938, when Atatürk died, he was pronounced “Eternal Chief,” while his successor İsmet İnönü got the title “National Chief.” Plans were drawn to redesign Ankara as a Mussolini-style capital, with Atatürk’s mausoleum at its center. In 1942, at the zenith of the ultra-secularist era, the first and only Jewish (and Greek) labor camp in Turkish history was formed in Erzurum, Aşkale. (What happened to the Kurdish citizens in that period is a separate tragedy, which I have written a book about.)

Had Nazi Germany won World War II, democracy would probably not visit Turkey for many decades, and the secularist establishment would not see any problem in that. What brought democracy in 1946 was not secularism, to be precise, but the victory of the Allies against the Third Reich, which had been openly admired by some of the Republican leaders such as Recep Peker, who chaired the CHP during much of the ‘20s and ‘30s.

Moreover, the CHP did not embrace democracy with open arms in 1946. The election of that year, as everybody well knows, was a fake and many votes that the opposing Democrat Party (DP) garnered were destroyed at the ballots. The first fair elections were held in 1950, which brought the DP to power, only for them to be ousted by a military coup in 1960. The coup-makers, who executed DP’s leader Adnan Menderes and two of his ministers after a Stalin-type show trial, were, of course, great defenders of “the secular life style,” but enemies of democracy. (The “liberal constitution” they enacted in 1961 included the provision that they would be “life time senators.”)

Secularity, not secular fundamentalism

Mr. Loğoğlu is right in putting the dichotomy in Turkey as a debate over “nature of [political] power and what its ultimate source is going to be.” But I don’t think that the two options at hand are, as he puts it, “the will of the people, or… the religion of Islam.” Nobody is speaking about something like “the divine rights of Sultans” in Turkey. And the people who demand an “Islamic state” are truly marginal — as social research such as the ones supported by TESEV, a prominent think-tank, indicate.

The real debate in Turkey is whether political power rests with “the will of the people,” which includes many devoutly religious citizens, or the secularist elite, who think that they are wiser and more patriotic then the rest.

As a final word, having disagreed with Mr. Loğoğlu considerably —and with all due respect — on all these issues, let me say that there is an important point on which I agree with him. (That’s why I did not call him “dead wrong” in my headline.) I, too, think that secularity of the state is a very important principle that we Turks need to preserve and defend. I don’t want to see an Islamic fundamentalist dictating to me what God wills and using the power of the state to coerce me in that way. But I don’t want to see a secular fundamentalist decreeing what “modernity demands” (or “what Atatürk would have willed”) and using state power for that either. As a citizen, I just wish to see my state minding its own business, and leaving me alone in my beliefs and lifestyle.

Turkey’s Islamic circles have made important progress toward that liberal democratic conception of politics in the past decade. But, unfortunately, the secular establishment didn’t move an inch. I hope they will. Otherwise they will remain as the real threat to democracy and freedom in Turkey, as I had argued in my IHT piece. And the consequences will be unpleasant for all of us.