Secularism, democracy, and Turkey's crumbling dream
HE WAS born just before the last great crumbling of the Ottoman Empire in an Ottoman province that is now Greece. He came to fame as an inspired military leader who out-maneuvered and out-fought the French, the British, and their dominion armies from Australia and New Zealand, who were clinging to the beaches of the Dardanelles in their ill-fated attempt to knock Turkey out of the first World War.
And when the empire was gone, and the allies tried to carve up Turkey itself with the 1920 treaty of Sevres, Mustafa Kemal rallied his demoralized countrymen, pushed out the invading Greeks, and faced down the British and French to secure the boundaries of Turkey as they stand today.
Having prevailed over the West, Kemal then set about on one of the most absolute social transformations of a country in history in order to be like the West. The ancient, flowing script was abandoned in favor of a Latinized alphabet - cutting Turks off from centuries of eastern literature. He lifted what he considered the dead hand of Islam from the body politic. Turkey would become a European-style, secular state with laws and regulations drawn from various European legal systems and constitutions. He would henceforth be known as Atatürk, the father of all Turks.
This was not done by referendum. Traditionalists resisted. But it was done almost overnight, leap-frogging the centuries that Europe had spent settling the balance between what was to be relegated to Caesar and what was God's.
Kemalism, as it came to be known, became the official doctrine, and over the years if anyone tried to stray, the army was there to protect Atatürk's ideals. Religion was to be allowed, but it was to be personal, as in Europe, and not interfere with the state.
Over the years, Atatürk's heirs have become rigid and unwilling to compromise. Even though Turkey has a working democracy, the Kamalist establishment has not entirely trusted democracy, and the army always stood ready as the guardian of the state to turf out any government it feels is straying too far from the path that Atatürk blazed.
Stephen Kinzer, in his book "Crescent and Star, Turkey Between Two Worlds," wrote that if "isiklal" (freedom) was his favorite Turkish word, "devlet" was his least favorite. Devlet means state in the dictionary, but it goes far beyond that. It is an "omnipotent entity that stands above every citizen and every institution," Kinzer wrote.
"It is a self-perpetuating elite - the generals, police chiefs, prosecutors, judges, political bosses, and press barons who decide what devlet demands. . . . This elite has written many laws to help it do what it perceives as its duty, and when necessary it acts outside the law."
Today, democracy in Turkey is imperiled by devlet. Recently, the constitutional court struck down the Turkish Parliament's decision to allow girls to wear headscarves in state universities. Parliament is controlled by an Islamic-leaning government, under Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is committed to maintaining a secular state. Ironically, his government is more democratic than the devlet will allow. Partly because of headscarves, there is another case before the courts that would shut down his political party, and ban its leaders from politics for endangering Kemalist principles.
No issue alarms the traditionalist Kemalists as does the headscarf. As in France, it seems to hit at the very heart of what the secular state is all about. If devlet decides it cannot bear headscarves, so be it. The US Supreme Court is not adverse to overturning the will of Congress when it deems necessary.
But that being said, if a moderate religious party that has been democratically elected is forcibly disbanded, if there is no recourse to the ballot box, then what hope is there for moderate Islam? To ban Erdogan and his party would be to force dissent away from political discourse and into the mosque, as is the case in less democratic Muslim countries.
Erdogan has presided over a reformist government bent on joining the European Union, which would have been Atatürk's desire. If Erdogan and his party are banned it would be devlet at its very worst, and, ironically, the end of Atatürk's European dream.
H.D.S. Greenway's column appears regularly in the Globe.
