No bloodless revolution

Turkey's election may point the way to further democratisation, but the army means to block it Maureen Freely Tuesday July 24, 2007 The Guardian When Turkey went to the polls at the weekend, it was, according to the headlines, fighting for its soul. Which would it choose, Islam or secularism? But that was never the real contest. The key issue was democracy - would the Turkish electorate again endorse a secular system that has, since its inception, been enforced by the military? Or would it signal that the time had come to let the people govern themselves? This was their message on Sunday, when they returned the mildly Islamist AK party to power with 47% of the vote. That they could do so at all is a victory for democracy. But it is not at all clear who will have the final say. A few words, then, on Turkish secularism. In 1923, when Mustafa Kemal Ataturk pulled Turkey from its Islamic roots to establish a western-style republic, one of his first acts was to shut down the dervish lodges. He went on to "nationalise" religion. To this day, clerics are state employees. When he replaced the Arabic script with a Latin alphabet, his aim was to increase the literacy rate - but he also knew that, before long, most Turks would be unable to read the Qur'an, or indeed any version of their history that he and his successors did not endorse. A pretty amazing achievement. It is unlikely that he could have done the same by democratic means. This has long been the refrain of the generals and those secularists who put their trust in them. Turkey's democracy is young, they say. Unsupervised, it will go back to its old ways. To keep it on the true path, the army has rolled in its tanks three times in the past 50 years. A decade ago, it successfully organised a tank-free intervention - what has come to be known as the post-modern coup. In spring, it staged an "e-coup", issuing on its website a "press release" warning it would intervene if the ruling AK party continued to Islamicise the state. The big fight then was about the presidency. The prime minister's candidate was Abdullah Gul, who had once been less mildly Islamist and whose wife wears a headscarf. But as foreign minister he took Turkey towards Europe. He has worked hard to keep the accession project afloat and his colleagues in Europe hold him in high esteem. Some in the army see this as stage one of a dastardly plan. By taking Turkey into Europe, the secretly fundamentalist AK party would emasculate the military, paving the way for an Islamist counter-revolution. There is no evidence that AK has such ambitions, or that Turkey - which overwhelmingly supports the separation of religion and state - would endorse such a project. But the military will want to curb and supervise the newly re-elected government, and there are fears that if that doesn't work, it will find an excuse to shut it down - thus "saving" it not just from Islam, but also from Europe. There are those who say the army cannot afford to stage a full-size coup. Having refused to play along in Iraq, it can no longer depend on its usual sponsor, the US. It has its own internal, though largely unreported, power struggles. And it is disinclined to take action without first manufacturing consent. But this it would seem to have done. Since 2005, the media has run a hate campaign against those it deems traitors. It has, in addition to reigniting the Kurdish issue, championed the ultranationalist lawyers who have prosecuted more than 100 journalists, writers, publishers, academics and activists for "insulting Turkishness". They have convinced the public that these "traitors" have sold the country to Europe to advance their careers. Few of their targets are Islamists. Meanwhile, the nation's mayors compete to prove who is the most patriotic. Istanbul is so thick with flags you can hardly see the skyline. Nothing stays still for long in Turkey, however. The economy is booming. During the AK party's five years in power there has been steady growth. For this it has won the approval of the secularist business world. Many in the liberal intelligentsia - secularists who are repelled by the nationalist rhetoric of Ataturk's old party the CHP and disturbed by the rise of the ultra-nationalist MHP - gave their votes to the AK party. At grassroots level there is abundant evidence that Islam and secularism can co-exist productively, as can Turkey and Europe. Even Turks and Kurds. But it's not going to be easy with an army this strong and this determined to block change. If democratisation continues, it is unlikely to be bloodless. · Maureen Freely is the author of Enlightenment maureen.freely@warwick.ac.uk