Turmoil in Turkey is about the future identity of the country
It appears that the latest wave of demonstrations is not so much about the general direction in which Erdogan has taken Turkey, but rather about what many in Turkey perceive as Erdogan’s growing imperious, some would say hubristic, tendencies.
Still, what may have begun as a demonstration about a shopping mall, and then grew into a campaign against the arrogance of the regime, may yet unleash deeper forces within Turkish society.
Nearly three years ago, in a referendum held on 12 September 2010, a series of reforms to the Turkish constitution was passed by a vote of 58 percent to 42 percent. Erdogan, and his governing Islamist Justice and Development Party, or AKP, supported the reforms, while the secularist Republican People’s Party, or CHP, opposed them.
Four days later, on 16 September, I discussed the Turkish vote in an article titled “Quo Vadis Turkey?” — in which I wrote:
The referendum was fought over specific clauses in the Turkish constitution, but the deeper, more fundamental issue was the future of Kemalism as Turkey’s governing philosophy. Kemalism, named after Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who was the founder and first president of the Turkish Republic in 1923, was a sweeping and radical ideology for a Muslim country that was just coming to terms with the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.
Within a few years, Ataturk had introduced a series of reforms, the short list of which include giving women the vote, closing the religious schools and courts, placing organized Islam under state control, and banning all clerical dress outside places of worship. The call to prayer had to be recited in Turkish, not Arabic, and the Perso-Arabic script was scrapped, replaced by the Latin alphabet.
As Judy Dempsey notes, such profound changes, introduced in the name of nationalism, modernization, and Westernization, pitted the more urbanized, European-oriented elites against the rural traditional population — a schism that was still apparent during the run-up to the referendum Sunday.
This is why the referendum on Sunday was about more than the popularity of Erdogan and his party. Analysts correctly say it was about something much more fundamental. “The referendum was about the different cultural values held by the conservatives and the secularists,” said Ozgur Unluhisarcikli, director of the Ankara office of the German Marshall Fund of the United States. “It was about the future identity of the country.”
The debate over Turkey’s identity, which began when the Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP) won the 2002 parliamentary elections, allowing Erdogan to become prime minister in February 2003, was not settled by the September 2010 referendum. It has only intensified, bubbling right below the surface. The latest unrest, which began as a demonstration against a shopping mall being built on the site of a popular park, and then developed into protests against the high-handedness of the Erdogan government, may yet bring this deeper debate over the future identity of Turkey to the surface.
Ben Frankel is the editor of Homeland Security News Wire
