[lbo-talk] Modernization, Not Westernization (was Turkey faces prospect of veiled First Lady)

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

On 4/21/07, uvj at vsnl.com <uvj at vsnl.com> wrote:
> Daily Times
> http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?date=12/28/2006
>
> Saturday, April 21, 2007
>
> Turkey faces prospect of veiled First Lady
> http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2007\04\21\story_21-4-2007_pg4_12
>
>  By Burak Akinci
>
> If Tayyip Erdogan is elected president next month, the country's top office
> will be home to a woman who has never been seen bareheaded in public since
> she was a teenager
>
> THE prospect of a veiled First Lady residing in Ankara's revered
> presidential palace for the next seven years has Turkey's secularists livid
> with anger.
>
> Turkey bans the Islamic headscarf in government offices and universities,
> seeing in it a sign of defiance against the republic's secular tradition.
>
> But if Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is elected president next month,
> the country's top office will be home to a woman who has never been seen
> bareheaded in public since she was a teenager.
>
> Emine Erdogan, the prime minister's wife of 28 years, has worn the headscarf
> since her youth, like most of the spouses of Erdogan's Justice and
> Development Party (AKP) leadership.
>
> The AKP has its roots in a now banned militant Muslim party, but rejects the
> Islamist label, Erdogan describing his movement as one of "conservative
> democrats."
>
> Secularists say this is mere show and that taking over the presidency -
> closely identified with Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the first man to hold the job
> as founder of the modern, secular republic - is part of the AKP's alleged
> secret Islamist agenda.
>
> Erdogan has yet to say whether he will run for the presidency or not, but if
> he does, he will be a shoo-in: the AKP holds 353 of the 550 seats in
> parliament, which elects the head of state for a single term.
>
> The headscarf is a strong political symbol not only for the secularists but
> also for the AKP grassroots and, as such, a magnet for passionate debate
> centred on the question: can a man whose wife wears the veil become the
> highest official of a secular state?
>
> Erdogan, whose party came to power in 2002, never concealed his desire to
> abolish the headscarf ban but could do nothing in the face of strong
> opposition from the secular establishment, which includes the powerful
> Turkish army.
>
> Still, secularists see his wife as a symbol of the Muslim fundamentalism
> they say threatens the system, drawing attention to the fact that the
> Erdogans sent their daughters to study in the United States just so they
> could wear headscarves to the university.
>
> To press home their point, secularist newspapers at every occasion run
> pictures of the strictly veiled Mrs. Erdogan alongside the well-groomed and
> barehaded spouses of Arab heads of state such as Queen Raina of Jordan and
> Syrian First Lady Asma al-Assad.
>
> Neither Mrs. Erdogan nor the veiled wives of other AKP leaders have been
> invited to the presidential palace by its current occupant, Ahmet Necdet
> Sezer, a staunch secularist who considers that the headscarf should be
> banned from Cankaya as it is from other state establishments.
>
> Another question up for hot debate is the president's role as
> commander-in-chief of the armed forces, which sees itself as the defender of
> secular, republican values.
>
> How, Erdogan's opponents ask, can the commander-in-chief's wife go around in
> a tightly wrapped scarf around her hair when the wives of army officers are
> barred from doing the same?
>
> General Yasar Buyukanit, the chief of general staff, evaded the question at
> a press conference last week, saying simply that he would like to see a
> president strongly attached to secular values, "not only in words but in
> essence."
>
> Still, if Erdogan becomes president, his wife will not be the first
> presidential spouse to cover up.
>
> No less than Latife Ussaki, the wife (in a short-lived marriage) of Ataturk,
> used to wear a scarf in the first years of the republic founded in 1923 - a
> practice she abandoned with the advent of republican reforms that
> discouraged women from covering up and banned men from wearing turbans and
> fezzes.
>
> And although the headscarf has become the central symbol of the clash
> between secular and Muslim Turkey, statistics say its use has been
> dwindling.
>
> A survey released last year showed 36 percent of 1,500 women polled said
> they would appear bareheaded in public, compared to only 27.3 percent in
> 1999.
>
> With the advent of the AKP, an "Islamic bourgeoisie" has seen the day in
> urban areas and Muslim-style fashion shows, unheard of and unthinkable less
> than a decade ago, are now commonplace.
>
> And Paris-based Turkish sociologist Nilufer Gole, in her book "Forbidden
> Modern: Civilization and Veiling," writes that the headscarf conceals not
> only the hair, but a new, educated, urban and socially active Muslim woman.
>
> afp

It seems to me that what Turkey's nationalist power elite have imposed
on their country is not so much secularism as Westernization.  If
secularism were the point, the power elite could have simply made it a
rule that no one should be forced to wear hijab and left it at that.
But what's the point of prohibiting not only women from wearing hijab
but also banning "men from wearing turbans and fezzes" in public
places?  The fez was not a religious but Ottoman item of clothing
(which the Ottomans adopted from the Greeks):
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fez_(clothing)#History>.  Similarly,
Turkey's power elite banned the Ottoman Turkish alphabet, which was
based on the Arabic alphabet (see
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman_Turkish_script>) and established
a new one based on the Latin alphabet (see it at
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_alphabet>), even though doing so
made it more difficult for Turkish students today to study literature
written in the older script.

It's a tragedy that many peoples in the world equated modernization
with Westernization: those who wanted modernization often felt that
they had to Westernize everything -- even the writing system
sometimes! -- and those who rejected Westernization often turned their
backs against necessary and desirable aspects of modernization.  The
correct path would have been to modernize without equating it with
Westernization.
-- 
Yoshie