Analysing the current hegemony of Erdoğan's AKP in Turkey, Cihan Tuğal argues that the party has been the agent of a classic passive revolution, effectively shoring up the Kemalist state. Paradoxes of 'Americanization with Muslim characteristics', against the backdrop of Western military intervention in the Middle East.
CIHAN TUĞAL NATO'S ISLAMISTS Hegemony and Americanization in Turkey
The tensions currently convulsing the Middle East—Western military offensive, Islamicized resistance, economic turbulence, demographic upheaval—have taken a peculiarly Americanized form in Turkey. [1] The secular Republic of Kemal Atatürk, nato's longstanding bulwark in the region, is now ruled by men who pray. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's Justice and Development Party (akp)—the latest incarnation of a once-banned Islamist movement—has a 60 per cent majority in the Assembly, or Meclis, forming the first non-coalition government in Ankara for fifteen years. Prime Minister Erdoğan is himself a possible candidate for the presidency, a seven-year appointment in the gift of the Meclis under the Republic's notoriously unrepresentative democracy. Predictably, perhaps, though elected primarily by the votes of the poor—above all, the young, informal proletariat now crowding Turkey's cities—Erdoğan's government is slashing government spending, aiming at a fiscal surplus of 6 per cent of gdp in the coming year. Though proclaiming solidarity with the Muslim world, it has dispatched Turkish troops to join the un occupation force in Southern Lebanon, and was only restrained from sending them to Iraq by the urgent pleas of the Iraqi-Kurdish President, Jalal Talabani. Yet the AKP is widely expected to win the Autumn 2007 elections, and has largely retained its support among provincial capitalists, the pious small bourgeoisie, the newly urbanized poor, important fractions of the police and much of the liberal, left-leaning intelligentsia.
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Challenges
Yet for all its successes in retaining the support of the 2002 coalition, the AKP faces a number of difficulties ahead which, if severe enough, might pose challenges to its hegemony over certain sectors. Among the most dangerous is the economy. During its first three years in office the Erdoğan government benefited from the post-2001 recovery, following the dramatic devaluation of that year. Growth, built on heavy borrowing, sustained consent for the economic reforms even among those worst hit by fiscal austerity. But the Turkish economy is highly exposed. A widening current-account deficit requires constant capital inflows, and the privatization programme that the AKP is undertaking to attract these is bedevilled by legal problems, graft and the run-down state of public utilities and infrastructure. As Turkey has opened to global markets, the traditionally strong textile and clothing industries, the basis for Central Anatolian growth in the 1980s, have lost out to countries with cheap labour, primarily China. Turkish capital investment is now mainly directed towards finance, tourism, and construction—all highly dependent on the vicissitudes of the global economy. A shake-out of world stock markets would have a very serious effect.
In May–June 2006, Turkey experienced its first serious financial shock under the AKP. There was a sudden outflow of short-term capital after the US Federal Reserve raised interest rates. The lira plummeted, and inflation rose sharply with more expensive imports. Weak sectors of the economy—textiles, clothing, agriculture—were hard hit, as interest rates, rents and food prices continued to climb after the financial crisis subsided, and the lira continued to tremble with every mild fluctuation on the global scene. In July 2006 the AKP faced the first mass protest over its economic policies: 80,000 hazelnut producers in the Black Sea region blocked the Samsun highway to protest the government cuts in agricultural subsidies that had left the growers' co-operative unable to purchase their crop. They targeted Erdoğan's close advisor Cuneyd Zapsu, chairman of the exporters' association that stands to gain most from low prices. In all probability, these workers had been AKP voters. In late August, public officials' unions threatened major strikes to counter falling real wages. With economic tensions growing, opinion polls suggest that the right-wing Nationalist Action Party has been regaining ground. In the last year, nationalist gangs have attempted more than a dozen lynchings of Kurdish immigrants living in western Turkish cities, and stoned AKP members after a nationalist rally. One result is that it is becoming harder to sell Turkey as an 'emerging market' success story to foreign investors.
A second problem that the AKP confronts is the faltering accession talks with the EU. The Republic of Cyprus's overwhelming rejection of the Annan Plan in its April 2004 referendum scotched the West's 'solution' for the island, and confronted Turkey with the necessity of recognizing the ROC, initially in the form of extending its 1995 Customs Union agreement with the eu to include the latest members, Cyprus among them. In July 2005 Erdoğan signed the protocols, while announcing loudly that this did not amount to a recognition of the Cypriot government. By the EU deadline of December 2006, Turkey had not opened its ports and harbours to Cyprus. Accession talks were partially suspended, and Brussels extended its inspections of Turkey's 'progress' over a still longer time-span. It also complained of Ankara's foot-dragging over the requested amendments to the Turkish penal code's Article 301, which criminalizes critics of the state. It is no longer so easy for the AKP to offer accession to the EU as a highway to a better future.
Opponents
Amid these uncertainties, the AKP still possesses the advantage that all political alternatives to its rule are totally discredited. Yet it has opponents, whose hands may be strengthened if the AKP government loses its lustre in worsening economic times. The most significant of these include hard-line factions within the state, the growing nationalist backlash and radical Islamism. Among official circles, including the nationalist wings of the judiciary and the military, there are still many who watch the AKP with suspicion and would like to see it toppled. Deniz Baykal, the leader of the Republican People's Party and the political representative of these circles, has frequently implied the need for military and street action against the AKP. Elements of the deep state have given this more concrete form.
In 2005, several people were killed in a series of bomb blasts in the Kurdish town of şemdinli in Hakkari, one of the poorest places in Turkey. Official sources attributed the explosions to the PKK and the increasing tension in the southeast since the end of the ceasefire in 2004. But in November 2005 one of the bombers was caught red-handed. Passers-by had seen him leave a case in front of a bookstore. He then waited around to watch the ensuing explosion, in which a man was killed. The angry onlookers surrounded the bomber, who panicked and shouted, 'Stop, I'm a police officer!' He was only saved from lynching by the security forces. The suspicion that clandestine elements of the state were behind the other şemdinli bombings—a suspicion voiced even by the establishment press—was virtually confirmed when the Army's Second-in-Command, Yaşar Büyükanıt, coolly remarked of the bomber: 'I know him; he is a good boy.'
In response to this, and in line with Erdoğan's promise that all responsible parties would be punished, a local public prosecutor in Van began an investigation which implicated Büyükanıt in organizing paramilitary activities in the southeast. The prosecutor came under attack from the establishment media, which claimed—without evidence—that he had connections with a clandestine religious community, and that the accusations against Büyükanıt were a part of a conspiracy to denigrate the military because of its struggle against 'fundamentalism'. The insinuation was that the AKP was behind this scheme. The prosecutor was disbarred for preparing a 'faulty indictment', and soon anybody attempting to investigate the şemdinli affair became suspect. Ultimately, two low-ranking officers were sentenced, and further legal proceedings were deemed futile. The AKP, which had initially backed the prosecutor, fell silent—another disappointment for its liberal supporters. In August 2006, after months of speculation as to who would be Özkök's successor as Chief of Staff, the AKP appointed Büyükanıt to the post.
Further evidence emerged of a deep-state campaign against the AKP's Islamist supporters following the assassination of the head of the Danıştay, a high administrative court, in May 2006. Some months before the Danıştay had blocked the promotion of a nursery schoolteacher on the grounds that, though of course unveiled during working hours, she covered her head for the journey home. This was seen as an extreme reactionary measure even by the establishment media, and provoked an indignant response from the popular Islamist press, with Vakit publishing photographs of the Danıştay decision-makers on its front page. The assassination of the Danıştay's top judge, apparently by a young Islamist lawyer, ignited a storm of secular outrage, and there were large demonstrations, led by top members of the judiciary, protesting against the Islamists and the AKP. A few days later, however, the conservative and pro-AKP daily Zaman revealed connections between the assassin and a group of retired army officers, who were members of an emerging network of paramilitary, hard-line nationalist organizations. These officers also apparently had links with the state: police had found secret official files in their homes. Their plan was to discredit and perhaps bring down the akp government.
Initially demoralized, the establishment press soon hit back by denouncing all this as an Islamist confection: the 'secret files' had been manufactured by conservative religious elements in the police, and handed to Zaman. Put together with the attempts by the 'religious' prosecutor to implicate Büyükanıt in the şemdinli bombings, this new conspiracy demonstrated rather that the tentacles of Islamism ran deep into the farthest reaches of the state. Neither the secularists nor the Islamists could provide conclusive evidence for their claims. But the drama revealed the depth of the hitherto covert conflict between the military and the police. The concentration of hard-line secular nationalists in the Army, and of religious conservatives in the ranks of the police, threatens low-level conspiratorial wars within the security forces as well as against the civilian population. Amnesty International has reported a decrease in state torture under the AKP; but the şemdinli and Danıştay affairs raise the question of whether the forces of coercion have not resorted to more intricate methods of control and intimidation than 'simple' torture and repression.
With the assassination of Hrant Dink these issues were sharply posed again. The editor of the bilingual Turkish-Armenian newspaper Agos, Dink was a conciliatory figure who emphasized democratization and Turkish-Armenian dialogue rather than focusing on the genocide debate. Despite this caution, he was charged several times with 'denigrating Turkishness'; one of around fifty intellectuals to be indicted under Article 301 in Erdoğan's Turkey. Unlike most of the others, Dink was convicted in 2005 and given a suspended sentence. He had also been frequently threatened by nationalist paramilitary organizations. On 19 January 2007 Dink was shot in the head outside his newspaper office by an unemployed youth from Trabzon. The killer was arrested, but within a few days investigators revealed that not only had a police informant been involved in organizing the crime, but that high-level members of the police apparatus had known about the planned assassination beforehand. No sooner were these details disclosed than the investigation came to an abrupt halt. Emboldened by the popular anger at Dink's killing—100,000 had marched in his funeral procession—several civil and political organizations began to campaign for the forces behind the murder to be fully unmasked. Yet, as of early March 2007, things remained at a standstill. In the already strained atmosphere before the April presidential elections, Dink's assassination has heightened tensions and demonstrated the akp's powerlessness to act against this continuing campaign of coercion and terror.
Islamist Quiescence?
A second locus of potential opposition to the Erdoğan government is radical Islamism—voiced by those left behind by the AKP's Americanization. Local AKP activists have tried to reassure their more militant Islamist brethren by circulating 'hidden transcripts' arguing that they still believe in the same principles, but longer-term methods are now required. Some AKP leaders—such as Bülent Arınç, who led the Meclis vote against the Iraq war in March 2003—remain in touch with the traditional Islamist Felicity Party. Others demonstrate their commitment by praying in public places. On the whole, as noted above, radical Islamists have been loath to criticize the government. There were large-scale protests against the Danish caricatures of the Prophet—especially in the east and southeast, hinting at a radical Islamic reorganization in the region—but these were a safely non-political distraction.
A major test for the Islamists was the dispatch of Turkish troops to join the un force in Lebanon in October 2006. As with Iraq, a majority of the population was strongly opposed to the Israeli invasion and the IDF destruction of south Beirut. The terms of deployment of the UN force under Resolution 1701—to help disarm the region 'south of the Litani River'—seemed clearly intended to finish the job of downgrading Hezbollah that Israel had failed to do. Characteristically, the AKP attempted both to act with its main military partners, the US and Israel, and to convince its base that it was on the side of the 'oppressed'. In July 2006, Erdoğan's condemnation of Israeli 'excesses' at the Organization of the Islamic Conference in Kuala Lumpur was warmly received in the Muslim world, although it differed little from the G8 Summit's formula of 'disproportionate response'.
Following the passage of Resolution 1701, both Erdoğan and Gül urged the need for Turkish troops to 'come to the aid' of the suffering Lebanese people. AKP leaders have invoked the Ottoman Empire traditions of 'the nation's ancestors': Turkey must not remain aloof from the problems of its neighbours and ignore the Middle East, as it had done for the past eighty years. Or, repeated in the language of Americanization: Turkey had to intervene in the region to become a global player. There was also a war of disinformation: Islamist media in favour of sending troops reported that Hezbollah had actually invited Turkey to Lebanon. This seems highly unlikely, given the formal military agreement between Israel and Turkey signed by Erbakan in 1996. Although the scale of this military partnership is secret, it is known to involve joint training exercises, shared intelligence, assistance in counter-insurgency operations and modernization of equipment—that is, Turkish purchases from Israeli arms manufacturers. The AKP, of course, has taken no steps to annul it.
Yet Islamist protests against the dispatch of Turkish troops to Lebanon were muted, if somewhat bigger in the east of the country. Ironically, it was the more concerted opposition to the deployment from the Republican People's Party and the nationalist right that helped to rally AKP deputies' support. At the end of August 2006, the rigidly secularist President Sezer—anathema to the religious conservatives—declared that, rather than send troops to Lebanon, Turkey should be dealing with its domestic problems, implying the resurgent PKK in the southeast. This was sufficient to convince the AKP parliamentarians that the enemies of 'conservative democracy' were united in trying to prevent the government from sending troops. The Cabinet convened immediately after the President's statement and agreed to the deployment; a decision ratified by 340 to 192 in an emergency session of the Meclis on September 5th, despite opinion polls which showed that some 80 per cent of the public was against the measure. The decision was also welcomed, of course, by the EU, the Western media and pro-Western liberals in Turkey; some European commentators even saw it as a good reason to speed up eu accession talks.
A Hardening Stand
A third potential basis of opposition to the AKP lies in the rising nationalist sentiment in Turkey, which has been demanding a tougher position against the Kurdish rebels, more controls on markets and more cautious relations with the West. Support for the EU has decreased markedly over the past year. The emergence of a potential Kurdish statelet in northern Iraq has alarmed Turkish nationalists who think that this might be a first step towards a greater Kurdistan, which would inevitably lead to the dismemberment of the country. This has led to the establishment of several racist and ethnic segregationist groups in the last years. These groups, some of them armed and led by retired officers, are becoming popular especially in western regions with large Kurdish migrant populations. Equally, the potential Kurdish statelet has emboldened Kurdish nationalists. In 2004 the PKK ended the ceasefire it had maintained since the arrest of its leader Abduallah Öcalan in 1999, citing the AKP government's refusal to grant a total amnesty. But by taking up arms, the guerrilla have inevitably provoked both a security clampdown and a nationalist backlash. The PKK declared another cease-fire at the end of September 2006, which again fell on deaf ears.
Whereas two years ago the Erdoğan government—admittedly, at EU urging—emphasized the need to acknowledge Kurdish identity, it is now obsessed with arresting the leaders of the PKK. In terms all too familiar from the 1990s, it has dismissed a mass demonstration in the east as 'terrorism', and brushed off criticisms of the security forces for having killed ten civilians. In June 2006, the AKP introduced amendments to the anti-terror legislation that seriously curtailed existing civil rights. Suspects under arrest will no longer have access to lawyers for the first 24 hours of their detention, increasing the likelihood of torture. It is now a criminal act to publish statements by illegal organizations, or even to sympathize with their views. This could hurt the Islamists and sections of the left, but will most probably be used against supporters of Kurdish organizations. The akp seems likely to ride the nationalist tide by shifting in a more authoritarian direction, especially where the Kurds are concerned.
At the same time—such are the contradictions of client-state nationalism—many establishment figures have argued that Turkey has to make itself ever-more indispensible to the Americans in order to persuade Washington to set limits on the emergence of any form of Kurdistan. This was one of the arguments used by secular-nationalist journalists, policy advisors and intellectuals in favour of joining the UN occupation force in Lebanon—that this was the only way to get the US to crack down on the pkk bases in northern Iraq. Given their current plight in Iraq the Americans are in no position to antagonize the Kurds, but they have appointed a retired American general as a facilitator to soothe Turkish fears and negotiate between Ankara and the Kurds. Ironically, the logic of a growing Turkish nationalism thus leads to intensifying Americanization, even as it demonstrates the AKP's incapacity to implement this latest twist on its own. . . .
-- Yoshie