Politics, identity and religious nationalism in Turkey: from Atatürk to the AKP

Abstract

Turkey has had an Islam-influenced government since a general election in 2002. The Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve KalkInma Partisi, abbreviated to AK Parti or AKP) won over a third of the popular vote and took power alone. A subsequent general election in 2007 saw the AKP win again with an improved 47 percent of votes cast. Over the last few years under the AKP, Turkey has often been noted for the ‘moderation’ of its Islam-influenced government, a positive example of the compatibility of Islam and democracy. The article focuses on Turkey's national identity and the place within it of Islam, secularism and the political role over time of the military, often judged to be the guardian of the country's secular national identity. This involves both a focus on the role and legacy of the country's nationalist founder, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, and on the special insular and inward-looking self-selected guardian role of the military, long seen as central to national choices of the pursuit of a secular political path. The article argues that one of the defining characteristics of Turkish identity is not Islam or secularism per se. Rather, it is a pronounced, perhaps even xenophobic, fear of outsiders, including not only Westerners but also some Muslim non-Turks. The article suggests that while Islam is part of that sense of identity, it is not at its core. Moreover, if the military has its way, which at the moment seems likely, then Islam will never be allowed to be central to Turkey's sense of national identity.

Notes

1. Most Turkish Muslims are Sunnis, although around 20 percent are Alevis of the Twelver Shia sect (Jenkins 2008: 38–9). The remaining 1 percent of the population includes Christians, Jews and Bahais.

2. Turkey has had four military coups, in 1960, 1971, 1980 and 1997. The most recent was described as a ‘soft coup’, when the generals edged from power a government they considered Islamist, by using both public and behind-the-scenes pressure rather than taking their forces to the streets.

3. The Grand National Assembly of Turkey (Türkiye Büyük Millet Meclisi [TBMM], usually referred to simply as Meclis—‘the Parliament’).

4. Following the resignation of an AKP Member of Parliament in September 2008, the breakdown of seats in the 550-seat national legislature is at the time of writing (mid March 2009) as follows: AKP: 338 (61.5 percent of seats); Republican People's Party (CHP): 98 (17.9 percent); Nationalist Action Party (MHP): 70 (12.7 percent); Democratic Society Party (DTP): 21 (3.8 percent); Democratic Left Party (DSP): 13 (2.5 percent); Independent: 5 (1 percent); Freedom and Solidarity Party (ODP): 1 (0.2 percent); Grand Unity Party (BBP): 1 (0.2 percent); and Vacant: 3.

5. Later, in 2008, the mayor of Istanbul sought to do the same thing in parts of Istanbul, with greater long-term success.

6. The charge against the AKP of being a ‘centre of anti-secularism’ not only threatened the existence of the governing party but was also combined with an attempt to forbid the continuous political engagement of more than 70 of its members, including Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and President Abdullah Gül.

7. Ergenekon or the Ergenekon network is an alleged clandestine ultra-nationalist organisation in Turkey with ties to the country's military and security apparatus.

8. The two positive characteristics were reverse-coded to reflect the opposite. For this analysis, a negativity index that ranges from zero (extremely positive) to 7 (extremely negative) was created using this series of questions. The seven questions used in the negativity index are part of a larger group of questions in which Muslim respondents were read lists of positive and negative traits and, for each one, were asked whether they associated it with Westerners. The questions regarding generosity and honesty, which originally were stated positively, were recoded to indicate the extent to which these positive traits were not associated with Westerners. For more information on the index, see Wike and Grim (2007).

9. Unfortunately, the findings of the poll have not yet been translated into English at the time of writing this article (mid March 2009). As a result, I rely here upon several commentaries on the poll published in English in both the United Kingdom and Turkey in February and March 2009.

10. The powerful armed forces have toppled four elected governments in coups in the past 50 years.

11. Approximately 97 percent of Greeks are Orthodox Christians. A study measuring the ‘global gender gap’ published by the World Economic Forum (WEF) in May 2005 highlighted the severity of the problems facing Greek women. The study assessed patterns of inequality in five dimensions—economic participation, economic opportunity, political empowerment, educational attainment, and health and well-being. Greece ranked fiftieth in the study of 58 countries and Turkey ranked fifty-seventh. However, we cannot usefully conclude that it was Turkey's ‘Muslim values’ which explain its even poorer position in the rankings compared to Greece, which also did very badly. In fact, several Muslim-majority countries, including Indonesia and Malaysia, did as well as or better not only than Greece but also several other Christian-majority EU member states, including Italy, Malta and Romania (Lopez-Claros and Zahidi 2005: 9).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jeffrey Haynes

Jeffrey Haynes is Professor and Associate Head of Department at the Department of Law, Governance and International Relations, London Metropolitan University, UK. He has published 25 books and most recently edited the Handbook of Religion and Politics (Routledge, 2009) and Religion and Democratisations (Routledge, 2010)