Getting Turkey Back on Track to Democracy, Human Rights, and Religious Freedom

In recent years, Turkey has made headlines for all the wrong reasons: ignoring the ISIS threat, taking military actions and imposing a civilian curfew in several Kurdish towns, and punishing academics and journalists for their opinions. A recent New York Times editorial sums it up: “Mr. Erdoğan has fallen far from the days when he could be regarded as a respected leader of a Muslim-majority democracy and a trusted partner in the region.” In the span of five short years, Turkey has reverted from a model for democracy for the Muslim world, to an authoritarian regime, looking more and more each day like other Middle East countries. Erdoğan’s fall from grace has forced the Obama Administration to choose between criticizing the authoritarian turn in Turkish politics and working with Ankara to combat ISIS.

Turkey has been a frustrating US ally on the subject of religious freedom. The US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) began reporting on Turkey in 2006, and in 2008 put the country on its watch list. In 2012, in an unprecedented and controversial step, the USCIRF recommended that the State Department designate Turkey a Country of Particular Concern (CPC), a category reserved for severe persecutors such as Iran, China, and Saudi Arabia. The downgrade was indicative of the legitimate frustration in Washington for Turkey’s unfulfilled promises of increased religious freedom. Following a minor diplomatic crisis between the two countries after USCIRF’s recommendation, in 2013 USCIRF removed the CPC recommendation for Turkey. After two years of vastly differing appraisals of the degree of religious freedom within Turkey, in 2014 Turkey was placed back on the watch list (renamed “Tier 2”) where it remains today.

The next US president should focus on three major items: repair the strained strategic partnership with Turkey in the Middle East, particularly with regard to defeating ISIS; publicly and privately encourage Turkish leaders to protect and promote religious freedom and other human rights in Turkey; and remind the Turkish leaders of the global value of the Turkish model—a majority Muslim nation with democratic politics, civil-secular state, and moderate Islam.

Repair the Strained Strategic Partnership

The tumultuous events of the Arab Spring and the subsequent upheavals in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) have shown that Turkey is both an indispensable and unreliable partner. Turkey and the US differ greatly in their approach to Syria: Ankara has prioritized Assad’s ouster and the Kurds’ containment while Washington has remained distant to anti-Assad opposition groups and prioritized the defeat and elimination of ISIS after 2014. While the political differences have sown mistrust between the allies, the threat posed by ISIS nevertheless led US policy-makers to prioritize Turkey’s cooperation in the fight against ISIS over concern about the status of democracy and human rights in Turkey.

The war in Syria will likely continue to be a major policy issue for the next president vis-à-vis Turkey. In a war that resulted in over a quarter million deaths and over four million refugees, Turkey’s willingness to shelter refugees has been laudable. But the country has also been an accomplice in the Syrian civil war: Ankara’s early and uncompromising anti-Assad position emboldened the Syrian Islamist opposition to take arms against the regime. Since then, Turkey’s murky dealings with Syria’s Islamic opposition and the shifting of loyalties of various groups have allowed some critics to claim the existence of a Turkish–ISIS alliance (Guiton 2014; Zaman 2015). Even friends of Turkey have a hard time understanding why the Turkish government long ignored the ISIS regime, despite ISIS’ recruitment activities in Turkey, use of Turkey as a transit country, and black market dealings in Turkey.

Turkey and the US will continue to diverge on some key issues in Syria—namely, Assad’s participation in a transition government and whether Syrian Kurds are granted a seat at the peace negotiations (Kardas 2016). Agreeing to disagree is a way forward, but the US should not allow Turkey to pursue policies that undermine efforts to defeat ISIS. Also non-negotiable for the US should be insisting that Turkey take strong measures to end ISIS activities within its borders.

The next president should caution Turkey about Russia’s role in the ongoing crisis in Syria. Concern over Russia’s role in the conflict in Syria and Turkey’s relationship with Russia increased following Turkey’s downing of a Russian fighter jet near the Turkish–Syrian border in November 2015. This incident and the ensuing row pushed Turkey closer to the Western alliance and hushed the advocates of Turkish membership in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (Turkey has been a dialogue partner since 2012). While Turkey realized the importance of its NATO membership, this may also embolden the Turkish leadership to engage in risky actions—actions that could embroil the US and other NATO countries in a larger conflict.

The Syrian quagmire and the goal of defeating ISIS should not tempt the next president to focus exclusively on short-term US interests with Turkey. While ensuring access to the country’s Incirlik airbase remains a key strategic consideration, there are other issues in the US–Turkey bilateral relationship that merit consideration. In particular, US authorities should publicly and privately speak against the authoritarian turn in Turkish politics, stressing that the rule of law, respect for human rights, and freedom of the press are non-negotiable expectations for Turkey. Clear statements from the US might carry weight, as the US has been instrumental during key periods in Turkish history and its march toward democracy. For example, Washington facilitated the Turkish experience with multiparty democracy after WWII. Although the US often took a soft approach to military interventions in Turkish politics, it also made its preferences known and encouraged the military to turn over power to civilian authorities.

It is also tempting to ignore President Erdoğan’s monopolization of power. However, absence of protests in the streets should not be mistaken for social consensus. Turkey’s social and political fabric is deeply frayed. Using its success at the polls and majority at the parliament, the The Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi; AKP) has dismantled the foundation of social consensus among main segments of the society and yet has been unable to build a new one, leaving the country susceptible to domestic political crisis. American authorities should constantly remind Turkish authorities that long-term stability comes with the messiness of democracy as opposed to the neat but fragile public order of authoritarianism. At this critical juncture in Turkish history, Washington must side with the future of Turkish democracy.

The shortest path to long-term stability in Turkey goes through Brussels. Since the end of WWII, the US has worked to tie Turkey to the Western military and political system with the Marshall Plan (1948–1951) and Turkey’s NATO membership (1952). Leaders in Washington also recognize EU membership as the best anchor for Turkey in the Western alliance.

When the conservative AKP government came to power in 2002, some observers asked whether Turkey was turning its back on the West—reversing a path the country had adopted since Tanzimat (1839) and an orientation that has been central to Turkish identity, politics, and foreign policy since the establishment of the Turkish Republic (1923). Surprisingly, the AKP’s pro-EU reforms in its first term opened the doors for accession negotiations with the union. Yet, a decade later, the process has been all but stalled and Turkey has drifted away from its former priority of EU membership. The EU’s urgent internal problems and the rise of Islamophobia across the EU have perpetuated European fears about admitting 70 million Muslims into Europe. Yet the Turkish government also shares the blame: Erdoğan’s dismissive, condescending, and reactionary rhetoric on issues such as women’s rights, human rights, and minority rights and the government’s oppressive policies surrounding freedom of speech have frustrated and alienated the EU’s pro-Turkey liberals, leaving Christian Democrat and right-wing parties and Cyprus’ Cypriot Government to influence EU deliberations over Turkey.

The next administration should work to repair Ankara’s ties with Brussels and renew the commitment of both sides to Turkey’s EU membership. A credible promise of EU membership might ignite the domestic reform process as well as empower Turkish youth who have been disillusioned with both the AKP and EU leaders. These younger Turks can bring a new dynamism to Turkish civil society, as well as enliven the moribund secular and liberal opposition to the AKP.

In addition to promoting reforms in Turkish society and laws, the Turkey–EU partnership also impacts the Turkish response to rulings by the European Court of Human Rights. While the court has not always been a reliable partner for religious freedom in Turkey (it supported the headscarf ban in the universities and the closure of the Islamist Welfare Party), it has been a progressive force concerning the freedom of religious minorities (Kayaoglu 2014). The court has been active in getting Turkey to return some confiscated minority religious properties, to revise religious textbooks, and to recognize the rights of Alevis. A revival of EU–Turkey relations could well make Turkey more attentive to the court’s demands.

Work to Stop the Erosion of Human Rights in Turkey

Turkey’s record on human rights and religious freedom has suffered major setbacks in recent years. After its progressive first term (Arat 2007) and stagnant second term, AKP ushered in a ruinous downward trend for rights and freedoms during its third term. If the start of the fourth term is any indication, human rights in Turkey has a bleak future. The AKP experience shows that Islamist parties’ electoral success may lead to tactical and selective gains for democracy and human rights; however, without institutional mechanisms and the internalization of democracy and human rights by party elites, any gains on these are easily reversible (Hamid 2014).

Following the Gezi Parkı protests—large-scale anti-government unrest in May and June 2013—and December 2013 corruption investigations, the AKP has systematically curtailed freedom of speech. Prosecutors regularly charge people for offenses such as insulting President Erdoğan or his family members. The AKP government has increasingly targeted social media and the Internet, denying access to websites critical of the government and has even imposed temporary restrictions to popular social media sites. YouTube and Twitter have suffered the wrath of the government in retaliation for these sites allowing users to post leaked phone conversations suggesting corruption on the part of AKP government members and Erdoğan’s inner circle. In 2015, Reporters Without Borders ranked Turkey 149 out of 180 countries in its World Press Freedom Index. Journalists have been fired under government pressure and some journalists have been jailed for publishing reports and photos showing government shipments of arms to groups in Syria. “Through its mounting campaign of arrests, financial pressure, online censorship, outright seizure, and violent intimidation” the government has assaulted on media freedom and muzzled the press (Bipartisan Policy Center 2016, 4).

The government’s control over the media has spread the conspiratorial and anti-American attitudes pervasive in Turkish Islamist circles to broader segments of Turkish society. Pro-government newspapers routinely defame and attack American diplomats. This has been exacerbated by the AKP government’s perpetual need to find internal and external scapegoats. Turkish society has effectively been denied the opportunity to hear alternative ideas about the US. The US should ask the Turkish government to respect freedom of the press—both out of respect for the principle of freedom of speech but also to ensure that the Turkish public receives a more balanced view about the US.

Turkey’s principal human rights problem remains the Kurdish situation. While the government advanced Kurdish rights on several fronts in its first two terms, the government ignored further Kurdish demands during its third term (Cavanaugh and Edel 2015). The Kurdish minority wants constitutional recognition, the Kurdish language to be taught in predominantly Kurdish regions, the Kurdish language accepted as an official language, and the removal of the 10 percent nationwide electoral threshold required for political parties to be seated in parliament. In 2012, thousands of Kurdish activists were arrested for alleged links to the The Kurdistan Workers' Party's (Partiya Karkerên Kurdistanê; PKK's) urban wing, Group of Communities in Kurdistan (Koma Civakên Kurdistan). Prosecutors have used anti-terrorism laws to suppress non-violent pro-Kurdish and leftist political activities. Activist members, party officials, and politicians from the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party have all been imprisoned. In the June 2015 parliamentary elections, the main pro-Kurdish party, the Peoples’ Democratic Party (Halkların Demokratik Partisi), surpassed the electoral threshold by receiving 13 percent of nationwide votes, an outcome that has begun a new era for Kurdish politics in Turkey.

Following the success of the Kurds at the polls, the government targeted southeastern cities, which became PKK strongholds when the government turned a blind eye toward the PKK’s efforts to strengthen its presence in the region for the now-jettisoned Democratic Opening. Then, in June 2015, the government gave the security agencies the green light to initiate the worst period of urban warfare in recent Turkish history. The end to this anti-Kurd urban warfare is not yet in sight, and the extent of the devastation is not yet clear, but the resulting trauma to Kurds, who have long been oppressed by secular Kemalists, nationalists, and now by the Islamists, will likely bolster separatist movements among Kurds.

The Kurdish issue is central to the geopolitics of the Middle East, and the US must not postpone clarifying what it envisions for Kurds in Iraq, Syria, Iran, and Turkey. While emphasizing that PKK terrorism is unacceptable, the US should maintain that Turkey must increase Kurds’ freedoms and guarantee both their individual rights as well as their collective rights.

Finally, the next American president should also prioritize the religious freedom of Turkey’s minorities. In recent years, the Turkish government took an unprecedented step in returning $1 billion worth of formerly confiscated properties to minority religious groups. Yet religious minorities still lack full legal status in Turkey (Kılınç 2014). Even Greek, Armenian, and Jewish minorities whose rights have been protected by the Lausanne Treaty (1924) face difficulties, such as restrictions on their ability to train clergy. The Greek Orthodox Halki Seminary has been closed since 1971, despite routine public promises by AKP leaders that it will be re-opened. These officially designated religious communities continue to face government intervention in their internal affairs. For instance, the government bars the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate from using the term “ecumenical” and interferes with the selection of the Armenian Patriarchate leadership. While Jews fare better in Turkey than in most other Muslim-majority nations, they continue to suffer from anti-Semitism.

State control over religion has resulted in Muslim communities suffering as well. Historically, pious Turks have been excluded from the state bureaucracy and state educational institutions—as well as parts of corporate world. While AKP policies provided more freedom to the pious, it tampered with the freedoms of secular Turks. Various reports indicate difficulties in getting alcohol in small towns, increasing challenges in accessing abortion services, and more students being registered in religious schools against their will (Lepeska 2014; Doğan 2015).

The Alevis, followers of a variant of Shia Islam, constitute an estimated 15–25 percent of the Turkish population. Alevi communities have also suffered various forms of discrimination and persecution at the hands of state authorities and Sunni Muslims. While Alevis vary in their relationship to Islam, a substantial majority consider themselves as a distinct religious community and seek the state’s recognition. To date the Turkish state has refused this demand. To address the Alevis’ grievances, in 2008 the AKP government initiated an official dialogue process with the Alevis (Erol 2015). The following year this process was abandoned, in part because of widespread Sunni prejudice against the Alevis. Turkey’s involvement in the Syrian conflict, the AKP’s strong anti-Assad stance, and the government’s support of the (Sunni) Islamic opposition in Syria have worsened the animosity toward Alevis in Turkey. In Turkey the Assad regime is widely regarded as an expression of Alevi Islam. Because the Turkish state has not officially recognized the Alevis as a religious community, their places of worship, called cemevis, cannot be categorized as a religious sanctuary and they are thus denied the public benefits provided to places of worship. In a 2014 ruling, Cumhuriyetçi Eğitim Ve Kültür Merkezi Vakfı v. Turkey, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) held unanimously that the government’s refusal to recognize cemevis is discriminatory and asked the government to change its policy.

There is only so much American authorities can do to stop the erosion of human rights in Turkey. One effective way is public and private criticism. In his January 2016 visit to Turkey, Vice President Joe Biden met with human rights activists and journalists and showed solidarity with them and criticized government actions when he told reporters,

When the media are intimidated or imprisoned for critical reporting, when Internet freedom is curtailed and social media sites … are shut down and more than 1000 academics are accused of treason simply by signing a petition, that’s not the kind of example that needs to be set. (Idiz 2015)

The next administration should continue to criticize and condemn Turkey’s leaders for their human right violations.

Promote a Revival of the Turkish Model

Until a couple of years ago, many prominent leaders and scholars praised Turkey as an example to the Muslim world. There was some disagreement among these observers about what aspects of the Turkish model should be the focus: Turkey’s aspiring democracy, its secularism, or its moderate Islam (Kaufman 2011; Ramadan 2011). Turkey has drifted from this model. Recent developments have all but eroded what Turkey had to offer the Muslim world. However, democracy, secularism, and politically moderate Islam still offer the best way forward. US leaders should emphasize these values and encourage Turkish leaders to incorporate them in a new constitution.

Turkish secularism, Kemalist laïcité, has a troubled history. Like its French cousin, it was exclusionary, reflecting the early Republican elites’ conflicting views about Islam: Islam was seen as a hindrance for modernization, yet indispensable for nation-building (Kuru 2009; Başkan 2014). Shedding the Ottoman multicultural, multi-religious system, the elites imposed legal, educational, and religious restrictions on non-Muslim minorities and Alevis. Unlike Sunni Muslims, these communities were denied full legal and public recognition. The elites also controlled, constructed, and mobilized a Sunni identity as the official state ideology. On the one hand, the Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet) controlled and managed the Sunni religious identity. On the other hand, the state actively oppressed alternative, even Sunni, expressions of religious identity, such as traditional Sufi brotherhoods (tariqats) and modern Islamist movements, whose spiritual messages, organizational structures, or political aspirations were deemed dangerous by the state.

Yet alternative Sunni expressions have emerged, survived, and even flourished in the society, creating cracks in the rigid secular foundation. The military, the self-appointed guardians of the Kemalist republic and its secular character, have intermittently intervened to bolster secularism by excluding Islamists or co-opting and deploying them against other enemies. While exclusionary in the public sphere, Turkish secularism also allowed a variety of perspectives on Islam to flourish in society. After 13 years of AKP rule, what remains of the Turkish model of secularism is a subject of some debate. More than any generation since the adoption of Kemalist laïcité, this generation has witnessed the use of Islam in politics.

When the AKP came to power in 2002, it led a broad-based coalition. As the party consolidated its power and gained confidence as a result of early successes, it shed this broad coalition—first liberals, then the Gülen movement, and later still the Kurds. Even moderates within the party were marginalized. The party became a community of loyalists, steered by an Islamist core and led by President Erdoğan.

Paradoxically, just as Turkey has lost its “model” status, President Erdoğan has emerged as the most powerful Muslim leader in the world, symbolizing and voicing Muslim anger toward global injustices against Muslims. The AKP and parts of the Turkish state have been polishing Erdoğan and Turkey’s credentials for broader Islamic leadership. To this end, Diyanet, the state agency in charge of religious affairs, has been an important tool. Active on the global scene, Diyanet has been involved in building “over 100 mosques and schools in 25 countries” in Muslim majority and minority countries, such as the Philippines and Haiti, costing over $200m (“Mosqued Objectives” 2016). The USA is getting attention from Diyanet whose $100m Diyanet Center of America in Lanham, Maryland, was inaugurated by President Erdoğan in April 2016 (Subramanian 2016). In addition to Diyanet, the Turkish International Cooperation and Development Agency has launched various projects, some of which are religious in nature. While these activities help Turkey to increase its soft power, they also boost President’s Erdoğan’s claims of global Islamic leadership—an assertion intended for both domestic and international audiences (“Mosqued Objectives” 2016).

Through the activities of Diyanet and connections to American Muslims, European Muslims, and Turkish immigrants, the AKP has increased its soft power with respect to Western Muslims. By capitalizing on Erdoğan’s popularity on the Muslim street, training European-born Turks in Turkish universities, giving scholarships to Muslims for study in Turkey, bankrolling mosque construction and staffing, Turkey has become a global Islamic financier under the AKP. The new Turkish Islamist elite, thought leaders such as Ibrahim Kalın and Yasin Aktay, bolster Erdoğan’s aspirations and appeal for global Muslim leadership. While this leadership—often seen in the form of speaking on behalf of Muslim minorities, speaking against Islamophobia, opening mosques for Muslim minorities, and criticizing Israel—is still in its infancy, signs suggest that the AKP government will continue to aggressively pursue this direction.

Turkey’s leaders will likely use the Islamic Summit of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation to polish their Islamic credentials and articulate their aspirations for Turkish leadership of the umma, the global Muslim community (Kayaoglu 2015). In its bid for global Islamic leadership, Turkey’s religious diplomacy abandoned a neutral position in the debate between Iran and Saudi Arabia; Turkey has now joined the Saudi camp. It is not clear how this new alliance with Saudi Arabia will influence Turkey’s relations with the Muslim Brotherhood in the region. This is a particularly interesting point given the Muslim Brotherhood’s opposition to—and Saudi Arabia’s support for—Egyptian President Sisi.

As Turkey’s new elites embrace a new vision for Turkey—leader of the political Islamist cause—the AKP and the Gülen movement, once strong allies, have drifted apart from each other. In December 2013, a series of corruption investigations targeted Erdoğan’s inner circle, and Erdoğan then accused members of the Gülen movement of being behind the investigations. The AKP leadership responded by firing scores of state bureaucrats affiliated with the Gülen movement and jailing others, closing Gülen-affiliated schools and charities, and confiscating the property of business people who financially support the Gülen movement.

This conflict has implications both for Turkish domestic politics and for US relations with Turkey and “moderate” Islam. With its focus on interfaith dialogue and education, the Gülen movement offers a sustained and significant voice for moderate Islam. Fethullah Gülen, who lives in exile in the US, has taken a strong stand for democracy, human rights, and Turkey’s EU membership. His views are in accord with the US effort to empower peaceful, democratic Islamic voices.

For a long time, Turkey represented the model of a secular, moderate, Western-oriented Muslim-majority state. Yet, there were significant flaws in this model: Turkey restricted the visibility of religion in the public sphere, it excluded non-Sunnis, and it treated ethnic and religious minorities with suspicion. Turkey’s secularism was based on an exclusionary form of secularism, laïcité, as opposed to the more inclusionary form of secularism established by First Amendment jurisprudence in the US. Increasingly Turkey is losing its secular vision altogether; it is looking more and more like a religious, autocratic, Middle Eastern state. Turkey has certainly drifted away from its former praiseworthy position, but the attributes that once made Turkey such an exemplar need not be lost forever.

In order to re-embrace democracy and human rights, and thereby allow diverse religious (and non-religious) voices to share the public square, Turkey must draft a new constitution. The 1982 Constitution, written under military rule, has been amended several times. However, the big issues, such as the Kurdish issue or the nature of secularism, have not been settled through these amendments. Moreover, changes have been ad hoc, making the current constitution inconsistent and contradictory. The AKP came to power with a strong mandate to write the country’s first civilian constitution in its modern history. The AKP failed to rewrite the constitution despite, or perhaps because of, its ongoing electoral success. Following the 2011 elections, the Turkish parliament established a drafting committee. However, the committee failed the reach a compromise and was disbanded in 2013. The AKP government initiated formation of a new constitutional committee after the November 2015 elections. However, the opposition parties only see President Erdoğan’s ambition to create a strong executive presidency behind the constitutional committee’s work. The committee has already witnessed withdrawal of the main opposition party.

With the ongoing offensive against the Kurdish insurgency and the spillover effects of the Syrian civil war, Turkish politics is extensively securitized and deeply polarized. Hence, the chance of a genuine break through for a consensus constitution is slim. Nevertheless, the next US president should pressure the Turkish government to re-establish the constitution committee and encourage Ankara to ensure the new constitution includes the protection of human rights (especially freedom of religion, conscience, and belief for all), the rule of law, and the strengthening of checks and balances. The new constitution could be a significant opportunity for Turkey to put its democracy back on track.

Conclusion

The new millennium has not been kind to the peoples of the MENA. The American occupation of Iraq and the Arab Spring destabilized the region. These developments precipitated a tragic reversal in Turkey: in the span of five years, Turkey fell from being the poster child of an emerging democratic, developed, secular, moderate Muslim-majority country to a typical MENA autocracy rallying around a strong leader with weak checks and balances and a diminished respect for the rule of law and human rights. References to Turkey as a model for other Muslim-majority states have been largely discarded, but the Turkish model can be revived by building on the strength of its civil society and its strong connections to Europe and the US.

The US has a special responsibility and a potentially influential role to play in promoting a democratic, prosperous, secular, and modern Turkey. Even in the heyday of the Cold War, the US had a long-term view when it came to Turkey. Unfortunately, under Obama, the US has not been particularly critical of Turkish government actions to dismantle checks-and-balances, disregard the rule of law, roll back freedoms of speech and religion, and stifle the media. Even with regard to the Kurdish issue, the Turkey of today looks increasingly like the Turkey of the 1990s, as opposed to the optimism in 2000s. The US should encourage Turkey’s leaders to re-embrace the EU, human rights, and Islamic values supportive of pluralistic liberal democracy.

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Turan Kayaoglu

Turan Kayaoglu is an Associate Professor of International Relations and the Associate Dean of Faculty and Student Affairs at the School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences, University of Washington Tacoma. He is the Editor-in-Chief of Muslim World Journal of Human Rights and the author of Legal Imperialism: Sovereignty and Extraterritoriality in Japan, the Ottoman Empire, and China (Cambridge University Press, 2010) and The Organization of Islamic Cooperation: The Politics, Problems, and Potential (Routledge, 2015).