Turkey's Internal Conflict: Mosque vs. State
In the Autumn 2000 issue of The Wilson Quarterly, Cengiz Çandar writes:
The Kemalist elite that followed Atatürk envisaged a militantly secular, ethnically homogeneous republic ready to join the Western world. It banished Islam from school curricula, glorified Turkish history, and “purified” the Turkish language in order to foster national pride and unity. ... The Turkish military, which had launched Atatürk into power, became the self-styled guardian of Kemalist values, particularly secularism. The army, which is the most respected institution of the Turkish state, vigorously defends the republic against what it perceives as imminent threats from Islamic fundamentalism.
Three times between 1960 and 1980 the military overthrew governments it judged to be a danger to the secular state. Most recently, in 1980, a rash of violent, politically radical dissent prompted the army to suspend the constitution, impose martial law, arrest leading politicians, and dissolve the parliament, political parties, and trade unions. However, as they have after each takeover, the generals voluntarily restored civilian rule, and in 1983 a newly elected government took office.
Frankly, I consider it amazing that Turkey’s military has consistently been a defender of democracy — so much so, that it will take over the government and then restore power back to civilian politicians once the apparent danger has passed. I don’t know if anything quite like this has happened, much less happened consistently, anywhere else in the world. You can make a lot of criticisms about the fact that the military feels entitled to seize power, but you have to give them credit for giving it back as soon as possible. There may be some things which the Turkish military could teach militaries elsewhere in the world.
The army draws support from two vitally important groups in Turkish society: the urban middle class, which has reaped many of the economic benefits of Atatürk´s modernization, and the formidable state bureaucracy, which is itself a product of Kemalism´s strong centralizing tendencies. The military has carte blanche to intervene when these groups feel threatened by public manifestations of Islamic sentiment. ... The constitution promulgated by the generals who carried out the 1980 coup also provides formal channels for military influence, notably through its five seats on the National Security Council, which oversees national defense, a term defined so broadly that topics from education to foreign policy fall under its umbrella.
In any other nation, such constant military involvement with normal civilian administration would be a cause for serious worry. Even with Turkey, it should be a cause for some concern — just because the Turkish military has managed to be more helpful than harmful in the past doesn’t mean that it can’t take a quick turn for the worse sometime in the future. The mere fact that they exert so much force and pressure from one side while Turkey is being similarly pressed on the other by the growing power and influence of religious leaders is alone cause for concern.
It’s questionable whether the Turkish military can continue to hold together Turkey’s secular, democratic state. That’s a serious problem because Turkey’s military is one of the few things which is holding Turkey together. In the end, that’s perhaps the biggest problem with the involvement of Turkey’s military in civilian politics: they have, perhaps, undermined the ability of self-governing, self-regulating secular institutions to maintain order. The military may have proven useful in times of domestic crisis, but it’s not something you want to rely on forever or for all crises.
Read More:
Comments
No comments yet. Leave a Comment