Can secular Turkey survive democracy?

Source: L.A.Times - By Ayaan Hirsi Ali *) - May 9, 2007

How reformists can stop the Islamists who have chipped away at Turkey's secularism.

SECULAR AND LIBERAL Turks have had a rude awakening from years of deep slumber. Kemal Ataturk's heritage is about to be destroyed — not by an invading power but from within, by fellow Turks who yearn for an Islamic state.

Ever since Ataturk, Turkey has been divided into those who want to run state affairs on Islamic principles and those who want to keep Allah's will from the public space.

The proponents of Islam in government, such as Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul and their Justice and Development Party, have been remarkably successful. They have exploited the fact that you can use democratic means to erode democracy, employing a powerful strategy.

Three pillars of that strategy are worth discussion.

The first is Dawa, a tactic inspired by Islam's founder, Muhammad. Dawa means to preach Islam as a way of life, including a way of government, perpetually and with conviction. Every convert is obligated to preach Islam to others, creating a grass-roots movement.
The secularists in Turkey underestimated this pillar and thus neglected competing with the Islamists for the hearts and minds of the electorate. Polls suggest that 70% of voters might still elect Gul president if Erdogan succeeds in changing the constitution so that the president can be elected directly. Any protest from the secularists against this evident popular will sounds irrational and undemocratic.

The second pillar is the improvement of the economy. No one can deny that when the secular parties were in power, the Turkish economy was in tatters. Since Erdogan took office, growth has been strong, with inflation down and foreign investment high.

The third pillar is taking control of two types of institutions in a democracy: those designed to educate civilians (education and media) and those designed to keep law and order (police, justice and the secret service).

After an initial attempt at Islamic revolution failed in 1997, when the military engineered a "soft coup" against elected Islamists, Erdogan and his party understood that gradualism would yield more lasting power. They surely realize that Islamizing Turkey entirely is possible only if they gain control of the army and the Constitutional Court, the two institutions that have helped preserve Turkey's secular state.

The recent Constitutional Court ruling annulling the nomination of Gul for the presidency, after the military warned that it is the guardian of secularism, is only a temporary setback for the Islamists. Erdogan and Gul have another trick up their sleeves.

If they show the same restraint and patience that have brought them this far, they may achieve their aim by continuing to court membership in the European Union. Well-meaning but naive European leaders were manipulated by the ruling Islamists into saying that Turkey's army should be placed under civil control, like all armies in EU member states.

In hindsight, Turkey's secular liberals have only themselves to blame. They underestimated the power of Dawa, they failed at growing the economy and they have not realized that members of the EU have been manipulated.

An important trait of liberalism, however, is the opportunity to learn by trial and error. Turkish secular liberals must start their own grass-roots movement, one with the message of individual freedom. They must restore the confidence of the electorate in entrusting Turkey's economy to them, and they must reconquer the institutions of education, information, police and justice.

They must also make EU leaders understand and respect the fact that the army and the Constitutional Court — besides defending the country and the constitution — are also, and maybe even more important, designed to protect Turkish democracy from Islam.

Bringing back true secularism does not mean just any secularism. It means secularism that protects individual freedoms and rights, not the ultra-nationalist kind that breeds an environment in which Adolf Hitler's "Mein Kampf" is a bestseller, the Armenian genocide is denied and minorities are persecuted. Hrant Dink, the Armenian editor, was murdered by such a nationalist.

It is this mix of virulent nationalism and predatory Islam in Turkey that makes the challenge for Turkish secular liberals greater than for any other liberal movement today.

*) AYAAN HIRSI ALI, a former Dutch legislator and women's activist who now lives in the U.S., recently published her memoir, "Infidel."

Posted by Sylvia

Comments

[Geplaatst door: Willem]

@Sylvia, may be (?) a Dutch translation of this letter of Ayaan dd 09-05-2007 in:

http://ayaanhirsiali.web-log.nl/ayaanhirsiali/2007/02/mak_europa_heef.html#comment-18910671

[Geplaatst door: Willem]

@Sylvia, Ayaan our "black Voltaire."

Sylvia it's not possible to use the "mailformulier" with 'my'
mobile-laptop.
So I have to post here.

Maybe an interesting article today on, in my opinion the best, real European journal:
Signandsight

"Alarm bells in Muslim hearts"
Bron: Signandsight

This article originally appeared in German in the Süddeutsche Zeitung on April 17, 2007.

Margriet de Moor, born in 1941 in Nordwijk, lives as a freelance writer in Bussum, near Hilversum. Her most recent publication in German is "Sturmflut," published by Hanser Verlag. This essay was read aloud at "Europe erlesen," an event organised in Düsseldorf in March 2007.

Translation: Melanie Newton.

Dutch writer Margriet de Moor looks at Islam in the light of Europe and Europe in the light of Islam.
I currently live in one of the most interesting countries in Europe. As a Dutch writer I used to have the feeling that the major events were taking place elsewhere, but those days are now past. I am an inhabitant of a remarkable country, one that first of all is tiny and over-populated, that secondly has four big cities – Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Utrecht and The Hague – half of whose populations already consist of people of foreign origins, most of them Muslims, and that thirdly has recently witnessed two political murders, one of which was committed directly in the name of Allah.

I am thus an inhabitant of a country that has all the makings of considerable social, political and religious trouble and yet has managed to stay calm. For sure, there has been a certain amount of commotion in parliament recently, rather entertaining commotion, I thought, involving heated discussions of our good old humanist principles and revolving around Rita Verdonk, our Minister for Immigration and Integration. Discussion about our legally enshrined right to freedom of opinion, concerning Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a politician who is sometimes called our "black Voltaire."

------
The whole article can be found on:

http://www.signandsight.com/features/1309.html

[Geplaatst door: Willem]

Let's talk European...

Let's try to (re-?)start an European-wide web-site..and yes in a language full of mistakes against correct "English"-grammatica..., so I suggest we will not use Esperanto or xxx, but a kind of a mix of English and ..??? in which it is allowed to make big mistakes in correct writing or correct grammatica.

Let us call this new language: The Internet-inglese/engels/English so : T.I.E.

So in T.I.E. everybody can write, and I repeat: only thàt what people want to say must be clear.

And yes, of course people can help each other to write and study a little better the dialect of London and surroudings.

And why ? Simple to make a stronger European-wide web-site:

"Dutch sociologist Abram de Swaan has summarized the paradoxes in the European realm in these words: "In the absence of a single European public space, there are myriads of European niches, each providing a distinct meeting place to participants from all member-nations who have shared interests... The more circumscribed the agenda, the more smoothly the all-European exchange proceeds: experts, technicians, specialists have no trouble finding each other, nor do entrepreneurs from the same branch, believers from the same church, athletes from he same sport or scientists from the same discipline find it hard to congregate and communicate. But these multifarious niches, neatly separated as they are, do not add up to a European space. On the contrary, as the agenda widens and comes to encompass broader cultural, social and political issues, communication becomes that more difficult. There are literally hundreds of specialized journals that carry the epithet European or an equivalent in their title. But when it comes to general cultural and political reviews, there may be no more than a dozen that achieve a genuine European distribution, and almost all of these are in English."

More about this article:

http://www.signandsight.com/features/1337.html

[Geplaatst door: Truus Baaij]

Oh thou that tells us good tidings about liberated Europe. Free from beards en burqa's.

[Geplaatst door: Willem]

B.t.w. dear Truus, I have a beard...., it's for me a symbol of...freedom and it's natural:
I mean a beard is just how mother nature made me. What is a Karl Marx,
a Michelangelo,a Leonardo da Vinci, a Fidel Castro, a Galilei without a beard ?

And as you know the beard of Galilei was verry important to save his live against fundamentalists of his time ...

When he was forced by the Pope to say that the earth was standing stil and when he did so (to escape the last argument of the pope:deat by the fire), he verry softly said to his neighbour: "En still the earth moves", using his beard so that the pope couldn's see his lips...

[Geplaatst door: Truus Baaij]

Beg pardon @Willem, beards like yours are beyond any suspicion.

[Geplaatst door: lucida]

@Willem: "What is a Karl Marx without a beard?"

The same as communism without islam, and as well it's koranic doctrine without opium for the muslim people!

[Geplaatst door: Willem]

Ha, ha ! We are going of topic !
But I want to know why both, Sinterklaas and Christmasman, have beards...

And why do children like people with beards, that's really a fact.

But maybe better back to the subject here with a question about ...beards..:
why is the beard for islam important ?

But also Jezus van Nazareth had a beard. So, why has the pope in Rome not a beard ?