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Nation versus state

Published 26 June 2008

This is a fight not between secularism and Islamism in Turkey, but between old and new power elites, between nationalism and democracy

The battle over Turkey's future as a democracy is getting ever nastier. Despite the air of normality in bustling Istanbul, optimists are hard to find.

It is two months since Turkey's highest court agreed to hear a case to close the governing Justice and Development Party (AKP) and ban the prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, President Abdullah Gül, and 69 other AKP members - including a third of the cabinet - from politics for five years.

Sitting at an outdoor terrace in Istanbul's Taksim square, the commentator Cengiz Çandar describes the situation as a judicial coup. "The government and ruling party are now under a legal siege," he says. At the next table is the local mayor. I wonder if he too is on the list of 71 AKP members. Çandar leans over to ask. The answer is yes and everyone laughs - a surreal moment in this dark political period.

Another closure case is being heard against the Kurdish Democratic Society Party (DTP). Shutting down both would mean disenfranchising 52 per cent of the electorate, including the whole of Turkey's Kurdish south-east.

Polarisation is increasing. "This disagreement divides the closest of friends, husbands from wives," explains Hakan Altinay, head of the Open Society Institute here.

To many this is a fight not between secularism and Islamism, but between old and new power elites, between nationalism and democracy.

Cengiz Çandar sees it as a continuation of last year's power struggle. Protests in May 2007 against the attempted election of Gü - with his headscarf-wearing wife - to the presidency provoked an "e-ultimatum" on the military's website, which triggered early elections. Erdogan triumphed, winning 47 per cent of the vote, and Gü became president last September.

"The traditional power quarters," says Candar, "do not like to see a party with an Islamist background holding the major posts of power." He believes the crisis reflects a new style of Turkish state nationalism led by Ankara's ruling elite. "It is organised and expressed by state institutions, rather than being a popular movement. It is anti-EU, anti-US and, increasingly, isolationist." Meanwhile, the new middle-class businessmen of central Anatolia - Erdogan's heartland - want to take their share of the pie from the old elites of Ankara and Istanbul.

Mehmet Ali Birand, chief CNN-Turk anchorman, says that the court decision will decide who runs the country. "The old Establishment with military backing or the elected representatives - and if the latter then Turkey will be more religious and conservative but it will be nuanced: we are not Iran or Saudi Arabia."

While most liberal commentators condemn the judicial coup, many criticise Erdogan too. The lack of democratic reforms since his electoral victory last year, and his decision in February to focus on a constitutional amendment allowing headscarves to be worn at university - the trigger for the "judicial coup" - are seen as major errors. (The country's highest court upheld the ban on headscarves on 5 June.)

The cosmetic changes recently made to the notorious article 301 of the constitution - used to prosecute writers including Orhan Pamuk and Elif Shafak - and the police violence used against 1 May demonstrators, underpin disenchantment with Erdogan. "There are so many broken hearts," says the columnist Yavuz Baydar.

Turkey's courts have closed many political parties in recent decades, but never a governing party. The court ruling may come as early as July or as late as December. But even if all 39 MPs on the list of 71 AKP members are banned, around 300 sitting AKP MPs will remain. They might form a new party, and appoint a new prime minister - possibly Ali Babacan, the current foreign minister. A general election could follow.

This more "balanced" outcome may receive tacit approval from the powerful military general staff. But some sources in the armed forces suggest the AKP's opponents hope the party will fracture and, helped by a deteriorating economy, fail.

The big question is, how would Erdogan respond? One possibility is that, if banned, he will stand again as an independent. Some say he will continue to lead his party from behind the scenes. Others wonder if he will lead a broad democratic front of popular protests around the country.

Outside influence on the crisis is limited. The EU is hampered by botched membership negotiations; the US, worried about Turkish military incursions into northern Iraq, is reluctant to get involved.

Middle Eastern neighbours are watching, says the commentator Osman Ulagay: "It would be very difficult to explain the closure of the AKP to those in the Islamic world who hoped the party would show that you can combine Islam and democracy."

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www.beyazrenkler.org
08 August 2008 at 16:22

Attack on the Turkish Constitution

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Controversial Headscarf Law

Attack on the Turkish Constitution

In early June, Turkey's Constitutional Court declared the lifting of the ban on headscarves in public institutions as unconstitutional. Ülkü Azrak, an expert in Turkish administrative law, explains the decision from a legal perspective and sees it as an indication of an impending ban on the AKP

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Turkey's Constitutional Court at a press conference – State founder Atatürk keeps watch in the background. "A democratic state can only be secular," states the judgment | At the beginning of June, the Turkish Constitutional Court issued a sensational judgment confirming the ban on headscarves at universities. The judges thereby declared the changes to the law approved by Parliament last February permitting women to wear headscarves at universities to be unconstitutional.

The High Court stated that constitutional amendments introduced by the governing party and passed by Parliament violate Article 2 of the Turkish constitution, known as the secularism article, and are therefore invalid. The court's decision stemmed from a petition raised by the opposition CHP (Republican People's Party), the party founded by Atatürk.

The principle of secularism

Article 10 of the Turkish constitution establishes the principle of equality before law. The Islamic AKP government wanted to expand this article with their amendment by adding the provision that all citizens should have unlimited access to government facilities and institutions. The main idea behind this addition and the resultant changes to Article 42 is that everyone should have equal access to every kind of government service, including, of course, educational institutions. This would primarily affect universities. According to the AKP amendment, they would thereby be accessible to students wearing headscarves.

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What is democracy – freedom to wear a headscarf or a neutral public space? The AKP and its supporters criticize the judgment as politically motivated | From a legal perspective, criticism of the court judgment by some government members and the inflammatory comments from media outlets close to the government miss the mark. The court decision is not the first such judgment dealing with the headscarf. Back in 1989, the High Court ruled in a case concerning the university law that any such changes violate the principle of secularism laid down in the constitution. The judgment at the time states:

"The basis of the democratic structure is national sovereignty. The democratic order also opposes the supremacy of religious values, the Sharia. A ruling giving particular prevalence to religious values cannot be democratic. A democratic state can only be secular. Regulations contingent upon religion are accompanied by religious zeal and constraints, which cause religious conflicts. This eventually leads to a loss of quality in the freedom, majority control, and tolerance of the democracy."

In 1991, just two years later, the Constitutional Court confirmed this ruling again.

The ban on headscarves is not undemocratic

The current judgment on the constitutional changes with respect to Articles 4 and 148 of the constitution concurs with the previous decisions of the Constitutional Court, as well as with the decision of the European Court of Human Rights in the case of Leyla Şahin and the Welfare Party (Refah Partisi). The decision from 2005 stated that a ban on headscarves in universities did not violate the European Convention on Human Rights. "This ban is required, especially in Turkey, to protect the rights of those who do not wear the headscarf," was the justification of the court in Strasbourg.

In his charges before the court, Turkey's Chief Prosecutor Abdurrahman Yalcinkaya stressed the persistence of the governing party in trying to allow women to wear headscarves at university. In addition, Yalcinkaya criticizes the AKP for not willing to recognize the contradiction between secularism and lifting the ban on the headscarf. From his point of view, the statements of numerous government members with respect to the secularism articles anchored in the constitution fulfill the conditions laid down in Article 69 of the constitution for a ban on the party. The charges therefore accuse Prime Minister Erdoğan's party of attempting to abolish secularism, which is one of the basic principles upon which the Turkish Republic was established.

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