AKP – “Creeping Islamization” or Muslim Democracy?
Kemal Atatürk, the founder of modern Turkey, institutionalized Islam by establishing strict state control over country’s mosques and Koranic interpretation. This move prevented a politicized Islam emerging as an opposition ideology, as happened with the Muslim Brotherhood in the Arab world. Turkey’s secular state also delivered a degree of modernization, unlike the secular Arab republics whose economic and military failures -notably defeat by Israel in 1967 – paved the way for the rise of radical Islamism.
In any case, political Islam in Turkey is largely based on the relatively liberal Ottoman tradition of Hanafi jurisprudence, not the conservative Saudi-based Hanbali school – which incorporates Salafi dogma. A further moderating force has been the influence of Sufi-influenced schools, including Fethullah Gülen’s extensive modernizing Muslim network which stresses modern education and the harmony of the three Abrahamic religions.
Within Turkey’s Islamist movement, Gülen’s network is particularly well-resourced, influential and , especially in the Anatolian hinterland. Gülen’s current is “open to dialogue with all groups to promote democracy and civility,” notes Hakan Yavuz, but not democratic or liberal, strictly speaking, since it prioritizes community and state over individual rights.
While culturally conservative and promoting a pious Muslim lifestyle, the network played an important role in bringing the AKP to its position of passive secularism. It helped marginalize radical Salafist elements not only in Turkey’s Islamist movement, but also in the wider Muslim world. Gülen’s movement poses an alternative and a challenge to radical Islamism, not least in Central Asia, where it could counter growing Iranian influence.
The AKP “wants to repair relations with Washington, will keep Ankara firmly in the West, and stands for a modern, pluralist, democratic Turkey,” says Steven Cook of the Council on Foreign Relations. Yet some observers dispute the AKP’s democratic credentials, accusing the Islamist party of political illiberalism and anti-Westernism. The party has recently taken “a majoritarian view of democracy, ignoring checks and balances and dismissing alliances with non-AKP groups,” argues analyst Soner Cagaptay. He cites as evidence the February 2008 law to permit Islamic headscarves on college campuses and the party’s failure to allow sufficient public input into drafting the new constitution.
Other commentators go further, recycling the claims of the ulusalcis – the neo-nationalist, Kemalist groups – that the AKP is practicing “soft jihad,” or sharia-by-stealth . The “creeping Islamization” of Turkish society is a cause for concern, some analysts suggest, but the AKP plays only a minor role. The AKP has “not significantly changed the nature of the secular state,” says the Century Foundation’s Mort Abramowitz.
A more serious threat to democracy comes from the deep state of the military-dominated Kemalist elite that sees not only political Islam, but Kurdish nationalism and European liberalism as a threat to their power. Their frustration arises from the fact that the Kemalist model and trajectory of modernization has exhausted itself, argues analyst Kerem Oktem. Contemporary Turkey is more diverse, more inclusive and less beholden to the military-civilian elite.
The AKP’s moderation is maintained through external pressures from the electorate (only 20% of Turks favor sharia law), rival parties, the military, economic factors, and the EU. The party has benefited from the privatized media, educational, and associational opportunity spaces that are now integral to Turkish Islamism. The AKP has every incentive for moderation, argues Barry Rubin. “Being cautious brings it votes , investment, progress on EU membership, more votes, and non-intervention by the army.”
If the AKP is banned and constitutional reform derailed, especially after climbing the greased pole of Turkish democracy, the perceived sabotage of moderate Muslim democrats will play into the hands of extremist forces, says Olivier Roy, confirming radical Islamist insistence on the West’s preference for “authoritarian secularism.” And that will have repercussions well beyond Turkey’s borders.
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