Therefore maintaining a “Western vocation” is not only a foreign policy choice but also a must to establish and consolidate an “open society” in Turkey. In this year of elections, which political party is likely to carry on with Turkey’s traditional Western orientation?Conventionally thinking, the CHP, the main opposition party, with its historical role in the republican modernization, would emerge as the most likely candidate. But in recent years the CHP, under the influence of its deputy leader Onür Oymen, has emerged as a political party which opposes EU negotiations, good neighborly relations, cooperation with the US and many democratic reforms, including the one that would abolish Article 301 of Turkish Penal Code. The CHP is returning to its roots as a party of the state, not of the masses -- with a difference, which is its newborn anti-Westernism.
The AK Party with its strong advocacy for the EU membership, enthusiasm for globalization and performance of democratization, notwithstanding its shortcomings, is the party most likely to carry on with Turkey’s traditional “Western orientation.” It is an irony of history that the AK Party, despite its Islamic roots, emerges as the most pro-Western political party under current circumstances. To understand why this is so, we need to look at the AK Party’s roots where lie an attempt to “rethinking the West” within an Islamic tradition.
Islamic political identity was traditionally built in opposition to the West, Western values, and importantly, to the history of Westernization in Turkey. Yet the pro-Islamic politicians of the late 1990s, most of whom either formed or joined the AK Party in 2001, realized under the pressure of “systemic forces” that they needed to adhere to the modern political values of democracy, human rights and the rule of law to build a broader front against the Kemalist center, and to acquire “systemic” legitimacy. A new language heavily utilizing the discourse of democracy, human rights and the rule of law was adopted by the AK Party leaders. They knew that they could survive only in a country that was democratically oriented, respecting civil and political rights, and moreover integrated further into the Western world, particularly the EU.
This new language enabled the AK Party to form international coalitions with numerous human rights NGOs, the European Union, the European Court of Human Rights and individual states that had in the past been critical of Turkey’s level of democracy and its human rights record. In the end, the AK Party found itself on the same side as Westerners, demanding democratization and further guarantees for civil and political rights in Turkey. This was a revolutionary “new positioning” in Turkish history in which for the first time, the demands of Islamic-conservative periphery overlapped with that of the Western vision of Turkey, outmaneuvering the Kemalist establishment.
In this way, the EU emerged as a natural ally to reduce the influence of the military and to establish democratic governance, within which Islamic social and political forces would be regarded as a legitimate player. The expectation was that the military’s interventions in politics would be significantly lessened as a result of further democratization, which had already been put as a precondition for Turkey’s entry to the EU. A Kemalist state ideology guarded by the army would not be sustainable in an EU member Turkey.
As a result, not only AK Party but mainstream Islamic groups adopted a new and positive stance towards the West, Turkey’s membership in the EU and the integration of Turkey into global structures and processes, which was a sharp break from their tradition basis of a radical anti-Westernism. Abandoning anti-Westernism enabled the Islamic-conservative periphery to emerge as a “central” power in Turkish politics broke off the historical block between the Kemalists and the West and added to the strength of democratic forces. Good enough reasons to maintain a pro-Western orientation for the AK Party and Islamic-conservative periphery?
