Over lunch we discussed the recent political events taking place in the country. He was full of ideas and said a lot of things. But the most remarkable statement he made was the following: “Devout Muslims in Turkey have finally fully understood that they cannot liberate themselves without liberating all who have suffered under the current authoritarian regime, that is the Kurds, the Alevis, the non-Muslims and others. That is why I am quite hopeful that the ‘democratic’ or ‘Kurdish opening’ the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government promises to pursue may succeed.”In the evening I listened to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan addressing Parliament in Ankara on the government initiative to further democratize the regime and solve the Kurdish problem that has caused so much suffering not only since the beginning of the Kurdish insurgency led by the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) 25 years ago, but ever since the founding of the republic. I was truly moved by Prime Minister Erdoğan’s speech. I was so happy to see that what the liberal-minded Turkish and Kurdish intellectuals had been advocating for a solution to the Kurdish problem for at least the last two decades had finally become the government discourse as expressed by the chief executive. Prime Minister Erdoğan said the parliamentary debate on the Kurdish question held that day should be taken as a milestone in history. Nov. 13 may indeed become a milestone in republican Turkish history because with the initial reforms announced by Interior Minister Beşir Atalay on that day, Turkey may be embarking on a road towards a solution to the Kurdish problem and bringing an end to the PKK insurgency, which has cost the country at least 40,000 lives and hundreds of billions of dollars.
I felt so elated that when Erdoğan concluded his speech I phoned close friends to share with them my thoughts and feelings on what we were witnessing. Later I sat down and contemplated. The Kurdish friend I met during the day was absolutely right. A very important aspect to consider of what we are recently witnessing in Turkish politics is surely the highly remarkable ideological evolution or transformation observed among the politicians in the AKP leadership since their appearance on the political scene in the early 1990s.
These politicians were among the leading cadre of the national vision (or if you like the Islamist) movement led by Mr. Necmettin Erbakan whose Welfare Party (RP) was banned by the Constitutional Court in 1998. There were serious doubts about the RP’s commitment to secularism. It was advocating a highly statist and nationalistic economic philosophy that strongly opposed the liberalization and globalization of the Turkish economy. In foreign policy it promised moving Turkey away from the West and the severing of ties with NATO and the EU. Its approach to the Kurdish problem was not much different from the official authoritarian line.
This is what Mr. Erbakan was recently saying about the AKP government’s initiative: “Where does this Kurdish problem come from? Outside forces are inciting Kurdish nationalism to dismember Turkey. They want to have Turkey fight within itself and then swallow it. They want to turn Turkey into a province of Israel …” This is how Mr. Erbakan called on AKP followers: “So what if you have taken off the ‘National Vision’ shirt? You are left naked … You are following the Jews. You said ‘one minute’ and then apologized … The road you are taking is not the right way. Return to your roots …” (At a Felicity Party meeting on Oct. 29.)
There certainly are a number of factors that explain the AKP leadership’s ideological transformation from “National Vision” to “Conservative Democracy.” The principal factor may be the rise since the 1990s in Anatolia of new business and professional elites who are culturally conservative but pro-democracy and pro-liberal in their general political and economic orientations. Another factor may be prospects for greater freedom and prosperity, which the start of the EU accession process at the end of the 1990s opened up for Turkey. Yet another factor surely is the impact of the critical discourse of liberal-minded intellectuals directed towards the regime dominated by state elites with the military at the helm. But perhaps more important than any of these factors is the one my Kurdish friend pointed to, that is the realization by devoutly Muslim politicians that they cannot liberate themselves without liberating all who have suffered under the illiberal and authoritarian regime.
The AKP, with roots in the National Vision or (if you like the Islamist) movement, going through a radical ideological transformation and assuming leadership towards greater freedom and broader democracy in Turkey, even without any encouragement coming from the EU after the appearance of Sarkozys and Merkels, and despite military and judicial coup attempts and foul opposition from rival parties and mainstream media, is truly the Turkish miracle of the 21st century.
