Recently an article in the Financial Times, however, was able to shed some much-needed light on the bigger picture behind these obscure Turkish dynamics. In the words of David Gardner, the larger power struggle in Turkey is “more … than a battle of wills between neo-Islamists and secularists; more even than a new and dangerous chapter in a recurring constitutional crisis. It is, above all, a clash between two rival establishments jostling for supremacy: the traditional metropolitan elites who see themselves as the guardians of the secular, republican heritage of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the father of modern Turkey; and the new AKP [Justice and Development Party] establishment that combines the conservative and religiously observant traditions of Anatolia with a huge constituency in Turkey’s modern but Muslim middle class.”Where does the Ergenekon case fall in this struggle? The AKP’s supporters often argue that the roots of Ergenekon go much deeper than the last few years. To them, Ergenekon seems to represent the “deep state” itself. Needless to say, the deep state is another Turkish concept Western media and analysts have a hard time understanding. As an entity representing the dark side of the national security establishment, it is as peculiarly Turkish as Ergenekon.
Many Turkish intellectuals argue that the roots of the deep state can be found in the early days of the Unionist movement of Enver Paşa, when small groups of officers gained power with the first military coup in Turkish history. And this was in 1908. Later on the Unionist movement of the Enver-Cemal-Talat Paşa triumvirate maintained a secret network called Teşkilat-ı Mahsusa (special organization) which among other things played a major role in the deportation and massacre of Armenians in eastern Anatolia. So, the argument goes, the roots of the deep state go to this unionist tradition. Today, supporters of the AKP have no doubt that Ergenekon represents not just a conspiracy against the government but the mentality of the deep state.
Members of Turkey’s Kemalist elite, especially the ultra-secularists, argue that Ergenekon is fiction, an excuse for the AKP to arrest its critics. They see the legal case against dozens of alleged conspirators as politically motivated. But there is also a larger problem with the Kemalist establishment. Again, as Gardner argues in his brilliant analysis in the Financial Times: “One of the principal reasons for the now chronic crisis is that the Kemalists are unelectable: After being trounced in two general elections by the AKP, they appear to have no strategy except to return to power by goading the army and the judiciary into seizing back what their howlingly irrelevant parties keep losing at the ballot box. It is a commonplace, often deployed with self-serving slyness in Europe, that Turkey is engaged in a struggle to determine its real identity. Yet, the real drama of Turkey today is more banal: It lacks an effective opposition to the AKP. It will keep bobbing from crisis to crisis until it has one.”
Therefore, as Gardner argues, the problem is not really the AKP’s authoritarian tendencies but the ineptitude and incompetency of political alternatives. In his words again: “The outlook of some secularists reflects a lazy sense of entitlement to power, unable to win elections any more, they incite the army and the courts. Their parties are not real parties. They are shrinking cults for outsize egos. Atatürk’s Republican People’s Party (CHP), under the ageing and illiberal Deniz Baykal, is a rudderless rump, incapable of appealing to a young Turkey.”
What makes Gardner’s analysis even more valuable is that it goes beyond just an insightful observation by providing a prescription: “What Turkey desperately needs is a regrouping of secular, liberal and social democratic forces into an electable party. Banging on about secularism is therapeutic but ultimately futile. A viable center-left needs to abandon the fragmented, pre-modern to Jurassic, and episodically putschist secular parties. Instead of worshipping at Atatürk’s shrine, they should follow his example. The founder of Turkey built the republic from the ruins of the Ottoman Empire. Even Mr. Erdoğan looked far beyond the wreckage of Turkish Islamism to create the AKP. Turkey’s center-left should emulate him and start again.” One can only hope that Turkey will find the opposition party it deserves.
