Most groups that participated in the rally were those that have been disturbed by Turkey’s accelerating democratization process. Several spokesmen delivered anti-Western speeches. The meeting was intended to damage the AK Party and its leader, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, despite the fact that Erdoğan has been the most ambitious Turkish politician to improve Turkey’s standards during its EU bid in the last four years. Ironically, the event was applauded by many members of the Western media.It is certain that this conflicting stance of the West will have a profound influence on Turkish politics as well as Turkey’s relations with the West. The dilemma in the West’s view of Turkey is hidden in the answer of the following question: Which is better, a democratic Turkey that is in peace both with her identity and with the world, or an authoritarian/laicist Turkey which is in conflict with her own values and is isolated from the world?
According to a traditional view that is often repeated in studies on Turkey in the West, in particular by Professor Bernard Lewis, Turkey has come a long way in development and modernization because of the military’s enforcement of laicist policies. This view holds that these laicist policies have also been the basis for good relations between Turkey and the West and that if the military-controlled laicist policies were eroded in Turkey, then Turkey’s relations with the West would come to an end and her current democratic structure would collapse. This view legitimizes continuing western support for military intervention on Turkish democracy. Because this anti-democratic moves are seen as if they prevent Turkey from getting off track. This thesis that developed overseas has been translated into a local language and consumed with pleasure by Kemalist elite as well. As a result, this ideology or paradigm has become a strong basis to legitimize lack of democracy or any attempt to hamper democracy in Turkey.
So it’s quite understandable for people both in Turkey and abroad with such a perspective on Turkey to applaud Ankara rally. For them, the meeting was an opportunity for those who don’t want Turkey to move towards Islam to speak out. Some of the media described April 14 as a day of a historical national awaking against an ‘Islamist surge’. Hence, they were not much concerned about the third wordlist ideological speeches delivered during the rally. Looking at the event from this point of view, many neglected the fact that the meeting was organized by an association headed by a retired general, whose name has been associated with coup attempts just 3 years ago.
There are implicit ideological prejudices and obvious distortions in the assessments based on this view. You will understand what I’m saying when you read the following statement: “According to public opinion studies, ‘the majority’ of Turkish public believes that if the president is from the AK Party, then they will try to make Turkey another Iran or Taliban-like Afghanistan (Kommersant, April 16).” Or when the Spanish newspaper El Pais quoted an officer as saying, “If Erdoğan becomes president, we will go back 100 years.”
Even an America-supported Persian radio station, Radio Ferda described the event in Ankara as the biggest protest rally in Turkey in recent years against ‘radical Islam’, while Erdoğan himself has become the target of neo-nationalists with claims that his moderate Islamic attitude is is in deed an ‘American project’.
While most news stations described the rally as a laicist protest against Islam, few explained which circles had planned the rally or which marginal groups supported it. Nor did they report that many political parties that are also sensitive for democracy or secularism, along with hundreds of unions and NGOs, refused to participate in the rally.
However, recent developments have proven that an Islamophobic analysis of Turkey that places democracy on the back burner should be changed. For example, today the democratic reforms are being carried out by a political party that has also been recognized with its conservative roots. The same party is also determined to improve Turkey’s democratic stability through EU membership.
The conservative middle classes that some circles fear due to their Muslim identity are the most crucial social factor in Turkey’s current democratization and opening up to the world. Moreover, many surveys reveal that the majority of the Turkish people accepts democracy and doesn’t see any conflict between Islam and democracy. And that they have no problem with principle of laicism as long as it is interpreted as a guarantor of freedom of religion.
In contrast, the political groups that pioneered in modernization in the past and were perceived as the vanguard of a modern Turkey in the West, have become reactionary forces that are solely concerned with protecting the status quo. If we pay little attention to private or public meetings of these groups, we can hear their quasi-fascist tone irrespective of their leftist, Islamist or nationalist backgrounds.
In fact, recently a new paradigm has blossomed amongst some politicians and scholars in the West, who realize that perhaps the trouble behind Turkey’s economic and political problems is not Islam or traditional values of Turkish society but a disguised anti-democratic structure. However the protest rally showed us that this new view remains foreign to many in the Western media. It would be good if they could also see that the problem in Turkey is not between Islam and laicism or democracy, but it is between the status quo and democracy.
I feel the Hrant Dink murder and the gruesome slaying in Malatya were prompted by some dark circles in order to destroy that new paradigm. I pray their vicious plans will fail.
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