Domestic determinants of Turkish foreign policy (2)

 Of course, there is a fallacy in the logic of such arguments. How can the AKP favor EU membership without compromising its so-called Islamist agenda? Is there no contradiction between all the democratic requirements of EU membership and Islamization? In any case, this fallacy in analyzing the AKP's intentions changed the way the Kemalist elite approached the EU. Again, as I argued last week, the military already had concerns because of the EU's human and minority rights agenda vis-à-vis the Kurdish problem. Now, with the additional complication of political Islam in the mix, the EU had become a clear enemy. This was the end of the love affair between Kemalism and Europe. The tables had turned. The Kemalist elite was now increasingly anti-Europe while former Islamists were in favor of pro-EU reforms.

 Finally, the fact that Washington, under the Bush administration, praised the AKP and spoke of Turkey as a “moderately Islamic” country further exacerbated the Kemalist sense of frustration with the West. It is under such circumstances that Kemalism came to be associated with the “Eurasian” alternative to Turkey's pro-EU and pro-US orientation. I ended my last column by pointing out that “even this complex turn of events fails to accurately capture what is going on in Turkey today.”

 This is mainly because the Cyprus debacle, the EU's reluctance to embrace Turkey and the AKP's rising populist nationalism since 2006 drastically changed the picture that dominated Turkish politics between 2003 and 2005. Over the last few years, it has become much harder to argue that the AKP is genuinely interested in pursuing EU reforms. Just like the Kemalist establishment, the AKP too has lost its enthusiasm for the EU. It is important to explore the reasons behind this troubling development. Part of the reason is ideological.

 In fact, the core philosophy of the party was never Islam pure and simple. The ideology of the “conservative-democratic” AKP was strongly borrowed from the famous Turkish-Islamic synthesis of the 1970s. This was a precarious formula prone to tension due to the inner conflict between nationalism and Islam. In Turkey, a country that never experienced a strong level of Islamic zeal, the balance between Islam and Turkishness has always favored the latter. In other words, the country has consistently been more nationalistic. The AKP has shown similar characteristics. It has consistently lost its Islamic dimension and boosted its nationalist credentials.

 In 2002, when the AKP first came to power, the EU was the party's ticket to legitimacy. Since the AKP was then seen as an Islamist party, Europe provided cover against the Kemalist establishment. Simply put, the AKP needed protection against the authoritarian secularist system. Now, seven years later, the AKP has itself become the system. It no longer feels as insecure as it did in November 2002. In fact, there are alarming signs that the party is happy to live with the system by mobilizing the Turkish nationalist card. In the new AKP, there is less room for Islam and the EU, but ample space for "Turkishness."

 It was, it turns out, the Islamic identity of the party that fueled a deep sense of insecurity and the relentless desire for European norms of democracy. Such insecurity, due to the AKP's Islamic identity, was the driving force behind EU reforms that would assure protection against secularist-Kemalist skeptics. It was this old AKP that was willing to take all the astonishing steps towards democratization, liberalization and compromise in Cyprus in order to start accession negotiations with the EU. That old AKP was more Islamic. The new one is more systemic and nationalistic. And this is exactly what the system wants. This is bad news for liberals who supported the AKP for reasons connected to the EU. Today, these liberals have no place else to go.