Politicization of religion (2)

One of the critical impasses in modern politics is that arrangements made by political mechanisms function to serve the interests of a certain class, lobby, interest group or central power while the larger segment of society develops an increasingly strong fear of indigence and deprivation. A democratic regime is a form of politics that claims to prevent corruption and unlawful gains by defining specific rules and mechanisms and securing the duration of their execution.

However, we also know that the process in question does not always function effectively. When there are open and cruel interventions, the democratic regime, along with its means and tools, is no longer functional. Power is the decisive factor in this kind of open intervention. Some examples are military interventions, autocratic regimes and dictatorial administrations. In anti-democratic regimes, intervention is not concealed but instead is carried out openly and with peculiarly coarse methods.

This situation is related to distinctive intervention methods in which the initial goals are obliterated but the visible tools are protected. When nonpolitical external forces interfere in politics, the formal political institutions are kept but their functions no longer operate in line with their respective goals. The function of institutions is to solve problems, but outside intervention is an approach that conflicts with this function. In other words, the purpose of an intervention is not to solve problems but to inhibit problem solving means and methods.

For this reason paralyzing politics in itself and breaking it into fragments is one of the methods applied. If the total votes of at least one or two political parties are not enough to become a ruling power for several election periods, then that is a sign not of political fissure in the society, but of the existence of systematic interventions in politics.

The effective method that is applied when breaking politics into fragments from the center toward the right and left ends is to create a dangerous “other” that poses a threat to the entire system. If this manufactured “dangerous other” becomes a center of attention for other political parties as well then the goal has been partially achieved. The generated threat becomes the general topic of politics and other parties find a chance to become a ruling power provided they accept the existence of this threat. Since parties do not have power to fight this threat on their own they need the help and support of external powers. When nonpolitical external powers instill the belief that normal political parties can not protect against this serious threat, their influence over politics become naturally understandable and enables them to find a ground of legitimacy.

While political parties are expected to avoid opportunism and focus on basic political and moral principles to make the politically defined “other” safe within the context of the normal political process and not ask for the support of external powers, if the external powers instead end up falling into a trap or take advantage of opportunities given to them, not only will they have a place in politics but also find themselves a place in the alliance of nonpolitical external powers.

In this respect, a crucial reason why “religion” has a central role in Turkish politics is that both “pro-religious” and “anti-religious” people are empirically aware that the religion motif brings a profit. Even if central right parties have not taken any notable steps to expand freedom of religion and conscience by standing beside religious segments of the society, in contrast to the Republican People’s Party (CHP), they have obtained political gains from “religious partisanship.”