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By Dr. Aland Mizell:
As the Middle East is burning, aspiring to get rid of totalitarian regimes, and attempting to become true democracies, many in Washington have been debating what is the best model for the Arab Spring. Washington is inclined towards Turkey as a paradigm for the Arab countries. Turkey is cited as an example of a moderate, secular Muslim state run by a party with roots in political Islam. The importance of Turkey, within the context of the American vision for the Middle East, goes back decades. President Obama’s government sees Turkey’s predominantly Muslim status as a potential model for the emerging democracies of the Arab Spring. The question is: what is the Turkish model? Why is the Turkish prototype good for the Arab Spring? Does Turkey really follow a moderate secular Islam?
While Washington and some Western countries are promoting a Turkish secular example as an alternative to Arab Muslim countries, Iran, on the other hand, has objected saying that Turkey will never represent an Islamic awakening. Turkey and other Muslim countries are trying to build the New Middle East without the West and America. Is Turkey’s democracy mature enough to be a model? How relevant is the Turkish version? How can you replicate it? It is true that Turkey could be an inspiration for Middle Eastern countries, but not a model?
Before suggesting that Turkey be the ideal for the Middle East, we should ask ourselves: has the Turkish paradigm been able to accommodate political Islam and principles of democracy? Since the founding of the Turkish Republic has Turkey fully embraced either the Western or Islamic principles of democracy?
Turkey neither belongs to the East nor to the West. Granted, Turkey is a member of NATO, the Council of Europe, the Court of Human Rights, and an EU Candidate, but Turkey is not ready to be a model for the region. Turkey’s “zero problems with its neighbors” as well as its stand against Israel and the United States made Turkey popular in the region, especially in the Arab countries, but those policies did not fashion a secular democracy; as a matter of fact, Arab Muslim countries do not like Turkey’s secular form of government. However, Turkey’s double foreign policies led to the collapse of its “zero problems with its neighbors policy” during the Arab Spring. Turkey tried to brand itself as the nation protecting victims and leader of the region.
How will Arab societies react when Turkey plays a more active political role? The world has to understand that Turkey and the Arab nations are different in terms of culture, traditions, values, and history. Turks are not Arabs. The only thing they have in common with the Arabs is the Islamic religion. Support for a Neo- Ottomanism is very sensitive especially when historical nationalist sentiment is mixed with oil-related aspirations. Not many Arabs liked the Ottoman Empire, and Arab nationalists retain a deep anti-Turkish bias because under the Ottoman rulers, the Ottoman Muslims were powerful, and the Caliph was transformed from Mecca to Istanbul. The center of power was in the hands of the Turks, and many Wahhabis did not like it. That is why they even took side with Western countries to fight against the Ottoman Empire.
The only thing that lets the Saudis support Turkey as the leader in the Middle East is that Turkey has a strong military, economy, and nationalism, and this combination could prevent leadership from falling into the hands of Iran, which is mostly Shia Muslim. That is why the current government and its strong cooperation with the Turkish Islamic missionary movement – the Gülen Movement – has made a concerted effort to target the Turkish secular institutions – such as the media, justice system, intelligence agencies and businesses – in order to realize the dream of Ottomanism and return Turkey to its Muslim imperialist past. Neo – Ottomanism argues that Turkey’s imperial Islamic legacy opens the door for a less ethnic concept of Turkishness; in other words, Neo- Ottomanism wishes to embrace the region with a multi-ethnic and cosmopolitan character of the states. In Turkey (Ummetcilik) Gülenists see Turkey as a regional superpower. It is a strategic vision and culture that reflects the geographic reach of the Ottoman Empire.
However, the oppression of the Kurdish minority under the current administration fails to prove this less ethnic concept but rather brings everybody under the tent of Islam with one identity; rather than ethnic identity, it celebrates religious identity. That is why Gulenists have opened schools all over the world.
I think it is important for the West and America to support a democratic model that will live up to standards of accountability, transparency, democracy, and the universal rule of law: not a one man law. Turkey should practice what it preaches. Democracy is not the law of the majority but the protection of the minority. I argue that Turkey cannot itself be a model when the process of nation building is not complete. Turkey today is a country where people live in fear and are divided socially, economically and ethnically. Generally, the main principles of democracy are the worth and dignity of the individual and equal rights for all. Turkey’s democracy is repressive in terms of the Kurdish minority and the separation of powers, basic human rights, freedom, social development and justice.
Today all of these are getting a lot less attention than they merit in that there is an on-going crackdown on the Kurds and the Kurdish Party, the BDP, which is a legal and democratically-elected party. Yet, the Turkish government, backed by the Islamic Missionary Gülen Movement, does not recognize the BDP as a legitimate party. Thousands of Kurdish politicians, journalists, intellectuals, lawyers, parliamentarians, and students have been arrested, and the majority of them have not committed any crime, but have been incarcerated just because they demand their basic rights and are opponents of the Gülenists’ nationalistic ideology and governmental policies; still, they have been treated as terrorists. Turkey is becoming an illiberal democracy with free elections but accompanied by a highly constrained capacity for freedom of speech, press, religion and opinion.The Syrian people are uprising because that is what Assad did to them, and now Erdogan’s regime is doing the same thing to its Kurdish people and to secularists as well. According to the rule of law, one is innocent until proven guilty. In Turkey under the current government, people are treated as guilty until proven innocent.
This is not going to be the first time America will ignore the democratic principles by supporting Turkey to be the model in the region. In the past the West, led by America, supported three military coups in Turkey. Turkey has been a NATO member since 1952, yet military intervention was tolerated in the interest of stability. As Turkey’s strategic importance grows, the quality and importance of the democratic principles have been increasingly ignored. The quality of Turkey’s model of democracy risks being overshadowed by the carefully crafted image of a democratic Turkey. There are two model options for the West to implement: the liberal, Islamic model of Turkey on the one hand and the conservative, Islamic model of Iran on the other. However, I should remind my Western and American policy-makers, that the Prime Minister of Turkey, Erdogan himself, said that a Muslim cannot be secular and at the same time be a devoted Muslim: either you are a Muslim or not a Muslim. So there is no such sect as a liberal Islam, a secular Islam, or a conservative Islam. Islam is Islam. Because the Ottoman legacy implies not only a desire for playing a primary role in world politics but also an approach that focuses on the Islamic identity while still recognizing other identities as well, in the end still your Islamic identity is supreme.
The rise of the Islamic movement (the Gülen Movement) pushes Turkey to play the role of a regional power with global aspirations. The current AKP party, backed by the Islamic movement, sees this as a historic transformation of the global world order and wants Turkey to be a part of the game, globally and regionally. Perhaps the previous world order has been a colonial order, and Muslims have always been excluded, but this time they do not want to be left out. Instead they want to be a part of the game and want to play by their own rules. That is why Turkey has a very assertive policy toward the Arab Spring. Turkey ‘s new Islamic movement believes that the Ottoman Empire ruled the region and a large part of the world for several centuries without any trouble and thus advocates the return of that system.
According to the new Islamic missionary movement, Turkey has geopolitical responsibilities to its neighbors in Central Asia, the Middle East, the Balkans, and the Caucasus; even Afghanistan expects a leadership role from Turkey. It is no surprise that President Obama can count the Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, among his favorite leaders and spends more time speaking on the phone with Erdogan than with any other leader ensuring that cooperation between Turkey and America is better than ever.
Not a long time ago Turkey was against the U.S. policy of sanctions on Iran and did not listen to America but continued to increase its economic trade between Iran and Turkey. Now, however, Turkey is siding with the West and America, tightening curbs against Iran. Turkey is supporting Syrian opposition groups and hosting the Friend of Syria Conference to hasten Assad’s downfall. Turkey is even considering that Hamas’s political base in Syria be moved to Turkey, in order to become a model for the rest of the region.
But Turkey needs to improve its domestic authority, basing it on constitutional democratic principles, such as human rights, freedom of speech and freedom of the press. Its treatment of the Kurdish problem has been the biggest obstacle to it becoming a leader and a model in the region. Turkey can only become a model for its neighbors when it is at peace with itself. Oppression does not endure. Justice, equal rights for all, and righteousness do.
Dr. Aland Mizell is with the University of Mindanao School of Social Science, President of the MCI and a regular contributor to The Kurdistan Tribune, Kurdishaspect.com and Kurdish Media.You may email the author at:aland_mizell2@hotmail.com
