The struggle for Turkey

[Al-khiyal]

Headscarf versus bikini is just one of the conflicts causing political turmoil in Turkey. Power and class count too, reports Peter Beaumont, Foreign Affairs Editor, in Istanbul:

On busy Istiklal Avenue in Istanbul's Beyoglu district, the paradox of Turkey in the 21st century is played out. Two women - one in early middle age, one younger - emerge from a shop with a provocative lingerie window display. Both wear the headscarves and long skirts denoting them as conservative and observant followers of Islam.

In the suburbs of featureless apartment houses that radiate for tens of kilometres out from the city centre, five-storey-high billboards depict models in underwear and bikinis. A steady stream of women with covered hair pass beneath the hoardings clutching shopping bags and children, oblivious to the half-naked women.

On 22 July, when Turkey votes in early elections called to defuse the dangerous political and constitutional crisis that threatened last week to overwhelm the Turkish state, this contrast between the headscarf and the free, modern woman will again be pushed to the fore of the country's debate.

And once again it will be deeply misleading. The confrontation of the past few weeks over whether Abdullah Gul - minister in the government of the moderate Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP), led by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan - should be appointed President, touches on the country's deepest fault lines. And they are as much social as religious.

It is a crisis where symbols like the headscarf and the billboard images matter as much as the reality of modern Turkish life. The recent crisis has pitted Turkey's secular opposition, which controls the judiciary, military, bureaucracy - and until now the presidency - against an AKP accused of allowing Islamisation of the state by the back door, with the question of who should be president as the key trigger.

Turkey's powerful army threatened to intervene in that argument last weekend on the side of the opposition to block the entrance of Gul and his headscarfed wife into Ankara's presidential palace.

Then, amid warnings of the risk of 'conflict' by the main opposition leader, Deniz Baykal of the Republican People's Party, the constitutional court intervened to annul Gul's appointment after the opposition boycotted parliament over the vote for Gul's selection.

But the truth of what has happened is not so easily corralled. The conflict has been as much about political power and class as it has been about Islam. The simple version paints out inconvenient facts: Erdogan's avowed support for secularism, an AKP whose leadership rejects the label of Islamist, and a programme dedicated to gaining EU membership and attracting foreign investment.

But underpinning this confrontation is something more mundane. It is the fear of the wealthy, highly educated and westernised elite that has traditionally run Turkey - and who are secular - of being pushed aside by a newly-powerful group made up of the urban poor and the lower-middle classes, a group that is conservative and religiously observant.

An explanation of Turkey's confrontation can be discerned in the vast modern suburbs that in 40 years have vastly increased the footprint of Istanbul. Whole villages have moved from the country to occupy fast-build apartment blocks. In these blocks lives a new Turkey in competition with the old. It is the constituency of parties such as the AKP.

'What we have seen over the past few weeks has been deeply undemocratic,' says Ihsan Dagi, a columnist on the Zaman newspaper, and a professor at the Middle East Technical University in Ankara. 'We have seen the [secular] opposition say: "We cannot elect a President because the parliament is controlled by the AKP." And the Turkish establishment does not want that. So they boycotted the vote. They changed the rules of the game under the shadow of a military threat to intervene.

'But the crisis has not gone away. The AKP is likely to increase its share of the vote from 30 to 35 or even 40 per cent in general election in July. That means there is a good chance they can achieve a quorum of 367 seats in the parliament and pick their own candidate for the presidency anyway.'

Dagi is dubious that Turkey is undergoing the process of radical Islamisation. He believes the real issue is the 'visibility' of those once on the periphery of Turkish economic and political life, which is alarming the elites who identify most closely with the secularist ideals of modern Turkey's founder, Kemal Ataturk.

'Islamic groups have become part of Turkey's political and social modernity, but the centre is still pushing hard to exclude them. Even the increased visibility of headscarves is indicative that Turkish women from disadvantaged backgrounds are getting better access to Turkey's social space. It is not a challenge to republicanism but a victory for it.' It is an argument supported by recent polling by the research institute Tesev, which showed 22 per cent of Turks polled felt secularism was in danger. Only 8 per cent declared themselves in favour of an Islamic state.

The same research established that the more wealthy and educated the respondent, the greater was the fear of threat to secularism. Even staunch defenders of secularism such as Dr Nilufer Narli, who has made a study of Islamist movements and fears their influence in Turkey, concedes that there is something far more complex going on in issues such as the increased visibility of the headscarf.

While Narli remains concerned by what she believes is the gradual encroachments of Islam into the state, she admits the transformation may be as much about social change as religion. 'What we have seen is a huge expansion in the diversity of the lower middle classes,' she says. 'We have seen a large influx of small and medium-size business owners into the cities from Anatolia - families that are religiously conservative. And they have been one of the main beneficiaries of the present buoyant economy [an economy averaging 7 per cent growth since the government was elected].' Narli has noted too a transformation in social habits of religiously observant women. 'It used to be that you would see headscarves being worn by women who were part of the urban or rural poor and they were a kind of uniform with the long coat that hid the body. Now you see many styles, women in headscarves wearing make-up and tightly fitted clothes. It is part of the increased social mobility that has occurred.'

All of which leads to a critical question: whether Turkey is being Islamised or whether Muslims in Turkey from once poor and ill-educated families are being modernised.

It is a conundrum that is reflected in the figure of Gul himself, a man whose background is in political Islam. Remarks he made to the Guardian in 1995 about wanting 'to end secularism' have been widely quoted by those opposing his presidency. But in 1997 Gul told the US paper the Christian Science Monitor he envisioned the 'Islamic head scarf and the miniskirt walking hand in hand'.

But the AKP has not always conducted itself in a way calculated to reassure the secular. In 2005 there was an attempt to recriminalise adultery, seen off by democratic debate. There was also a botched appointment to the Central Bank of a man with an Islamic banking background, leading to suspicions the AKP was monopolising all the key posts - although nepotism is hardly unique in Turkish politics.

But another question remains: whether an army that has intervened to oust governments four times since 1960, most recently in 1997, that has declared itself hostile to Islamisation and sees itself as Turkey's 'saviour' in times of strife, can refrain from intervening.

'We Turks like the army in some circumstances and hate them in others,' says Salih Erturk, 25, a salesman in the Robinson Crusoe bookstore, who allies himself with the left. 'When there is a feeling it is interfering we don't like it. But still there is a general feeling too that the army is the one that saves us.'


Secular history

· Turkey's first President, in 1923, was Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who founded the republic from the Anatolian remnants of the defeated Ottoman empire, creating a democracy based on western ideals of governance.

· The constitution forbids religious laws from dominating government and society and requires that the state and religion be separated.

· St Nicholas, Santa Claus, was born in Demre, on the Mediterranean coast. Homer placed Troy in Turkey and Noah's Ark is said to have landed on Mt Ararat.

· Turkey has been in Nato since 1952. Since 2005, it has been in accession negotiations with the EU.

· Population is 71.5 million, 99 per cent of whom are Muslim, most of them Sunni.

Behind the billboard lies the true struggle for Turkey

[Al-khiyal]

May 6, 2007 -- During a press conference in Ankara, Turkish Minister for Foreign affairs, Abdullah Gùl officially withdrew from Turkey’s presidential election race.

Abdullah Gùl's party failed to secure a quorum in parliament.

Turkey has been rocked by the presidential poll standoff, an army threat to intervene and an anti-government rally of up to one million people.

The army, which sees itself as the final guarantor of the secular state, has ousted four governments in the past 50 years, most recently in 1997 when it acted against a cabinet in which Gul served.

Turkish elections: Abdullah Gùl withdraws

[Al-khiyal]

Turkey's foreign minister abandoned his bid to become president yesterday after an opposition boycott ensured that for the second time the vote in parliament fell short of the two-thirds a court has declared necessary for a quorum.

The candidacy of Abdullah Gul, a former Islamist whose wife wears a headscarf, had sparked a crisis, with the army threatening to intervene and secularists staging one of their biggest demonstrations in Istanbul last Sunday.

Turkey's constitutional court sided with the secularists, declaring a first presidential vote by the parliament, held on April 27, void after fewer than 367 deputies attended.

Mr Gul, a last-minute compromise stand-in for his prime minister, Tayyip Erdogan, always wanted the post of prime minister more than the largely ceremonial presidency. The failure of his bid nonetheless represents a victory for Turkey's secular establishment, which had claimed that Mr Gul's self-styled Muslim Democrat party planned to impose its conservative way of life on the country.

But with general elections brought forward from November to July 22 after the decision of the constitutional court, ending Mr Gul's bid is unlikely to end the polarisation of Turkish society. The main opposition party has already vowed to block a government attempt to change the constitution to have the president to be elected directly by the people, rather than by MPs.

The government came to power in 2002 and led arguably the most rapid period of liberal reform in Turkey's history. But as political debate focuses on the perceived menace to secularism, Turkey's ongoing European Union accession process has been all but forgotten.

It is an atmosphere suited more to the extremes than the centre, analysts argue. Two centre-right parties joined up on Saturday to increase their chances of getting the 10% of votes necessary to qualify for parliament.

It remains to be seen whether Turkey's notoriously fractious left will do the same. Calls for a leftwing coalition were widespread on Saturday when more than 10,000 secularists gathered for protests in the western Turkish towns of Canakkale and Manisa.

Gul abandons presidential bid in face of second boycott

[Al-khiyal]

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) - Turkey's Islamic-rooted government, whose presidential candidate dropped his bid in the face of protests from pro-secular lawmakers, pushed on Monday for a constitutional amendment that allows the president to be elected in a popular vote rather than in a parliamentary poll.

The withdrawal of Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul's candidacy for the presidency on Sunday was a new defeat for the government, which had to call for early general elections in a standoff that has exposed a deepening divide between the government and its opponents. Secularism is enshrined in the Constitution and fiercely guarded by the judiciary and the powerful military.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan planned to overcome the deadlock in Parliament with a constitutional amendment that would require a popular vote for president. Parliament began debating the proposal and could hold the first round of voting on the measure on Monday.

"Parliament is deadlocked. The correct thing now is for the people to elect'' the new president themselves, Gul said as he dropped his candidacy on Sunday.

Parliament needed two-thirds quorum to vote on Gul, the only candidate in the running. The vote was a repeat of a first round that the Constitutional Court - siding with the secular opposition - invalidated last week because Parliament failed to reach quorum.

But legislators from the secular party, which also boycotted the first round vote, stayed away Sunday as well, and Parliament was short of the 367 legislators needed to press ahead with the poll.

A small conservative party has declared support for the government's proposal to allow a popular vote for president - a post that carries the veto power over legislation.

The proposed amendment includes reducing the presidential term from seven years to five, allowing the president to stand for re-election, holding general elections every four years instead of five and reducing the number of lawmakers for a quorum to 184 for a vote on any legislation in Parliament.

Legislators from Erdogan's party have said if the amendment is passed this week, Turkey could hold both general and presidential elections on July 22.

However, the current president, Ahmet Necdet Sezer has the power to veto the amendment and could even call for a referendum on the measure.

Sezer has publicly shared his concerns over the government's attempts to raise the profile of Islam in daily life in the country. The military also stepped into the debate, threatening to intervene to ensure that secularism is enforced.

Erdogan's party is an advocate of European Union membership that has done more than many other governments to introduce Western reforms to Turkey. It denies the label "Islamist.''

"We have worked harder than any party in Turkey's history to make Turkey a member of the EU,'' Gul told Newsweek magazine in the May 14 issue. "Why would we do this if we are trying to Islamize Turkey?''

Secularists fear that if a president with Islamist leanings is elected to the prestigious post, that would allow the ruling party to expand its control and impose religion on society.

Hundreds of thousands took to the streets in Turkish cities in recent weeks to protest the government for nominating a politician with Islamic leanings as president. Another large demonstration was scheduled for Sunday in the western city of Izmir.

Turkish government seeks popular vote

[voltaire]

To be honest, if it results in a law change whereby the president gets a popular mandate from the people rather than a mandate just from Parliament, then that's probably a good thing. And as long as the army don't intervene, those protestors are also well within their rights.



V

[Al-khiyal]

ANKARA, May 7 (KUNA) -- The Turkish Parliament started on Monday discussions on a proposal by the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) on amending the constitution to have the country's president elected directly by voters and not by legislators. AKP candidate for president, Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul, has failed Sunday for the second time to win the "president" as a quorum of 367 legislators did not attend since the opposition parties' boycotted the parliamentary vote. Gul opted for withdrawal.

Gul said that he had withdrawn as there was no use carrying on especially as the opposition parties insisted on boycotting the vote. He criticized them for their absence, an act not fit for democracy not decent politics.

He added that he abandoned the candidacy for president and that it would be up to the people to decide.

Gul's nomination for the post had triggered a political crisis in Turkey between liberals and the Islamic parties due to the fear that an "Islamist" would be at the helm.

However, Gul's withdrawal is not the end, but the start of a wider conflict as the political parties have prepared themselves to compete with the AK Party which enjoys highest rates of popularity.

The AKP believes that amending the constitution would help their candidate to be the President due to Party's popularity among Islamists and moderates.

Analysts believe Gul has realized a victory through withdrawal because it will make him gain more popularity together with his party in the forthcoming early elections. To them he has been exposed to prejudice just because he is a Muslim and his wife wears a Hijab.

Turkish MPs discuss AKP proposal for presidential direct vote

[sania]

It is a great thing to see a country is divided in its opinion whether their government should be secular or not.

It is the greatness of democracy that so many people are free to express their opinion openly for and against it.
Without interference of the govt. and peacefully.

I wish such a freedom is made available in all Islamic countries as well.
What will happen then..?