Turkey’s Political Crisis
July 16th, 2008 by Adam
In their RAND report entitled “The Rise of Political Islam in Turkey” Angel Rabasa and F. Stephen Larrabee argue that Turkey’s political crisis is a struggle between the secular elite and previously marginalized social groups. Turkey’s staunch secularists fear that the AKP’s broad political support will shift the balance of power towards civilian government and gradually lead to their political marginalization.
On a related note, Helle Dale in the Washington Times writes that the crisis threatens any chance of Turkish EU membership. Dale says the EU’s failure to engage Turkey and cement its ties to Europe can be blamed for contributing to the crisis.
Posted in EU, Political Islam, Secularism, Turkey |
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Leave a Reply
July 16th, 2008 at 10:58 am
Important analysis. we posted something similar earlier this week.
Best, Michael (see also http://www.demdigest.net/blog/?s=Turkey )
Turkey’s politically tumultuous year has been marked by growing tensions and debates. But it is inaccurate to characterize the divisions as Islamist vs. secularist, suggests a new analysis. The struggle is really between the center and the periphery, or the secularized elite and hitherto-excluded social groups, argue Angel Rabasa and F. Stephen Larrabee in a RAND report on The Rise of Political Islam in Turkey.
The ruling AK party has undergone “an important ideological transformation”, the authors note, with the result that “while the AKP has Islamic roots, it enjoys broad-based political support that transcends religious, class and regional differences.” A scenario of “creeping Islamization” cannot be wholly dismissed, but Turkey’s political evolution is too strategically significant to readily dismiss the prospect of reconciling its “recessed” Islamic politics with democracy.
The recent arrests of former military figures associated with Turkey’s “Deep State” has changed the political landscape in the country for good in favor of civilian supremacy in the balance of power,” according to political scientist Soli Ozel of Istanbul’s Bilgi University.
If the AKP wins the current contest, Turkey will not become a Shariah state, says Soner Cagaptay, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, but he fears it could become less tolerant and liberal, and feature a new, intimate religion-state relationship. “Islam will dominate politics and education and will shape the government’s administrative actions — such as curtailing women’s employment and the issuance of alcohol licenses,” he argues. Turkey “will be less like secular, liberal-democratic Italy and more like authoritarian, semisecular Jordan.”