Turkey Decides

One of the best-selling books in Turkey in the past few years was one in which Washington DC is destroyed in a nuclear explosion caused not by an Islamist radical, but by a Turkish military intelligence officer desperate to save his country from US occupation. Metal Fırtına (Metal Storm) by science fiction writer Orkun Ucar and journalist Burak Turna, is a near-future political thriller in which the United States, fresh from its occupation of Iraq, invades its NATO ally Turkey. The heroes of the book include the country’s present Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and the armed forces General Staff, who work together to pull political and diplomatic victory out of military defeat. Yet the real-world political crisis gripping Turkey today sets Mr. Erdogan and the military on a dangerous collision course. Americans need to pay attention.

On my last visit to Turkey in 2005 Metal Fırtına seemed to be everywhere—in the headlines as much as the bookstores—as the country’s intellectual elite agonized over the chauvinist mood that seemed to have swept the country. There were many flag-waving demonstrations in response to perceived insults to ‘Turkishness,’ be they from Kurdish youths demonstrating in the streets, or writers addressing the massacre of Armenians in the dying days of the Ottoman Empire. Fast forward to 2007, the year in which the events of Metal Fırtına are set. Turkey’s streets are full of demonstrators once more. In January, thousands marched in Istanbul in solidarity with the murdered Armenian journalist (and patriotic Turkish citizen) Hrant Dink. In late April, hundreds of thousands demonstrated in Istanbul ‘to defend secularism.’ And on May 1^st almost 600 supporters of Turkey’s labor movement were arrested as thousands tried to rally in Istanbul’s Taksim Square. The present crisis goes beyond party politics. What is at stake is the nature of the Republic. The ruling Justice and Development Party’s candidate, Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul, secured 357 out of 361 votes cast by members of the People’s Assembly in the first round of the presidential election. Mr. Gul’s center-right party (known by its Turkish initials AKP) has been in government since 2002. In government, but not fully in power. For while sovereignty rests with the National Assembly, any government serves only at the pleasure of the military, the self-appointed guardians of the principles of the Republic founded by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in 1924, who have intervened in politics with coups in 1960, 1971, and 1980, and by pressuring an Islamist cabinet to resign in 1997. The military warned that it had concerns about the election. The Constitutional Court, at the request of the main secularist opposition party, then annulled the vote.

The AKP represents Islamist politics of a peculiarly Turkish kind, a fusion labelled by some ‘Muslim Democracy.’ The party is socially conservative, but has not pushed an overtly Islamist agenda. It has frequently stated its commitment to the principles of the Constitution, including Ataturk’s version of secularism. It has presided over a period of successful economic reform, the revitalization of Turkey’s commercial and cultural capital, Istanbul, and some tough but broadly positive negotiations with the European Union about Turkey’s eventual membership. Mr. Gul has led those negotiations, and was put forward for the presidency as being less controversial than Mr. Erdogan, less likely to provoke the military to intervene. And yet here we are again.

Mr. Erdogan responded to the setback in combative form, calling on the Assembly to approve early elections and setting out a package of constitutional reforms including making the Presidency directly elected by popular vote. The Assembly elections may show that Mr Erdogan represents the majority of his country rather better than do the opposition and the senior ranks of the military. They may not: uncertainty is the essence of democracy. The AKP is not the enemy of democracy, nor of the West, nor of Ataturk’s Republic. We must hope that if Mr Erdogan wins a new mandate, Turkey will show itself to be a mature democratic republic rather than lapsing back into the pattern of periodic crises and military interventions that has marred past decades.