Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Will Turkey become the new Pakistan?

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • Will Turkey become the new Pakistan?

    Will Turkey become the new Pakistan?

    Dr. Can Erimtan is an independent scholar residing in Ä°stanbul, with a
    wide interest in the politics, history and culture of the Balkans and
    the Greater Middle East. He tweets at @theerimtanangle

    Published time: February 21, 2014 12:47

    Protesters shout slogans as they try to march towards Turkish
    Parliament during a protest against Turkey's ruling Ak Party (AKP) and
    Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara February 13, 2014
    (Reuters/Umit Bektas)


    Culture, History, Pakistan, Politics,Religion, Turkey

    As Turkey is now slowly approaching the first centenary of the
    Republic's foundation on 29 October 1923, some critics appear to fear
    that the country has assumed an outlook most incongruous with the
    legacy of Atatürk.

    And it is true that ever since the Justice and Development Party (AKP)
    assumed the reins of power in the country, Turkey has moved into a
    distinct post-Kemalist era. Following decades of Kemalist
    indoctrination and a seeming hostility towards Islam, the nation is
    now going through a "process of completing its normalization," as
    voiced by Taha Ã-zhan, the Director General of the Ankara-based
    non-profit research institute SETA (or Foundation for Political,
    Economic, and Social Research).

    Kemalism" is the `ideas and principles of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the
    founder and first president of the Turkish Republic.' From The Oxford
    Encyclopedia of the Islamic World

    Ã-zhan sees the overtly Islamic AKP as a political power that is
    forcibly taking Turkey into new waters, where a pious population is
    made to feel at ease with the government machinery that had previously
    appeared to be in direct opposition to the population's deep and
    heartfelt attachment to Islam and its values. As such, throughout the
    1920s and 30s "the ideological position of Turkish nationalism in the
    guise of the political doctrine of Kemalism was meant to replace the
    religion of Islam as the binding force fashioning a unitary and
    homogeneous state."

    Turkey's Westward road

    The many ethnic groups making up Anatolia's Muslim population `
    according to the Prime Minister Recep Tayyip ErdoÄ?an Turkey's
    population consists of "36 ethnic elements" ` are all united under the
    banner of Turkish nationalism in the Kemalist nation state. The late
    19th and early 20th century Ottoman state, the Turkish Republic's
    direct precursor, had attempted to accommodate the many Muslim
    refugees fleeing persecution from the Russian Empire and the Balkans
    on Anatolian soil, the Ottoman heartland. This exercise in social
    engineering saw the dispersal of the Christian minorities living in
    Anatolia only to be replaced by Muslim newcomers. The ideological
    stance of Ottomanism provided a new identity to the newly arrived
    settlers, who were united in their allegiance to the Ottoman
    Sultan-Caliph, the nominal head of all (Sunni) Muslims worldwide.
    Following the end of the Great War (1918) and the successful War of
    Resistance (1922), Mustafa Kemal Pasha sent a delegation to Lausanne
    to conduct peace negotiations. The subsequent treaty, signed on 24
    July 1923, led to the formation of the state of Turkey on Anatolian
    soil ` the name Turkey having been in use throughout the 19th century
    to refer to the Ottoman Empire. And the earlier results of the
    Ottoman-directed exercises in social engineering were all but
    confirmed by the treaty and the population exchange between Greece and
    Turkey, forcibly evicting and relocating Christians and Muslims and
    leading to the fact that by 1927 a staggering 97.4 percent of Turkey's
    population was Muslim (the statistic today proclaims 99.9 percent of
    Turks are Muslim).

    As a result, the population of Anatolia emerged as an almost
    completely Islamic entity. But rather than identify themselves as
    Anatolian Muslims, Kemalist indoctrination and social engineering
    turned these Republican inhabitants into Turks, with their allegiance
    to Islam actually constituting their common bond.

    The stipulations of the Treaty of Lausanne, in conjunction with the
    abolition of the Ottoman Sultanate (1922) and Caliphate (1924), meant
    that the Republic of Turkey developed into a modern nation state
    oriented towards the West. The Kemalist reform policies cut off
    modernized Turkey from its erstwhile Ottoman hinterland and Muslim
    neighbors. The Kemalist experiment transformed the Anatolian
    population, the Turkish citizens in other words, into a people cut off
    from their Islamic past, with access only granted to academic
    historians able to read the Arabic alphabet.

    The new westward orientation of the country was made visible by means
    of the so-called Language Reform (1928), which saw the introduction of
    a new Latin-based script. The new Republic ensured that the
    traditional Islamic power class no longer wielded any power ` creating
    the Directorate of Religious Affairs (1924), as an aggregate to the
    office of the Prime Minister, to control the religious institutions of
    the country. As a nation state, deprived of its erstwhile Islamic
    provinces and dependencies, the Islam practiced in Turkey became
    focused on the population of the territories granted in the Treaty of
    Lausanne. Whereas previously, the Ottoman sultans wielded nominal
    power over all (Sunni) Muslim peoples, the Republic's government only
    held sway over Turkey and the Directorate of Religious Affairs, in
    turn, only provided for the needs of the Turkish believers.

    Turkey's Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan (Reuters)

    `Reapplying Islam' in the 21st century

    At the moment, the AKP-led government appears to be pursuing a policy
    which all but strengthens the Anatolian population's Muslim identity
    at the expense of their "common" Turkish character. Efforts to solve
    the Kurdish Issue appear to underline this development.

    The fact that Tayyip Erdogan's AKP-led government is currently
    developing policies that would strengthen the Turks' rediscovery of
    their Islamic heritage is illustrated by the budget passed for the
    fiscal year 2014. The money allocated to the Directorate of Religious
    Affairs has increased by 18.2 percent; the Directorate of Religious
    Affairs will receive around $2.5 billion, compared to the Ministry of
    the Interior with $1.6 billion and the Ministry of Health with $1.1
    billion.

    The budget passed for the year 2014 does seem to stress that Erdogan's
    government is at pains to provide for the spiritual and physical
    health of the Turkish citizenry, as befits the Muslim nanny stateI
    talked about earlier.

    When the Kemalist regime abolished the Caliphate, it also ended the
    office of the Chief Mufti and replaced the Shariah with the new
    Turkish Civil Code (Türk Medeni Kanunu) in 1926, which was adopted
    from the Swiss Civil Code of 1907. Many in Turkey now fear a creeping
    return to a more Islamic approach to law and civil rights.

    On a purely academic level, the current government, employing the
    offices of the Committee for Higher Education, ensured in August 2013
    that theology faculties will in future only teach Islam and Islamic
    scholarship to their students. Whereas previously, Turkish theology
    students also became well-versed in religious studies and even
    philosophy, psychology and sociology; new candidates will only receive
    a strict Islamic education ` one that even excludes the beliefs and
    teachings of the Alevi minority in Turkey.

    Recently, Hayrettin Karaman, a highly respected theology professor
    known for his close ties to the Prime Minister, published a telling
    article in the pro-government paper, Yeni Safak, somewhat reflecting
    the government's thinking. Karaman writes that pious believers in
    Turkey do not want full"integration with the EU," nor do they wish to
    "replace" their "own pure and high civilization" with that of the
    "West," regarding this as an "issue of faith."

    These words appear as a clear challenge to the Kemalist credo, which
    sees the Muslim Turk as an integral part of the civilization of Europe
    and the West. As such, Karaman even takes his anti-nationalist stance
    a whole lot further, declaring that these unnamed pious believers
    regard the"human element [living] within the national borders [of
    Turkey, in other words, Turkish citizens or Turks] as an indispensable
    part of the great Islamic ummah [or community of believers]."

    The Islamic thinker, Hayrettin Karaman, should not be understood as an
    obscurantist advocating the return to some kind of idealized Islamic
    past. Instead Karaman is a person totally at ease with today's world
    and enjoying the benefits of 21st-century science and technology. On
    the internet, for instance, he has a very distinct presence. His
    personal website contains over 3,500 individual webpages and provides
    online access to 15 of his books. In addition, his website also
    provides access to his articles published in various newspapers and
    periodicals.

    Riot police use tear gas and water canon to disperse protesters as
    they try to march to the parliament during a protest against Turkey's
    ruling Ak Party (AKP) and Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara
    February 13, 2014. (Reuters)

    Karaman does not promote a return to the past; instead he lives and
    works in the here and now. As such, Karaman resembles the Pakistani
    writer Mawlana Abul Ala Mawdudi (1903-79). As a Muslim who witnessed
    the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the abject failure of the Indian
    Khilafat Movement, in his writings, Mawdudi "provided Islamic
    responses, ideological and organizational, to modern society," as
    worded by American professor of International Affairs and Islamic
    Studies, John Esposito. In his analysis of the Pakistani thinker,
    Esposito explains further that Mawdudi saw"the West ... [as] a
    political and economic but also a cultural threat to Muslim
    societies," that Abul Ala Mawdudi was a thinker who "self-consciously
    reapplied Islamic sources and beliefs, reinterpreting them to address
    modern realities."

    He put his thoughts into practice in 1941, founding the
    Jamaat-e-Islami in Lahore, in then-British India. Following
    independence and partition, Mawdudi and his Jamaat moved to West
    Pakistan. As an organization, the Jamaat maintains close ties with
    international Muslim activist groups, such as the Muslim Brotherhood.
    Mawdudi's organization aims at the establishment of an Islamic state,
    governed by the Shariah, but maintains that democracy is understood as
    an integral part of Islamic political ideals. When General Muhammad
    Zia-ul-Haq organized a coup in Pakistan on 5 July 1977, Mawdudi's
    ideals arguably provided the basis for the general's subsequent
    thorough Islamization of Pakistani society. Still, the left-liberal
    Pakistani journalist, Nadeem Paracha, maintains that General Zia
    actually "exploited" what he calls 'Maududi-ism' "as a way to deflect,
    deflate and denounce any other form of Islamic reformism."

    The parallels outlined above could very well lead some critics of the
    Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan to assume that the future of Turkey
    appears predicated upon earlier events in Pakistan. Could it be that
    Turkey's Directorate of Religious Affairs and certain trusted
    faculties of theology are now in the process of formulating a Turkish
    form of Maududi-ism? Thinkers like Hayrettin Karaman are able to
    provide Turkey's current government with academic and legalistic
    ammunition to enact a wholesale shift in Turkish policy-making, thus
    paving the way for the Republic of Turkey to look like another version
    of Pakistan transported to the western edge of Asia.

    The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely
    those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.

    http://rt.com/op-edge/turkey-to-become-new-pakistan-099/

Working...
X