Turkey and Democracy

Turkey is in upheaval. The selection of a conservative President by the Turkish Parliament that is dominated by the conservative, AK party has raised, yet again, concerns in Turkey’s secular future.

The AK Party is dominated by conservative Islamists. They are the equivalent of our Christian Coalition. For those who don’t understand how this works, the President of the Turkish Republic is chosen by Parliament. The President has veto power over parliamentary resolutions. The current president, Ahmet Necdet Sezer, is a strict secularist. He has blocked many of the most conservative (i.e. Islamist) proposals to come out of the Parliament. This has actually worked out well for Erdogan. He can claim credit for many reforms that have help build up the Turkish economy. Of course, many of these reforms have been made under pressure from the EU and U.S.

The concern now is that if the Parliament selects a conservative Prime Minister, that the checks and balances of the system will be under threat. Who will stop the Islamist tide that seems to be threatening Turkish shores? Well, in Turkish history it has always been the military. In fact in Turkey, the military has always protected the Turkish state from itself. This is why many Turks support and trust the military. In this case, the military threatened Erdogan, telling him that if he ran, they would put a stop to it. Erdogan decided to get around them by putting up a soft-spoken, conservative diplomat. That hasn’t worked.

Over the weekend, there were huge anti-government demonstrations in the streets of Turkey’s cities. Today, Turkish police broke up May 1 demonstrations, arresting some 600 people, most of them leftists. At the same time, The Turkish Constitutional Court ruled that the election of Abdullah Gul to the presidency was unconstitutional because there were not enough participants in the election. This is a binding decision. So now, one of two things will have to happen. 1) Erdogan will have to call general elections 2) He will have to find a compromise candidate. He will end up taking the first option.

I am very interested to see how this plays out. Turkey is struggling now with deep riffs between secularists and Islamists, with globalization, modernization and cultural preservation. It is struggling to maintain its secular, westernized democracy. It straddles East and West. And as such, its East is very conservative, underdeveloped, and rural while its West is very modern, European, and wealthy. With insecurity on nearly all its borders, it is a nation that is trying to strike a very delicate balance. Many from Turkey tell me that the U.S. picks the Prime Minister. They tell me that this conservative party was supported by the U.S. embassy who wanted to create a model of an Islamic democracy. I am sure it comported well with the value system of this Administration as well. The result has been instability. Its success or lack thereof will have some interesting ramifications for US foreign policy and strategic interests.