Date: October 24, 2006 11:49:17 AM PDT
Subject: [SPY NEWS] Fwd: M. Rubin in Wall St. Journal: "Mr. Erdogan's Turkey"
*MEF News Mailing List*
October 24, 2006
"Mr. Erdogan's Turkey"
*by Michael Rubin
/Wall Street Journal/
October 19, 2006
Five years into the war on terror, inept U.S. diplomacy risks
undercutting a key democracy (and ally) that President Bush once called
a model for the Muslim world. The future of Turkey as a secular,
Western-oriented state is at risk. Just as in Gaza and Lebanon, the
threat comes from parties using the rhetoric of democracy to advance
distinctly undemocratic agendas. Turkey has overcome past challenges
from terrorism and radical Islam; always its system has persevered. But
now, as Turkish politicians and officials work to defend the Turkish
constitution, U.S. diplomats interfere to dismiss Turkish concerns and
downplay the Islamist threat.
A crisis has simmered for months, but earlier this month Ankara erupted.
On Oct. 1, President Ahmet Necdet Sezer warned parliament, "The
fundamentalist threat has not changed its goal to change the basic
characteristics of the state." The next day, as Prime Minister Recep
Tayyip Erdogan visited the Oval Office, Gen. Yasar Büyükanit, chief of
Turkey's armed forces, warned cadets of growing Islamic fundamentalism
and promised "every measure will be taken against it." Usually such
warnings are enough to keep those transgressing on the constitutional
separation of mosque and state in check.
Enter U.S. Ambassador Ross Wilson. At an Oct. 4 press conference he
said: "There is nothing that worries me with regards to Turkey's
continuation as a strong, secure, stable and secular democracy." He
dismissed opposition concern about the Islamism of Mr. Erdogan's ruling
Justice and Development Party (known in Turkish as the AKP) as
"political cacophony." His remarks were consistent with those of his
State Department superiors. Last autumn, Daniel Fried, assistant
secretary of state for European Affairs, said "The development of the
AKP into a democratic party . . . has mirrored and supported the
development of Turkish political society as a whole in a liberal and
democratic direction." He described the AKP as "a kind of Muslim version
of a Christian Democratic Party."
Why are so many Turks angry at Washington's dismissal of their concerns?
While democrats fight for change within a system, Islamists seek to
alter the system itself. This has been the case with the AKP. Over the
party's four-year tenure, Mr. Erdogan has spoken of democracy, tolerance
and liberalism, but waged a slow and steady assault on the system. He
endorsed, for example, the dream of Turkey's secular elite to enter the
European Union, but only to embrace reforms diluting the checks and
balances of military constitutional enforcement. After the European
Court of Human Rights upheld a ban on headscarves in public schools, he
changed course. "It is wrong that those who have no connection to this
field [of religion] make such a decision . . . without consulting
Islamic scholars," he declared. Then in May 2006, his chief negotiator
for accession talks ordered the removal, from a negotiating paper, of
reference to Turkey's educational system as secular.
The assault on the secular education system has been subtle but
effective. Traditionally, students had three choices: enroll at
religious academies (so-called Imam Hatips) and enter the clergy; learn
a trade at vocational schools; or matriculate at secular high schools,
attend university and pursue a career. Mr. Erdogan changed the system:
By equating Imam Hatip degrees with high-school degrees, he enabled
Islamist students to enter university and qualify for government jobs
without ever mastering Western fundamentals. He also sought to bypass
checks and balances. After the Higher Education Board composed of
university rectors rejected his demands to make universities more
welcoming of political Islam, the AKP-dominated parliament proposed to
establish 15 new universities. While Mr. Erdogan told diplomats his goal
was to promote education, Turkish academics say the move would enable
him to handpick rectors and swamp the board with political henchmen.
Such tactics have become commonplace. At Mr. Erdogan's insistence and
over the objections of many secularists, the AKP passed legislation to
lower the mandatory retirement age of technocrats. This could mean
replacement of nearly 4,000 out of 9,000 judges. Turks are suspicious
that the AKP seeks to curtail judicial independence. In May 2005, AKP
Parliamentary Speaker Bülent Arinç warned that the AKP might abolish the
constitutional court if its judges continued to hamper its legislation.
Mr. Erdogan's refusal to implement Supreme Court decisions levied
against his government underline his contempt for rule of law. Last May,
in the heat of the AKP's anti-judiciary rhetoric, an Islamist lawyer
protesting the headscarf ban shouted "Allahu Akbar," opened fire in the
Supreme Court and murdered a judge. Thousands attended his funeral,
chanting pro-secular slogans. Mr. Erdogan was absent from the ceremony.
There have been other subtle changes. Mr. Erdogan has replaced nearly
every member of the banking regulatory board with officials from the
Islamic banking sector. Accusations of Saudi capital subsidizing AKP are
rampant. According to Turkish Central Bank statistics, in the first six
months of this year, the net error -- money entering the Turkish economy
for which regulators cannot account -- has increased almost eightfold
compared to 2002, the year the AKP came to power. According to the
opposition parliamentary bloc, debt amassed under Mr. Erdogan's
administration is equal to total debt accrued in Turkey between 1970 and
2000. Erkan Mumcu, a former AKP minister who now heads the center-right
Motherland Party, accused the AKP in June of interfering in Central Bank
operations. Accordingly, President Bush's Oval Office statement, based
on State Department talking points -- congratulating "the prime minister
and his government for the economic reforms that have enabled the
Turkish economy to be strong" -- may have hampered transparency, if not
reform.
In the past year, the AKP anti-secular agenda has grown bolder. AKP-run
municipalities now ban alcohol. Turkish Airlines recently surveyed
employees about their attitudes toward the Quran. On July 11, Mr.
Erdogan publicly vouched for the sincerity of Yasin al-Qadi, a Saudi
financier identified by both the U.N. and U.S. Treasury Department as an
al Qaeda financier.
When Mr. Erdogan began his political career, he did not hide his agenda.
In September 1994, while mayor of Istanbul, he promised, "We will turn
all our schools into Imam Hatips." Two months later he said, "Thank God
Almighty, I am a servant of the Shariah." In May 1996, he called for a
ban on alcohol. In the months before his dismissal from the mayoralty,
his cynicism was clear. "Democracy is like a streetcar," he quipped.
"You ride it until you arrive at your destination and then you step off."
Diplomacy should not just accentuate the positive and ignore the
negative. When a country faces an Islamist challenge, PC platitudes do
far more harm than good. At the very least, U.S. diplomats should never
intercede to preserve the status quo at the expense of liberalism. Nor
should they even appear to endorse a political party as an established
democracy enters an election season. It is not good relations with
Ankara that should be the U.S. goal, but rather the triumph of the
democratic and liberal ideas for which Turkey traditionally stands.
/Mr. Rubin is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute./
Related Items
* Other items by Michael Rubin
* Other items from /Wall Street Journal/
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