Turks Debate the Role of Islam

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Turks Debate the Role of IslamGeorge GruenPublished online: 30 Nov 2010.

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Turks Debate the Role of Islam 281

American Foreign Policy Interests

American Foreign Policy Interests, 25: 281�298, 2003Copyright © 2003 NCAFP1080-3920/03 $12.00 + .08DOI:10.1080/108030390236744

In recent months there has been an intensifieddebate within Turkey over the proper role of

Islam in the shaping of Turkish identity andwhether there should be limits on personal ex-pressions of religious practice in public. One ofthe most hotly contested issues is whether it isappropriate for women government officials orthe spouses of officials to appear at public func-tions wearing Islamic-style headscarves. Somefemale college students have been denied regis-tration at public universities or admission to classwhen they refused to take off their headscarveswhen posing for their student identity photos.According to statistics obtained by Mazlumder, aTurkish human rights organization that has fo-cused on the issue, approximately 2,200 studentswho refused to remove their headscarves werenot allowed to attend lectures during the 2002academic year. In institutions where the ban hasbeen rigorously enforced, some students ex-changed their headscarves for hats or wigs in or-der to be able to complete their education.1

This issue aroused national attention in May1999, when Merve Kavakçi, who had been electedto Turkey�s Grand National Assembly as a mem-ber of the pro-Islamic Virtue party, was not per-mitted to take her seat in parliament when sherefused to remove her headscarf before beingsworn in. Although the headscarf is widely wornin rural areas of Turkey, whose population is al-most entirely Muslim, the secular elite regards itas a political symbol of Islamic fundamentalismand bans its use in universities and govern-ment offices. Kavakçi�s stand stirred up a majorpolitical controversy because her insistence onwearing the headscarf was regarded as a politi-cal challenge to the secular principles on whichthe Turkish Republic was founded. The MP�s

refusal to compromise rekindled allegations at thetime that Virtue was no less extreme than its pre-decessor, the Welfare party, which was closeddown the previous year. Its leader, former PrimeMinister Necmettin Erbakan, and several of itssenior MPs were barred from public office forfive years. Opposition parties and the militaryaccused Erbakan�s government of filling keystate positions with supporters of Islamic law.2

According to Boston University AnthropologyProfessor Jenny B. White, Erbakan �continuedto try to maneuver party activities and policy frombehind the scenes, including orchestratingMerve Kavakçi�s ill-fated confrontation withparliament.�3

Nevertheless, the majority of Welfare partyMPs managed to hold onto their seats by trans-ferring to the new Virtue party, which tried topresent itself as a more moderate force than itspredecessor. Despite calls for its closure, Virtuemanaged to survive long enough to fight the gen-eral elections in April 1999. It failed to repeat its1995 election victory, however, winning only 15percent of the vote.

According to a BBC correspondent, the en-raged Turkish establishment reacted to Kavakçi�sinsistence on wearing her headscarf by threaten-ing to charge her with sedition. Their case wasbolstered by reports in Turkish newspapers,which claimed that in an address to a conferencein the United States, Ms. Kavakçi described hermission as a �holy war.� This led to reports thatthe authorities were planning not only to barKavakçi but also to close down the party and ex-pel its members from parliament. Although shesaid she would try again to take her oath of officethe following week, she never got the chance. Shewas excluded from parliament on a technicality:

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Based on information that she had married anAmerican and taken U.S. citizenship withoutprior authorization from Ankara, the authoritiesclaimed that she had forfeited her Turkish na-tionality and thus was no longer eligible to servein parliament.4

But this did not end the clash between theVirtue party and Turkey�s secular establishment.After a two-year legal proceeding, on June 22,2001, Turkey�s Constitutional Court ordered Vir-tue closed on the grounds that it was a focal pointof antisecular activities. Virtue thus became thelatest in a series of pro-Islamic parties to be closeddown under Turkey�s state-controlled secularistsystem. The court also expelled two deputies fromparliament and banned them from politics for fiveyears. The banning of the party, however, did notforce new elections, which would have been heldhad 20 deputies been removed. Observers in Tur-key and abroad speculated that the ruling waslikely to draw criticism from the European Union,which has been pushing Turkey to undertakedemocratic reforms before it can join the union.5

Most of Virtue�s 100 deputies were given theoption of joining other parties or remaining in-dependent.6

The Concept of Secularismin Turkey

Professor White has pointed out that thereare significant differences between the conceptsof secularism in the United States and Turkey.In the United States, secularism is one of theoptions offered to American citizens as a resultof the legal separation of church and state thatflows from the First Amendment provisions ofthe U.S. Constitution. Although it bars the cre-ation of a single established national church, italso provides great freedom of choice to Ameri-cans in the practice of religion without govern-ment interference.7 She notes that the term forthe Turkish state�s position on religion, laiklik,often is mistakenly translated as secularism�

that is, the separation of religion and state. �It ismore accurately represented as laicism, the sub-ordination of religion to the state.� Laicism is oneof six fundamental principles of Kemalism thatMustafa Kemal (later named Atatürk, Father ofthe Turks) enshrined in the Turkish constitution.White stresses:

[T]his is a crucial difference in theTurkish context. The state controls theeducation of religious professionals andtheir assignment to mosques and ap-proves the content of their sermons. Italso controls religious schools and thecontent of religious education and en-forces laws about the wearing of reli-gious symbols and clothing in publicspaces and institutions.8

Islamists in Turkey have demanded an endto government control over public religious ex-pression and have advocated a system of religion-state separation on the American model. KemalistRepublicans held that following the abolition ofthe Caliphate in 1924, the religious expression ofIslam was to be a private affair. Religion wastaken out of the classroom and all state publicfunctions. The turban and fez were outlawed, andWestern-style clothing was encouraged. Althoughhe strongly discouraged the wearing of the veil,Atatürk failed in his efforts to have it banned.The power of long-established custom was toostrong. White notes, however, that �those cover-ing their heads found no place in the banks, min-istries, and schools of the new republic.� The callto prayer was changed from Arabic to Turkish,and when the alphabet reform was instituted toreplace the Arabic script with a modified Latinalphabet, the effect was to cut off the youngergeneration from access to the literature of theirOttoman past. After the multiparty systememerged following World War II, some of the ear-lier restrictions were eased, and the populistDemocratic party reintroduced the call to prayerin Arabic.

White explains the adoption of laicism by the

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Turkish Republic�s Kemalist leadership as a re-sult of the opposition to Atatürk�s far-reachingWesternizing reforms by conservative elementsof the population, spearheaded by the Islamicreligious establishment, who saw their legalpowers greatly diminished after the abolition ofthe Caliphate and the closing of the wide-spread and popular network of religious frater-nal orders (tarikat in Turkish). White notes thatafter being challenged by revolts against the newrepublic organized by religious leaders, �the Re-publican stand on religion hardened. Thus, itsmandate came to include laicism, or state con-trol of religion, since a laissez-faire policy towardreligion could not be relied upon.� Writing be-fore the AK party was swept into power, Whitecomments that this attitude of state control overreligious expression �still today governs thestate�s response to religion.�9

The headscarf issue continues to be a symbolof the simmering confrontation between secular-ist Kemalist and pro-Islamic forces in Turkey.Over the past year, the wife of the speaker of theTurkish parliament, Bülent Arinç, has made her-self the focal point of the headscarf debate. Thefirst well-publicized incident occurred late lastyear when she accompanied her husband to theairport to say farewell to President Ahmet NecdetSezer, a staunch secularist, who was off to repre-sent Turkey at a NATO conference in Prague.The Turkish mass media all carried pictures ofthe event, prominently showing Mrs. Arinç wear-ing a headscarf. Under the Turkish constitution,the speaker of the parliament serves as actingpresident when the president is out of the coun-try. The secularists in the establishment regardedher action as a deliberate breach of protocol anda provocative pro-Islamist gesture.

With this as background, it was not surpris-ing that when Speaker Arinç issued the tradi-tional invitation for a reception on April 23 tomark the anniversary of the Turkish NationalAssembly, the media focused on his wife�sheadscarf. Would she attend? As Middle East In-ternational correspondent Nicole Pope reported,Deniz Baykal, the leader of the opposition Re-

publican People�s party (RPP), was the first toannounce that he would not attend the reception.This was to be expected as the RPP, which wasfounded by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, has retainedits strong commitment to enforce the basic prin-ciple of secularism in Turkish public affairs.President Sezer and Armed Forces Chief of StaffGeneral Hilmi Ozkök, as well as other prominentgenerals, followed suit and �took the unprec-edented decision to boycott the reception,� eventhough Mrs. Arinç announced, at the last minute,that she would not attend. Pope noted that �manycommentators were quick to interpret the non-appearance of state representatives as a seriouswarning to the AKP government.�10 This was areference to the Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi (Jus-tice and Development party), which had won ap-proximately two-thirds of the parliamentary seatsin the November 2002 national elections and nowcontrolled the government.11

Pope, however, contrasted what she regardedas the muted popular reaction to Chief of StaffOzkök�s boycott of the reception to the previousconfrontation between the Turkish military lead-ers and the Islamist-leaning government of PrimeMinister Necmettin Erbakan in 1997, when themilitary successfully pressured him to resign.�But whereas in 1997 the generals had the back-ing of many ordinary Turks when they launchedtheir �post-modern coup� against NecmettinErbakan�s government, this time there is no signof polarization in society,� Pope reported. Turksin the street �may be frustrated by the inactionof the AKP government and the divisions thatmake this one-party government appear at timeslike a multiparty coalition, but they do not feelthreatened by them.�12 The military leaders, how-ever, remained deeply suspicious of the AKP�strue intentions. They also were worried that thepackage of human rights reforms the governmentwas proposing to meet the criteria for Turkey�sentry into the European Union would endangertwo of the basic Kemalist principles of the Turk-ish Republic. One was the strict separation ofreligion and state, and the other was the mainte-nance of the unity and territorial integrity of the

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country. Some army officers contended that elimi-nating the ban on headscarves in public institu-tions would undermine the principle of secular-ism, whereas providing greater freedom for cul-tural expression by Turkey�s large Kurdish mi-nority would encourage separatist elements andthereby threaten the territorial integrity of theTurkish Republic.

Not only the military leadership but alsomany older Turks continue to display what ispopularly known as the �Sèvres syndrome.� Thisis a deep-seated fear that outside powers mightagain attempt to carve out an independentKurdish state from Turkish territory in easternAnatolia, along the lines of the Sèvres Treaty,which the victorious European Allied powers inWorld War I�the British Empire, France, andItaly�tried to impose on the defeated OttomanEmpire in August 1920. The Turkish nationalmovement, led by General Mustafa Kemal, suc-cessfully beat back the European invasion and,in the negotiated Treaty of Lausanne of 1923,regained Turkish sovereignty over all ofAnatolia.13

The Turkish Leadership�sDilemma

The Turkish political and military leadershipface a dilemma. As part of Ankara�s efforts to gainadmission to the EU, Turkey has pledged to en-act and implement legislation that will bring itspolicies with regard to freedom of religious prac-tice and cultural expression by all its citizens upto the human rights standards prevalent in West-ern Europe. The problem is how to do this with-out endangering secularism or Turkish nationalunity.

It should be pointed out that recently therewas a leadership reshuffle at the top of the AKP.As was previously noted, the party�s leader, RecepTayyip Erdogan, was barred from political officeand could not run for a seat in parliament in theNovember 2002 national elections because he had

been convicted by a State Security Court and sen-tenced to several months in prison in June 1998for a speech he gave in Diyarbakir in which hequoted a well-known poem that declared: �Themosques are our barracks, the domes are ourhelmets, the minarets are our bayonets, and thefaithful are our army.� He was charged with ille-gally using religion as a political weapon and �in-citing religious hatred� under a law that bans�provoking enmity and hatred among thepeople.�

After some members of the secular oppositionRPP joined with the AKP to amend the constitu-tion and limit the scope of the ban to actions in-citing religious hatred and not simply expressionsof speech, Erdogan was once again permitted torun for public office.14 But the change initiallyaroused strong opposition from some prominentsecularist circles, including President AhmetNecdet Sezer. Among the reasons for his refusalto sign the amendment into law, Sezer said, wasthat the amendment was drawn up specificallyfor Erdogan�s benefit. As a former judge, Sezerwas opposed in principle to such ex parte legisla-tion.

The amendment was intended to change aclause in Article 312 of the constitution that barsthose convicted of �inciting people to hatred andenmity on the basis of ethnic, religious, regional,and sectarian differences� from running for po-litical office. The new clause would no longercriminalize speech but would ban only those con-victed of terrorism.

On December 27, parliament approved theamendment a second time by an overwhelming437 to 44 votes, overruling Sezer�s veto. The presi-dent then had only two options: to sign theamendment into law or to call for a referendumon it. He chose to accept the amendment and notpush for a referendum.

When new elections were called in Siirt be-cause of irregularities that were found during theNovember 2002 balloting there, Erdogan ran forone of the three vacant seats in the special elec-tion on March 9, 2003, and won what The WallStreet Journal correspondent called �a crushing

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ç

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ing tension between his Islamist-rooted govern-ment and the powerful military over reforms todraw the country closer to the EU. In commentscarried by the Anatolia News Agency, Erdoganslammed the reports as �made up� and said theywere the result of conscious efforts to stir trouble.�Those who are trying to disrupt the harmonybetween the army and the government are doingwrong. . . . No one has the right to lay the groundfor conflict and tension in the country,� Erdogantold reporters.

The Turkish leader was referring to reportsearlier in the week that Army Chief Hilmi Ozkökhad told him of the military�s concern that a pack-age of planned EU-oriented reforms could encour-age radical Islamist and separatist movements.The reform package aims to allow private radioand television stations to broadcast in Kurdish,enable the country�s largest minority to give itschildren Kurdish names, and abolish a law against�propagating separatism� that had been used tojail Kurdish rights activists.

Although the AKP says it has dropped its pastIslamist views, it is still suspected by many ofharboring a hidden Islamist agenda. In April thearmy�s top brass warned the AKP governmentto respect the nation�s strict secular system overmoves it perceived to be against the strict sepa-ration of church and state. The warning cameafter the generals and the secular establishmentboycotted the official parliament reception ar-ranged by Speaker Arinç. The AKP governmentalso has been accused of appointing pro-Islamistcronies to government offices and for askingTurkish embassies to support Milli Görüs (Na-tional Point of View), an expatriate Islamist groupactive in Central Asia and other areas that havesignificant Turkish or Turkic communities. MilliGörüs has long been suspected of promoting ex-tremism.18 In the past, the army leadership peri-odically expelled cadets and other young recruitsfrom the armed services who were suspected ofharboring fundamentalist Islamic views. Thearmy now charged that the AKP leadership hadbeen lax in enforcing this procedure to weed outpotential Islamic activists.

victory.� Indeed, the final tally showed that hehad won an overwhelming majority of 84.7 per-cent of the votes.15 (It surely did not hurt that hiswife�s family were prominent members of thereligiously conservative Siirt community.) Onceduly elected, Erdogan was able to form a newgovernment with himself as prime minister.Abdullah Gül, his loyal deputy in the AKP, whohad served as prime minister following the No-vember 2002 elections, stepped down and wasappointed foreign minister in the new Erdogan-led government.16

Gül was well suited for his new job for, unlikeErdogan, who spoke only Turkish, Gül wasfluent in English and had spent time abroad,including an eight-year stint as an economicconsultant to the Islamic Development Bank. A50-year-old former economics professor fromKayseri, Gül had written his doctoral disserta-tion on economic relations between Turkey andthe Islamic states. In 1991, he won a seat in par-liament as a Welfare party candidate, and whenErbakan became prime minister in 1996, Gül wasnamed secretary of state. White notes that he wasa leading figure in restructuring the Virtue party,moving it further away from an �Islam-refer-enced� party to what he called a new politicsbased on universal democratic principles, includ-ing �freedom of belief.� White also notes:

Gül supported tolerance of differentlifestyles, arguing (in response to aninterviewer�s question) that such issuesas whether or not a woman wore a bath-ing suit in public were personal deci-sions and of no interest to the party. Hesupported gender equality and ex-pressed an interest in attracting thesupport of what he called �contempo-rary modern women who accept alifestyle like that found in developedcountries.�17

On May 25, a month after the controversyover the parliamentary reception, Turkish PrimeMinister Erdogan dismissed press reports of ris-

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The Headscarf ControversyRevisited

The strict ban on headscarves in public insti-tutions and universities has come in for increas-ing criticism from secular human rights advocatesand not only from pious Muslims. Pope noted that�a few columnists were bold enough to criticizethe boycott, pointing out that millions of womenin Turkey wear a headscarf.� They also under-lined that expecting women to stay home ratherthan be seen in public with a headscarf �did notbefit a modern democracy.� She predicted thatthe controversy was unlikely to die down.

Indeed, the headscarf issue once again becamea matter of public debate in early June, this timeover a controversial fashion show. As the Ankaracorrespondent for Agence France-Presse noted,

Models strolling down a catwalk inclothes fashioned to fit the precepts ofthe Muslim faith are not uncommonhere, but plans by a pro-Islamic char-ity to hold the show in a former palaceclosely associated with the founder ofthe Turkish republic proved to be a steptoo far. The proestablishment press andsecular parliamentarians immediatelycriticized the Tuesday show and the factthat it was to be chaired by the veiled[actually headscarf attired] wife of Par-liament Speaker Bülent Arinç, whohails from the ruling AKP, a conserva-tive movement some consider suspectbecause of its Islamist past.

The protests forced the parade to be movedfrom the palace, which is now a governmentguesthouse, to a hotel. White notes that theheadscarf is only one part of tesettür. This wordis literally translated as �veiling� but does notusually involve a Saudi or Iranian type of facialveil. The term refers to the modern Islamistwoman�s outdoor attire, which, in addition to afashionable headscarf, includes a long coat and

other features enshrining the principles of mod-esty. Yet she also amusingly portrays how she dis-covered that styles, colors, and patterns ofheadscarves, coats, and dresses kept changing asIslamist women sought to keep up with the lat-est trends in fashion.

Some have sought to portray the headscarfcontroversy as a sharp polarization of opposingworldviews: At one extreme are those who regardwearing the scarf as a religious duty and whotherefore fiercely defend their right to do so; atthe opposite pole are secularist officials who viewthe wearing of a headscarf as a symbol of politi-cal Islam and part of a subversive campaign tobring back Islamic rule. The Kemalist elite andthe military leadership have been willing to ig-nore the continued wearing of headscarves by il-literate or poorly educated traditional women inremote rural areas. When they see educatedyoung women in an urban setting demanding theright to wear a headscarf at a state-sponsoreduniversity, however, the action is interpreted asa political act that threatens to undermine thecountry�s decades-old Western orientation. Theyare not so worried about the affluent and well-educated Islamic feminists at the universities inIstanbul or Ankara as they are about the �reac-tionary example� they are setting for the masses.When interviewed in 1998, some former Welfareparty officials expressed the belief that thegovernment�s crackdown on headscarves at thattime had swung votes in their favor�to the suc-cessor pro-Islamist Virtue party. The popularbacklash, they said, was helping them to mobi-lize poor women from the countryside and cityslums. According to Islamist activists, once timidhousewives were now imitating the students. �Weare trying to get Muslim women to use theirrights�their universal rights and human rights,�said Necdet Gokcinar, an Istanbul party chief.19

AKP leader Erdogan, who grew up inKasimpasa (one of Istanbul�s poorest quarters)and was a protégé of Welfare party leaderErbakan in his youth, used his personal charismatogether with considerable organizational skillsto build the grassroots support that won him elec-

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tion first as mayor of Istanbul and more recentlyas leader of the new AKP. The AKP decided touse a light bulb as its symbol to signify that itwill bring enlightenment, economic opportunity,and new ideas to the people. The party�s acro-nym, AK, literally means white in Turkish. It alsohas the connotation of �clean, unsullied� and �un-blemished.�20 This was a not-too-subtle dig atsome of the established parties that had becomenotorious for corruption and shady dealings.

A recent nationwide survey suggests thatmost people do not agree with the ruling secularelite�s perception of the Islamic-style headscarf.According to the study, commissioned by the lib-eral Milliyet daily, a full 70 percent of those ques-tioned, both men and women, said they did notsee the headscarf as an antisecular symbol. TheMilliyet survey, polling 1,881 adults, suggestedthat an average 64.2 percent of women in Tur-key covered their heads, but it added that only5.4 percent of the head-covered women ques-tioned described their attire as an Islamic-styleheadscarf, which covers all of the hair. The ma-jority, 77.6 percent, described theirs as purely tra-ditional garb and did not shy from allowing a littlehair to show. �The headscarf is the state�s ownproblem,� said Ali Çarkoglu from Sabanci Uni-versity, whose 1999 research for an influentialthink tank showed that a majority of Turks didnot long to replace the civil code with Islamic rule,or sharia. �There is no public alarm over peoplereadying to take to the streets to demand Shariarules. . . . It would be an exaggeration to see theheadscarf as a symbolic representation of thosewho want Sharia,� he recently told a reporter forAgence France-Presse. �The results do not pointto a section of society big enough to be perceivedas a problem,� Çarkoglu said.21

The Interaction of Religion,Society, and Politics in Turkey

Professor Çarkoglu, together with ProfessorBinaz Toprak, was commissioned by the Turkish

Economic and Social Studies Foundation to un-dertake an extensive study of the interaction ofreligion, society, and politics in Turkey. It waspublished in 2000 in Turkish.22 Professor Whiteuses the results of this study to buttress her view-point that the seemingly sharp ideological clashbetween Kemalists and Islamists often is blurredin practice.

The lines between them are ambiguousand constantly shifting. Some Islamistshave great respect for Ataturk and sym-pathy for his attempts to modernizeTurkey, although they might wish tocreate more space for religious freedomand participation within the existingsystem. Many self-described Kemalistsare uncomfortable with the lack of po-litical liberalism in Turkey and sharethe Islamists� disquiet about the use ofKemalism to legitimate coercion by thestate and silence opposition. At thesame time, they may dig in their heelswhen it comes to loosening the reins onreligious opposition, out of fear thattheir secular, Western lifestyle mightultimately be jeopardized were a reli-gious party to come to power.

Nevertheless, despite these concerns, Whitenotes that �a sizable number of secularist voterssupported Islam-inspired political parties in the1990s, and a number of leftist intellectuals havecrossed the line to join or support the Islamists.� 23

Among the significant findings of the nationalpublic opinion surveys conducted by Çarkoglu andToprak, White reports that �the majority of Turksare practicing Muslims. A quarter of the elec-torate considers itself quite religious and 12.4percent marginally or not at all religious.� Withregard to questions on the performance of spe-cific requirements of Islamic practice, the surveyfound the following responses: 46 percent saidthey pray five times a day; 84 percent of the mensaid they attend mosque for Friday noontimeprayers; 91 percent said they fasted during the

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holy month of Ramadan [Ramazan in Turkish];60 percent said they give regularly to charity; 71percent said they would like to go on pilgrimageto Mecca. Only 7 percent, however, said that theyhad actually been able to do so.24

Not surprising are Çarkoglu and Toprak�sfindings that voters who supported liberal, secu-lar parties like the RPP fell at the low end ofthe scale of religious practice, whereas support-ers of religious, conservative parties had a highrate of compliance.25 Despite this generally highlevel of religiosity, three-fifths of the respondentsto the survey thought that a party operating onthe basis of religion had no place in the Turkishpolitical system.26 White added that, in her ownextensive conversations with Turkish Islamistsin Istanbul, she found that they had no desireto emulate the clergy-dominated system of theIslamic Republic of Iran and expressed disap-proval of the extreme restrictions imposed bythe Taliban on women in Afghanistan. She con-cluded:

[From] the highest party leaders, suchas Recep Tayyip Erdogan, to the street-level activist, as well as those who sim-ply voted for the Welfare party, therewas a general disaffection with Islamiclaw as it was applied in Iran and SaudiArabia, not to mention the Taliban inAfghanistan, who were often character-ized as having nothing whatsoever todo with Islam.27

Çarkoglu and Toprak also found widespreadsupport for religious freedom that extended farbeyond the support base of the religious parties.For instance, three-quarters of the electorate saidthey believed that female civil servants and stu-dents should be able to cover their heads if theyso choose. But they were also quite tolerant ofnonobservant Turkish Muslims. Most of the re-spondents agreed that even if a person does notpray (85 percent) or drinks alcohol (66 percent),or if a woman does not cover her head (85 per-cent), he or she is still a Muslim.28 Summarizing

the various findings of the survey, White con-cludes that Çarkoglu and Toprak found that�measures of tolerance for differences of beliefand lifestyle were quite high, never lower than50 percent, and a full 91 percent of the elector-ate agreed that tolerance and protection ofdifferences of belief were important for socialharmony.�29

As might be expected, the greatest polariza-tion of views was found in the responses of mem-bers of the Virtue party and the RepublicanPeople�s party. Although there is no reason todoubt that Professors Çarkoglu and Toprak andtheir survey team accurately reported the re-sponses to the various questions, one should keepin mind the general tendency found in publicopinion surveys in the United States and else-where that persons will exaggerate the extent oftheir own virtuous behavior, whether it concernscontribution to charity, religious observance, ortolerance for views fundamentally contrary totheir own. It cannot be determined whether thiswas a factor in the Turkish survey and thereforeto what extent virtuous responses should be dis-counted.

As has already been noted, although there iswidespread public support for permitting womento choose freely whether or not to cover their hair,for the older Kemalist elite of the state bureau-cracy, any type or style of headscarf is still aheadscarf, and such attire is still banned in pub-lic offices and universities. One proponent of theban is Professor Zekeriya Beyaz, the dean of theFaculty of Divinity at Marmara University, whowas stabbed in 2001 by a proheadscarf student.�Social rules cannot be customized to individu-als, they can only be general,� Beyaz told anAgence France-Presse reporter. �Unfortunately,the headscarf is an important symbol for somewho wear it. It divides the society into two, whichis very dangerous,� he said.

The Turkish human rights organizationMazlumder, however, sees the headscarf ban as ablatant violation of basic liberties. �The problemis not a religious one of whether a woman shouldcover up her head or not. It stems from the at-

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tempts of the elite minority to impose their ownlifestyle on the public,� the association�s deputypresident, Ayhan Bilgen, said.30 There also havebeen reports that some university administratorshave sought to regulate the types and length ofbeards worn by male students. Artistic and well-trimmed beards such as those worn by poets andartists are acceptable, but long, full, round beardssuch as those worn by pious Muslims may arousesuspicions that the bearer is a religious fanaticengaged in banned Islamic militancy. In practice,the ban on beards is not enforced in classes ofmodern art and drama, as those beards are re-garded as artistic rather than Islamic. It alsoshould be noted that under the university dresscode, women are permitted to wear headscarvesduring officially sanctioned Koran study classes.31

Similarly, there are no restrictions on the head-gear worn by Christian, Jewish, or Muslim clergyand lay persons when attending religious servicesin churches, synagogues, or mosques.

Captivating Poetry

In his defense at the trial, Erdogan said thatthe words he had spoken were from a classic poemand were aimed at �no person or target.� Wheninterviewed recently by New York Times corre-spondent Deborah Sontag, Erdogan said the poemhad been approved for use in textbooks by theMinistry of Education, and that he had used itprimarily for oratorical purposes. �It was an at-tention getter,� he said. �It would make the peoplespirited.� But Sontag considered that comment�somewhat disingenuous.� She pointed out thatin the speech following the poem, Erdogan �wenton to proclaim that Islam was his compass andthat anyone who tried to stifle prayer in Turkeywould face an exploding volcano.�32

Yet by sending him to jail, the Turkish bu-reaucracy did not succeed in removing him frompublic life. His conviction and jail sentence notonly enhanced Erdogan�s popularity among reli-gious Turks, thousands of whom accompaniedhim to the prison gate, but putting him in jail for

a speech rather an overt act of treason or terror-ism also disturbed many secular Turks and hu-man rights advocates in Western Europe and theUnited States. In its reasoned verdict, the courtruled that Erdogan�s speech should not be judgedwithin the acceptable framework of expressionsof political views and religious concepts but aspart of the pernicious campaign by the Welfareparty�s leaders�of whom Erdogan was the mostprominent rising star�to undermine therepublic�s secular institutions. By separating thepeople into camps of �believers and nonbeliev-ers,� he had caused social peace to be disruptedand was dragging the country into an atmosphereof clashes and civil war. The basic message of thespeech taken as a whole, the court concluded, wasa call for a state based on religion�namely, theIslamic sharia.

In recent interviews Erdogan has repeatedlysaid that the time he spent in prison caused hispolitical views to �mature,� and that he is now afirm believer in the political separation of reli-gion and state. The fact that the Welfare partywas outlawed and that shortly before the Novem-ber 2002 elections the public prosecutor said heplanned to seek the banning of the AKP no doubtalso helped concentrate and refine Erdogan�sthinking.

For example, although the wives of bothErdogan and Gül were scrupulous to follow theIslamic practice of covering their hair with aheadscarf when going out in public, the AKP se-lected some female candidates for office who ei-ther did not normally wear a headscarf or werewilling to remove it before entering parliamentor other government offices, as required by cur-rent secularist regulations. Because 6 of the 12women who were founding members of the partyregularly wore headscarves, however, the stateprosecutor said the party was in clear violationof the law, as founding members of a politicalparty are forbidden to wear headscarves. TheAKP was thus faced with the choice of either re-placing them with other suitable women or get-ting the ban on headscarves eliminated from thelaw.33

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The Early Foundationof Erdogan�s Faith

From his early youth, Erdogan was a devoutMuslim. Deborah Sontag reports part of theErdogan lore:

[I]n fifth grade he refused to use a news-paper as a prayer rug in a religiousclass. It was inappropriate, he told histeacher, who took a special interest inhim and persuaded Erdogan�s father tosend him to a state-run Imam-Hatip(Prayer Leaders and Preachers) School,which offered a secular curriculumamplified by religious instruction.

Eventually, after juggling his love of soccer(he played professionally for 11 years), education,and political activism as one of Erbakan�s dis-ciples in the pro-Islamist National Salvation party(NSP), he received a university degree in man-agement at age 27. Erdogan�s political climb be-gan when he was appointed chairman of theNational Salvation party�s youth group. His fu-ture wife, Emine, who wears a headscarf as anarticle of faith, belonged to an Islamist women�sgroup, the Idealist Ladies Association. They weremarried in 1978 and when a son was born, hewas named after Erdogan�s political leader.Erbakan rewarded him by making Erdogan chair-man of the Istanbul branch of the new Welfareparty that was formed by Islamist politicians toreplace the NSP, which had been closed down bythe 1980 coup. The members of the Welfare partywere not unified in their objectives; some secretlyaimed eventually to establish an Islamic statebased on the sharia; whereas others only soughtgreater tolerance for religion and religious prac-tice.34 The broad range of views and objectivesamong the supporters of the Welfare party andlater among the Virtue party are expertly ana-lyzed in great detail by White in her insightfulstudy of Islamist Mobilization in Turkey.35

When recently queried by Sontag for her New

York Times Magazine article as to where he stood,Erdogan replied:

Before anything else, I�m a Muslim. Asa Muslim, I try to comply with the re-quirements of my religion. I have a re-sponsibility to God, who created me,and I try to fulfill that responsibility.But I now try to keep this away frommy political life, to keep it private.

He acknowledged that many in the establish-ment still distrust him, doubt that he has trulyevolved, and suspect that he has a secret plan toimpose religion on the nation. He declared cat-egorically that he believed that �a political partycannot have a religion. Only individuals can. Oth-erwise, you�d be exploiting religion, and religionis so supreme that it cannot be exploited or takenadvantage of.�36

Sontag writes that during Erdogan�s Decem-ber 10, 2002, meeting with President Bush in theWhite House, the president startled the Turkspresent by declaring: �You believe in the Al-mighty, and I believe in the Almighty. That�s whywe�ll be great partners.� Erdogan left Washing-ton with Bush�s backing for Turkey�s efforts toenter the EU. (President Bush has recently usedsimilar words about a shared spiritual belief whenmeeting with Muslim leaders of other countriesin the Middle East.) President Bush has also beena strong supporter of �faith-based initiatives� tohelp meet social, economic, and educational needsin local communities in the United States.

Cuneyd Zapsu, a prominent young Turkishbusinessman who owns the Azizlar Holding Com-pany, was an early supporter of the AKP andhelped introduce Erdogan to Turkey�s businessestablishment. Zapsu, a secularist whose grand-father was a well-known Kurdish poet, toldSontag he was deeply offended by the treatmentErdogan received from the authorities. �It�s notright what happened to him. I don�t want to livein a country where someone goes to jail for apoem.� Zapsu contends that Erdogan �was per-secuted because they sensed his power,� adding

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that he thought �it was not religion but a classthing.�37

The Reform Package

On June 12, 2003, the Turkish governmentsubmitted to parliament a package of humanrights reforms to draw the country closer to theEU, hoping to adopt them swiftly before the sum-mit of EU leaders in Greece later in the month.But the proposals, which aim to expand freedomof speech and cultural rights for Turkey�s sizableKurdish minority, have led to unease in the pow-erful army. Some in the military fear the changeswill fuel Kurdish separatism in the country, whichsubdued a 15-year armed rebellion for Kurdishself-rule in 1999 that left approximately 36,000persons dead. Defying the military�s pressure, thegovernment of Prime Minister Erdogan wasworking hard to get parliament to adopt the pack-age by the end of the month at the latest�inorder to boost Ankara�s chances of EU mem-bership.

�If we can pass the reforms this month, wewill have gained an important amount of time,�Justice Minister Cemil Cicek told the NTV newschannel on June 11. The adoption of the packagebefore the Salonika EU summit on June 19�21could hand Ankara much-needed praise in aprogress report due in October of this year, be-fore EU leaders decide in December 2004 whetherto open accession talks with Turkey. �In order toguarantee 2004, we have to complete the arrange-ments in 2003 and in order to wrap up 2003 in aproductive way, there should be no negative ele-ment, arising from Turkey, in the progress re-port,� Cicek said.

If approved, the reform package will allowprivate radio and television stations, along withstate television, to air programs in the Kurdishlanguage and lift restrictions on the country�slargest minority to give their children ethnicnames. But, most important, it also would abol-ish an infamous article on �propagating separat-ism,� a catch-all provision that has been widely

used to jail advocates of Kurdish rights. Drop-ping this article would cause particular uneasein the army, which officially supports thecountry�s EU membership bid. Some generals aresaid to frown on the change on the grounds thatit could play into the hands of Kurdish separat-ists and radical Islamists, impeding the fightagainst �terrorism.� In its rationale explainingthe package, the government sought to allay themilitary�s concerns. The abolition of the article�will not create a void with respect to protectingthe country�s unity,� it said, pointing at sanctionswithin other legislation to serve that purpose.�Terrorism is political violence. Acts which do notinvolve physical violence cannot be terrorist acts,�it added.

The Kurdish broadcast article remains in thereform package, however. TV channels will beallowed to air Kurdish programs with Turkishsubtitles when the package is cleared by parlia-ment. Programs will be subject to the SupremeTV Board�s inspections. The government wasforced to drop an article that would have allowedplaces of worship to open in residential build-ings�a move the military and old guardKemalists feared could be used to fuel radical Is-lamic movements outside the watchful eyes of thelaicist bureaucracy. The government claimedthere was a far more benign explanation for theproposal to permit religious services in privatehomes. According to an analysis of the reformpackage by United Press International, a govern-ment spokesman claimed that permission for ser-vices in private homes was intended to meet theneeds of �Christians and Jews living in small com-munities in some of the resort areas,� who �mightwish to practice their religion freely� without fearof �the police breaking in.�38 (Many members ofthe Jewish community of Istanbul in fact spendseveral months in the summer on the PrincessIslands in the Sea of Marmara.)

The military, however, did not object to an-other provision in the package of reforms thatwill allow non-Muslim foundations to buy prop-erty in Turkey. This was welcomed by the lead-ership of Turkey�s small Jewish community.39

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Lifting Restrictionson Synagogue Purchaseand Restoration

To understand the problem, one needs to ex-amine it in historical context. In Istanbul, as inNew York and other American cities, Jewish com-munities have over time moved from some olderneighborhoods to newer ones in the suburbs.Under American law, if the Jewish communitydecides to sell a no-longer-used synagogue, it canuse the proceeds to purchase and build or remodela synagogue in any other location. This has notbeen the case under the laws of the Turkish Re-public. According to information provided by at-torney Nedim Karako, the legal adviser to theChief Rabbinate, the situation was as follows: TheTurkish Jewish community in 1926, as a demon-strative sign of their confidence in the equal hu-man rights officially granted all Turkish citizensby the new Turkish Republic, renounced the spe-cial minority rights contained in the Peace Treatyof Lausanne of 1923.40 One consequence of thisdecision of the Jewish community leadership in1926 was that, unlike their position as a distinctmillet (autonomous religious community) underthe Ottoman Empire, there was no longer a rec-ognized nationwide Jewish community. Conse-quently, each synagogue (or sometimes a groupof synagogues) has to be separately incorporatedas a religious charitable foundation (Vakif). Ac-cording to Karako, many synagogues, �especiallyin Balat or Hasköy in Istanbul and many inEdirne and other cities, were destroyed becauseof the lack of people to take care of them in thelast 60 years.�

Under a Turkish law enacted in 1935, anysynagogue or other Vakif property that no longerhas a functioning community to take care of itand has not held board elections every four yearsis taken over and placed under the authority ofthe General Directorate of Charitable Founda-tions (Vakiflar Müdürlügü). Because there is vir-

tually no area in Turkey that does not have afunctioning local Muslim community, this lawhas in practice only affected the religious prop-erties of the small remaining Jewish, Armenian,and Greek Orthodox communities. (When a vis-iting American Jewish Committee delegationmet in Ankara in 1989 with then Foreign Minis-ter Mesut Yilmaz, I suggested that removingthese restrictions would be a fitting gesture tobe timed to the forthcoming celebrations in 1992to mark the Quincentennial of the welcomegiven by Ottoman Sultan Beyazit II to the Jewswho had been expelled from Spain in 1492.Yilmaz said that although he would very muchlike to do so for the synagogues, he did not thinkthis was politically feasible, as the governmentwas concerned it would set a precedent for thefar more extensive properties that had beenowned by the Armenian and Greek Orthodoxcommunities.)

As for a functioning local Jewish committeethat still holds regular board elections, it cansell synagogues or other communal propertiesit owns and deposit the proceeds in the bank oruse them to renovate other properties owned bythat specific Vakif. But because each Vakif is aseparate legal entity, it cannot transfer its fundsto a Vakif in any other location. The Office ofthe Chief Rabbinate �has no status as a legalentity and consequently cannot buy or sell prop-erty� on behalf of the Turkish Jewish commu-nity as a whole. In fulfillment of the 1935 lawon charitable foundations, the Turkish Jewishcommunity in 1936 issued a declaration listingthe buildings and institutions they possessed butdid not specify the rules and regulations thatwould govern their activities. As Karako ex-plains, the Turkish Court of Cassation acceptedthe 1936 declaration as constituting the char-ter of a religious foundation.

However, the community leadership in1936, because of the conditions of Tur-key of that time, left many questionsunanswered. Therefore, questions suchas the aims of the foundation, what it

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could do and what it could not do, forexample, can it buy buildings or not,were not clear.

Since the 1936 declaration did not specificallystate that the Jewish foundations could buy build-ings or land, the Turkish authorities ruled thatthey did not have the right to do so.

As part of Ankara�s efforts to meet the en-try requirements of the EU, the Turkish parlia-ment in August 2002 adopted a series of lawsdesigned to strengthen human rights and tobring Turkey�s treatment of religious and eth-nic minorities more closely in line with WesternEuropean standards. One of the laws gave per-mission to religious community foundations (a)to acquire new buildings with the permission ofthe cabinet, and (b) in case of application, withinsix months from August 2002, to register in theirnames all buildings acquired before August 2002for which registration rights had not previouslybeen given. Although this was a positive devel-opment in principle, the regulations adopted inOctober to implement the law required that allspecific actions had to be approved by the cabi-net and imposed a heavy bureaucratic system.Jewish community leaders reached the conclu-sion that to compile all the documents requiredby this regulation would impose upon them �analmost impossible task.� AKP leader TayyipErdogan was sympathetic to the Jewishcommunity�s predicament. Since the AKP�s re-sounding victory in early November, Erdoganhas been working to abrogate the clause requir-ing cabinet approval for registering community-owned buildings and canceled the oneroussystem of bureaucratic regulations. The leadersof the Jewish community have publicly ex-pressed their gratitude for this action and havealso continued to maintain good working rela-tions with the new AKP government. The factthat Erdogan is personally an observant Mus-lim has no doubt made him more sensitive tomeeting the religious needs of observant mem-bers of other faiths than the staunchly laicistKemalist ministers in the past.

The State of Interfaith Relations

During 2002, the Jewish community in Tur-key engaged in a significant election of its own.Chief Rabbi David Asseo, who had been ill forseveral months, died on July 14, 2002, at the ageof 88, after serving for 41 years. Thus for the firsttime in more than four decades, the communityhad to choose a new chief rabbi to succeed RavAsseo, who was born in 1914 in Istanbul andworked as a teacher in Jewish schools before join-ing the office of the rabbinate in 1936. He waselected chief rabbi in 1961. The selection of thenew chief rabbi was conducted in a two-stagedemocratic process. All registered members of theJewish community, both women and men, whohad reached the age of 18 were eligible to votefor their local candidates to a lay leadership coun-cil of 120 on October 20. This represented a sig-nificant enlargement of the pool of eligible vot-ers from the previous election of a chief rabbi 41years before. At that time, only male members ofthe community above the age of 21 could vote.41

Rabbi Izak [Yitzhak] Haleva was elected as thenew chief rabbi and installed in a festive cer-emony at the Neve Shalom Synagogue on Decem-ber 19, 2002, marked by the blowing of theshofar. The doors of the Ark of the Law wereopened by the visiting Israeli Sephardi ChiefRabbi, Rav Eliahu Bakshi Doron, together withBensiyon Pinto, the president of the TurkishJewish community.

An indication of the generally positive stateof interfaith relations in Turkey today was thefact that the ceremony was attended by IstanbulMayor Ali Müfit Gürtuna and high-rankingofficials from Turkey�s civil service and repre-sentatives of Turkey�s various religious commu-nities. They included Istanbul Greek OrthodoxPatriarch Bartholomeos; the Armenian Patri-arch of Turkey Mesrob II; Monsignor LouisPelatre, spiritual leader of the Latin Catholics;George Marovich, spokesman of the Union ofLatin Catholic Churches; Monsignor Yusuf Sag,the spiritual leader of the Syriac Catholic Church

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in Turkey; Monsignor Paul Karakash, the spiri-tual leader of the Chaldeans; MonsignorOhannes Cholokyan, spiritual leader of the Ar-menian Catholics; and Zeynel Abidin Tanbak,assistant to the Mufti of Istanbul. Other reli-gious representatives included Professor ofTheology Yumni Sezen and Professor of the His-tory of Religion Ömer Faruk Harman, both fromthe School of Divinity at Istanbul�s MarmaraUniversity.

Most officials from Ankara were unable toattend because of a heavy snowstorm that dis-rupted air, rail, and road traffic. But many sentcongratulatory messages. The message by Turk-ish President Ahmet Necdet Sezer stated: �I amvery happy to announce that the distinguishedreligious leader Izak Haleva will assume the im-portant position of chief rabbi and that under hisleadership the Turkish Jewish community�s unityand solidarity will be maintained and strength-ened.�

Especially noteworthy was the message sentby Recep Tayyip Erdogan, at the time chairmanof the AKP and since March 2003 prime ministerof the Turkish Republic:

It is my heartfelt belief that the es-teemed Chief Rabbi Haleva�s profoundcultural as well as philosophical knowl-edge will be a source for advancing thepeace and well-being not only of ourJewish Community but of all the sec-tors of our country.

AK party leader and former mayor of IstanbulErdogan is believed to have been alluding to thefact that Rabbi Haleva was teaching popularcourses on religion and philosophy at the Divin-ity School of Istanbul�s Marmara University andwas active in promoting interfaith dialogue withhis Muslim and Christian Turkish counterpartsand with visiting foreign religious leaders. Accord-ing to the article by Ester Yannier in Shalom (theJewish community�s weekly paper), the presenceat the installation ceremony of a group of RavHaleva�s Marmara University students was seen

in university circles as a special sign of friend-ship and respect.42

Diversity of ReligiousBeliefs and Practices

More than 99 percent of Turkey�s estimatedpopulation of 67 million are considered Muslims.The adherents of the various Christian denomi-nations today are believed to number only around100,000, and the Jewish community is estimatedat between 22,000 and 25,000. (There are no pre-cise figures, as the official Turkish census elimi-nated the question about religious identity after1965.) But the Muslim Turkish community is byno means monolithic. As we have seen, there is agreat diversity of opinion as to what being Mus-lim means and what it entails in practice. Al-though many Turks observe all the basic tenetsof Islam, including prayer five times a day, oth-ers celebrate only the major feast days and suchbasic tenets as circumcision. There also are thecompletely Westernized and secularized MuslimTurks, who consider themselves personally to beagnostic, if not atheist, and rarely if ever attendservices at a mosque.

It also should be noted that although themajority of Turks are Sunni Muslims, an esti-mated 10 to 20 percent of the population areAlevis, a heterodox Muslim community whosebeliefs have some similarity to the Alawites inSyria and the Shiites in Iran. Unlike the Shiitesin the Islamic Republic of Iran, however, theAlevis in Turkey have been staunch advocates ofthe separation of religion and state.43 They alsohave tended to vote for parties on the liberal leftof the political spectrum, in contrast to piousSunni Muslims, who have favored the more con-servative parties of the right.

Another noteworthy fact is that although thevarious religious brotherhoods (tarikat) andmystical religious (Sufi) orders were officiallyclosed down by Atatürk early in the republicanera, they have unofficially continued to function

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and have remained important institutions in thelife not only of lower-class but also of middle-class Turkish citizens. White notes that afterthe introduction of multiparty politics follow-ing the end of World War II, �brotherhoods be-gan to reappear in political life, once politiciansrealized that religious leaders were able to de-liver blocks of votes. Former president TurgutÖzal and other prominent people have admit-ted to belonging to religious brotherhoods.�Religious orders vary from the politically activefundamentalist Naksibendi and Süleymanci tothe philosophically left-of-center Bektasi andMevlevi. (The latter are known outside of Tur-key as the Whirling Dervishes.)44

White also notes that a generational changeadds to the complexity of Kemalist and Islamistpractice, as younger elites with interests andfears different from those of their elders takecontrol of the business and political sectors.Some of the older generation of Kemalists stillsuffer from the �Sèvres syndrome� and there-fore cling to a rigidly authoritarian system thatseeks to crush any rise of religious or eth-nic movements that might challenge theirvision of a centralized monocultural Turkishnationalism.

In an insightful article some years ago, EricRouleau, the veteran Middle East columnist forLe Monde and former French ambassador to An-kara, argued that it is time for Turkey to move�beyond Atatürk.� Writing in 1996, Rouleau con-cluded that the Turkish Republic, founded morethan 70 years earlier, �is in desperate need of anoverhaul, and some of its most basic assump-tions must be rethought in light of the changesthat have transformed the world.� Although ac-knowledging that �some of the principles ofKemalism have already undergone significanterosion,� others, �entrenched as dogma, fre-quently serve as the pretext for a retreat into aprickly conservatism, thus contributing to a scle-rosis in republican institutions while undermin-ing Turkey�s role in international affairs.�45

Rouleau pointed out that the Kemalist re-public:

was born of a peculiar set of historicalcircumstances and the genius of oneman. It drew its inspiration from boththe Soviet and French models. From theSoviets, it adopted in its early decadesan authoritarian, single-party rule anda statist economy; from the French, astrict secularism and the concept of acentralized nation-state in which citi-zenship is based on the rights of theindividual rather than on ethnic or re-ligious identity. Secular citizenship wasmeant to forge a homogeneous nationdedicated to modernity and irrevocablytied to the Europe of the Enlighten-ment.

To that end, Rouleau wrote, �it was neces-sary to suppress, if need be through violence, thevarious ethnic and cultural loyalties of the dis-parate populations that had made up the Otto-man Empire.�

Rouleau praised the late President TurgutÖzal as:

one of the few Turkish politicians whounderstood that it was no longer pos-sible to ignore the Kurds� quest for theirown identity. Indeed, among the conse-quences of the pluralism that replacedauthoritarianism at the end of WorldWar II were a certain re-Islamizationof society (further accentuated byÖzal�s democratization measures in the1980s) and a liberalization of theeconomy.

With the reawakening of nationalism thatcoincided with the collapse of the Soviet Empire,Rouleau said, �the fate of the Kemalist state,as it was conceived in the 1920s, was sealed.�Özal, who used to declare proudly that one of hisgrandparents was of Kurdish origin, began to lib-eralize the state�s policy toward religion and ex-pressions of Kurdish cultural identity in schoolsand the mass media. Following his death in April

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1993, however, his successors were either unableor unwilling to maintain his liberalization poli-cies. Rouleau attributed this return to a morehard-line position on religious and ethnic issuesto the intervention of �the highest echelons ofthe armed forces.�

White, writing several years later (in 2002),offers a more optimistic analysis. �The newKemalists,� she notes, �are willing to compromiseon some of these issues, to admit Islam andethnicity into the system in the interests of sta-bility.� She is heartened by the fact that:

groups like TÜSIAD, Turkey�s main as-sociation of businessmen and industri-alists, are in the forefront of this liber-alization of Kemalist practice becausethey believe political stability is goodfor business. Others object to Kemalistauthoritarianism because they see thehammer swinging wide and damagingfreedom of speech, civil society, and thecountry�s credibility abroad.46

Finally, we should ask, how do Turks definethemselves and their attitudes toward religion?Reviewing the findings by Çarkoglu and Toprak,White notes that there was a wide range of viewsexpressed. For example, supporters of the Repub-lican People�s party were least likely to rate them-selves as very religious (only 2 percent did so, incontrast to 14 percent of Virtue party support-ers) and most likely to claim not to be at all reli-gious (8 percent, compared to below 3 percent foreach of the other parties). As noted above, how-ever, there was a high degree of observance amongthe Turkish public of certain basic Islamic tenets,such as the daytime fast during Ramadan andattendance at Friday noon prayers. What shefound most striking of all, White wrote, was that�between 40 and 60 percent of all respondentsrated themselves as religious and 40 percentwould define themselves as Muslim or MuslimTurk before Turkish citizen.�47

How well Turkey manages to integrate thebasic requirements of maintaining national and

territorial unity with the demands of its citizensfor greater freedom of religious and cultural ex-pression will determine whether Turkey will con-tinue to be viewed by the United States and itsMiddle East neighbors as a role model for thesuccessful transformation of traditional societiesinto modern Western democratic states.

About the Author

George E. Gruen, senior fellow of the NationalCommittee on American Foreign Policy, is also amember of its Academic Board of Advisers. Hehas been a consultant to the U.S. government andthe UN on Middle East water issues. He is a mem-ber of four Columbia University seminars: TheMiddle East, Conflict Resolution, History andCulture of the Turks, and Israel and Jewish Stud-ies. He also is a member of the InternationalWater Resources Association and the Middle EastStudies Association.

Notes

1. �Turkish Fashion Show Revives Veil Con-troversy,� Agence France-Presse dispatch fromAnkara, June 3, 2003.

2. For additional information on the earliercontroversies, see George E. Gruen, �DefiningLimits on Religious Expression in Public Insti-tutions: The Turkish Dilemma,� Jewish Politi-cal Studies Review, 11/3�4 (fall 1999): 163�196.

3. Jenny B. White, Islamist Mobilization inTurkey: A Study in Vernacular Politics (Seattle,2002), 145.

4. �Analysis: A Headscarf Too Far? MerveKavakci Caused Uproar at Parliament�s Open-ing Session,� by regional analyst Pam O�Toole,May 7, 1999, BBC World: Europe.

5. �Turkish Court Bans Islamic Opposition,�Associated Press dispatch from Ankara, June 22,200l.

6. Agence France-Presse dispatch from An-kara, May 25, 2003.

7. The First Amendment to the U.S. Consti-

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tution states: �Congress shall make no law re-specting an establishment of religion, or prohib-iting the free exercise thereof; or abridging thefreedom of speech, or of the press; or the right ofthe people peaceably to assemble, and to petitionthe government for a redress of grievances.� Thefirst 10 amendments are known as the Bill ofRights.

8. White, op. cit., 35.9. Ibid., 34�35.10. Nicole Pope, �Turkey: Kirkuk Nerves,�

dispatch from Istanbul, Middle East Interna-tional, May 2, 2003, 10�11.

11. For an analysis of the reasons for the AKparty victory, see George E. Gruen, �Turkey�s�Political Earthquake�: Significance for theUnited States and the Region,� American For-eign Policy Interests, 25 (April 2003): 87�97.

12. Pope, op. cit., 11.13. The text of the relevant political articles

of the Tripartite (Sèvres) Agreement on Anatoliaof August 10, 1920, is reproduced in J. C.Hurewitz, The Middle East and North Africa inWorld Politics: A Documentary Record, secondedition, revised and enlarged (New Haven andLondon, 1970), vol. 2, Document 54, �PoliticalClauses of the Treaty of Sèvres,� 219�225. Thetreaty also proposed the creation of a �free andindependent� state of Armenia whose border withTurkey was to be established by arbitration con-ducted by the president of the United States(222).

14. �Turkish Parliament Overturns Presiden-tial Veto,� Associated Press dispatch from Ankara,December 27, 2002.

15. �Turkey�s Erdogan Wins By-Election,�Dow Jones Wire Service dispatch from Ankara,December 27, 2002,

16. Gruen, �Turkey�s �Political Earthquake,��90.

17. White, op. cit., 147.18. Quoted in Agence France-Presse dispatch

from Ankara, May 25, 2003.19. Quoted by Philip G. Smucker, �The Mean-

ing of a Scarf,� U.S. News & World Report, March16, 1998, 31�33. The article was accompanied by

a large photograph showing young women stu-dents wearing colorful headscarves protesting atIstanbul University and carrying a large bannerin Turkish demanding �Freedom of thought andexpression for everyone now!� [emphasis in theoriginal].

20. The Redhouse Press, Çagdas Türkçe-Ingilizce Sozlugu [Contemporary Turkish-En-glish Dictionary] (Istanbul, 1983), 10.

21. �Turkish Fashion Show Revives Veil Con-troversy,� Agence France-Presse dispatch fromAnkara, June 3, 2003.

22. Ali Çarkoglu and Binaz Toprak, Turkiye�de din, toplum ve siyaset (Instanbul, 2000).

23. White, op. cit., 56. She completed the re-search for her book in 2000, and it was publishedin 2002, shortly before the stunning AK partyvictory in November. As noted in an earlier ar-ticle, the AK party drew support from many dis-gruntled voters who were not Islamists (SeeGruen, �Turkey�s �Political Earthquake,�� op.cit.).

24. White, op. cit., 56�57, citing Çarkoglu andToprak, 42�47.

25. Çarkoglu and Toprak, 51.26. Ibid., 58.27. White, 168�169.28. White, 57, summarizing Çarkoglu and

Toprak, 83.29. White, 57, summarizing Çarkoglu and

Toprak, xi.30. �Turkish Fashion Show Revives Veil Con-

troversy,� op. cit.31. Gruen, �Defining Limits on Religious

Expression,� op. cit., 172.32. Deborah Sontag, �The Erdogan Experi-

ment,� The New York Times Magazine, May 11,2003, 42�47.

33. White, Islamist Mobilization in Turkey,274.

34. Sontag, op. cit., 44�45.35. White, Islamist Mobilization, especially

chapters 3, 4, and 5.36. Sontag, op. cit., 44.37. Ibid., 47.38. �Analysis: Turkey�s Reform Package,�

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298 George E. Gruen


United Press International dispatch from Ankara,June 12, 2003.

39. �Eyes on EU Summit, Turkish Govern-ment Presses on with Rights Reforms,� AgenceFrance-Presse dispatch from Ankara, June 12,2003.

40. For a brief review of the evolution of theposition of the Jewish community from 1923 to2000, see the chapter �Turkey� by George E.Gruen in The Jews of the Middle East and NorthAfrica in Modern Times, eds. Reeva SpectorSimon, Michael Menachem Laskier, and SaraReguer (New York, 2003), 303�315.

41. This section is excerpted from an articleon recent developments affecting Turkey�s Jew-ish community that is to be published in theAmerican Jewish Year Book.

42. Shalom, December 25, 2002. Former MayorErdogan�s message was read by the AK party�sdeputy chairman, Associate Professor Dr. MuratMercan. [My unofficial translation from the Turk-ish originals of the Sezer and Erdogan messages.]

43. Jenny White uses the higher estimate of�around 20 percent� (109). For a comprehensivedescription of the Alevis, see David Shankland,

Islam and Society in Turkey (Huntingdon, 1999),132�168.

44. In her chapter on �The Institutional Ex-pression of Islam� (103�130), White examines notonly the Islamic-oriented political parties but alsothe various popular institutional expressions ofIslam as well as the more �enlightened elite�groups such as Nurcu Fethullacilar, founded byFethullah Gülen, which has branches and schoolsthroughout Turkey and the Turkic republics ofCentral Asia. She also describes occasional vio-lent clashes between Sunni and Alevi adherentsand the shadowy, notorious, and violent TurkishHizbullah, which is suspected of waging an armedbattle to establish an Islamic state in Turkey andkilling journalists critical of businessmen andothers suspected of supporting Kurdish separat-ism. (The Turkish Hizbullah is not believed tobe connected to the group of the same name inLebanon.)

45. Eric Rouleau, �Turkey: Beyond Atatürk,�Foreign Policy, no. 103 (summer 1996): 70�87.

46. White, 57�58.47. White, 108, citing Çarkoglu and Toprak,

43 and 27.

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Documents

Turks Debate the Role of Islam