The Secularism of the Army and the Islamists
Mostafa Zein Al Hayat - 02/09/07//
The historical reconciliation between the political Islam and the modern state in Turkey took more than 80 years. This spans the period from the establishment of the republic and its triumph over the effect of the Protocol of Sèvres until the election of Abdullah Gül president days ago. Throughout this period, the army was able to maintain the secularism of the state that rebelled against a conservative society ruled, for many years, by caliphs (Sultans) in the name of Islam. From this title they drew their legitimacy, seizing the significance of such title in the consciousness and subconsciousness of the Muslim, especially in the Arab world. In its name, they fought and occupied countries and subdued them for centuries, brandishing religious slogans in the face of Western Christian slogans.
Instead of the "Turkmenization" campaign waged by the Sultan in the last days of the Ottoman empire, the founder of the republic Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, and the members of his army waged an internal westernization campaign, in form and content: they drafted a modern constitution. They eradicated the laws of the Shariaa. They prevented men from growing long beards and women from wearing a veil. They founded modern schools. They replaced Arabic words with Latin ones, as a way to stray away from religion and the Arabs. The westernization process touched on all aspects of life. They rebelled against each government that tried to go back to the past and imposed all of this forcefully.
The army turned Turkey into the primary defense line for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in confronting the Soviet Union and the Communist expansion. Secularism wasn't their only goal. Communism is also secular. They took stances that refuted the feelings of their people. They subdued all the national and political minorities, including the Islamic movements. They forged strong relations with Israel. They formed with Iran of the Chah and Ethiopia of Haile Selassie a hoop, not far from Pakistan, which jeopardizes any Arab ambition, especially in the Christian era.
All this came as an implementation of Atatürk's belief in the military institution "Nationalism and Islam do not go together." But the secularism that Atatürk and his partners embraced does not constitute an identity. It is a ruling method, exactly like Communism that didn't obliterate the identity of the German or the Russian or the Romanian, etc…
The truth is that Turkey, in the light of the civil rule, on the outside, and military rule on the inside, witnessed a major historical reconciliation between Atatürkism and Islam. Following the 1980 military coup, Atatürk's approach was amended and the rebels adopted a new ideology that emphasizes the religious dimension of Turkey's identity. They imposed on the low-ranked officers an Islamic book to point out a firm relationship between the Sunnite sect and nationalism. The book is quite an overstatement in that it contrives some kind of connection between the Prophet and Atatürk. To assert the Islamic nature of Turkey, the rebels founded schools for Imams and made religious teaching compulsory in public schools "to achieve a cultural solidarity of the national identity and loyalty to the state" (the researcher Hakan Yavuz). In other words, they reverted to the Islamic framework that binds nationalities and races in the age of the Ottoman empire. They went away with more than a thousand university professors that had secular leftist inclinations, and replaced them with professors rooted in Islamism.
In other words, the Turkish military institution is the one that paved the way for the rise of the Islamists. It succeeded in using them to fight leftism. In Turkey today, there are more than 700 religious schools funded by the private sector that is controlled by the Islamists. The graduates of this school are being engaged by secular public institutions. As for the religious parties, there is the "Refah Partisi" (Welfare party) under the leadership of Necmettin Erbakan who was forced to relinquish his position as Prime Minister and was forbidden to practice politics. Thus, he renamed the party as "Justice and Development," thereby crowning the historical reconciliation between the Islamists and the secular military institution with the rise of Ghel to the presidency.
The military institution wasn't the only one that changed and opened up to the Islamists. These too changed their backward Ottoman methodologies. They did not brandish the slogan of "Caliphate Now" that was raised by one of the Arab Islamic parties in London. They did not establish international Jihad organizations. They did not proclaim a war against the Christians. They adapted to their state's inclinations. They did not try to forcefully control the authority. In other words, they became well-versed in the democratic game. Turkey is now under their custody and that of the army. The harmony between the two parties seems good, despite the "democratic boycott" of the army's supreme command to appoint Gül.
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