Many people are truly perplexed about the "odd" transformation that has happened in Turkey.

- 07 / 05 / 2008 08:35

Many people are truly perplexed about the "odd" transformation that has happened in Turkey. On the one hand, they are trying to understand how conservative suburbanites with Islamic sensitivities have adopted an attitude in favor of modernization.

On the other hand, they are exerting great effort to grasp how an ideology such as Kemalism, which was once meant to introduce modernism to this land, has come to represent an anti-Western policy of retiring into oneself and has even started to hint at racism. The Kemalism in question founded a new country by securing the direct and indirect support of the Italians in 1920, then the British and the French, followed by that of the Russians. It strenuously endeavored to lure foreign capital into the country and sought ways to make the newborn republic a part of the Western world. In other words, Kemalism's understanding of modernism essentially meant having a position in the Western world.

However, Kemalism was at the same time a movement strictly committed to independence. And this implied demonstrating an autonomous attitude in foreign policy while foreign elements were not interfering in Turkey's domestic affairs. Therefore, the independence of Kemalism has always been chiefly defensive, tending to favor the attitude of retiring into itself. As a matter of fact, the "enemies" outside of the country have never become the determining elements of the political scene in Turkey. The fundamental policy of the state was to freeze international problems by avoiding even discussing them -- let alone making attempts to solve them. In return, the dynamic of the politics inside the country was getting entangled in a quandary over what to do with the "enemies" inside, and Kemalism showed no hesitation about taking the strictest measures in that field. From this perspective, "independence" was a hegemonic strategy that allowed the state to turn a blind eye to social diversity. This general state behavior -- associating any different social demands with foreign powers and adopting an attitude of animosity toward the non-Muslim population -- has become an increasingly common approach.

Kemalism's failure to appreciate modernism's individualistic and liberal side and its reduction of modernism into a simple nation-state formation has caused it to sanctify the state. And the state, being represented almost solely by Kemalists, has culminated in Kemalism taking on an almost narcissistic quality. It was as if the Kemalists were "enlightened teachers" innately gifted at discerning the "good" and the "bad." They used this to form a class "above" the normal people. In this situation, they developed an internal perception in which everybody that was not like them turned into an "internal enemy" and they institutionalized this perception by making it an essential part of the country's constitution, laws and bylaws. In this regard, military coups were able to become the natural political instruments of Kemalism, because the mechanism of democracy could from time to time bring some of the "internal enemies" in question into power or cause social demands disliked by Kemalists to be represented in the public sphere.

In short, Kemalism can be described as an ideology that offers to make the country into a state that is "desirable" in the view of the Kemalists. When Kemalists deemed this offer compatible with "modernism," they were probably sincere. Even today, they are of the opinion that modernism necessitates a sterilized public sphere and assume that this can be done only through authoritarian secularism and statist nationalism, because any demand for change in society poses a threat to Kemalism, and the legitimization of the demand in question narrows down the "independence" of the Kemalists.

In doing so, you are advancing toward a state ideology that sees change, social preferences and even society itself as illegitimate. You can be sure that such a power source will always want to shut down the political parties that represent different demands not included in the official ideology. This doesn't make them cease to be Kemalists. Just the opposite, it makes them even greater Kemalists, because Kemalism is not an ideology that was once modern and has now drifted away from it. Kemalism is an intrinsically authoritarian ideology, and this is the most it is able to understand from modernism.