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FROM TURKEY TO TUNISIA AND BEYOND
By Haroon Siddiqui
The Toronto Star, Canada
October 27, 2011 Thursday
Turkey has become a place of pilgrimage for Arab Spring reformers.
They come here to learn about the "Turkish model" - democratic,
secular, modern and economically successful, attributes not normally
associated with Muslim nations.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is happy to oblige.
A pious Muslim in a striped suit, he led his religiously based Justice
and Development Party to a record third majority in June. In power
since 2002, he has pursued disciplined economic liberalization to
produce record growth - nearly 9 per cent this year, the highest in
the world. He has established civilian control over a military that
used to topple elected governments. He is also the first Turkish
leader to be popular among Arabs - no mean feat, given Arab memories
of imperial Ottoman rule over their lands.
Erdogan was the first Muslim leader to publicly urge Hosni Mubarak
to quit. On Libya, he hesitated initially (Turkish construction
companies had $25 billion in contracts there), but soon abandoned
Moammar Gadhafi and was among the first to help the Libyan rebels
($300 million cash). On Syria, too, he dithered (having spent years
to start Turkish-Syrian visa-free bilateral trade) but called for
Bashar Assad's departure well ahead of Barack Obama.
Turkey has hosted and helped Syrian dissidents, just as it has
anti-Gadhafi forces as well as a range of veteran politicians and
young bloggers from Tunisia and Egypt.
Last month when Erdogan visited Egypt, Libya and Tunisia, he was
received like a rock star. In Cairo, he urged Arabs to build a secular
and not a religious state.
The advice upset the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's largest religious
and political group. Theocratic Iran accused him of poisoning Muslim
minds with secular ideas. Tehran's overreaction only served to remind
people that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has not visited a single
Arab Spring nation, indeed is not welcome in any.
On secularism, Erdogan talks about "neo-laicism," differentiating
it from the old laïcite of Turkey or France. In the 1920s, modern
Turkey's founder Kemal Ataturk established an authoritarian secularism
that penalized any expression of religion in state institutions.
French laïcite promotes strict separation of church and state (but
privileges Christian churches and schools).
Among those rejecting laïcite is Rachid Ghannouchi, leader of Tunisia's
Islamic party Ennahda, which on Monday won the country's first free and
fair election. For him, it evokes bad memories of France, Tunisia's
former colonial power, as well as the dictatorial regime of Zine El
Abidine Ben Ali, both of which invoked Islam to prolong power.
Nader Hashemi, a native of Toronto and professor of international
relations at the University of Denver, notes that "for a generation of
Arabs, secularism is linked to dictatorship, corruption and nepotism."
Rejecting authoritarianism means rejecting Saudi Arabia and Iran as
models. Saying no to French laïcite means rejecting a secularism that
selectively demonizes religion.
Turkey is, therefore, "a model very close to what Tunisia wants to be,
one that merges Islam with modernity," says Ghannouchi.
But there's also a contrarian view, articulated by Yusuf al-Qaradawi,
the Qatar-based Egyptian scholar: "What we want is neither the
democracy of the East nor the West but rather Islamic democracy."
Turkey is not an Islamic democracy. It's a democracy in which Muslims
are a privileged majority.
But Erdogan is moving Turkey away from its Kemalist contradictions -
a secular state that tightly controlled Islam, yet used the Islamic
identity to forge Turkish nationalism that ethnically cleansed the
Greek and Armenian minorities, and forcibly assimilated the Kurds,
the Alevis and the Laz .
Erdogan has extended limited linguistic and cultural rights to the
Kurds (while battling Kurdish separatist insurgency). Recently, he
began returning, or compensating for, Greek and Armenian religious
properties confiscated during the Kemalist era. He's also making
overtures to the Alevis.
But his biggest challenge is yet to come - promised constitutional
changes to extend rights to Kurds and others.
How Turkey, the only Muslim member of NATO, implements equal
By Haroon Siddiqui
The Toronto Star, Canada
October 27, 2011 Thursday
Turkey has become a place of pilgrimage for Arab Spring reformers.
They come here to learn about the "Turkish model" - democratic,
secular, modern and economically successful, attributes not normally
associated with Muslim nations.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is happy to oblige.
A pious Muslim in a striped suit, he led his religiously based Justice
and Development Party to a record third majority in June. In power
since 2002, he has pursued disciplined economic liberalization to
produce record growth - nearly 9 per cent this year, the highest in
the world. He has established civilian control over a military that
used to topple elected governments. He is also the first Turkish
leader to be popular among Arabs - no mean feat, given Arab memories
of imperial Ottoman rule over their lands.
Erdogan was the first Muslim leader to publicly urge Hosni Mubarak
to quit. On Libya, he hesitated initially (Turkish construction
companies had $25 billion in contracts there), but soon abandoned
Moammar Gadhafi and was among the first to help the Libyan rebels
($300 million cash). On Syria, too, he dithered (having spent years
to start Turkish-Syrian visa-free bilateral trade) but called for
Bashar Assad's departure well ahead of Barack Obama.
Turkey has hosted and helped Syrian dissidents, just as it has
anti-Gadhafi forces as well as a range of veteran politicians and
young bloggers from Tunisia and Egypt.
Last month when Erdogan visited Egypt, Libya and Tunisia, he was
received like a rock star. In Cairo, he urged Arabs to build a secular
and not a religious state.
The advice upset the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's largest religious
and political group. Theocratic Iran accused him of poisoning Muslim
minds with secular ideas. Tehran's overreaction only served to remind
people that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has not visited a single
Arab Spring nation, indeed is not welcome in any.
On secularism, Erdogan talks about "neo-laicism," differentiating
it from the old laïcite of Turkey or France. In the 1920s, modern
Turkey's founder Kemal Ataturk established an authoritarian secularism
that penalized any expression of religion in state institutions.
French laïcite promotes strict separation of church and state (but
privileges Christian churches and schools).
Among those rejecting laïcite is Rachid Ghannouchi, leader of Tunisia's
Islamic party Ennahda, which on Monday won the country's first free and
fair election. For him, it evokes bad memories of France, Tunisia's
former colonial power, as well as the dictatorial regime of Zine El
Abidine Ben Ali, both of which invoked Islam to prolong power.
Nader Hashemi, a native of Toronto and professor of international
relations at the University of Denver, notes that "for a generation of
Arabs, secularism is linked to dictatorship, corruption and nepotism."
Rejecting authoritarianism means rejecting Saudi Arabia and Iran as
models. Saying no to French laïcite means rejecting a secularism that
selectively demonizes religion.
Turkey is, therefore, "a model very close to what Tunisia wants to be,
one that merges Islam with modernity," says Ghannouchi.
But there's also a contrarian view, articulated by Yusuf al-Qaradawi,
the Qatar-based Egyptian scholar: "What we want is neither the
democracy of the East nor the West but rather Islamic democracy."
Turkey is not an Islamic democracy. It's a democracy in which Muslims
are a privileged majority.
But Erdogan is moving Turkey away from its Kemalist contradictions -
a secular state that tightly controlled Islam, yet used the Islamic
identity to forge Turkish nationalism that ethnically cleansed the
Greek and Armenian minorities, and forcibly assimilated the Kurds,
the Alevis and the Laz .
Erdogan has extended limited linguistic and cultural rights to the
Kurds (while battling Kurdish separatist insurgency). Recently, he
began returning, or compensating for, Greek and Armenian religious
properties confiscated during the Kemalist era. He's also making
overtures to the Alevis.
But his biggest challenge is yet to come - promised constitutional
changes to extend rights to Kurds and others.
How Turkey, the only Muslim member of NATO, implements equal