Division and progress in Turkey

When I arrived in Turkey three months ago, I thought that the main division in Turkish society was between religious people and nonbelievers.

I was completely wrong. I had read dozens of books and learned all I could about Turkey, but I still made a huge error because of flawed preconceptions about Islam and Turkey. Turkey is divided, but not by religion: part of society is modernizing and pragmatic, the other is stubbornly traditional and ideological. Religious people and nonbelievers alike find themselves on each side of this divide.

Westerners tend to perceive the role of Islam as a major fault in Turkish political life, but it is not--or at least, it shouldn't be. Most devout Turks hope for a democratic, pluralistic society that respects their beliefs. Turkish Islam is anything but anti-modern: it is one of the most powerful proponents of greater freedom, equality, and openness in Turkey. Moderate Islam finds itself on the same side as Turkey's nonobservant liberals, who want a pluralist, democratic society too.

The radical Kemalists, led by the military, have more in common with Turkey's few extremist Islamists than most people realize: both are committed to returning Turkey to an imagined perfect past. Both are ideological groups and eschew the pragmatism that characterizes moderate Islam and liberalism. Of course, rightist Kemalists and religious extremists have nothing in common beyond nostalgia for the imaginary, and they have very different dreams.

At first glance, religion looks like the most significant division in Turkey. People's clothing and mannerisms reflect their religious beliefs, and the media perpetuates the myth of a battle between ''secularists'' and ''Radical Islamists.'' But wearing a head scarf or praying five times a day does not make someone radical--it makes him a believer. Yet most Westerners and many Turks conflate the two thanks to a poor understanding of Turkish history and a basic ignorance of Islam. (Needless to say, most Westerners are guilty of both. Surely most Turks know more about Islam, but their view of their own history... well, I've written about that before.)

So, how about history? In the 1920's, the new Turkish government treated Islam like an enemy: most of the modernizing policies of the era weakened the role of Islam in Turkish life. The language reform distanced Turks from the Koran, universal suffrage made women more equal, and the abolition of the Caliphate deprived Turks of their (theoretical) leadership of the Muslim world. Religious leaders were oppressed and believers marginalized. Devout Muslims did oppose these changes 80 years ago and viewed the new Republic as an enemy, but it's incorrect to assume that they still do: that would mean that neither Turkey nor Turkish Islam has changed since then. Both have.

Today, the moderate Muslim community in Turkey (that's the majority of the population, by the way) realizes that democracy and modernity is Turkey's best hope for the future. Turkish Islam is largely a social force today--its political significance is quite limited. I didn't understand this three months ago, and very few people outside Turkey get it. The image of Islam we've been force-fed for the last eight years and more is one of a monolithic, political religion irreconcilably opposed to democracy and modernity, and it's not easy to really shake that perception until you talk with people who are both devout Muslims and reformists.

However, moderate Islam alone will not deliver progress (we'll get to just what that is in a few minutes) because it lacks the tools to challenge the entrenched Kemalist elite: its static interpretation of ''Turkishness'' will only fall if the two main reformist forces--moderate Islam and liberalism--start to work together. There are many significant obstacles to this partnership, most significantly the lingering distrust of religion that is so common in educated, westernizing Turkish society.

I had thought that the AK Party had delivered this synthesis: its attempts to strengthen Turkey's democratic structures seemed genuine. However, its recent implosion indicates that it--or at least Recep Erdoğan, the Prime Minister--is more interested in maintaining power than reform. I'm disappointed, as are many of the liberal Turks who supported Erdoğan, a devout Muslim, in 2003. Elections are soon and it doesn't look good for the AKP: it was elected promising to change Turkey and hasn't followed through.

It may be some time before these two factions can cooperate, but I view it as an absolute precondition to progress in Turkey. Together, moderate Muslims and liberals make up a huge majority of Turkish society, but the rightist Kemalists have effectively divided and ruled for most of Turkey's democratic history.

These men wield Atatürk's legacy like a cudgel: anyone who challenges their plans is branded an enemy of the Father of All Turks. This is duplicitous at best, as their policies are only distantly related to those of the early Republican period. Kemalist governance is long dead; only the mythical Atatürk lives on. That myth is used to maintain the Turkish status quo, benefiting only the deceitful guardians of the great man's legacy--the military and its civilian allies.

What, then, will reform look like in Turkey? My answers are pretty standard: respect for minority rights, civilian control of the military, populist (and sane) economic policies, unrestricted democracy, true freedom of religion, and a strengthened civil society. But it's not up to me.

Turks will have to set their own course, and the only thing that's certain is that Turkey's path will be different from anything we've seen before. Turkey's historical and contemporary circumstances are unique and its solutions will be too, but those solutions will only come if the artificial divisions of Turkish society can be put aside. Am I optimistic? Well, I'm hopeful. But I also know that the status quo is a damn hard thing to change.