2008_10_SRP_CornellKaraveli_Turkey

Introduction
In 2008, the Turkish republic celebrates its eighty-fifth anniversary. It will
also be commemorating the seventieth anniversary of the death of the
founder of the republic, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (1881-1938). These are
symbolically charged anniversaries. They coincide with a defining moment
in the history of the Turkish republic; traditional republican notions about
the nation-state and the role of religion in society are in the process of being
redefined and renegotiated. Severe ideological tensions between competing
power centers in the state apparatus as well as in a civil society, which is
divided along ideological lines, have ensued.
In 2007 and 2008, Turkey was shaken by a regime crisis in which the Islamic
conservatives, in government since 2002, were pitted against a secular
opposition in other parts of the state establishment, mainly the military and
parts of the judiciary. 1 The decision of the constitutional court in the summer
of 2008 not to follow the republic’s chief prosecutor’s demand to ban the
Justice and development party, the AKP, marked the end of the acute crisis,
although not of the age-old struggle over the identity of Turkey. Indeed, the
contentious issues remain as unresolved as ever.
The secularist opposition had suffered a resounding defeat in the elections of
2007 when the AKP was re-elected with 47 percent of the votes.
Subsequently, for the first time in the history of the republic, the military
failed in its attempts to steer politics: Abdullah Gül became the first person
of an Islamist background to be elected Turkish president, over the military’s
objections, and the General staff has since had to acquiesce in the
continuation of the AKP’s rule as well.
1
“Moderate Islamist” is the common description internationally of the Justice and
Development Party, AKP. Yet, representatives of the party themselves deny that they
are Islamists at all; they do however claim to be the Muslim equivalent of the
European, conservative Christian democrats. Thus, it seems appropriate to employ the
term “Islamic Conservative” in describing the AKP.