2008_10_SRP_CornellKaraveli_Turkey

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22 Svante E. Cornell and Halil Magnus Karaveli furthermore been tarnished by charges of corruption for years. But their total collapse, in the wake of a financial meltdown which could not have been foreseen and which was to lead to the victory of the AKP, was not possible to envisage in 1997. While the coming to power of the AKP was not inevitable, dependent as it was on timing, sheer luck and a range of extraordinary, unforeseen circumstances and a scarcely imaginable ideological realignment, it must ultimately still be understood against the backdrop of the policies pursued by successive governments during the last decades. The causes underlying the rise of Islam as a political force in Turkey will be further elaborated, but it was not far-fetched in itself to imagine the prospect of political Islam mounting yet another challenge to the notion of a secular order. What virtually no one could foresee was the complete reversal of alliances: that Islamists would become the champions of liberalization and Europeanization, and that the secular forces which have traditionally been the vectors of Turkey’s Westernization would become – or at least come to be regarded as – anti-Western and anti-democratic.
Dynamics of Internal Divisions It is a testimony to the relative success of the Turkish republic’s secularism that the country has eschewed the kind of Islamic radicalization at display across the Muslim world, from the Arab states to South Asia. Indeed, the Turkish political system has had the gradual effect of moderating the discourse of political Islam. The mixture of mild repression against expressions of extremism, and the overt political system that enabled Islamic-based politics to be voiced and compete for votes, has combined to produce a brand of political Islam that – in spite of its flaws – is more “modern” and at peace with the world compared to virtually any other Muslim country. Yet, Islamic conservatism, however moderate, is basically not yet at peace with an understanding of secularism that calls for the withdrawal of religion from the public realm, which in turn is a prerequisite for liberal democracy. Radical Islamism The moderation of political Islam has had only moderate side-effects in terms of the splintering of more radical groups away from the Islamist mainstream. One example is IBDA-C, (İslami Büyükdoğu Akıncılar Cephesi or Great Eastern Islamic Raiders Front), a radical group that split from Necmettin Erbakan’s National Salvation Party. The group shifted to the use of violence in the mid-1990s, primarily in the form of terrorist attacks against civilian targets deemed un-Islamic such as bars, churches, etc. The group’s lack of a hierarchical structure nevertheless prevented it from becoming a systemic threat. The groups then faded into the background until 2003, when it claimed responsibility for the high-profile suicide bombing of two synagogues, the British consulate and a British bank in Istanbul. Again in 2008, it claimed responsibility for an armed attack against the police post outside the U.S. consulate in Istanbul. The 2003 attacks suggested that IBDA-C had been incorporated into Al Qaeda or used a as local Al Qaeda
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Conclusions Turkey’s internal and
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Authors’ Bio Svante E. Cornell is
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2008_10_SRP_CornellKaraveli_Turkey

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