2008_10_SRP_CornellKaraveli_Turkey

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46 Svante E. Cornell and Halil Magnus Karaveli General staff could feel insecure at the premises of the General staff is a vivid illustration of the divisions within military ranks. The coup plotters were subsequently retired, but intra-military tensions undoubtedly remain, and can be expected to have grown even more severe since 2004. Notably, certain retired generals have voiced the view that Turkey should move towards closer relations with Russia and China, in response to what is interpreted as Western disregard for the integrity of the Turkish nation-state and the founding ideology of secularism. That prescription hardly commands wide support in the High command; the consciousness that the alliance with the United States constitutes Turkey’s strategic bedrock is ingrained in military thinking since decades. General İlker Başbuğ reiterated the commitment to the alliance with the United States in his inauguration speech as new chief of the General staff in August 2008. It is however noteworthy that the new Army chief General Işık Koşaner, who is scheduled to replace Basbuğ in 2010, stroke a radically different chord in his inauguration speech, more or less accusing Washington of siding with the enemies of Turkey, notably the PKK. General Koşaner’s speech suggests that there is an important undercurrent of neo-nationalism in military ranks which the High Command apparently feels obliged to cater to. A Turkish EU membership would represent the coronation of the process of Westernization of which the military has been the principal promoter for the last two hundred years; the military has subscribed to a nationalism that has sought self-fulfillment in becoming part of the West. However, there is evidently ambivalence in military ranks about the EU, caused by the concern that the territorial integrity of Turkey could eventually be jeopardized as a result of adjustments to EU norms, which in turn fuels an isolationistic nationalism.
Prospects for Reconciliation The “survival” of the AKP signifies that the secularist part of the Turkish state establishment has had to reconcile itself with the reality of the power of the Islamic movement, although notably the Constitutional court has tried to rein in Islamic conservatism by reasserting the principles of the secular order. Given the republican establishment’s history of accommodation of religious demands, and the historical record of power-sharing in the state bureaucracy with religious elites, the inclusion of the ascendant religious bourgeoisie, represented by the AKP, in the establishment coalition of the military and the secular business community would indeed be the logical outcome of the confrontation of 2007-2008. What galvanized a secular opposition within the state and in civil society in 2007-2008 was the AKP’s unwillingness or inability to remain ideologically in the center, and the perception that the Islamic conservatives were not ready to share power with the seculars. Significantly, the insistence that the president should be “religious”, with a wife wearing the Islamic headscarf, confirmed long-standing indications that religiosity, measured by the headscarf, was going to be the criterion for advancement within the bureaucracy. The AKP acted in a way that created the impression that the Islamic conservatives expected the seculars to accept total surrender. The key question for the future is whether Islamic conservatism will be emboldened or moderated within a new framework of systemic reconciliation based on tacit, secularist admittance of relative weakness. Religious conservatism owes much of its strength to the state establishments’ lack of secular resolve. On the other hand, the system has tried to maintain certain barriers to excesses of Islamicization, a fact that is, as has been noted, largely responsible for the relative moderation of political Islam in Turkey. However, even if these barriers – such as the restriction to wear the Islamic headscarf in universities and in public offices – remain enforced, that may still not prove enough to counter-balance the societal strength that religious
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