2008_10_SRP_CornellKaraveli_Turkey

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Svante E. Cornell and Halil Magnus Karaveli
conservatism has achieved and secure its moderation. Islamic conservatism
may have become a little too powerful for its own good. The current
marginalization of political opposition and the fact that a growing section of
the media has come to be controlled by business interests close to the Islamic
movement have given rise to a political hubris which risks setting
authoritarian tendencies that have never been absent loose.
Still, political power may in the long term make the Islamist movement
conducive to reconciliation with secularism. Middle Eastern examples,
notably the evolution in recent years of the Muslim Brotherhood movement
in Egypt and Jordan would seem to suggest that increased political
participation incites to displaying greater consideration for secular values
such as democracy, human rights and gender equality, simply out of the need
to attract other groups of voters beside the religious conservative core. The
Turkish Islamic conservatives have indeed been successful in attracting
secular voters. On the other hand, they have displayed disregard for secular
sensibilities and showed authoritarian inclinations. The pressure of the
conservative base is also bound to make itself felt.
As was noted above, an Islamic “reformation” of a kind has taken place in
Turkey; a majority of the population has come to accept that religion should
be privatized – that is, confined to the conscience and to the shrine. Barely 10
percent support the introduction of Islamic law. But opinion polls,
significantly, reveal that there is a much larger constituency – around 35
percent – of a religious conservatism which is distinguished by a marked
uneasiness with the concepts of secularism and democracy; as has been
noted, surveys further suggest that support for secularism has been
decreasing during the last half-decade.
Attitudes within the Islamic movement, the religious brotherhoods, and in
particular the Fethullah Gülen cemaat (the most powerful of these) as well as
among the cadres of the ruling Islamic conservatives, have not yet evolved to
the point of a reconciliation with secularism. The leading representatives of
the AKP have not made any secret of their displeasure with the changes that
were brought on with the republic, specifically concerning the restriction of
the societal role of religion. Dengir Mir Mehmet Fırat, deputy chairman of
the AKP, stirred the debate in 2008 when he claimed that society had been