2008_10_SRP_CornellKaraveli_Turkey

Summary
In October 2008, The Turkish republic celebrates its eighty-fifth anniversary.
By early November, seventy years have passed since the death of the founder
of the secular and unitary republic, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. These
anniversaries coincide with a defining moment in the history of the Turkish
republic. Severe ideological tensions have erupted as traditional republican
notions about the role of religion in society and about the nation-state have
come to be increasingly challenged.
In 2007 and 2008, Turkey was shaken by a regime crisis in which the ruling
Islamic conservatives of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) were
pitted against the secular opposition in other parts of the state establishment
and in civil society. The decision of the constitutional court in the summer of
2008 not to close down the AKP marked the end of the acute crisis, although
not of the age-old struggle over the identity of Turkey.
Internal as well as external dynamics underpin the power of the Islamic
conservatives. Having been wielding significant power in society for a long
time, the Islamic movement has come close also to achieving the goal of
controlling the state. By all accounts, with the survival of the AKP, Turkey
has passed a critical threshold.
From a Western policy perspective, there are two basic questions to be asked
about Turkey. The first concerns the perceptions of the nature of Islamic
conservatism: to what degree is the assumption that guides U.S. and
European policy – that it is a force for reform that will make Turkish society
more democratic, securing Turkey as a Western asset – ideologically as well
as strategically warranted? The second concerns how the forces of secularism
are to be conceptualized. Notably, how is the military to be understood? How
can it be predicted to act as Turkey becomes a country dominated by Islamic
conservatism?