2008_10_SRP_CornellKaraveli_Turkey

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vi Svante E. Cornell and Halil Magnus Karaveli In the decade ahead, what kind of a Turkey can we expect? In particular, what are the implications of religious conservatism and secularism, respectively, for democratization and for Turkey’s foreign policy orientation? While trying to fathom what the future may hold, how the republic that will be celebrating its 100 th anniversary in 2023 may come to look like, this study has also taken stock, in rough outline, of the Kemalist experiment. How that experiment is ultimately understood and judged has an importance that transcends the borders of Turkey. The forces of secularism and religious conservatism, of republican nationalism and ethnic separatism, pull the country in opposite directions, straining national cohesion, making political stability elusive and the securing of democracy a still more difficult challenge. Turkey presents a very specific case, which fits neither into a European nor a Middle Eastern framework of historical development. Hence, the exercise of predicting its future trajectory is scarcely sustained by any helpful analogies. The central question is how Islamic conservatism will develop, whether or not it will encourage a kind of Islamic reformation – an Islamic reconciliation with Enlightenment values – and secondly, whether or not it will be able to hold the nation-state together. Obviously, the future relationship between Islamic conservatism and secularism will not be determined solely by the internal developments in Turkey. Yet, as the attempts to “redefine” secularism and the description of secularization as a “societal trauma” show, the Islamic conservatives still have a long way to travel before making their peace with the conceptual leap of thinking about politics in exclusively human terms, with the break with political theology. The co-existence of two divergent worldviews in society, religious conservatism and secularism, will inevitably continue to generate friction and furnish Turkish politics with a defining context for decades to come. Neither religious conservatism nor secularism will be wished away; both are sociologically deeply rooted, and neither can in the short run be expected to prevail altogether over the other. The co-existence of competing value systems, while creating tensions, also signifies that Turkish society is inherently pluralistic, multi-culturally heterogeneous to an extent that it is difficult to envisage that an attempt to establish an authoritarian system – be
Prospects for a ‘Torn’ Turkey vii it of a religious or a secularist nature – could succeed. However, Turkey seems destined to become a more markedly religious and conservative country, although secularism will not have disappeared as a societal force to be reckoned with. Presently, religious conservatism undoubtedly has the upper hand, and the historical trend since the 1950s is on its side. Meanwhile, it is misleading to describe the Turkish state as having been staunchly secularist in the past half century. In fact, the state has continuously sought to accommodate Islam, while secularism, on the other hand, has not been tended to. An important conclusion is therefore that the military should not be assumed to have an unwavering commitment to secularism, even if it is obviously not insensitive about the issue. However, the military has little choice but to adjust to a changing societal environment in which religious conservatism is on the ascendancy. In addition, the Kurdish question provides the ground for a possible, durable reconciliation between the military and political Islam, as the latter has proven itself capable of securing the loyalty of a substantial portion of the religiously conservative Kurdish population. It is however an altogether different question to what degree an Islamic conservatism that appeals to the Kurds will remain as attractive for the Turkish majority. An ethnic Turkish nationalism that excludes the Kurds could be in the process of evolving at a popular level as a reaction to the PKK’s continued attacks on the Turkish military and its acts of terrorism. In the long run, it is unlikely that Islamic conservatism would turn Turkey into a more Western-oriented nation. Although Turkey will not “break” with the West strategically, the ties between it and the West are bound to become weakened. The growing Islamicization of society will inevitably lead to a concomitant cultural estrangement of Turkey from the West in general, with possible strategic repercussions. The common ground of shared values which sustains the special relationship between the U.S. and its European allies will in that case be increasingly lacking in the U.S.-Turkish relationship. That will make the relationship, although likely to endure and not necessarily to cool in strategic terms, more vulnerable to mutual misunderstandings and tensions.
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Foreign Relations and Geopolitics A
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Turkey in 2023: the Republic at 100
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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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