As the AKP prepared to capitalize on its landslide victoryin the 2002 parliamentary election, it proceeded with
care. The party’s leadership remained in a complicated posi-tion with its chairman, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, still bannedfrom politics. Initially, the government was headed by Abdul-lah Gul as prime minister. During its first few months inpower, the party’s parliamentary majority voted to nullify thepolitical ban against Erdogan. In March 2003, he won a seatin a by-election in Siirt (his wife’s hometown and, ironically,the city where he read aloud from the poem that led to hisimprisonment). He then became prime minister, with Gulshifting to foreign minister.
A cautious spirit continued to guide the AKP at the outsetof the Erdogan government. The party sought to consolidate
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its support domestically and abroad by cultivating an image ofa conservative (e.g., religious) and democratic party, akin toEurope’s various Christian democratic parties. Gul and Erdo-gan focused their public statements on economic reform andgrowth, and Turkey’s quest for EU membership. The Turkishgovernment sustained the economic policies outlined byKemal Dervis’s reform plan and sanctioned by the IMF.
Those policies of continuity reassured domestic and inter-national audiences. At home, growth returned to the Istanbulstock market and the Turkish economy, which deepened thebusiness elite’s support for the AKP. Abroad, the governmentwon accolades from U.S. and European leaders as a new andhopeful type of political movement that could prove the com-patibility of Islam and democracy and blunt the appeal ofextremists following the terrorist attacks of September 11,2001 and March 11, 2004. American and European officialscheered the Erdogan administration’s success in securing par-liamentary approval of its first constitutional reform packagein July 2003. In accordance with EU norms, these reformsinter alia curbed the role of the military in Turkish politics bymandating a civilian head of the nation’s most powerful statesecurity body, the NSC, and diminishing its policy-makingauthority; the latter step was deemed necessary because themilitary continued to wield heavy influence on the councileven without chairing it. AKP leaders hailed these reforms asproof of their commitment to rejuvenate and strengthen Tur-key’s democracy.
In December 2004, a favorably impressed European Coun-cil voted to invite Turkey to begin accession negotiations for
EU membership, capping a 40-year quest by successive Turk-ish governments to be granted EU candidacy. Accession talkscommenced in October 2005.
But the AKP leadership also began to send contradictorysignals. Rather than stressing their commitment to democ-racy, key leaders suggested that the Islamist agendas of Erba-kan and the Gulen movement remained active. In 2003,Omer Dincer, a key AKP strategist and an undersecretary atthe prime ministry, announced his continued embrace of theIslamist ideology and tactics that he had outlined in a famousspeech in 1995, when he was a member of Erbakan’s WelfareParty.1 In that speech, Dincer welcomed what he termed theuniting of cultural Islamic movements, such as that sparkedby Gulen, with Islamist political parties to replace the currentrepublic with an Islamic state governed by sharia.
Echoing Dincer’s attitude, the AKP government seemed toadjust the direction of EU-mandated reforms away fromdeeper democratization and toward the reintroduction ofIslam into public life. In 2004, Prime Minister Erdogan citedthe EU requirement of reforming Turkey’s penal code to jus-tify his own call for the criminalization of adultery. This movedisturbed many because it would mean the reintroduction ofsharia norms into private family matters, a step that wouldweaken the secular legal order. In a similar move, the govern-ment invoked the EU’s call to expand religious freedom—astep that many secular Turks perceived as an attempt to laythe foundation to overturn Turkey’s legal ban on the Islamicheadscarf in universities. Both of these social reforms ulti-
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mately failed in the face of sharp criticism from the Kemalistopposition, women’s groups, newspaper editorialists, andother civil-society groups.
A few European officials echoed growing concern withinTurkey about the AKP’s apparent attempts to divert reformsin the name of EU accession from democratization to privatesocial matters. As the EU debated the acceptability of publicdisplays of religiosity within Europe’s secular democracies,members of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR)broke with the European mainstream and expressed greaterunderstanding of Turkey’s restrictions on wearing the head-scarf. In November 2005, the ECHR upheld Istanbul Univer-sity’s 1998 decision to forbid it there. The court judged theban legitimate in the Turkish context because of the effect that‘‘wearing such a symbol, which was presented or perceived asa compulsory religious duty, may have on those who chosenot to wear it.’’ The court noted the importance of protectingsecularism and equality, two principles that ‘‘reinforce andcomplement each other,’’ as well as the Turkish constitution’semphasis on safeguarding the rights of women.
The ECHR’s ruling shocked the AKP and dampened enthu-siasm for membership in the European Union. Prime Minis-ter Erdogan declared, ‘‘This court cannot reach such adecision. They should ask religious people, the ulema [Muslimtheologians].’’2 In the months following the ruling, AKP lead-ers stepped up efforts to soften the constitution’s strict pro-tections of secularism. On April 23, 2006, the anniversary ofthe founding of the secular parliament, Speaker Bulent Arınctold his legislative colleagues that the constitutional principle
of secularism should be redefined to maintain separation ofmosque and state without stifling public expressions of privatepiety. He added that the practice of ‘‘intense secularism’’should not turn society into a ‘‘prison.’’3 Arınc’s speech wasinterpreted as a call for constitutional reforms to lift the head-scarf ban and clear the way for the general return of Islamicnorms to mainstream society.
Meanwhile, the AKP was shoring up its power throughoutsociety. It placed its followers in positions in all the civilianbureaucracies, including the courts. Many of these appointeeswere the party’s most conservative advocates for the return ofIslam into public life (for example, the graduates of I
.mam
Hatip schools—see Chapter 4). The AKP also supported thegrowth of the Islamic business elite. State contracts werechanneled to its supporters, many of whom belonged to theNaqshibandi orders and the Gulen network. Small and me-dium businesses that began moving from the Anatolian pe-riphery to urban centers under Ozal had given birth to a newelite in Istanbul.
The AKP’s first four years in power achieved mixed results.On the one hand, the initial package of constitutional reformsboosted Turkey’s democracy and EU aspirations, while its eco-nomic policies sustained stability and growth. Such policiesgained the AKP many non-Islamist supporters, includingmembers of the secular business elite. But by continuing theirpredecessors’ practice of using political power to provide eco-nomic benefits to themselves and their allies, AKP leaders frus-trated the hopes of millions of centrist voters who longed formore democracy, less corruption, and justice and development
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for all. Moreover, as the AKP consolidated its strength, staunchKemalists worried that they had lost power for the foreseeablefuture, and that Islam was regaining its societal role.
The Kemalists Counterattack
As expected, the Kemalist elite strongly opposed the AKP’sinitiatives on Islamist reform and political consolidation. Acentral figure in the resulting counterattack was the presidentof the republic, Ahmet Necdet Sezer. A former chairman ofthe Constitutional Court, Sezer was a staunch believer in Tur-key’s secular democratic order. The holder of that office hadtraditionally been viewed more as an apolitical arbiter than asthe executive of government policy, and thus as a key elementin Turkey’s system of checks and balances. The president’score functions, besides serving as head of state, are to approveor veto all parliamentary bills and all senior appointments ofstate officials, including generals, governors, and universityrectors.
In Sezer’s hands, the presidency was the Kemalists’ lastremaining lever to restrain what they viewed as a serious ero-sion of the secular order. Sezer carried out his duties withvigor. He vetoed Prime Minister Erdogan’s candidate for thecentral bank presidency, Adnan Buyukdeniz, who headed afinancial institution practicing sharia-based banking methods.He blocked university-rector nominees whom he fearedwould not enforce the headscarf ban. In addition, he vetoedseveral key AKP bills: in 2004, a bill that proposed fundamen-
tal changes to the Higher Education Law in order to facilitateI.mam Hatip graduates’ access to higher education institutions;
in 2007, a constitutional reform package that includedamendments to elect the president by popular rather thanparliamentary vote.
In his public speeches, President Sezer increasingly warnedagainst ‘‘creeping Islamization’’ of the Turkish republic. In hisopening address to the Grand National Assembly in October2006, Sezer warned of an Islamist threat by the AKP. He re-peated his warnings in April 2007, during an address to theofficer corps at the War Academy. He told the audience therethat domestic and foreign entities were trying to Islamize Tur-key under the false pretense of democratization.
That second warning was strategically placed: PresidentSezer’s key ally in countering the AKP’s pro-Islam policieswas the military. In the past, the Turkish general staff hadintervened at key political moments to ‘‘preserve secular stateorder’’ through decisions of the NSC and, more dramatically,through coups. Despite its sometimes heavy-handed tactics,the military had never intervened against governments thatenjoyed strong public support, and as a result, had for decadesremained Turkey’s most popular government institution.Turks generally accepted its self-appointed role as protectorof the model of secular democracy, though many Islamistsand adherents of the political left retained deep distrust of themilitary as an enemy of democratic freedom. Despite the2003 reforms that reduced the general staff ’s political influ-ence, the military retained significant authority and had noqualms about exercising it.
Torn Country: Turkey between Secularism and Islamism
While General Hilmi Ozkok, as chief of the general stafffrom 2002 to 2006, sought political stability through accom-modations with the AKP, his successor, General Yasar Buyu-kanıt, was more outspoken in opposing what he viewed as theAKP’s efforts to weaken secularism. Opening the academicyear at the Military Academy in October 2006, General Buyu-kanıt warned that Turkey’s secular democracy was threatenedby ‘‘Islamist fundamentalism’’ and asked rhetorically, ‘‘Arethere not people in Turkey saying that secularism should beredefined? Aren’t those people occupying the highest seats ofthe state? Isn’t the ideology of Ataturk under attack?’’ Thefollowing year, at the Turkish Embassy in Washington, D.C.,Buyukanıt warned that the republic had not faced graver dan-gers since 1919, before the start of the War of Liberation,and made clear that the military would not allow the countryto disintegrate.
Election Showdown: The AKP Blinks
The 2007 political season promised to be monumentally im-portant, as Turkey looked ahead to parliamentary election ofa new president in April and a new parliament in November.The AKP was confident that it could attract enough indepen-dent legislators to secure the two-thirds majority required topropel its candidate to victory, regardless of opposition fromthe only other party represented in parliament, the KemalistRepublican People’s Party (CHP).
Erdogan seemed to ponder for months whether he wouldbe the AKP candidate. His critics said he was not suitable,
arguing that he would politicize the office, had spent time injail for opposing secularism, and had a wife who wore anIslamic headscarf, which was seen as a political statement.Media speculation swirled around whether Erdogan wouldrisk a direct confrontation with the Kemalist elite as the AKPcandidate or disappoint the AKP’s Islamist base (and risksplitting the party) by giving way to a candidate with no Islam-ist background, such as Defense Minister Vecdi Gonul (whosewife did not wear a headscarf ). In the end, he and the partyleadership settled on Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul. As a co-founder of the AKP with a long history in Erbakan’s partiesand a wife who wears the scarf, Gul was acceptable to theparty base. The AKP leadership hoped that Gul’s moderaterhetoric and conciliatory demeanor would help temper Kema-list opposition.
The Kemalists, however, were not placated by the relativelymoderate stance of candidate Gul, especially given SpeakerArınc’s statement that Turkey’s next president should be ‘‘reli-gious.’’4 The CHP counterattacked in parliament, arguing thatthe AKP’s near-two-thirds majority did not reflect an over-whelming mandate, since it resulted from a mathematicalanomaly rooted in the peculiarities of the country’s electionlaws. It called for the election of a new parliament, whichtheoretically would more accurately reflect the electorate’scurrent preference, before parliament elected Turkey’s nextpresident. But Erdogan and the AKP refused to hold the par-liamentary election earlier than planned, which meant thepresidential election would occur first.
As parliament convened for the first round of presidentialballoting on April 27, the CHP leaders attempted to block the
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vote on procedural grounds. They claimed that the constitu-tion required a quorum of two-thirds (or 367 deputies, fourmore than AKP’s number of seats) to validate a presidentialvote, even though that alleged requirement had never beeninvoked in previous presidential elections. All CHP deputiesand several independents staged a boycott, cutting attendanceto 361. The AKP majority nonetheless proceeded with thevote, electing Gul as president. The Kemalists responded bylodging a protest case with the Constitutional Court declaringthe presidential vote illegitimate due to the lack of a quorum.
Late that same evening, the Turkish military stepped intothe fray, posting a sharp warning on the website of the generalstaff. The statement cautioned that the military considereditself an ‘‘absolute defender of secularism’’ and underlined anApril 12 press statement by General Buyukanıt that Turkey’snext president must be ‘‘committed to the principles of theRepublic not just in words, but in essence, and demonstratethis [commitment] in actions.’’
On May 1, the Constitutional Court ruled that a quorum of367 MPs was indeed required to validate a presidential elec-tion. On May 10, Gul withdrew his candidacy. The next day,parliament voted to move up the parliamentary election nearlythree months, to July 22. The Kemalists appeared to haveprevailed, having blocked Gul’s election and set a precedent ofrequiring a quorum they could use in the future to prevent theAKP’s choice of a presidential candidate. The outraged Erdo-gan called the court’s decision ‘‘a shot fired at democracy.’’Many others thought that the general staff ’s online manifesto
had clouded the court’s independence, and (referring to theonline posting of the warning) spoke of an ‘‘e-coup.’’
Secularists vs. Islamists: ‘‘No Sharia, No Coup’’
The high political drama and constitutional crisis of spring2007 reflected a key political fault line in Turkish society. Onone side of the divide were the AKP’s heterogeneous support-ers, split into two schools. On the right of that divide: devoutMuslims and Islamists, who formed the AKP’s base and ex-pected the party to deliver on their core demands—above all,a constitutional amendment to permit women to wear theIslamic headscarf in universities and government offices. Onthe left of the divide: the so-called liberal democrats, whowelcomed the AKP’s political and economic reforms, hopedthe party would improve the plight of Turkey’s Kurdish popu-lation, and shared the AKP’s sharp opposition to the military’saccustomed role in politics. (The military had repressed manyof the liberal democrats following previous coups.)
Opposing the AKP camp was a similarly loose alliance oftraditional secularists and nationalists who demanded preser-vation of the republic as a unitary, secular, and democraticstate. They feared that the AKP would expand Islam’s role inthe public sphere and grant autonomy to the Kurds, all at theexpense of Turkey’s secular democratic institutions and per-haps its territorial integrity. Although previously pro-Western,the secular camp perceived the United States and Europe assupporting the AKP and its politico-religious aspirations,
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given their continuous praise of the AKP and its policies.Some extreme secularists asked why the military was ‘‘tolerat-ing’’ the AKP instead of treating the party the same way ithad treated Erbakan less than a decade earlier.
As the electoral-constitutional crisis flared in April, the di-vide between these two camps played itself out on the streetsthrough mass demonstrations. Following small rallies by AKPsupporters in I
.zmir and Balikesır, the proponents of secular-
ism launched large ones. On April 14, close to one and a halfmillion protestors took to the streets of Ankara, chanting theirsupport for Turkey’s secular and democratic principles andurging Erdogan not to run for president. They waved Turkishflags and chanted slogans such as ‘‘Turkey is secular and willremain secular!’’ and ‘‘We don’t want a sharia state!’’
A similar rally took place in Istanbul on April 29, two daysafter the military’s anti-Islamist electronic statement. The sec-ularists continued their mass protests even when Gul with-drew his candidacy for president on May 10, shifting theirfocus to parliamentary elections. Large gatherings took placeon May 13 in the Aegean city of I
.zmir and a week later in the
Black Sea port of Samsun (two critical cities in Turkey’s Warof Liberation in 1920).
The secularists who had taken to the streets were an eclec-tic mix of largely moderate people. Many had never taken partin a public demonstration. More than half were women whofeared that an Islamist president would undermine their statusas equal citizens. Their pleas for the defense of Turkey’s secu-lar and democratic order were at times overshadowed by a
small, radical group calling for military intervention to preventthe election of an Islamist president.
The large majority of protestors were uncomfortable withboth the AKP’s push to soften Islam’s separation from publiclife and the extreme secularists’ push for the military to re-move the AKP from power. Their most prevalent slogan dur-ing the rallies was ‘‘No sharia, no coup!’’ That was the middleroad—the demand for a political process that would normal-ize political life by maintaining the separation between reli-gion and politics, while keeping the military in its barracks.
The AKP Rebounds with Electoral Wins
The large demonstrations of April-May 2007 set the tone forthe final weeks of campaigning for the July 22 parliamentaryelection. The pro-secular camps urged both the center-leftand center-right parties to form separate electoral blocs thatcould surpass the 10 percent threshold to avoid a repeat ofthe disproportionate majority the AKP won in November2002. Neither centrist bloc materialized, however, and Tur-key’s center-right parties melted away. Meanwhile, the AKPran a successful campaign portraying itself as a centrist partyseeking democratic reform and economic growth. The AKP’seconomic record was indeed strong: annual GDP growth dur-ing the party’s first years in office averaged 7.4 percent, com-pared with only 3.7 percent during 1991–2001; inflation hadfallen by 2004 to single digits for the first time since 1976,after soaring to 68 percent in 2001. AKP supporters argued
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that the party had been unfairly victimized by the Kemalists’attacks.
On election day, the AKP camp succeeded in rallying evenmore voters from the center of Turkish politics than it hadattracted in November 2002. Many business leaders pre-viously associated with the secular camp voted for the AKP inthe expectation of continued economic stability. The partywon a resounding victory, expanding its share of the vote tonearly 47 percent (from 34 percent in 2002) and exceedingprojections in national polls during the early summer of 2007.At the same time, a third party, the rightist Nationalist ActionParty (MHP), joined the AKP and the CHP in breaching the10-percent threshold for parliamentary representation. Thatdevelopment meant that AKP’s 2007 victory translated intofewer parliamentary seats (341) than in 2002 (363 out of550, or four shy of a two-thirds majority).
The AKP’s room for maneuver narrowed as 22 candidatesof the Kurdish Democratic Society Party won parliamentaryseats. This allowed the Kurdish party to organize itself as anunofficial bloc, even though it won less than 5 percent of thenational vote, resulting in the first pro-Kurdish quasi-factionin parliament since 1991.5
Given that the two-thirds parliamentary majority requiredfor constitutional amendments lay beyond its reach, manycentrist observers hoped the AKP would refocus its agenda ona national consensus favoring democratic reform and eco-nomic growth. Such centrist hopes focused in particular on acompromise candidate for president. Instead, the AKP, un-daunted by its loss of seats, emphasized its 13-percentage
point increase in the popular vote, interpreting that as a man-date to consolidate its political power and please its Islamistbase. The AKP renewed its push for Abdullah Gul’s candidacyfor president in an election scheduled one month after theparliamentary election.
Throughout the first half of August, the secular camp hopedthat the CHP, with MHP as a new parliamentary partner,would again use the procedural tactic of boycotting a parlia-mentary vote on the presidential election of Gul to block aquorum. But the national mood had shifted since spring.More Turks now objected to the general staff ’s electronicmemorandum as inappropriate interference in Turkish poli-tics. In addition, nationalist sentiment had continued to grow,with members of all political camps interpreting a range ofU.S. and European actions (some of which are discussed inChapter 5) as directed against Turkey. The growth in national-ism led many voters on the right, who embraced traditionalIslam as a key element in Turkish identity, to seek a ‘‘devoutMuslim’’ president. After failing to garner a majority on Au-gust 23, Abdullah Gul was elected president in the secondround, on August 28, capping a mid-summer surge in supportfor the AKP.6
Presidential and Court Victories Embolden the AKP
With Gul’s election, leaders of a single political party with anIslamist past secured Turkey’s three key offices (president,prime minister, and speaker of parliament) for the first time
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since the foundation of the republic. Turkey’s supporters inthe West (once again) hoped the AKP government would useits strengthened political capital to re-energize democratizingreforms required for EU accession. Instead, Prime MinisterErdogan quickly pressed for a constitutional amendment tolift the headscarf ban.
The headscarf issue continues to carry tremendous politicaland social significance in Turkey. Although many Turkishwomen from conservative backgrounds embrace the scarf as areligious requirement and an instrument of partial liberationfrom being treated as sexual objects, many others fear thatsocial and political pressure to don the scarf will underminetheir personal freedoms and gender equality. Conflicting ten-sions over the scarf are embodied in the wives of the primeminister and president, Emine Erdogan and Hayrunnisa Gul,whose families compelled them to wear it.7
In January 2008, the AKP scored a crucial political andlegal victory by securing a parliamentary approval of the con-stitutional amendments required to overturn the ban on head-scarf in universities. The party’s opponents counterattacked.In March 2008, the chief prosecutor of the High AppealsCourt, Abdurrahman Yalcinkaya, a staunch Kemalist, broughta case to the Constitutional Court charging the AKP and itsleaders with being ‘‘a focal point of efforts to change thesecular nature of the Republic.’’ He argued that the AKPshould be disbanded and 71 of its leaders (including PresidentGul and Prime Minister Erdogan) banned from politics.
The court deliberated this landmark case for severalmonths. In June 2008, before deciding the AKP’s fate, the
judges ended the headscarf debate—at least for the timebeing—by ruling that the amendments allowing universitywomen to wear the scarf on university property violated theconstitutional principle of secularism.
That decision was a serious defeat for the AKP. It fueledpublic perceptions that a subsequent court ruling would closedown the party and end its leaders’ participation in politics.The AKP and its supporters responded with a public cam-paign portraying the Constitutional Court heading toward a‘‘judicial coup.’’ Such accusations resonated in the EU andUnited States, where officials and analysts believed that thebanning of the country’s most popular political party wouldweaken Turkish democracy.
At the same time, the AKP administration launched an in-vestigation into alleged plots by a group of retired generalsand other Kemalist allies in and out of government in whatbecame known as the ‘‘Ergenekon’’ case (see Chapter 4). So-cietal tension increased, and pressure built on the judges fromall directions. Even some of the AKP’s opponents worriedthat, if banned from politics, the party’s leaders would returneven stronger; that had happened with Erbakan and Erdogan.Others feared that shuttering the AKP itself would promptpolitical instability that could undermine the economy andfuel a new financial crisis.
The Constitutional Court reached its historic decision inJuly 2008, ruling against closing the AKP by only a seven tosix margin. But the court, terming the AKP a ‘‘hub of anti-secular activities,’’ also reduced its state subsidy. The chair-man of the court characterized this decision as ‘‘a serious
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warning,’’ saying the AKP should ‘‘draw its own conclusions’’about the consequences of violating secular principles. Asnewspaper columnist Soli Ozel, put it, ‘‘The AKP is onprobation. . . . The court clearly said it sees the party as afocal institution for Islamizing the country.’’8
But the AKP saw the outcome differently—as it was thefirst time a Turkish Islamist party had survived a concertedeffort by the Kemalist establishment to shut it down. TheAKP thus felt emboldened to pursue a more aggressive agendato restore a broader Islamic role in Turkish society and deter-mination of Turkish identity.
The central, enduring tension between secularism and de-mocracy had again been laid bare, and there was no use tryingto finesse or conceal it. The Kemalists were believers in mod-ernism, as they reckoned it. The newly empowered Islamistspinned their hopes on the democratic process. The old facileassumption that democracy and secularism were inseparabletwins was overtaken by the political changes that had settledupon Turkey.
In retrospect, the stewardship of Turgut Ozal (first as primeminister, then president, from 1983 until his death a decadelater) may well have presented a rare chance to bridge Turkey’ssecularist-religious divide. He was both a man of Turkey’sconservative heartland and a worldly politician who sought forthe nation’s membership in the European Union and who didmuch to bring the Kurds into the mainstream of political life.His brand of Islam was moderate, at its core the kind of faithwith which most Turks feel at ease.
Ozal had made his way around the Kemalist inheritance,amending and updating it without triggering a backlash fromits adherents. His premature death robbed his country of thechance to reconcile the two camps competing for its directionand identity. In the decade that followed him, the countrywould witness greater polarization. Where Ozal smothereddifferences, the Islamists and their secularist rivals wouldsharpen them with increasing force and conviction.
