On 5/6/07, Michael Perelman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
I admit that I know very little about Turkey. The last two times followed the
country's politics, I was mostly looking at first the brutal dictatorship that
was
attacking even liberals and then later oppression of the Kurds.
I appreciated that the military did not want to get involved in Iraq.
I'm glad I'm not a Turk where I have to choose between religious
fundamentalists and
the military, but then I'm an American and I have a government which has the
worst of
both.
I have looked at articles about the AKP, written by Turks as well as
Westerners, and I have concluded that it is a mistake to think of it
as a "religious fundamentalist" party. It looks to me to be more
secularist* than, for instance, the Democratic Party of the USA,
relatively speaking. Talking about the AKP as if it were a party of
fundamentalists, as secular parties are apparently doing, when
evidence of the party's fundamentalism is missing, is only likely to
alienate voters from the secular parties, for voters notice a big gap
between what they experience and what the secular parties' alarmist
rhetoric says they should see. Voters want to hear about economy and
other secular issues, first and foremost. It's ironic that's what the
AKP is doing whereas the secular parties only talk about religion.
* Ahmet T. Kuru puts it this way in "Reinterpretation of Secularism
in Turkey: The Case of the Justice and Development Party" (The
Emergence of a New Turkey: Islam, Democracy, and the AK Parti, ed. M.
Hakan Yavuz, Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2006,
<http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/~akuru/EMERGENCE.doc>):
the JDP [the Justice and Development Party, the AKP] is
not anti-secular; rather, it defends a distinct
interpretation of secularism that differs from that of the
Kemalist establishment. The debate between the
establishment and the JDP is not simply a conflict between
secularism and Islamism, but rather a discussion about
the true meaning and practice of secularism itself.
Apart from marginal groups, there is an overall consensus
on secularism in Turkey. The real debate occurs between
the supporters of different interpretations of secularism.
* "Un millón cuatrocientas mil personas en la 'Avalancha Tricolor'":
<http://www.globovision.com/news.php?nid=43696>.
--
Yoshie
