Election in Turkey: Implications — domestic, regional and international

Turkey continues to struggle to find a balance in the 21st century between its Turkic and Islamic roots and the westernizing and secularization that have governed much of the life of its people since the founding of its republic in 1923.

Is it shifting East? Is the West shifting away from Turkey? How have changes in the West during this time frame affected Turkey’s outlook? The national elections in Turkey in June will serve as a bellwether to gauge the pace and direction of change in a contest for the heart and soul of the country. Is Turkey to remain a secular republic, become more Islamic or become what appears to be an evolving hybrid of the two?

When asked how he would best describe Turks, the first president of the new republic, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, said, “Biz bize benzeriz” — in English: “We resemble ourselves.” Against this cultural tapestry, in some sense, forcibly woven with threads of many ethnic, religious and ideological colors, here’s some idea of who they are and what Turkey has become.

Turkey is a nation of some 73 million people, with more than 13 million living in Istanbul, a city whose population numbered 675,000 in 1960. Turks have blond, red and black hair. They have fair and swarthy skin. Cell phones are ubiquitous. They have country folk as well as urbane, multilingual and cosmopolitan people — attributes descriptive of Ottomans well back into the 19th century.

The country enjoys a large and growing middle class. Prosperity is moving across political and geographic lines. Turkey has urban sprawl, poverty, world-class companies and an internationally traded stock market, all surrounded by vestiges of the many civilizations that have held sway in Asia Minor. The city of Antalya boasts more five-star hotels than all of Spain. In the past few months, Turkish Airlines has opened direct service to Istanbul from Los Angeles and Washington.

Turkey has the 17th-largest economy in the world, and with an 8.9 percent GNP growth rate, last year outpaced all but China in the G-20 countries. It is the sixth-largest economy in the European Customs Union, with nearly half of its trade with the European Union. Russia is now its single largest trading partner.

One cannot overestimate the importance of its growing economic power, which fuels much of its foreign policy. It should be noted that much of Turkey’s insulation from the recent financial crisis has been its diversification away from its more traditional Western markets. Between 2002 and 2010, Turkey’s trade with the Middle East, for example, grew from $2 billion to $28 billion.

For all its achievements in the modern era, Turkey, like all countries, carries with it the past, including challenging external problems related to Cyprus, the countries it borders, the EU and America. Internal challenges include issues of constitutional reform, the rule of law, freedom of the press and issues of religious tolerance. As William Faulkner famously said, “The past is not dead. It is not even past.”

Turkey continues to struggle to become comfortable in its own skin, peculiarly both European and Asian. Samuel Huntington, in his “Clash of Civilizations…,” describes Turkey as a “torn country.” People who were comfortable with Ataturk’s secular policies and with Turkey’s more obvious Western orientation during the Cold War — and these people include not just its old Western allies, but also Turks themselves — are struggling with 21st-century realities. The end of the Cold War has not only changed the political, economic and military landscapes in Turkey, but those of Europe and America as well.

In response to these new realities, both its citizenry and its foreign policy are rediscovering, in some ways, a more Ottoman view of the world. This is a world where Turkey, as a clear and growing regional power, now finds that a more even balancing of its interests between eastern and western, and northern and southern, considerations actually serves to better leverage the country’s importance in both the region and the world. It is increasingly reflective of the will of the diverse interests of its people.

After decades of post World War II experiments with a more open political dynamic, including Islamic, Nationalist, Centrist and Socialist parties, the election of 2002 resulted in the first plurality for an Islamic Party. The Justice and Development Party (AKP) received 34 percent of the popular vote. Political support came not just from the Islamists. Defections from the Center parties joined in. These included what one young sociologist, Neslihan Cevik, has postulated is a growing segment of the population that she describes as “Muslimists,” or people who are religious, well-educated, financially successful and support the separation of mosque and state.

The direct progenitors of the current ruling Islamist party were a series of Islamist parties, previously opened and then outlawed under secular, Kemalist and military pressure. The leader of the Justice and Development Party, the current prime minister of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, was associated with those earlier parties. He has personal ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.

In fact, he spent several months in prison, convicted of subversion, for having quoted from a poem at a political rally in 1997, saying, “The mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets are our bayonets, and the faithful are our soldiers.” Erdogan’s imprisonment shocked the Islamists, who promptly abandoned more openly anti-secular, anti-Western policies. So, the current AKP party has been careful to present a less fundamentalist image, giving rise to the Economist magazine’s moniker of the “mildly Islamist” Justice and Development Party.

For a variety of reasons, Erdogan’s government has enjoyed considerable success, both economic and diplomatic. The election in 2007 only saw an increase in popularity, with Erdogan’s party achieving 47 percent of the vote, up from 34 percent in 2002.

Yet, for all the current ruling party’s success in the last eight years, opposition parties may be regaining some ground. Erdogan’s government is beginning to look autocratic to some, both at home and abroad. Internationally, from its parliamentary “no vote” on the question of granting access to American forces through Turkey to the Iraq War theater in 2003, to its U.N. Security Council “no vote” on nuclear sanctions against Iran last year, to last year’s separately negotiated nuclear fuel swap agreement partnered with Brazil, to the diplomatic rupture with Israel, have all been poorly received in Western capitals.

And recently, Turkey’s initial reluctance to support the NATO-based no-fly zone in Libya, was poorly received in France, the United Kingdom and the U.S. — although that reluctance stemmed from Turkey’s concern about Western oil-related incursions into another Muslim country where Turkey had 25,000 workers and $14 billion in investments.

Freedom of the press continues to appear to be increasingly constrained by the current government, drawing both domestic and international opprobrium. The murder of an Armenian Turkish journalist in 2007, and the current government’s efforts to silence criticism coming from journalists in general, might best be summed up in a 2010 report by Reporters without Borders. It ranked Turkey last year 138th of 178 countries for press freedom.

Hugh Pope, who spoke at the Miller Center two years ago, wrote in a Foreign Affairs article last fall: “Turkey does not fit neatly into anyone’s conception of world order. Turkey is unusually vulnerable to being misunderstood, particularly since Turks themselves often seem unsure about what exactly they want their country to be.”

Battle lines leading toward the coming election continue to be drawn. The ruling party’s current success notwithstanding, the opposition, especially coming from the Center Left Party (CHP) led by Kemal Kilicdaroglu, looks to gain some seats in the parliament. But without University of Virginia professor Larry Sabato’s famous crystal ball, it is difficult to forecast the outcome with any certainty.

How the Arab unrest will impact these elections is also unclear. It is noteworthy that a recent survey released by the Turkish Economic and Social Studies taken in seven Arab countries, plus Iran, showed 665 of the respondents, or 85 percent, believed that Turkey represented a “successful blend of Islam and democracy.”

But, the very momentum to put Turkey into the Islamic camp will equally stiffen the backs of the domestic opposition, Israel and many in the West. Certainly, it would seem that pressure on regimes from Morocco to Iran will serve to increase Turkey’s role in the region.

In the coming election, the current ruling party is most likely to hold a significant plurality, even with some gains from the CHP. Erdogan and the AKP Party will continue their policies aimed at reshaping the Kemalist vision of Turkey.

Efforts at constitutional and high court reform will continue unabated will be driven by economic and business opportunities designed to lessen dependence on EU trade. The government will seek to increase Turkey’s influence within the Muslim world, Sunni and Shiia. Relations with Israel will continue to be strained, but benefit from a quiet undergirding of business alliances. Support for the Palestinian cause will continue. Relations with Russia will continue to improve, driven by Turkey’s energy requirements and Russia’s need not to be excluded by Turkey’s efforts to update the “silk route” with pipeline energy transport. For the same reasons, relations with Iraq and Iran will move forward. Relations with Syria may have to be reinvented.

There will be increasing pressure for a solution to the Cyprus stalemate. Additionally, it seems incumbent on the ruling party to make further efforts to ameliorate issues related to human rights and freedom of the press, in the wake of Turkey’s support of newly democratizing governments in the Middle East and North Africa.

Frankly, looking at systemic financial weakness in the EU, with Portugal on the verge of defaulting, prospective membership in the EU continues to lose public support. The euphoria of the 2005 opening of the process, for which Turkey had waited more than 40 years since its initial application, is comatose.

So, in this process, is Turkey leaning East or West? It is unimaginable that Turkey will, or could afford to, turn its back on republican secularism or the West. Nor will it ever again behave in Cold War-era lockstep with NATO and the West.

Approval of America there has climbed from a low of 8 percent in 2008 to an outstanding high of 14 percent, putting Turkish approval of the U.S. government about on par with American approval of Congress. A good example of the anti-American feeling may best be observed in the wildly popular Turkish movie, “The Valley of the Wolves,” when it premiered in 2006. It depicted American soldiers in a Crusader-like abuse of Iraqis in Abu Ghraib prison and portrayed the incident near Mosul, Iraq, where Turkish commandos were captured, “hooded” and interrogated by American forces, in a way to be seen as an unforgiveable offense against fellow NATO forces.

Turkey occupies the westernmost part of a Turkic world encompassing 200 million people, spanning a remarkable geographic space between Europe and China. Whether wearing the traditional fez or a western sports cap, head-scarved or not, the outcome of these forthcoming elections and the future of Turkey will continue on its historic path as both a physical and ideational bridge, between and between Europe and Asia, only increasing its regional and global roles on the world stage.

America and the world must certainly care.