Turkish Labyrinth: Ataturk and the New Islam, The

Middle East Policy, Jun 1998 by Lombardi, Ben

[t]he Turkey we have known for the past 75 years is entering a period of rapid and profound transition whose dimensions are not yet clear. Some observers might conclude that the "real" Turkey is just now emerging, that the Turkey we have claimed to understand for so long is an aberration. This may be an extreme interpretation of Turkey's evolution, yet it is undeniable that Turkey now displays characteristics that were absent from the previous political spectrum.4

One does not need to accept the notion that there is a primordial national identity reemerging to believe that Turkey is more than the Kemalist myth. In her poignant travelogue, Mary Lee Settle offers a more elegant interplay of time, culture and identity:

It is not that they are frozen in time, far from it. They simply have, from mother to daughter and father to son over the centuries, kept ways they have found useful. They belie our naive idea that when kingdoms replaced kingdoms, or ideas replaced ideas, they somehow wiped out the past. This did not happen - not in building and not in thought. They may have changed the old patterns, but they have not obliterated them.' Whatever the cause, the events since the municipal elections in spring 1994, which saw sweeping gains for Refah, have led many to wonder just how much we understand, or ever really understood, Turkey.

A theme that resonates throughout Pettifer's work is that Turkey is not as modern as has been commonly held, that Turkish politics are not as democratic, nor its society as secular, as we have been led to believe. But the problem is more than just challenges to a prevailing ideology. The myth of Ataturk's Turkey is beginning to crack as a crisis of Turkish national identity becomes increasingly apparent. As one might expect, Americanization and modern consumerism are identified as having destroyed much traditional culture. However, Kemalism is itself blamed for having contributed to a weak identity. Ataturk's break with the Ottoman heritage, it is argued, detracts from today's political discourse and presents a fictionalized past that is designed only to support the current regime. At a more popular level, Ataturk's intensive secularism has yielded a spiritual vacuum in a traditionally religious culture. The result has been the creation of a people who are seeking a more substantial identity than Kemalism and finding much that is attractive in contemporary Islam.

The "new Islam" draws support from a broad section of society. The strength of Refah in urban centers such as Istanbul and Ankara is quite understandable. Yet in discussing the consequences, Pettifer pays little attention to the profound transformation underway in Turkey, which has seen the country move from a largely rural to an urbanized society. Here, again, Kaplan proves useful. For him, Islam has captured the slums in which the Left once held sway. As leftist ideologies lost their legitimacy following the collapse of the USSR, people looked elsewhere and found Refah. Good social scientists know this coincidence is not sufficient evidence of causality. However, if one looks at Istanbul (population 10 million) and its growth of 450,000 people each year, most of whom are arriving from more traditional rural environments, it is perfectly reasonable to draw such a connection. Istanbul's first Refah mayor, Tayyip Erdogan, a possible successor to party leader Necmettin Erbakan, rose to office on what Kaplan terms a "social-economic revolution far more important than any change in government."6