Turkish Labyrinth: Ataturk and the New Islam, The

Middle East Policy, Jun 1998 by Lombardi, Ben

Poverty alone is not the explanation for Islam's popular appeal. Like conservative movements elsewhere, Refah has offered answers to questions that more liberal parties were unable or unwilling to confront. That this is happening is not altogether surprising. The social atomism of Western liberalism, imported by Ataturk, is often even challenged in the countries from which it sprang. One can only begin to appreciate the sense of bewilderment such values must create in such a traditional atmosphere as rural Turkey or the city tenements, inflated as they are by waves of landless peasants. The search for social comfort is a basic human goal, and the sense of being alone in modern society is not exclusive to the lower social strata. Pettifer argues that some intellectuals, adrift in the emptiness that describes much of today's culture, supported Refah because it seemed to be the only political organization that sought to recapture elements of Turkish culture that have been lost. The mosques, centers of radicalism elsewhere in the Islamic world, became refuges from the "isms" attacking Turkish solidarity, including Kemalism. Hurt by poverty and failing to see their lot improved in the ways they expected, women have also been supportive of the new Islam. This new conservatism is due to a desire for an order that its members understand and support.

Yet if we accept Pettifer's claims about the strength of the "new Islam," the obvious question that springs to mind is why the Refah-led coalition government was unable to resist the pressures to abandon power in June 1997? The most obvious reason was to avoid a showdown with the armed forces. The fear of a military coup was warranted, given that many senior parliamentary deputies, as well as a large section of the Turkish media, believed that only the intervention of the Turkish Armed Forces could stop Refah from implementing its Islamist agenda.

Another plausible reason for the fall of Refah might be that that government's support was never as solid as some thought. It is unlikely that all of those in the middle class who voted for Erbakan supported his agenda. It is a common problem in democratic systems that "the best of the worst" is often the candidate chosen by the electorate. The enormous levels of corruption in Turkish politics have led to an equally high degree of public cynicism. The Susurluk scandal - in which a parliamentary deputy belonging to Refah's coalition partner, the True Path party (DYP), was killed in a car accident along with a well-known fugitive -- underscores this problem. The accusations of financial mismanagement directed at the True Path leader and former premier, Tansu Ciller, only further fueled the cynicism of the political leadership. Throughout the last half of 1997, Istanbul witnessed the backlash, as the public appealed for a clean society. Turning off the lights in their homes and banging pots and pans, the general public signaled their exasperation with the self-centered machinations of the country's political leadership.