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Turkish democracy and political Islam.

Article Excerpt
In a global trend toward democratization, the Middle East has for many years proved to be the exception. Nevertheless, very recently this region has started to come out of its stubborn resistance to democratic change, resulting in the ascendancy of political Islam. In the dominant authoritarian order, religion tends to provide the Islamist parties a sort of protection from the repression of political regimes. This structural advantage has put the Islamists in a better position to capitalize on the recent changes in the region, giving them the opportunity to emerge as winners in many recent free elections throughout the region. This is hardly surprising, since a heavy legacy of authoritarianism, a lack of democracy, and the oppression of secular political forces would surely make this outcome almost inevitable for any election in this region. Thus, after the 1992 experience in Algeria, where authorities canceled a general election dominated by radical Islamists and precipitated a bloody civil war, several Islamist parties have managed to come to power in the Middle East. This has been the case in Turkey since 2002, Iraq since 2005 and in the victory of Hamas in the Palestinian election of 2006. An Islamist party coming to power in democratic elections is a new phenomenon that is likely to be replicated.

While the rise of political Islam creates a new political reality in the Middle East, it clearly shows the degeneration of politics in the region. The plurality of political configurations in most of the 20th century stands in sharp contrast to today's political polarization. Recent developments in the region have produced two antagonistic poles: authoritarian regimes and the Islamist challenge. The poverty of this political configuration tends to aggravate, rather than alleviate, the sharp political and economic crises in the region. With their emphasis on identity politics, extremism, violence and conflict with the Other, the Islamist parties have proved to be a part of, rather than a solution to, the crisis.

However, the November 2002 election in Turkey put in power the Islamically rooted Justice and Development Party (in Turkish, Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi or AKP) with a landslide electoral victory (34.3 percent of the vote). The party was also able to strengthen its position in the local election in 2004 (42 percent). These victories were taken to an even more remarkable level by getting 47 percent of the vote (that ensured 342 seats in the parliament) in the election of July 2007, where the turnout was as high as 85 percent. Given the heavy Kemalist heritage of secularism in Turkey, the electoral success of the Islamists is astonishing indeed. I will argue that this electoral victory and the success of AKP rule rest on at least two grounds: moderate politics and success in economic reform. Considering the disappointing realities of the political economy of the Middle East, it is precisely these distinctive features of the Turkish experience that the region is lacking. The Turkish experience of Islamists in government could offer a model for the whole region.

POLITICS OF MODERATION

While the electoral success of the AKP illustrates the domination of political Islam in the Middle East during the past quarter century, it is actually the story of the success of moderation. The Turkish experience illustrates that only moderation in democratic politics can ensure success. This is an important lesson for a region that is still engulfed in the politics of extremism and violence and suffers from a deficit of moderation.

The Islamists of Turkey were able to develop a more tolerant and pragmatist politics than the Afghani, Arab, Iranian or Pakistani Islamists, who still represent the extremist and violent mainstream of radical Islam. In fact, the success of the Islamists of Turkey was only possible because they distanced themselves from this mainstream. Some perceive this development as un-Islamic; others say the AKP is becoming more secular. However, labels are often misleading. Whether they are called Islamists or liberals is not very significant, if the essence of the democratic process exists. More important is that this distancing from extremism not only ensured success for them as a political party, it also proved to be in the interests of the Turkish people. The Islamists of Turkey did not subscribe to the destructive fallacy that "Islam is the solution," a slogan that not only failed to prove viable, but also exacerbated the political, economic and intellectual crises in the Middle East. Instead, they advanced the idea that Islamists can respect and engage in the democratic process.

However, the success of the Islamists...

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