[Foreign Affairs] Erdogan's Achilles' Heel

Why the Prime Minister Will Win the Election, but Lose the Economy

By Halil Karaveli

AUGUST 8, 2014

Over the course of last year, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has surmounted some major obstacles. He crushed urban protests last summer. He cracked down on the followers of U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gülen within the police and judiciary over the fall and winter. Electorally as well, Erdogan seems invincible: On Sunday, when Turkish voters head to the polls to elect a new president -- the first to be chosen by popular vote -- Erdogan is set to win in a landslide.

Erdogan has vowed to expand presidential power. He does not hide his ambition to become Turkey’s second founding father; in fact, he seems to aspire to be the anti-Atatürk, that is, to remake the secular republic that Turkey’s founder, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, built. Erdogan has vowed to raise “pious generations,” and frequently refers to a historic “mission” that he, “God willing,” will soon fulfill. His words are not empty. For one, the ongoing changes to Turkey’s secular education system are conspicuous; state-run secondary schools across Turkey are quickly becoming clerical institutions.

Still, it is not Islamist ideology that has sustained Erdogan’s power. It is the economy. Voters have kept him and his party, the Justice and Development Party (AKP), in office because the economic benefits the party has brought have outweighed other considerations. For example, waves of international capital during the last decade have led to booms in public and private consumption and construction. These have kept the Turkish economy growing.

The material foundations of Erdogan’s power, however, are not stable. Rahmi Koc, the honorary chairman of Koc Holding, Turkey’s biggest industrial conglomerate, recently warned that “The most important structural problem Turkey faces is its excessive reliance on foreign capital inflows.” Income levels have ceased to rise, and economic growth based on consumption and construction is usually not sustainable in the long run. In short, Turkey has become stuck in the classic middle-income trap. And the way out is well known: increase productivity, which requires a better educated population; encourage innovation, which requires a free intellectual atmosphere; and increase female participation in the workforce. Turning out more clerics than scientists, muzzling free speech, and urging, as Erdogan recently did, young women not to postpone marriage because of studies, is not going to help the Turkish economy advance.

Concerns about Erdogan’s direction have led these very people to rally around Abdullah Gul, the outgoing president.

By undermining Turkey’s economy in the long term, Erdogan’s religious policies will eventually put him at odds with some of his most important backers: Istanbul-based big business and the religiously conservative business community in Turkey’s heartland, Anatolia. In the short term, things don’t look great either.

The relationship between Istanbul-based big business -- which is culturally Westernized -- and Erdogan has been uneasy for a long time. In 2008, Erdogan asked the public to stop reading the newspapers that belonged to business magnate Aydin Dogan’s Dogan Media Group. In 2009, the government fined the group an unprecedented $2.5 billion after a tax audit. Last year, tax auditors (accompanied by the police) raided three major companies belonging to Koc Holding, which is active in the energy, automotive, shipping, defense, and consumer durables sectors. What triggered the move was the fact that a hotel that belongs to Koc Holding had given refuge to people fleeing from police crackdown on peaceful protesters in Istanbul’s Gezi Park.

What is new and more significant is the strain in the relationship between Erdogan and the Islamic-oriented business community in Anatolia. For one, the AKP government’s Sunni sectarian impulse has cost the Anatolia business community its most important markets in the Middle East. For example, Turkey’s support of the Sunni Islamist cause in Syria has not only aggravated the civil war there, but has also led to the emergence of jihadist groups such as the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) in Iraq. As a consequence, Turkey has lost what used to be its second-most important export market. (Turkey’s exports to Iraq totaled $11.9 billion in 2013, second only to its exports to Germany, which came in at $13.3 billion.)

Turkey’s adoption of the cause of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and its ideologically driven enmity toward Israel have not made things easier. With the route through Iraq cut off after ISIS’ advances, Turkish exporters need access to the Israeli and Egyptian ports of Ashdod and al-Arish to reach the Gulf markets through Jordan. Since they are no longer welcome there, though, they have had to start looking for emergency routes through Iran.

In addition to the old Middle Eastern trading partners, Turkish businesses also need new markets, foreign know-how, and foreign investment. In July, the Chairman of the Turkish Chambers of Commerce, Rifat Hisarciklioglu, a pro-AKP conservative, visited the United States. He pleaded with U.S. authorities to include Turkey in the free trade agreement that the United States and the European Union are negotiating. His U.S. interlocutors gave him the cold shoulder and advised him to try to convince the Europeans first. Hisarciklioglu told accompanying Turkish journalists that the only thing people in Washington wanted to talk about was the rise of militant Islam in the Middle East and Turkey’s role in it. That message is bound to worry conservative business community in Turkey. 

In fact, concerns about Erdogan’s direction have led these very people to rally around Abdullah Gul, the outgoing president. Gul was given an enthusiastic welcome at a Ramadan dinner reception hosted by the Turkish Chambers of Commerce last month. The standing ovation was reported to have lasted half an hour. During his tenure, Gul took care to not openly break ranks with Erdogan. On several occasions, though, he let it be known that he would have favored more moderate policies in line with the interests of the business community, which has a stake in good relations with the West. 

Conservative businessmen and others within the ranks of the AKP have started to push for Gul to become party leader and prime minister after Erdogan takes over the presidency. And for his part, Gul has dropped several hints that he aspires to continue to play a central role in politics. “I am going to continue to serve my people after this as well. Let’s see how I’m going to do it,” he told a gathering of businessmen. But the general assumption in Turkish political circles is that Erdogan, sensing competition, wants Gul to stay as far away from the AKP as possible. Erdogan has said that he is going to be a “sweating” president who will make full use of his prerogatives, which was seen as a thinly veiled criticism of Gul’s presidential record of restraint.

If there is a struggle for the control of the AKP after Erdogan leaves the prime minister job to become president, Erdogan is certain to prevail. If he wins in the first round of voting with more than 50 percent, he will have such a strong popular mandate that no one will be able to contest his continued hold over the AKP and the government. In the longer run, however, things are bound to work out differently. 

Gul cannot match Erdogan’s popular mandate, but he speaks for interest groups that have historically been decisive in politics. In the speech at the reception hosted by the Turkish Chambers of Commerce, Gul observed that “the expectations of the private sector” and the “demands that originate from Anatolia are going to decide the course of politics.” These remarks are somewhat self-serving: After all, the “demands from Anatolia” evidently include him taking over the AKP. But Gul is correct when he notes that the expectations of the private sector have a way of changing Turkey’s course.

The first time they did so was in 1980. After staging a coup, the military implemented a comprehensive program of economic liberalization. The business community had been demanding these reforms for years, but the civilian government had been unable to implement them because of opposition by the left and the trade unions. As the Turkish economy suffocated, social tensions and violence escalated. The military stepped in, and the economic liberalization it pushed forward laid the groundwork for Turkey’s economic ascent.

The fact that the Turkish economy has continued to grow while the country has relapsed into authoritarianism has created an illusion that business can continue to thrive in an illiberal environment. But it can't.

The second occasion came at the beginning of the 2000s. In those days, the Turkish business community and international lenders demanded further economic liberalization and political democratization. Runaway inflation and enormous budget deficits had brought Turkey to the brink of financial collapse at the end of the 1990s. The ruling leftist–rightist coalition launched a new set of policies designed to meet these expectations, but then crumbled politically. The AKP subsequently came to power, backed by the United States, the EU, and the business community, which hoped that the party would provide political stability and fix Turkey’s economic mess. And, when the time came, the AKP successfully and quickly implemented the reforms. 

In Turkey, the relationship between the state -- the military and the bureaucracy -- and the business community has been symbiotic. Business interests have been paramount; the state has looked after them since the founding of the republic. Moreover, Turkey’s integration in the global economy since the 1980s has made the state even more sensitive to the dynamics of capitalism. Over time, however, the relationship between economic political freedoms has changed. In 1980, business interests were served by an authoritarian regime. Two decades later, however, business had come to have a vested interest in democratization. Economic necessities forced the Turkish government to introduce political liberalization, in order to gain the confidence and support of the European Union.

The fact that the Turkish economy has continued to grow while the country has relapsed into authoritarianism has created an illusion that business can continue to thrive in an illiberal environment. But that illusion has already started to crack. In Turkey, state authoritarianism and capitalism no longer go together. In this light, Erdogan’s victory is destined to be a pyrrhic one.

[Foreign Affairs] Man in the Middle

Why Abdullah Gul Will Disappoint the West

By Steven A. Cook

Many observers, both in Turkey and abroad, believe that this is Turkish President Abdullah Gul's moment to shine. In recent months, Turkey's democracy has careened wildly off its democratic path, as Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has resorted to increasingly authoritarian measures -- including a ban on access to Twitter and YouTube -- to suppress what he believes is an existential threat posed by his onetime ally Fethullah Gulen, a charismatic Turkish cleric who has followers in positions of influence throughout the government. Erdogan seems intent on trying to excise Gulenists from Turkish society entirely. Erdogan's paranoia has also moved the AKP toward becoming an authoritarian cult of personality.

This is where many Turks, Europeans, and Americans have hoped that Gul would step in to steer Turkey back onto a democratic course. In mid-February, Gunay Hilal Aygun, a columnist for the Gulen-affiliated Today’s Zaman, asked, “Will President Gul let the Turkish people down?” The Financial Times picked up on this theme a few weeks later when the editorial board called on Gul “to take a stand” against Erdogan. What these observers seem to want is for Gul to come down from the apolitical confines of his presidential office and directly challenge Erdogan for leadership of the AKP, with a promise of restoring the party's original coalition, which included pious Muslims of all stripes, Kurds, secular liberals, and the business elite. These hopes aren't entirely fanciful, but they are far too optimistic. In fact, they have fundamentally missed Gul's broader reading of Turkish politics.

Gul has carefully cultivated his reputation as a moral voice in Turkey's transition to democracy, and in recent months he has not shied from expressing his displeasure with Erdogan's style of leadership. In response to the government’s ban on Twitter after Erdogan vowed to “eradicate” the service, Gul tweeted, “The wholesale shuttering of social media platforms cannot be approved. I hope this practice will not last long.” Months earlier, at the opening session of the Grand National Assembly, Gul distanced himself from the prime minister's increasing authoritarianism, declaring, “I have always acted with the awareness that democracy requires tolerance, patience, perseverance and sacrifice. I was also mindful of the fact that democracy is a system of checks and balances.” And in responding to last spring's Gezi Park protests, Gul’s diplomatic manner and vocal support for peaceful dialogue with protesters contrasted starkly with Erdogan’s thuggish defiance.

All of this is consistent with Gul's demeanor in meetings with journalists and private interlocutors, where he has offered implicit but unmistakable critiques of the prime minister. He has also hinted that he might return to politics sometime in the future, raising speculation that he would challenge Erdogan. The fact that the president has not been caught up in the ongoing corruption scandal that has enveloped Erdogan and the AKP since last December has only intensified speculation about Gul’s political plans.

But for all of his appealing attributes, Gul has consistently stopped short of taking action. Rather than use the powers of his office to thwart Erdogan’s worst instincts, Gul has done the opposite. Since last June, he has signed into law a slew of restrictive measures supported by Erdogan and passed by the AKP-dominated Grand National Assembly. These new laws range from restricting the Internet to making administering first aid a criminal offense under certain circumstances, to prevent good Samaritans from giving aid to protesters. Gul has also signed into law a measure that strips the independent Supreme Council of Judges and Public Prosecutors of its power to make any judicial appointments and transferred that authority to political appointees at the Ministry of Justice.

Gul's aides have tried to paint his actions as attempts to make the best of a bad situation. For example, Gul approved the Internet access bill but included the proviso that the parts of the legislation that most egregiously violated international norms be revised. Yet Gul's more idealistic supporters were stunned that he would give his assent at all. They couldn't understand how the man whom they believed clearly disapproved of Erdogan's authoritarianism had been so willing to act as his accomplice.

But Gul's behavior should not come as such a surprise. It is the product of his understanding of Turkey's present political situation and his own broader political goals. The fact that Gul has failed to challenge Erdogan doesn't mean there aren't differences between the two men. There is no reason to doubt that Gul is sincere when he expresses democratic ideals. But for the present moment, at least, Gul believes that it is necessary to subordinate his ideals for the sake of maintaining the stability and strength of the AKP.

As Turkey's president, Gul is legally not permitted to have a political affiliation, and he has done his best to stay above day-to-day politics. But his past as a political operator can’t be denied. Gul -- along with Erdogan and a number of others -- is a founder of the AKP. As they built the party in 2001 and 2002 they looked to dysfunctional coalition governments of the 1990s, which were composed of various small parties with limited appeal, as a cautionary example. They observed how personal rivalries pushed the previously venerable Motherland and True Path parties into oblivion. Gul and his partners wanted their AKP to rise above all that and to be able to capture a broad share of the public. Just 14 months after founding the AKP, the new party garnered 36 percent of the vote in national elections. The rest is history.

Whatever his other political beliefs, Gul believes that the AKP remains the only vehicle for Turkey’s transformation (and for his own personal ambition). In that sense, anything that Gul does to fracture the AKP would be devastating to his own lifelong political project. Even if he knows that the AKP has lapsed from its reformist origins, Gul likely believes that its disintegration would be worse, since it would return Turkey to the destabilized politics of the recent past.

And Gul would not be wrong to think so. If he directly challenged Erdogan, he would surely receive praise from Turkey watchers in Europe and the United States. But that would hardly compensate for the bruising political battle he would have initiated with Erdogan. For all of the discussions about fissures developing within the party since the Gezi Park protests and a few resignations after the corruption scandal broke, the AKP has remained remarkably cohesive and loyal to Erdogan. Most of the party’s parliamentarians owe their position to the patronage of the prime minister, and Erdogan remains wildly popular among the AKP supporters in the public. Gul has loyalists of his own in the party, of course, but the apolitical nature of the presidency has constrained him from broadening his base within the AKP.

And Gul has surely noticed, during this extended season of Turkish political tumult, that Erdogan has proved to be a fearless combatant. The Gulenists within the police, judiciary, and state prosecutors’ office have thrown virtually everything at him, and the prime minister has only responded in kind. Erdogan’s call for a ban on Twitter and YouTube reflects his willingness to do Turkey harm in pursuit of trying to save himself.

Erdogan's evident lack of judiciousness is the reason that outsiders believe Gul should assert himself; from Gul's perspective, it also the reason he should refrain from doing so. A civil war between pro-Erdogan and pro-Gul factions of the AKP would only serve to benefit their common political enemies, the Kemalists. When Kemalism was the dominant ideology in Turkey, pious Turks like Gul and Erdogan were subjected to routine repression. The rise of the AKP has mostly reduced Kemalism to a hollow ideology, something to which many Turks only pay lip service as they go about their business. But Kemalist forces still exist in Turkey throughout the judiciary, the bureaucracy, academia, big business, and the military. To the extent that a fight with Erdogan would provide an opportunity for Kemalists to return to the fore of national politics, Gul will avoid taking on his old ally.

The president is likely better off avoiding a direct confrontation with Erdogan, signaling his disapproval for the prime minister’s excesses, and hoping that the electoral process provides an opportunity for Turks to alter their country’s current nondemocratic trajectory. The key word is “hope.” Although Erdogan has given up the idea of becoming president under a new constitution that would have granted the presidency broader and more direct political powers, AKP lieutenants have openly floated the idea of changing party bylaws to allow him to serve additional terms in his current office. If that happens, which seems likely, Gul will remain under Erdogan’s shadow. Perhaps Gul is planning to bide his time until Erdogan thoroughly discredits himself with his supporters. But, in that case, he may be waiting a long time. All of Erdogan’s excessive actions to date -- banning Twitter and YouTube, attacking civil society organizations, intimidating the press, and making accusations about foreign plots aimed at bringing Turkey to its knees -- have played well with his constituency.

It is hard not to sympathize with Gul. He is the voice of reason -- or at least portrays himself that way -- in a political environment where so many seem to have taken leave of their senses. But he also believes he has no good options available to him. By wading into the AKP morass, he thinks he would ultimately only be doing damage to himself, his party, and Turkey as a whole. Those who are desperately waiting for Gul to make a move will most likely remain disappointed. He will remain outside the battle -- torn between his political ideals and his calculations of political interest.

[Foregin Affairs Website 2014/3/27]

[Foreign Affairs] The Muslim Martin Luther?

Fethullah Gulen Attempts an Islamic Reformation

By Victor Gaetan

In a video posted on his Web site last December, the Turkish Islamic scholar Fethullah Gulen called on God to curse Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Gulen, who has lived in exile in the United States since 1999, declared in a sermon broadcast on Turkish television, “Those who don’t see the thief but go after those trying to catch the thief: may God bring fire to their houses, ruin their homes, break their unities.” This went far beyond the normally secular bounds of political debate in Turkey.

But to fixate on Gulen's lack of political polish is to miss the point. Gulen and Erdogan have been described in the West as political rivals, but there has always been more at stake in their clash than earthly affairs. Whereas Erdogan may frequently indulge in Islamist political rhetoric, it is Gulen that has tried to make actual contributions as an Islamic intellectual and develop a genuinely modern school of Islam that reconciles the religion with liberal democracy, scientific rationalism, ecumenism, and free enterprise. Regardless of who wins the battle for Turkey's political future, it is vital that Gulen's religious legacy be preserved.

EGALITARIAN ENLIGHTENMENT

Erdogan has repeatedly portrayed Gulen, and his religious movement, known as Hizmet (which translates to Service), as part of a political conspiracy, calling it a “parallel state” responsible for initiating a series of corruption investigations against his administration. These accusations are impossible to substantiate. Hizmet has no formal membership, no headquarters, and no hierarchy, which makes it impossible to know whether Gulenists are overrepresented in law enforcement and the judiciary, let alone orchestrating a putsch. There are many civic organizations in Turkey that are explicitly linked to Gulen, but, in keeping with Gulen’s teachings, they neither endorse nor reject any political party.

Gulen's theology went hand-in-hand with Turkey's capitalist revolution. The country's new entrepreneurs were pious Muslims who drew on Gulen's teaching to justify their embrace of free enterprise, strong democratic institutions, and dialogue and commerce with other faiths.
Although Gulen has always assumed that pious Muslims would be drawn to politics, he has long warned against allowing religion to be used as a tool to pursue political power. In this sense, Gulen has followed in the footsteps of Said Nursi, a great Turkish scholar of Sufism, who inspired an Islamic revival in the late Ottoman period and under Ataturk’s republic. Nursi's 6,000-page commentary on the Koran, Risale-i Nur (Epistles of Light), argued that true spiritual knowledge was accessible to all Muslims without the guidance of a “master.” Nursi considered materialism an enemy of Islam, but he also advocated modern science instruction in Muslim schools.

Gulen has endorsed this same basic approach. Born in eastern Turkey in 1941, he grew up studying the Koran. He began to manage a mosque as well as a study center in the city of Izmir in the 1960s. Pushing beyond Nursi's concept of strengthening religious conscience, or inner discipline, Gulen emphasized the importance of public service as a way for believers to glorify God while repressing selfish impulses.

These teachings were in sharp contrast to the political pronouncements of Islamist groups, like the Muslim Brotherhood, that gained ground in the Middle East in the mid-twentieth century. Where the Brotherhood considered it a religious obligation to control the state and to make Islamic law the basis of jurisprudence, Gulen argued that religion suffered from politicization. Where the Brotherhood implies that jihad is necessarily an armed struggle, Gulen emphasized that jihad is a moral and spiritual struggle.

In 1970, Gulen was arrested by a newly installed military government, and his license to preach was revoked. But his private talks to small groups -- in mosques, theatres, coffee shops, and schools -- were taped and distributed. Gulen leveraged his growing fame to establish a series of student hostels, or “lighthouses,” that offered private prep courses for university entrance exams. In 1979, personal friends of Gulen set up a publishing business so that he could provide his growing number of students with study materials. Yamanlar College in Izmir, the first Gulen-inspired private high school, followed in 1982. By 1983, he had a wide national following.

Today, Gulen sympathizers run more than 1,500 schools and universities in 120 countries, including Afghanistan, Austria, Bosnia, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico, Sudan, and the United States. (In Texas alone, Gulen affiliates manage 26 public charter schools.) The Gulen movement provides countless scholarships for the poor to attend their schools, which mostly emphasize science and math. By contributing as volunteers, or financiers, to the movement's education network, supporters also engage in a form of sanctified charity.

His commitment to education as the main solution to problems plaguing most Muslim societies is the most concrete expression of Gulen's religious teachings. Drawing on Islam's sacred texts -- the Koran, hadith (words of the Prophet), and Sira (biography of the Prophet) -- as well as Turkish and Ottoman cultural tradition, Gulen has developed a distinct form of Islamic theology that puts social engagement, not political engagement, at its center.

The Utah-based political scientist Hakan Yavuz, author of Toward an Islamic Enlightenment: The Gulen Movement, sees four defining characteristics in Gulen’s project. First, Gulen emphasizes that a believer's piety can be measured by his practical actions, specifically, the degree to which the person improves the human condition. Second, Gulen argues that Islam must be an ecumenical religion. Muslims, he believes, are obliged to seek consensus in their communities and should value social participation and dialogue with other groups. (Gulen's movement has placed a particular emphasis on interfaith dialogue, especially with Christians and Jews.)

Third, Gulen teaches the inviolability of individual rights. Religious engagement, he maintains, must be voluntary, which is one reason that Gulen's followers are usually referred to as “volunteers” and their total numbers are never officially counted. Finally, the Gulen movement endorses critical thinking as a foundation for knowledge that glorifies God, rather than as something that contradicts revelation. Science, Gulen teaches, is a vehicle for Muslims to honor their religious duty to improve the economic condition of their societies.

To the extent that Gulen has had anything to say about politics, it has almost always been in the service of promoting democracy and cultural tolerance. Asked by The New York Times about his attitude toward the Turkish government, Gulen responded, “I always believe in being on the side of the rule of law, and I also believe in the importance of sharing good ideas with the officials of the state that are going to promise a future for the country. Accordingly, irrespective of whoever is in charge, I try to be respectful of those state officials, keep a reasonable level of closeness and keep a positive attitude toward them.” He has also emphasized the importance of maintaining a healthy civil society outside the control of the state. Private schools, private enterprise, volunteerism -- these were the institutions that Turkey required if it hoped to maintain its traditionally inclusive culture.

Gulen's theology went hand-in-hand with Turkey's capitalist revolution, which was sparked by economic deregulation in the 1980s. The country's new entrepreneurs were pious Muslims who drew on Gulen's teaching to justify their embrace of free enterprise, strong democratic institutions, and dialogue and commerce with other faiths and ethnic groups. Gulen, in turn, urged this new capitalist class to work hard and succeed -- not for personal gain but to enhance the spiritual well-being of society. The prophet Muhammad was also a merchant, he reminded them.

Gulen has shown that he will refuse to be intimidated, but it is still an open question whether his movement can withstand the AKP’s relentless campaign against it.
MARRIAGE OF CONVENIENCE

It should come as no surprise that the Gulen movement saw a potential ally in Erdogan's AKP party. In 2002, under the AKP flag, Erdogan spoke out in favor of greater religious and economic freedoms. Like the AKP, the Gulenist movement had identified the military and the old secular economic elite as impediments to those freedoms. Although the Gulenists never offered an explicit endorsement, it seemed keen to work with the AKP. After Erdogan won, the AKP (as well as Justice Department officials said to be affiliated with the Gulenists) supported a series of court cases that landed hundreds of military officers and businessmen in jail. (Although there were many flaws in the trials’ methods, blame falls mainly on the shoulders of the AKP, which had sole authority to direct the proceedings.)

But the alliance did not last. The AKP and the Gulenists have fundamentally different understandings of Turkish identity and how it relates to Islam. The AKP has its roots in Turkey's National View ideology, which was originally advanced by former Turkish Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan in his manifesto Millî Görüş (National View), published in 1969. Erbakan argued that Turkey should turn away from the West and forge a political, economic, and military union with Muslim countries. According to this view, national strength, especially as expressed in conflict with the West, is a bigger priority than healthy democratic institutions. Erbakan is still a clear source of inspiration for the AKP in general, and for Erdogan in particular. When Erbakan died, in 2011, Erdogan cut short a trip to Europe in order to rush back for his funeral, attended by hundreds of thousands in Istanbul. Germany’s most influential Turkish Islamist organization is a Millî Görüş community that Erdogan has encouraged to resist Western assimilation, in accordance with Erbakan’s teachings.

Predictably, Hizmet and the AKP have clashed over Erdogan's bellicose foreign policy and undemocratic domestic maneuvers. When a Turkish NGO attempted to break Israel's blockade of Gaza and was confronted by the Israeli navy (resulting in nine deaths), Erdogan responded by accusing Israel of terrorism and genocide. Gulen responded to Erdogan's belligerence, by calling it not “fruitful,” and adding that he sought Israeli permission anytime his charities wanted to help the people of Gaza.

Another point of contention has been Turkey's relationship with the European Union. As a strong proponent of closer ties with Europe, the Gulenist movement has been frustrated by Erdogan's refusal to pursue more serious accession talks with the EU. Occasionally, Erdogan has pursued policies -- such as legislation restricting Internet access and reducing the independence of prosecutors -- that seem designed to antagonize EU officials. Gulenists have also been concerned by Erdogan's support for Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood.

Free speech has always been a critical issue for the Gulenist movement, so it has also spoken out against Erdogan's persecution of journalists and his broader disdain for democratic dialogue. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, Turkey has incarcerated more journalists over the past two years than any other country in the world. (Close on Turkey's heels: Iran and China.) Gulen sympathizer Alp Aslandogan, president of the New York–based Alliance for Shared Values, a nonprofit umbrella group for Hizmet-affiliated groups, recounted the “intimidation, inspections, and fines” that now confront publishers. “Media group owners face threats to their businesses. Never in Turkish history has a single person or party achieved this level of media subservience.”

Erdogan's response to last summer's Gezi Park protests must have been particularly troubing for the Gulenists. In some sense, the diverse group of protesters, who originally gathered to demonstrate against the demolition of an Istanbul park, were the model of the sort of engaged pluralistic civil society that the Gulenists champion. Erdogan decided to order police to disperse the protests with force, which resulted in days of violent confrontation. Gulen placed the blame on Erdogan for not listening to the protesters' demands in the first place. That seems to have convinced Erdogan to declare war directly on the Gulenist movement. In September, Erdogan announced that the government planned to close all private schools helping students to prepare for university exams: the Gulenist movement runs about 20 percent of such schools in Turkey and they represent a vital source of income, as well as one of the main ways in which Gulen's ideas are introduced to the public.

Erdogan and the AKP have taken to describing Gulen’s movement as a power-hungry conspiracy. But there is little evidence of a concerted Gulenist push for power. The movement has stayed true to its teachings by devoting massive resources and attention to running schools, charity organizations, and media entities, in Turkey and abroad. Gulenists have not made a concerted push to infiltrate the AKP, or to seat their own members in parliament. Gulenists have regularly denounced the AKP’s corruption as a violation of Islamic ethics and Hizmet principles. There is no reason not to take those criticisms at face value.

Gulen has shown that he will refuse to be intimidated, but it is still an open question whether his movement can withstand the AKP’s relentless campaign against it. Erdogan is clearly intent on marginalizing the Gulenist movement, even at the expense of the rule of law in Turkey. This week, President Abdullah Gul signed a law allowing government agencies, without a court order, to block access to any Web site. Last week, parliament passed a bill giving the executive branch complete control over the judiciary, allowing the government to nominate and fire prosecutors at will.

Turkey would clearly be harmed if Gulenist teachings on tolerance and individual rights were successfully quieted. But the loss for Islamic culture would be an even greater tragedy.

[Foregin Affairs Website 2014/2/20]

[Foreign Affairs] Six Markets to Watch: Turkey

How Erdogan Did It -- and Could Blow It

By Daniel Dombey

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2014 ISSUE

For much of last year, Turkey’s economy seemed almost on top of the world. In May, as huge construction projects moved ahead, Ankara paid off its remaining debt to the International Monetary Fund, ending what seemed to many Turks a long history of humiliation. The country received an encouraging investment-grade rating, and foreign funds poured in like never before.

In a flurry of appearances that month, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan feted record-low interest rates, a slide in the unemployment rate from 15 percent to nine percent since 2009, and, above all, the growth that Turkey has enjoyed “due to reforms carried out over the past ten years.” He underlined his point -- and his driving ambition -- on an exuberant visit to Washington. Addressing the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, he noted that when his Islamist-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP) came to power in 2002, at least 20 other economies were bigger than Turkey’s in terms of dollar output. “Now, we are 17th,” he exulted, “and in due course, we are going to be among the ten largest economies.”

The Turkish economy has indeed come a long way during Erdogan’s decade in office, propelling Ankara’s ascent to greater global prominence. In the late 1990s, Turkey was running 90 percent inflation and attracting almost no foreign investment. As recently as 2002, Turkey was using up almost 90 percent of its tax revenues to pay the interest on its debt. Today, these problems have all but disappeared.

But the optimism of May has since faded. Turkey, like many other developing countries, has found itself facing skittish markets, volatile exchange rates, political unrest, and an uncertain outlook. The picture of Turkey today is less flattering but more revealing than before, displaying both the promise and the perils of being an $800 billion emerging economy.

Turkey is still on track to grow faster than much of the industrialized world in the coming years. In October, Jim Yong Kim, the president of the World Bank, hailed the country as “an inspiration to many developing countries.” But the fact remains that Turkey’s success could yet unravel. To live up to its economic potential, Turkey will have to overcome two main challenges: its reliance on fickle foreign funds and the intrusion of heavy-handed politics into its economic life.

SEEDS OF SUCCESS

The seeds of Turkey’s success this century lie in the failure of the period that immediately preceded it. After the liberalizing reforms of Turgut Ozal, the visionary prime minister of the 1980s, who opened up what had been a perennially closed economy, the 1990s were a wretched decade, punctuated by economic crisis, brutal episodes in the country’s Kurdish conflict, a de facto coup, and a devastating earthquake. This was a time when the lack of foreign funds, often the result of spikes in U.S. Treasury yields, could cause economies to seize up, and Turkey was hardly alone in its misery. During these years, macroeconomic shocks also hit Mexico, Russia, and Southeast Asia.

For Turkey, this sorry period came to an end just after a 2001 banking crisis, when Finance Minister Kemal Dervis, with the cooperation of the International Monetary Fund, laid the groundwork for success. Ankara pruned back its spending, brought inflation under control, introduced a floating exchange rate, restructured the country’s banks, and granted more independence to the central bank and regulators. When the AKP took over in 2002, it stuck to this template, which paid off as Turkey’s discussions with the European Union progressed. The prospect of EU membership -- negotiations started in 2005 -- opened the floodgates for foreign direct investment.

A boom in infrastructure development and construction added to the good times. Since the outset of Erdogan’s tenure, the country’s highway network has been expanded by more than 10,000 miles. The number of airports has doubled, to 50, and Turkish Airlines now flies to more than 100 countries, more than any other carrier in the world. New, upscale housing complexes and shopping malls seem to flank every major city.

Turkey’s once-fragile banking sector was strong enough to get through the 2008 financial crisis with only a brief, albeit deep, recession. Then, as the United States unleashed an unprecedented monetary stimulus, Turkey floated on a sea of money. Growth roared ahead: the economy expanded by 9.2 percent in 2010 and 8.8 percent in 2011, although higher interest rates slowed the overheating economy to 2.2 percent growth in 2012.

HOOKED ON FOREIGN FUNDS

Yet for all its strengths, Turkey remains vulnerable. Its first major problem is its dependence on foreign funds. The country suffers from structural weaknesses that have been obscured by the waves of money that have been crashing in because of loose monetary policies elsewhere. It shares this problem with other developing countries, including Brazil and Indonesia, whose governments have grown lazy about reforms and let the quantitative-easing-induced good times roll. This dependence has become particularly worrying since May, when the U.S. Federal Reserve floated the possibility of reining in its monetary stimulus, a step that would likely reduce the funds that have been pouring into emerging economies. For Turkey, the talk of a tighter U.S. monetary policy left a particular mark: amid other troubles, yields on the country’s benchmark two-year bonds doubled.

Turkish markets were sensitive for one reason above all: a lack of balance in the country’s economy. Even though Turkey was expected to have grown by only 3.5 to 4.0 percent in 2013 -- below the level needed to create enough jobs for new entrants into the work force -- the country’s current account deficit stands at about seven percent of GDP. Despite Turkey’s enormous appeal for tourists (36 million arrived in 2012), a manufacturing base well positioned for exports, a $62 billion agricultural sector, a tradition of trading, and ambitions to become an energy hub, the country still relies on domestic consumption to power its economy, and consumption has risen rapidly as savings have fallen. At present, Turkey sucks in foreign goods and relies on foreign cash to finance even lackluster economic expansion.

Making matters worse, the foreign funds that are financing Turkey’s expansion are overwhelmingly short-term investments and could be swiftly pulled out of the country. Net foreign direct investment underwrote just $7.3 billion of the country’s $56.7 billion current account deficit between August 2012 and August 2013. By contrast, five years ago, such investment -- which is intrinsically more stable than short-term portfolio funds -- financed half the deficit.

Turkish officials argue that concerns about the country’s prospects are exaggerated and emphasize that a return to a more traditional U.S. monetary policy should not be compared with traumas on the scale of the collapse of Lehman Brothers. And in fact, with the U.S. economy still troubled, the Federal Reserve has so far held off tapering back its $85 billion of monthly asset purchases: money has returned to Turkey, and the spike in Turkish bond yields has partially subsided. Most analysts predict that Turkey will continue to grow moderately, as the country’s living standards continue to converge toward those of the developed world, albeit at a slower pace than before.

But Washington’s loose monetary policy can’t last forever, and behind the Turkish economy’s ups and downs, deeper problems lurk. The rebound from the 1990s is over, the low-hanging fruit of the last decade’s reforms has been picked, and the foreign money on which the economy depends will eventually be in shorter supply. If Turkey cannot reduce its dependence on short-term foreign capital, it will not be able to grow enough, or at least not sustainably.

To a certain extent, the Turkish story so far has been less than meets the eye. The government trumpets that during its time in office, income per capita has tripled, partly a result of disparities between inflation and the exchange rate. But that growth happened early on, mostly due to the lira’s strengthening in real terms, and for the past half decade, that figure has largely been stuck around $10,500.

Then there are a whole host of structural issues that Turkey must address. Participation in the labor force remains low: only about 50 percent of working-age adults were employed in 2012, compared with an average of 68 percent across the mostly developed countries of the Organ­ization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Part of the reason for this is the fact that Turkey has overlooked the potential of half its population: according to a recent World Economic Forum report, Turkey ranks 120th out of 136 countries in terms of gender equality, and women constitute only 23 percent of the nonagricultural work force. Moreover, Turkey still lags behind the developed world in terms of educational levels. In 2011, two-thirds of Turkey’s working-age population had received only primary education or less, and according to the EU, fully 30 percent of Turkey’s young people are neither receiving education or training nor securing jobs.

The government acknowledges all these concerns. Ankara is seeking to reduce its dependence on foreign fuel, which accounts for almost all its current account deficit, by encouraging alternative sources of energy and attempting to develop Turkey as an energy hub between its oil- and gas-rich neighbors. The government has recently imposed measures to limit credit card and consumer lending to contain private consumption, and it has offered new incentives for pension schemes to encourage saving. The World Bank recently commended the “remarkable improvement” in Turkey’s education system since 2003. And the government’s finances are in admirable shape.

But the existing problems translate into economic facts of life: much of the increase in employment in recent years has come from agriculture, services, and relatively low-technology manufacturing in Anatolia. Outside the greater Istanbul area and beyond the Aegean coastline, two areas that export products such as refrigerators, washing machines, televisions, and vehicles, much of the country produces low-value-added goods, which generate less income and can be more vulnerable to competition.

THE STRONGMAN

Turkey’s other main challenge is political. The concentration of power under Erdogan was once an essential precondition for economic success. Today, however, it could make things worse, not better.

Erdogan’s chief accomplishment has been to establish the supremacy of Turkey’s elected leaders and hence the stability of government on which economic progress often rests. After 40 years in which the military ousted four governments, Turkish democracy no longer operates at gunpoint. Erdogan has pushed aside a host of opponents, some of them antidemocratic, including the military, big business, the country’s old media barons, and the judges who bent laws in a bid to weaken the AKP government. But the consequence is that the prime minister is now master of almost all he surveys, which, combined with his often erratic behavior of late, has raised important questions about the Turkish government’s transparency, rationality, and stability.

The institutions that played a role in Turkey’s success over the past decade now struggle to appear independent of the prime minister’s will. Despite the prospect of an end to the U.S. stimulus -- and inflation of about eight percent -- the central bank has kept the benchmark interest rate at 4.5 percent. Instead of increasing that rate -- what would seem the appropriate response -- the central bank has tightened the money supply with unorthodox and often confusing measures. Underlining the constraints under which the bank operates, Erdogan has long made clear his aversion to high interest rates, not least because of their role in holding back growth, and blamed an “interest-rate lobby” for stoking the Gezi Park protests last summer.

Other examples of the centralization of economic power abound. The Capital Markets Board of Turkey has named three AKP officials, including two former ministers, as directors of Turkcell, the country’s biggest cell-phone company. Last summer, Turkey’s broadcasting watchdog fined television stations that screened footage of the Gezi protests. Most conspicuous, after Erdogan denounced the Turkish conglomerate Koc Holding for sheltering protesters in one of its hotels, in July, tax inspectors accompanied by police raided the offices of several Koc subsidiaries. The case is ongoing and could fizzle out in the long run, but Turkish executives now privately complain that such an atmosphere could scare away the foreign direct investment that Turkey so desperately needs.

Indeed, the risks that Erdogan’s erratic policymaking could wreak economic damage is especially great in a country with few natural resources and little capital of its own. If the government continues to punish the media for broadcasting bad news, if big decisions come to depend on the mood of one man, and if companies fear predatory fines, Turkish growth seems unlikely to continue at the rates to which the country has become accustomed.

Little of this seems to have dawned on Erdogan himself, however: the prime minister has rarely sounded more optimistic. His government projects that Turkey will reach a per capita income of $25,000 by 2023 -- the centenary of the founding of the republic -- and realize its aim of becoming one of the world’s ten biggest economies. The latter target would require barely credible rates of growth -- 15 percent a year, according to Rahmi Koc, the patriarch of Koc Holding -- but it is in keeping with the prime minister’s monumental approach. Erdogan has also backed and begun such giant projects as a vast new airport for Istanbul, a new bridge across the Bosporus, and a new canal to run parallel to the strait. In Turkey’s current political climate, any suggestion that such projects could face financing difficulties leads to howls of outrage by the pro-government press.

As all of this implies, Turkey’s economic potential is decidedly mixed. The country remains alluring to consumer goods companies that want to sell to the country’s youthful population; it has been tried and tested as a manufacturer, and it retains a strong tradition of exporting apparel. But for other foreign investors, it presents more uncertain prospects; government officials acknowledge that foreign direct investment is considerably below where they would like it to be.

Nevertheless, Turkey still stands out amid the troubled economies of southern Europe, not to mention a Middle East in turmoil. In a November survey, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development forecast that in 2014, Turkey would grow by 3.6 percent -- less than it had previously expected, but still a higher rate than those projected for many of its neighbors. The country’s enviable geographic location and its customs union with the EU remain important competitive advantages.

ANKARA'S AMBITION

The current state of affairs may not necessarily endure. Optimists argue that the country will return to trend, in politics as well as economics. They note that Turkey is incomparably richer and freer than it was 15 years ago. On the economic front, if education improves and Turks save more, the country can continue to grow at an accelerated pace. And on the political front, Erdogan may change course if the drawbacks of his current approach sink in.

In fact, Erdogan might not even be at the helm of government for much longer. Erdogan has sworn not to serve another term as premier (AKP term limits prohibit it), and he has shown great interest in running for the country’s presidency -- currently a largely symbolic post -- in the first direct elections for the position, which will be held later this year. Should he do so, the current president, Abdullah Gul, may well become prime minister. And a country led by Gul could be an entirely different place. Although Gul and Erdogan are old allies who built the AKP together, in recent years, Gul has taken pains to establish himself as a more moderate alternative to his old comrade. During his address at the opening of parliament in October, Gul called for a “new growth policy” and argued that Turkey should address its low savings rate, its educational failings, and the lack of women’s participation in political and economic life, as well as find ways to make “foreign investors and our own entrepreneurs feel safe and secure.”

Whoever leads Turkey next will face strong headwinds. Few analysts predict that Turkey will face the sort of crashes that have done it so much damage in the past. But in a harsh report in September, the International Monetary Fund warned that it would be difficult for Turkey to grow by four or five percent annually -- let alone by the extraordinary levels of recent memory -- “while continuing to accumulate large external liabilities.” It predicted that without structural reform, higher interest rates, and tighter spending policies, the country would be left with an unenviable choice between sluggish growth and bouts of instability.

This is the dilemma that Erdogan faces as he seeks to continue the political and economic advances his country has made since 2002. He has often proved his critics wrong. But Erdogan can achieve his outsized ambitions only if the country and the government do everything right. And the way things currently look, that might simply be too much to expect.

[FP] Zero Problems in a New Era

Realpolitik is no answer to the challenges posed by the Arab Spring.

BY Ahmet Davutoglu

Following its electoral victory in 2002, Turkey's Justice and Development Party (AK Party) embarked on an ambitious reform program in both domestic and foreign policy. The Middle East has changed dramatically over the past decade, but our government's foreign policy philosophy remains the same. In particular, our "zero problem with neighbors" principle remains alive and well -- and more relevant than ever to resolving the challenges facing our region.

From the moment the AK Party government was formed, it faced enormous foreign-policy challenges. On the one hand, Turkey was confronted with an immediate crisis, as the ill-fated U.S. war on Iraq was fast impending. On the other hand, Turkey was plagued by chronic foreign-policy disputes with nearly all of its neighbors -- disputes that served as tremendous barriers to the normalization of regional relations.
In many ways, Turkey's diplomacy during the Iraq war and beyond, where it sought to mediate between all major political groups, foretold the efforts we, the AK Party, were going to undertake in the coming years. It was our goal to liberate
Turkey from its problematic relations with neighboring countries, address the persistent fault lines and tensions in its vicinity through regional cooperation, and act with a clear foreign-policy vision underpinned by proactive rather than reactive policies. This forward-looking foreign policy led to a redefinition of Turkey's policy toward its neighbors.

As a scholar of international relations, I have long asserted that a major reason for Turkey's relative isolation from its neighborhood had to do with the framework that dominated the mindset of Turkish foreign-policy elites for decades -- a mindset that erected obstacles between Turkey and its neighbors physically, mentally, and politically. The new AK Party government hoped to reintegrate Turkey with its surroundings, and this new strategy necessitated a major break with the old foreign-policy culture. In its electoral platform, the AK Party resolved to improve relations with Turkey's neighbors and pursue a more dynamic and multidimensional foreign policy. This was a foreign-policy vision I had been advocating in academia, and was thus more than happy to make my own contribution toward the realization of that new approach.

When I became Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's chief foreign-policy advisor, I not only worked to advise him on the practical handling of Turkey's external affairs, but also endeavored to set forth new ideas that would guide my country's foreign policy in the new era. I proposed that our foreign policy would be based upon six core principles: a balance between security and freedom, zero problems with neighbors, a multidimensional foreign policy, a pro-active regional foreign policy, an altogether new diplomatic style, and rhythmic diplomacy.

Though these principles were by no means static, they have since inspired our institutional foreign policy approach. Together, they formed an internally coherent set of principles -- a blueprint, so to speak -- that both guides our approach to regional crises and helps Turkey reassert itself as a preeminent country in the international system.
It is with this fresh and innovative thinking that the AK Party government has also delivered numerous domestic reforms to expand the scope of democratic freedoms at home. Without a stable domestic order that meets its citizens' demands for liberties, after all, Turkey cannot pursue a proactive foreign-policy agenda abroad.

As Turkey achieved greater domestic peace, my country became more capable of realizing its foreign-policy objectives. The government undertook numerous groundbreaking initiatives, including but not limited to efforts to resolve the Cyprus issue, end enmity with Syria, and normalize relations with Armenia. Similarly, we expanded our efforts to bolster Turkey's ties with emerging actors in Asia, Latin America, and Africa. We also adopted new foreign-policy instruments ranging from mediation to development assistance, which became cornerstones of the new pro-active Turkish diplomacy.

Particularly after I assumed the post of minister of foreign affairs, "zero problems with neighbors" became the most publicized of Turkey's foreign-policy principles. Taken literally, this was obviously an idealistic model -- however, it also represented a clear change of mentality in Turkish foreign policy. Under subsequent AK Party governments, we have broken ground in reconnecting with the Balkans, Black Sea region, Caucasus, and Middle East. Turkey's foreign-policy agenda is no longer dominated by the chronic disputes with neighbors that used to consume its energy in regional and international affairs. Thus, Turkish people started to see their neighborhood not as a source of problems and potential threats, but as an arena of cooperation and partnership.

When the recent wave of democratic protests started to shake the Middle East, the validity of our new conceptual framework was once again confirmed. At the root of the regional turmoil was the Arab people's genuine demand for good governance that respected their civil rights, honor, and integrity. Previously, the AK Party had argued on many occasions that just as we continuously reformed our economic and political systems, the rulers in the wider Middle East needed to initiate similar domestic reforms. Unfortunately, their failure to take timely steps to meet their citizens' demands forced upon them a rapid transformation, which not only resulted in the death and misery of innocent people but also poses a risk to regional peace and stability.

The Arab Spring, thus, presented us all with difficult decisions: We either could maintain ties with these oppressive rulers, or we could support the popular uprisings to secure basic democratic rights. More significantly, the uprisings also posed a challenge to the conceptual foundations of our new foreign policy, which we had carefully nurtured over the years. Turkey naturally opted for the second alternative with regard to Syria, leading many analysts to argue that we have abandoned the "zero problems with neighbors" policy, or claim that it had simply failed. Many critics of our foreign policy, it appears, have interpreted the "zero problems" principle in a simplistic way, as if it suggested we would continue to follow this ideal at all costs and condone regime-inflicted violence on innocent civilians.

Those criticizing Turkey's foreign policy, however, fail to understand how our policy toward the Arab Spring was formulated. It was through a balanced consideration of our foreign-policy principles, and an acknowledgment of the fact that "zero problems with neighbors" made sense only when it was considered in conjunction with other principles. Notably, Turkey balanced the "zero problems" principle with our belief in achieving a balance between security and freedom, which formed the core of our policy toward the Arab Spring. Our key principles, together with the "zero problems" policy, have not failed -- nor have they been rejected. Instead, they continue to guide our foreign policy in our neighborhood.

Those who narrowly focus on the "zero problems" principle miss Turkey's greater foreign- policy vision. As we readjusted our policies in response to the new strategic situation in the Middle East, we also embarked on new initiatives. Turkey has drawn attention to the problems of the least-developed countries, led a campaign to mobilize the international community to assist famine victims in Somalia, sustained its engagement in the reconstruction of Afghanistan, and reenergized its bid for European Union membership. More remarkably, these initiatives have been carried out while Turkey was working to address the humanitarian tragedy unfolding on its border with Syria.

When the revolutionary events in the Middle East began, we were determined that we would not be passive bystanders, but active agents that impacted this historic transformation of the region. Our government, therefore, made an unequivocal decision from the very first day of the Arab Spring to extend our assistance to the people of the region, so that they could enjoy the same universally acknowledged rights as their peers do elsewhere in the world. We refused to stand idly by as the basic democratic rights enjoyed by the Turkish people were denied to others by violence and oppression.

We thus called for peaceful and gradual political transformation, such that the new regional governments could be shaped by the popular demands of their citizens. When some Arab regimes ignored such calls, we did not hesitate to support the people's legitimate struggle for reinstituting popular sovereignty as the basis of political authority and regional stability.

Our emphasis on zero problems with neighbors neither prevented us from taking that bold position nor ceased to serve as a blueprint for our foreign policy in the region. When we initiated the "zero problems" policy, it was in no way meant to suggest that Turkey would pursue a values-free realpolitik agenda, solely focused on advancing its economic and security interests. Rather, it meant to eliminate the barriers preventing Turkey's reintegration with its neighbors, irrespective of where those obstacles came from. Our main objective was to ensure deep inter-societal communication, notably between our people and the people of the region, which we called "maximum cooperation."

Today, the "zero problems" vision means that we cannot make a decision that will alienate us from the hearts and minds of our region's people. If the main challenge to that vision of peace comes from those who deny the people's basic rights by oppressive means, we cannot remain silent. If we don't stand against oppression today, we cannot face the future generations with dignity. We also might erect new and lingering barriers between Turkey and the region, which would hinder our efforts at reintegration.

The "zero problems" principle, in the sense of friendly relations with regional states, still forms the basis of our policy in the region. We still pursue stronger ties with rulers who respect their people's demands for freedom and offer a secure and stable domestic order. In the countries that are going through a political transition, we are doing our utmost to help reestablish a balance between freedom and security. Our "zero problems" initiatives in the Middle East in the years preceding the popular uprisings also enabled us to establish valuable ties not only with neighboring regimes, but also societal actors. The leverage we gained in this process put us in a better position to address the challenges of the current regional transformation.

The vision of cooperation and dialogue implied by the "zero problems" principle is still urgently needed to address the current challenges in the Middle East. As the future of regional peace and stability is threatened by deepened ethnic and sectarian conflict, Turkey has warned against a new Cold War. We must not allow new barriers to divide the societies of our region -- such barriers are the biggest challenges to our search for cooperation and integration. Just as we tried to spread this notion through our "Countries Neighboring Iraq" initiative, we are again working to convince our neighbors to embrace a new language of inclusion, inspired by our common history and value system.

The current regional transformation will no doubt prove painful. Turkey, however, will continue to pursue its multidimensional foreign policy and draw on its new diplomatic assets to assist its neighbors undergoing this difficult phase. It is a historic responsibility for Turkey to assume that role: We believe that the regional order can be rebuilt only after people's demands for honor, freedom, and good governance are expressed in their political systems.

Once the regional transition is completed, we will continue our work toward regional integration within the spirit of the "zero problems with neighbors" principle. It will shape our foreign policy as a responsible member of international community -- and also serve as a guide for channeling a new collective conscience of solidarity into a spirit of regional integration.

[Foregin Policy Website 2014/3/21]

[Foreign Affairs] Kemalism Is Dead, Long Live Kemalism

How the AKP Became Ataturk’s Last Defender

By Dariush Zahedi and Gokhan Bacik

APRIL 23, 2010

In both Turkey and the West, Kemalism -- the principle that Turkey should be secular and Western -- has been pronounced dead. The country is drifting away from both, the argument goes, and Islamists, led by the governing Justice and Development Party (AKP), are socially and politically aligning the country with the authoritarian regimes of the Middle East.

Turkey’s domestic and foreign politics are indeed transforming. In the ongoing Ergenekon trial, state prosecutors, encouraged by AKP officials, are indicting a group of alleged Kemalist academics, journalists, officers, and politicians (accusing them of plotting to overthrow the government) in order to purge them from public institutions. Meanwhile, a growing AKP-aligned religious bourgeoisie is starting to dominate various sectors, including energy, finance, manufacturing, and the media. Trade unions and professional associations, such as the Istanbul Chamber of Commerce, are also increasingly under the sway of the AKP. And in terms of foreign policy, Turkey is pursuing ties with Iran and Syria while putting some distance between itself and its old allies in the region, such as Israel.

But in reality, most of the AKP’s policies are not incompatible with Kemalism. Indeed, the irony of Turkey today is that the AKP -- a religiously rooted, conservative political party -- has become the closest thing the country has to a defender of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of Turkey’s original Kemalist vision.s

For the last several decades, military Kemalism has been the organizing principle of Turkish politics, with a small group of military officials (along with a few bureaucratic and judicial representatives) responsible for guarding European values in Turkish society. But the military’s dominance has always been a distortion of Ataturk’s idea of Kemalism. Beginning in the 1920s, a few years before the declaration of the Republic of Turkey, the leaders of the Kemalist movement were adamant that the new state should embrace European social, economic, and political practices. Recognizing that Turkish society was still a long way from achieving secular modernity, they urged a period of tutelage during which the government would lay the socioeconomic and cultural foundations needed for transformation, such as modern infrastructure, better provision of social services, Western legal codes, a cadre of economic technocrats, and a reorganized educational system.

The military’s dominance has always been a distortion of Ataturk’s idea of Kemalism.

The military was never meant to lead this process. Ataturk, who had been a general in the Ottoman army and a field marshal in the Turkish army, set aside his military fatigues upon assuming the role of head of state in 1923. He removed other military officers from political posts, promoted civilian control of the armed forces, and cautioned the military against intervening in political affairs. He gave responsibility for developing the public’s understanding of liberal, Western values to politicians, civil servants, schoolteachers, journalists, and public intellectuals. Finally, he encouraged the country to adopt modern, liberal economics, though the worldwide depression of the 1930s forced him to resort to state control of the economy.

Elite guardianship over the country’s political and economic systems was to be temporary, lasting only until the bulk of the people had embraced modern norms and institutions. Thereafter, the guardians would relinquish their control over the economy, institute multiparty elections, and extend greater rights to the citizenry.

In 1938, Ataturk died and Ismet Inonu, who had served as prime minister until Ataturk removed him shortly before his death, became president. It was during Inonu’s 12-year, increasingly autocratic rule that civilian Kemalism warped into military Kemalism. Inonu relied on the military (which had supported his bid for the presidency) to implement his policies. Even after he was voted out of office in 1950, the military remained the most powerful actor in the Kemalist establishment. The Cold War only perpetuated this distortion: in exchange for Turkey’s alignment with the Western bloc, the United States gave its support to an increasingly strong military, which, in 1960, carried out the first of three Cold War–era military coups and brought Inonu back to power.

At the end of the Cold War, with communism no longer a threat, Turkish military rulers shifted their sights to creeping Islamization. Beginning in the 1990s, they sought to use the army’s status as the protector of secular Kemalism to justify its continued dominance in Turkish politics. In 1997, they forced the elected government to resign, purportedly because it was pursuing an Islamic agenda. Working with allies in the judiciary and bureaucracy, they banned Islamic political parties, jailed their leaders, and expelled suspected members from government posts. The media, which was supportive of military Kemalism, hailed their actions.

But the military’s claim that it is the protector of Kemalist values is increasingly falling on deaf ears. Many of the AKP’s policies represent an actual fulfillment of Ataturk’s notion of Kemalism. Western values are no longer abstract; they are codified in the Copenhagen criteria for EU accession. The AKP has tried to institutionalize civil liberties, improve minority rights by ending martial law in Kurdish regions, promote civilian control of the military, and further develop the free market.

The emerging industrial, commercial, and financial bourgeoisie, most of which is linked to the AKP, in effect accomplishes Ataturk’s grand historical vision. This rising middle class no longer wants (or needs) to be treated like an adolescent in need of supervision. It willingly embraces democracy, participation in civil society, and the market. It yearns to be a part of the modern world and -- if allowed -- would want to become a member of the European Union.

Rather than being apprehensive about the AKP and its political, economic, and foreign policies, the West should welcome it. A democratic, market-oriented, prosperous, and stable Turkey, at ease with its Islamic identity and at peace with its neighbors, will prove to be a more natural ally than a military Kemalist state. It will also be better positioned to promote Western interests. A Turkey that is respected and trusted by its neighbors can serve as a broker between, for example, Iran and the West, Israel and Palestine, and Israel and Syria.

This is not to suggest that the AKP is completely benign. Indeed, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s frequent attempts at silencing dissent in the media are worrisome and should be countered.

In time, however, the rise of a middle class will be the most effective guarantee that Turkey will continue its route to secular, Western democracy. Although much of the emerging pious bourgeoisie is closely linked with -- even dependent on -- the AKP, this class will shun extremist policies that endanger its economic interests, even as it continues to embrace moderate Islam. Eventually, the AKP and parties like it may play a role akin to that of the Christian democratic parties of Western Europe.

Finally, those who worry that the AKP’s already lengthy tenure appears set to continue, thereby affording it the opportunity to erode Turkey’s secular foundations further, should recognize that the opposition’s prospects would improve if it embraced some of the more liberal tenets of the AKP’s political platform, such as market reform, civilian control of the military, and the extension of greater cultural rights to the Kurdish minority. But rather than dividing the AKP’s base among its intellectual, religious, entrepreneurial, and Kurdish components by championing progressive causes, the opposition parties have so far opted for reflexive opposition dismissal to its religious platform and bemoaned the end of Kemalism.

The AKP has tried to institutionalize civil liberties, improve minority rights by ending martial law in Kurdish regions, promote civilian control of the military, and further develop the free market.