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| Volume XIV, Fall 2007, Number 3 |
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BOOK REVIEW
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The Emergence of a New Turkey: Democracy and the AK Parti
edited by M.
Hakan Yavuz, (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2006). 354 pages. $25.00.
Hasan Kosebalaban
James Madison College, Michigan State University
The experience of Turkey's Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi (AKP, Justice and Development Party)
continues to puzzle domestic and international observers of Turkish politics. Many are surprised to
see an Islamist party emerging as the strongest defender of Turkish membership in the EU in the
context of a political culture that is increasingly dominated by nationalist and anti-globalization
forces. What explains AKP's pro-EU, pro-market and pro-globalization stances? Does the party
demonstrate an unprecedented level of pragmatism in order to implement a hidden Islamist agenda?
Or is what underlies the AKP phenomenon a genuine sociopolitical transformation of Turkish
society? Alternatively, is the cause of the difficulty to locate the AKP phenomenon caused by the
conceptual tools of the modernization school that expects certain behavioral codes from so-called
Islamist movements? What conclusions can we derive from the Turkish case that are applicable to
other societies in the Muslim world? All these questions, their answers and the surrounding
debates are put together here in a single volume, The Emergence of a New Turkey. However,
inasmuch as any such a study requires a comprehensive historical and sociopolitical background,
the analytical scope and depth of the book go beyond the six years of the AKP's existence.
In addition to the editor's informative introduction, the volume brings together thirteen articles
dealing with various aspects of the party's ideology, organization, leadership and policies. Contributors
include both academics and politicians. Also helpful are the translations of two major
speeches by Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan and his deputy, Foreign Minister and presidential
candidate Abdullah Gul, which are included as appendixes. Erdogan discusses the concept of
conservative democracy, and Gul talks about the need for democratic reform in the Muslim world.
Conservative democracy, which the AKP claims as its official identity, was developed by Erdogan
advisor Yalcin Akdogan, who explains the meaning and utility of the concept. According to
Akdogan, conservative democracy implies that politics should be based on reconciliation and tolerance rather than conflict and polarization. It requires the exercise of a limited form of power -
as opposed to authoritarianism - and considers popular sovereignty the linchpin of political
legitimacy. One is left wondering, however, in what ways conservative democracy as espoused by
Akdogan differs from liberal democracy.
This new ideological reconstruction misses an important fact: by accepting conservatism as its
defining identity, the AKP is admitting that its social base is located at the opposite pole of the
political spectrum from the reformist secularist elites. However, such a picture has never reflected
the true social basis and ideological orientation of Turkish political parties. This inaccurate
description has become even more problematic in the context of post-Cold War globalization and
the EU membership process. It should come as a puzzle to many observers that the AKP's social
base, which is supposed to be conservative, favors globalism and integrationism. This indicates a
desire for a fundamental restructuring of the system. The secularist establishment, meanwhile, has
emerged as nationalist and isolationist conservatives striving to maintain an economic and political
system that no longer meets the needs of the society.
Many of the contributors contend that the AKP's rise is to be explained by the socioeconomic
transformation that has led to the rapid social mobilization of Anatolian-based political and
economic actors. If that is indeed the case, to highlight conservatism instead of reform as the
ideology of a party that defends change could be highly misleading. Yavuz's chapter explaining
the social and economic roots of the AKP indicates that the current political transformation is an
outcome of the neo-liberal economic policies of Turgut Özal (1983-1993). Yavuz stresses the role of
political economy in the Islamic political movement in Turkey. The chapters by Sultan Tepe,
Massimo Introvigne, Ihsan Dagi, and Ziya Onis together provide a solid conceptual framework for
an examination of the broader transformation of the Turkish ideological landscape within which the
AKP has emerged. It becomes clear that "conservatism" is at best incomplete to capture the AKP
ideology and serves to justify the orientalist discourse - that observant Muslims cannot escape
the boundaries of Islamism and moral conservatism in their practice of politics. In this sense, it is
also a mistake to compare the AKP with European Christian Democratic parties that are conservative
in the true meaning of the concept. As William Hale shows in his chapter, the AKP emerges out
of a dynamic change in its society and is an outward-looking political movement, whereas the
Christian Democrats demonstrate culturally protectionist reflexes, as indicated by their stance on
the issue of Turkey's EU membership.
In her chapter, Edibe Sozen, now one of the vice presidents of the party, discusses the AKP
attitude regarding women. According to Sozen, women who join the party have divergent backgrounds
and motivations and hence cannot be considered as a single group. But the party often
faces criticism that it does not adequately allow political participation by women. However, it
should also be stated that participation by headscarf-wearing women is constrained by the
application of secularism as jointly enforced by judicial and military bureaucrats. In his chapter,
Ahmet Kuru calls this interventionist attitude assertive secularism and compares it with the notion
of passive secularism. Kuru attests that the Turkish state is not a monolithic unit and hence state
ideology is a contested space as characterized by a conflict over the definition of secularism. Yet, it
is not very clear whether the assertive secularism as demonstrated by the Turkish Kemalist elites is
secularism in the first place or rather a totalitarian practice of attempting to shape the daily lives of
people who subscribe to a specific religious doctrine.
Foreign policy is an important aspect of the AKP's political record, particularly for foreign
observers. The AKP is largely praised for its push for EU membership in the face of strong resistance
even from secularist intellectual and political elites. On another front, the political tenure of
the party coincided with the ongoing Iraq War, leading to a tension in U.S.-Turkish relations. While
the volume does not include a chapter devoted to EU membership, Saban Kardas provides a succinct examination of the dynamics operating within the AKP-led government during the 2003
Iraq War. His analysis refutes the structuralist account, which under-theorizes domestic politics. As
shown by the author, not only other significant stake holders - the military, the president and
opposition parties - but also divisions within the party affected Turkish decisions during the Iraq
War. In another chapter on foreign policy, Burhanettin Duran examines the interactions among
domestic and international factors in shaping Turkish foreign policy under the AKP government.
Duran believes that the EU membership process has had a transformative impact on Turkish
foreign policy's orientation, particularly in regard to the Middle East. Both Kardas and Duran credit
the influence of Erdogan's chief adviser, Ahmet Davutoglu, for AKP's proactive and multidimensional
foreign policy.
Overall The Emergence of a New Turkey is a timely volume that will serve not only as helpful
reading in graduate and undergraduate courses on Turkish politics, but also a case study for the
theoretical question of the compatibility of Islam and democracy.
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