141. Religion, Society and Politics in Changing Turkey
- Author:
- Ali Carkoglu and Binnaz Toprak
- Publication Date:
- 08-2007
- Content Type:
- Special Report
- Institution:
- Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation (TESEV)
- Abstract:
- During the period from 1999 to 2004, Turkey’s path toward European Union accession promoted important advances in the consolidation of democracy and respect for human rights. Turkey’s long-standing democratization problems -- such as the treatment of minorities, the lack of democratic oversight of the security sector, and the failure to resolve the Kurdish question, the Armenian question and the headscarf issue -- have come to surface and been widely discussed. Yet pro-status quo groups, including political parties, some “civil society” organizations, and governmental institutions have harshly reacted to the public discussion of these issues. Since 2004, the momentum of the democratization process has slowed down, and 2007 brought to the Turkish agenda a critical debate over presidential elections. According to the prostatus quo, elitist groups the chair of the presidency is representation of the modern Turkish republic, and the government party’s candidate will not have the capability of representing the Turkish Republic with a first lady with headscarf. Since May 2007, the discussions over the presidential relations and the candidacy of a deputy from the Justice and Development Party (AKP) have dominated the political agenda in Turkey. While the tension is represented as between religious people and secularism, in fact, this tension is more accurately one between the possibility of departing from the status quo, through democratization efforts, and thus confronting the deep-rooted democratization problems of Turkey. While all the discussions seem to be on the axis of religiosity and secularism, during the general election process, most of the opposition parties claimed that Turkey was under threat from internal and external enemies – whether Shari’a, Kurds, Armenians trying to divide and weaken it, or foreign powers like the EU and USA seeking Turkey’s economic subordination – and that the AKP was to blame. The opposition parties also blamed the AKP for the presidential election crisis, due to the fact that the AKP had not sought a consensus candidate. At this moment, the results of the elections show that approximately one-half of the country supports the AKP government and the majority of the people are opposed to any military intervention in the country’s democratic life. Although the prospective presidency of Mr. Gül should be evaluated through the lens of citizenship and even though Mr. Gül meets the requirements for being President, his candidacy has still been discussed in terms of the capacity of a man whose wife wears a headscarf -- which is seen as a symbol of the so-called “threat to the secular regime” -- to represent Turkey. Because the aforementioned agenda is very related to the problematic nature of Religion-State-Society Relations in Turkey, TESEV’s Democratization Program has been working on the issue since 1999. The project on Religion-StateSociety relations, through research, publication, outreach, and advocacy, aims to contribute to the understanding of the changing dynamics between religion, state, and society in today’s world and specifically in the Turkish context. In addition, the project aspires to create dialogue and to increase mutual understanding between groups in Turkish society who have increasingly become polarized around the issues of secularism and religiosity. Religion, Society and Politics in a Changing Turkey, by Ali Çarkoğlu and Binnaz Toprak, is an output of a survey of 1492 votingage individuals that was carried out in rural and urban areas between May 6th and June 11th 2006. The survey report observes and compares the changing nature of Turkish people’s attitudes towards issues such as religion, democracy, terrorism and minorities. The Turkish-language edition of the study was received with high interest by the public and the media in November 2006. The study provoked an engaging debate as it was published during the controversy around the fact that presidential candidate Abdullah Gül’s wife wears a headscarf. TESEV hopes that the English version of the report will contribute to the debates over Turkey’s practice of Islam, people’s preferences to identify themselves, understanding of democracy and multi-culturalism in Turkey, and the political and sociological stance towards the headscarf controversy.
- Topic:
- Politics, Religion, State, and Society
- Political Geography:
- Turkey and Middle East