Berkley Center

Throughout the twentieth century, Turkey was plagued by a destabilizing sociopolitical conflict between modernizing, Western-leaning secularists and traditional political Islamists. The absence of a middle ground between these two perspectives magnified the apparent irreconcilability between them. Today, however, a more nuanced, albeit controversial, centrism appears to have filled that void and is tentatively flourishing within it.

At its inception, modern Turkey was resolvedly marched in one direction. In the 1920s and 1930s, the nation’s founding father, Mustafa Kemal "Attaturk," scripted an avidly Western and assertively secular character in an attempt to subdue the vestiges of Turkey’s Islamic orientation.

Ataturk saw Islam as a modernity-threatening remnant of the country’s Ottoman past. In his fabled shrewdness, he recognized the salient role Islam played in the lives of Anatolia’s largely rural, uneducated population. His domineering approach toward Islam was part of an attempt to keep entrenched religiosity from undermining his liberalizing reforms. Since Ataturk’s death, loyal Kemalists have reaffirmed the principles of secularization in non-negotiable dogmas. This assertive secularism was and still is promoted by an urban, educated elite that is most often represented in the Republican People’s Party’s (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi, CHP) tireless dedication to preserving Ataturk’s ideology. This group is bolstered by a popular cult of Ataturk and is ideologically supported by the most powerful of all secular watchdogs: the Turkish military.

On the other side of the aisle, political Islamists have capitalized on economic troubles by accentuating Islamic values and winning public office on the backs of the underprivileged masses. They subtly, and sometimes explicitly, have purported aspirations of an Islamic-oriented Turkish state. The most prominent manifestation of political Islam in Turkey during the twentieth century was the Millî Görüş movement, founded in 1969 by the popular conservative figure Necmettin Erbakan.

These popular Islamists have threatened secular elites’ hold on power. The fires of political conflict have been most virulently stoked by the political Islamist groups’ conspicuous rebukes of the canonized Kemalist secularism that the traditional elite held so dear. Over the course of the twentieth century, this destabilizing conflict has resulted in three separate coup d’états against democratically elected governments.

Claiming to defend liberal democracy through unabashed authoritarianism may strike one as contradictory. In a country where over 95 percent of the population self-identifies as Muslim, the assertive secularism of the Western-oriented elite has proven difficult to maintain alongside true democracy. In 2001, this volatile and polarizing conflict sparked the creation of a new political party that seeks to bridge Turkey’s political divide.

The Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP) has been the ruling party in Turkey since 2002 and has faced little meaningful electoral competition. From the beginning, the party has embodied nuance; it was founded by a potpourri of leaders from various preexisting parties that represented reformist Islamists, social democrats, and even nationalists. Its platforms and policies, guided by principles of "conservative democracy," have largely reflected its hybrid beginnings.

The AKP has built a massive support base in both Turkey and abroad through rhetoric and policies that incorporate both its Islamic foundation and liberal aspirations. Despite the open religious conservatism of many of its leaders, the AKP has made a point of denouncing the idea of an Islamic state.

Moreover, it has backed its ideology with a steady flow of liberal legislation. The AKP government has fully committed itself to Turkey’s EU accession process by working to institute as many Copenhagen Criteria as possible. In addition to liberal economic and political changes, the AKP has worked to promote human rights and the rule of law, which in turn has led to an improvement in gender equality, minority rights, and religious freedom.

The AKP's liberal, passive approach to religion marks a pivotal shift away from the vehement secularism of the Kemalist establishment. In this vein, one of the AKP’s most publicized reforms was a 2008 constitutional amendment that repealed a law that banned headscarves from university campuses, which party leaders argued dissuaded women from pursuing higher education. Despite staunch opposition from the secular elite and Constitutional Court, the effort was lauded by national and international human rights groups and has been accepted on campuses across he country.

Even with the popularity and unprecedented centrism of the AKP, there remains a lurid opposition movement led by the Kemalist elites who have managed to exert tremendous political influence since the days of Ataturk.

Over the course of my semester here in Turkey, I have encountered and spent time with many of these pure-blooded secularists. Both in formal settings, like an organized dinner with a CHP member of parliament, and informal ones at my host family’s house, I have played audience to suspicions about the AKP’s hidden Islamic agenda. They point to certain reforms and maneuvers of the AKP as being attempts to infiltrate secularist institutions and weaken the power of secularist safeguards.

Strongly voiced opposition to the government is valuable, particularly when it is patriotic in tone. Checks and balances like these are what brought the AKP to the political center in the first place, and they are necessary to ensure sustained liberal democracy in the future.

In reality, claims that Turkey is becoming an Islamist republic are based on entirely circumstantial evidence. It is also important to view traditionalist secularists' vociferous opposition in light of their deteriorating political clout, as well as their frequent disdain for the uneducated and "backward" masses of Anatolia.

The AKP represents the nuances of modern Turkey, a country that is continually attempting to bridge East and West. Rising out of the ashes of a nearly century-long battle between the uncompromising forces of puritan secularists and political Islamists, the AKP has secured a sturdy voting block at home and widespread support abroad by striking a balance between Islam and liberal reform.