{"id":66545,"date":"2013-02-26T08:27:33","date_gmt":"2013-02-26T06:27:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/?p=66545"},"modified":"2014-01-08T00:31:34","modified_gmt":"2014-01-07T22:31:34","slug":"turkeys-failed-attempt-at-democratization","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/2013\/02\/26\/turkeys-failed-attempt-at-democratization\/","title":{"rendered":"Turkey\u2019s Failed Attempt at Democratization"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Turkey\u2019s Failed Attempt at Democratization<\/h1>\n
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Turkey has signalled a shift from European to Islamic values.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

By Robert Ellis<\/strong>
\nContributor<\/em>
\nFebruary 25, 2013<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\"Turkey\"<\/p>\n

U.S. Ambassador Francis Ricciardone incurred the wrath of the Turkish government when he drew attention to the\u00a0shortcomings\u00a0of the country\u2019s legal system. Military leaders are locked up as if they were terrorists, parliamentary deputies and university professors are detained on unclear charges, and non-violent student protesters are imprisoned for protesting tuition hikes as evidence. Despite this, the United States remains a staunch supporter of Turkey\u2019s European Union membership.<\/p>\n

When accession talks started in 2005, the reform process which began under Turkish Prime Minister Ecevit\u2019s coalition government and continued under the AK (Justice and Reform) Party\u2019s rule in 2002 started to grind to a halt. Soon after talks started, Olli Rehn, the European Union\u2019s Enlargement Commissioner, noted that the pace of change had slowed and the implementation of reforms\u00a0remained uneven. Rehn also warned that pluralism and free speech were basic values which could not be compromised.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, the AKP government was met with a chorus of praise. In 2007, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice\u00a0stated\u00a0that the AKP was \u201ca government dedicated to pulling Turkey west towards Europe.\u201d A year later, Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt\u00a0declared\u00a0\u201cthe AKP government is made up of profound European reformers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although it was apparent that the reform process had stalled, Rehn\u2019s successor, Stefan F\u00fcle, claimed at a conference in Istanbul in June 2010 that Turkey had been making\u00a0\u201cremarkable advances\u201d\u00a0in reforms. F\u00fcle was not the only victim of wishful thinking. Last June, 16 EU foreign ministers\u00a0proclaimed\u00a0Turkey to be \u201can inspirational example of a secular and democratic country.\u201d<\/p>\n

In\u00a0response, Deputy Chairman of Turkey\u2019s opposition CHP (Republican People\u2019s Party), Faruk Lo\u011fo\u011flu, called on the EU to \u201cacknowledge the realities of Turkey with objectivity.\u201d According to Lo\u011fo\u011flu, the EU ministers\u2019 perception of the state of affairs in Turkey was \u201csadly out of focus\u201d and ignored the fact that the AKP government pursued an authoritarian policy of gradual Islamization in all walks of life, including education, science, politics, the economy, the armed forces and civil society, leading to the erosion of Turkish democracy and secularism.<\/p>\n

In 1997,\u00a0Fareed Zakaria wrote in Foreign Affairs\u00a0about the rise of illiberal democracy, where he made a distinction between democracy as an electoral form and a liberal democracy, where citizens\u2019 rights are protected by the constitution, a separation of powers, and the rule of law.<\/p>\n

Zakaria concluded that democratization in the Islamic world had led to an increasing role for theocratic politics, eroding long-standing traditions of secularism and tolerance. Furthermore, he held that if elections were to be held, the resulting regimes would be more illiberal than the ones currently in place.<\/p>\n

Nuray Mert, a Turkish professor and commentator, recently asked whether Turkey is going to be another\u00a0illiberal democracy. She compared the present government\u2019s political values with the absolutism of Putin\u2019s Russia and its model of economic growth, which comes at the expense of democratic rights and freedoms, with that of China. According to Mert, because Islamic conservatism represses the liberal democratic culture of rights and freedoms, Turkey has become a Muslim country with a failed attempt at democratization.<\/p>\n

Moreover, the EU Commission has expressed concern for Turkey\u2019s reform process. Its\u00a02012 Progress Report\u00a0on Turkey criticized the catch-all indictments which have led to the mass arrests of military personnel and critics of the AKP government, as well as lengthy periods of pre-trial detention. The Commission also expressed serious concern about the increase in violations of the freedom of expression, which has caused Reporters Without Borders (RSF) to call Turkey\u00a0\u201cthe world\u2019s biggest prison for journalists.\u201d<\/p>\n

Regardless of EU interests, under the AKP government there has been a\u00a0shift in consciousness. In his key 2001 work \u201cStrategic Depth,\u201d the Turkish foreign minister, Ahmet Davuto\u011flu, the architect of Turkey\u2019s new foreign policy, stated that the EU\u2019s demands for political reform are interpreted as the return of foreign hegemony. Therefore, EU membership has become less of a goal in itself as an instrument to facilitate the country\u2019s economic development.<\/p>\n

In a\u00a0keynote speech\u00a0held at the Istanbul Forum in October, Prime Minister Erdo\u011fan\u2019s chief advisor Ibrahim Kal\u0131n rejected the European model of secular democracy and pluralism, which he believes has little traction in the Arab and larger Muslim world. Furthermore, he posits that there is \u201ca mental gap\u201d between Islamic and Western notions of what constitutes sacred religious rights and freedom of expression.<\/p>\n

Turkey\u2019s president Abdullah G\u00fcl has said that the\u00a0EU must decide\u00a0whether it represents a community of values or a narrowly defined geographic entity. But Turkey belongs to neither. There has been much debate about Turkey\u2019s \u2018axis shift,\u2019 which is justified. In Sarajevo in 2009, Foreign Minister Davuto\u011flu spoke of an\u00a0Ottoman renaissance\u00a0and last April in Konya he went further and spoke of\u00a0\u201cthe mission for a new world order\u201d\u00a0under Islam.<\/p>\n

In a recent interview, Prime Minister Erdo\u011fan also stated his preference, when he\u00a0remarked, \u201cThe Shanghai Five is better and more powerful and we have common values with them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Therefore, to talk of Turkey\u2019s EU membership is illusory, as the best that can be hoped for is a modus vivendi based on mutual interest.<\/p>\n

Robert Ellis is a regular commentator on Turkish affairs in the Danish and European press.<\/em><\/p>\n

Photo courtesy of the United Nations via\u00a0Flickr.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Turkey\u2019s Failed Attempt at Democratization Turkey has signalled a shift from European to Islamic values. By Robert Ellis Contributor February 25, 2013 U.S. Ambassador Francis Ricciardone incurred the wrath of the Turkish government when he drew attention to the\u00a0shortcomings\u00a0of the country\u2019s legal system. Military leaders are locked up as if they were terrorists, parliamentary deputies […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":66546,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2293,89],"tags":[1628],"class_list":["post-66545","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-robert-ellis","category-turkey","tag-islam-and-democracy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66545","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66545"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66545\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66546"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}