EU-DIGEST

Turkey’s Governing Party Avoids Ban - Sebnem Arsu

Turkey’s governing party narrowly missed being banned in a court ruling on Wednesday that released months of pressure in the country and handed a victory to the party’s leader, a former Islamist.The party, Justice and Development, or AKP, as it is know in Turkish, was kept alive by just one vote — six members of Turkey’s Constitutional Court voted to close it, but seven were required. A ban would have brought down the government, forcing national elections for the second time in a year and pitching the country into chaos. “A great uncertainty blocking Turkey’s future has been lifted,” said Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the leader of the party, speaking in Ankara, Turkey’s capital.

And while the ruling was widely viewed as a win for Mr. Erdogan, and in turn for Turkish democracy, the court did not let the party off the hook, voting to cut its public funding in half, a strong but not fatal sanction, and issued a “serious warning,” that the party was steering the country in too Islamic a direction. “AKP is on probation,” said Soli Ozel, a professor at Bilgi University in Istanbul. “The court clearly said it sees the party as a focal institution for Islamizing the country.”

Labels: Secularism, Turkey

Arrests fuel Turkey coup rumblings

A senior Turkish general called for calm yesterday after two prominent retired generals were detained in a widening police investigation into a suspected coup plot against the Government. "Turkey is passing through difficult days. We all have to be acting with more common sense, more carefully and more responsibly," land forces commander General Ilker Basbug, who is the second-most powerful general in the Turkish military, said yesterday. Police detained 21 people on Tuesday as part of an investigation into Ergenekon, a shadowy, ultra-nationalist and hard-line secularist group suspected of planning bombings and assassinations calculated to trigger an army takeover.

Labels: Military, Secularism, Turkey

TURKEY - Court Challenge for Leaders

The deputy prime minister defended his party in court against charges that it was steering Turkey toward Islamic rule. Turkey’s chief prosecutor, Abdurrahman Yalcinkaya, wants to disband the governing Justice and Development Party and ban Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and 70 other party members from politics for five years. Deputy Prime Minister Cemil Cicek argued in the party’s defense. The party has been locked in a power struggle with secular groups supported by the military, the judiciary and other state institutions.

Labels: Military, Secularism, Turkey

Divided Turkey sweats in a political heat wave - by Bernard Bouwman

Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan's AK Party is furious because the Constitutional Court has decided to reinstate the ban on headscarves at Turkish universities. Rarely have the Turkish government and judiciary been so much at loggerheads. Is there any way out of the crisis? MK Party MPs cheered as Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan attacked the Turkish Constitutional Court in a speech on Tuesday. In February, MPs voted to abolish the ban on headscarves at Turkish universities, but last week the Constitutional Court revoked the decision. The religious headscarf is again outlawed on campus. And like many others in his party, Mr Erdogan is furious. In his speech to parliament he asserted,
"The constitution clearly says that legislative power belongs solely to elected parliaments" - not, therefore, to the Constitutional Court. "No one can take away the power the constitution grants to the respected parliament." Mr Erdogan's speech is indicative of the degree of political tension in Turkey. The secular camp (the CHP Party, the army and the judiciary) bitterly complains that Mr Erdogan and his supporters are striking at the roots of the secular system in Turkey.They claim only religious people are being appointed to top positions, and the AK Party is doing its best to push Turkey in the direction of Islam. The headscarf at universities is the thin end of the wedge, say secular Turks.

Note EU-Digest: A headscarf like a yamaka is a symbol of religious belief. If the constitution is changed , whereby the wearing of religious symbols is enforced and thereby indirectly undermines the secularity of the state, as seems to been the case in Turkey, it can only be seen as an attempt by the government of Mr. Erdogan to change the secular status of Turkey.

Labels: Headscarfs, Secularism, Turkey

Secularism and Islam: the Turkish experience

Most Turks - including, apparently, many of those who vote for the AKP - are proud of their country’s secular tradition. Earlier this year, when Gul’s presidential candidacy was initially proposed by the AKP, large numbers of them were led to believe that this tradition was somehow under threat. Their suspicions were not entirely unfounded. For instance, a dozen years ago Gul had talked about wishing “to end secularism” - although, not long afterwards, he had also spoken of wanting to see the “Islamic headscarf and the miniskirt walking hand in hand”.

However, it wasn’t so much his utterances that his opponents picked on: they appeared to be piqued by the fact that his wife, Hayrunisa, sports such a headscarf. As do millions of other Turkish women. And, of course, there are large numbers who don’t. Anyhow, back in May there were massive anti-Gul demonstrations in Ankara and Istanbul. In Turkey the president is elected by parliament, and an opposition boycott led the Constitutional Court to annul Gul’s election, because it deemed the assembly inquorate. The decision was handed down after the military made it clear where it stood via a message posted on its website. With only a little bit of exaggeration, it has been described as the world’s first internet coup.

Labels: EU, Islam, Secularism, Turkey

Turkey: Mr. Erdogan received the benefit of the doubt from the electorate, but not more than that - by Rick Morren

Turkey’s election results have become part of some interesting discussions about the state of secularism in that country.

Looking at the EU, it also supposedly is secular, but it still has a variety of Christian Democratic parties and Governments in control. So with Turkey in mind the question can be asked: "what makes Muslims any different from Christians when it comes to respecting secularism, democracy and an omnipresent God as one package?" In today’s world, tradition, culture, history, or track-records are weak arguments to separate these two major religions on this issue.

The recent elections in Turkey were part of a well established democratic process, and no doubt, so will be the upcoming Presidential election. Mr. Erdogan’s party won the general elections fair and square and should be given the benefit of the doubt.

One thing can be sure,every move Mr.Erdogan and his government make will be closely watched by friend and foe alike. Turkey is one of the very few, if not the only Muslim Nation which has chosen a secular and democratic road to the future. Any deviation from that course will result in turmoil for the whole region and particularly for Europe. The EU must make sure they continuously keep reminding Mr. Erdogan of this.

Labels: Erdogan, EU, Islam, Secularism, Turkey

Pious Turks find their place in the sun

By day the Turkish women strip down to bikinis and belly-dance by the swimming pool. But at night they swathe their new suntans in headscarves and join their menfolk for dinner. The Bera Alanya is a five-star hotel on Turkey's Mediterranean coast where men and women have separate swimming pools and alcohol is not served – but female customers enjoy freedoms they often do not find in the public sector. The hotel is part of a growing sector in Turkey that caters for devout wealthy Muslims who want to enjoy the beach without compromising their beliefs – a conservative social class whose support will be key for the ruling AK Party at elections this month.

Behind the success of hotels such as Bera Alanya is an economic boom from which many religiously conservative Turks have greatly benefited. Islamic banks have also seen a boom.

A study by Resort magazine, published by the Mediterranean Hoteliers Associations, shows there are 27 hotels like this one on the coast. Most of them have opened since 2004.Many guests rejected the fears of Turkey's secularists, saying the AK Party has not taken any steps to increase the profile or role of religion in public life. Although they are not all AK Party supporters, many hope that a second term in office – which polls show is likely – will bring reforms to make life easier for devout Muslim Turks.

Labels: Islam, Secularism, Turkey

Mass demonstration in Izmir for a secular Turkey

Hundreds of thousands took to the streets of the western Turkish city of Izmir Sunday morning to protest against the conservative Islamic government and to demand the maintenance of the separation between religion and state.

The crowds of protestors, which Turkish television estimated at more than 1 million, stretched back for kilometres from the site of the main demonstration. The protestors were waving the red national flag with a white star and crescent and carrying posters of the founding father of modern secular Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the reports said. Flags were also waved from ships and boats in the coastal city as the mass demonstration featuring music and song took on a festival air.

Labels: Secularism, Turkey

Gul withdraws as Turkey again fails to elect new President

Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul has withdrawn from the country's Presidental race - as he failed to secure a quorum in a second parliamentary vote. After today's ballot the Islamist-rooted AK Party candidate said - "After this time my candidacy is out of the question".

Tens of thousands took to the streets of Man-is-a yesterday to show support for Turkey's secular system - following previous demonstrations in Istanbul and Ankara. It's now expected a new president will not be declared before a general election in July.

Labels: Secularism, Turkey

Turkey's militant Muslims should worry West - by Con Coughlin

Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the father of modern Turkey, was no friend of Islam. Late at night, and in his cups, Turkey's iconic leader would often refer to the nation's Islamic past as "a necklace of corpses" that defiled the new state he was trying to create from the ruins of the Ottoman empire.

The 15 years he governed the country is most remembered for the almost obsessive purge he undertook of the country's Muslim identity as he sought to create a society more attuned to the ways of modern Europe.

Note EU-Digest: Europe must not allow Turkey to slide back into its past and support the forces that want to protect the legacy of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk

Labels: Muslims, Secularism, Turkey

Scores arrested in Turkey May Day demos

Turkish police arrested scores of people including union leaders taking part in May Day demonstrations here Tuesday, organizers and the media said.

Most of the 82 arrests made by mid-morning came as participants in one of two major rallies tried to march on central Taksim Square in defiance of a ban by the Istanbul authorities, according to the Anatolia news agency. Land and sea traffic was paralyzed in the city of more than 12 million as the authorities blocked roads, cancelled ferries and closed metro stations as they tried to cope with two labour rallies on either side of the Bosphorus.

Labels: EU, Secularism, Turkey

Turkey's Gul defies army and protests - Osman Orsel

Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul refused on Sunday to withdraw from Turkey's presidential vote, defying pressure from the army and calls from hundreds of thousands of demonstrators worried about his Islamist past.

The protesters, waving red and white Turkish flags and anti-government placards at an Istanbul rally, denounced Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan and Gul as a threat to Turkey's secular order separating state and religion, and they praised the army.

Labels: Protest, Secularism, Turkey

Huge pro-secularism rally in Turkey

n a massive demonstration in support of secularism in Turkey hundreds of thousands of people have taken part in a rally Ankara. It was organised by a group opposed to the nomination of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan for president. His AK party has its roots in Islam and many in the country worry its official secular status would be undermined if he were to become head of state. Turkey, which is a candidate for EU membership, is predominently Muslim but state and religion are strictly separated.

Tens of thousands of people were bussed into the capital from across the nation to attend what was one of the biggest gatherings in Turkey in recent years. Note EU-Digest: "Mustafa Kemal Ataturk shaped the destiny of a nation which was alone and dying. He gave it a new future. Under his progressive nationalist leadership his country broke free from its passive, inward-looking and parochial and religious conservatism, ingrained through long centuries of habit, and from the defeatism and apathy engendered by the inexorable decline of its imperial power. Aiming to replace the image of Turkey as ' the Sick Man of Europe ' with that of a dynamic and self-renewing non-imperialist country capable of winning the respect of its more advanced European neighbours, he led his country out of the Middle Ages into the twentieth century in a couple of decades. He achieved this through a co-ordinated series of sweeping reforms, all directed towards the creation in Turkey of a western-style democracy. These changes were so drastic that it is impossible to conceive that anyone could have brought them about if he had not been, like Mustafa Kemal, a national hero twice over as a result of his leadership at Gallipoli and his single-handed master minding of the Turkish War of Independence, which ended with the departure of all foreign armies from Turkish soil.

In February 1937 he had the following six principles written into Article Two of the Constitution of the Turkish Republic:
1. Republicanism
2. Nationalism
3. Populism
4. Revolutionism
5. Secularism
6. Etatism

The first four principles provide the basis for the new political life of the country, and the last two lay down the guidelines for his reforms.

Secularism is one of the cornerstones of the Turkish political system. Any change in this structure will not only mean a danger to the survival of a free and independent Turkish Democratic Republic, but it will also impact on Europe's established secular societies. Secularism is one of the cornerstones of the Turkish political system. Any change in this structure will not only mean a danger to the survival of a free and independent Turkish Democratic Republic, but it will also impact on Europe's established secular societies. All of us in the EU can take an example of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk who created this great democratic and secular country. We must help to preserve Turkey, not bring it down. (EU-Digest) "

Labels: Elections, EU, Secularism, Turkey

Turkey's secularism 'threatened' - by Sarah Rainsford

Turkey's outgoing president has warned the country's secular system faces its greatest threat since the founding of the republic in 1923.

President Ahmet Necdet Sezer said attempts to bring religion into politics were stirring social tensions. His comments come as Turkey prepares for elections which could see the current religious-minded prime minister becoming president if he stands.The outgoing President Sezer also lashed out at unnamed foreign forces, saying democratisation efforts, including steps to reduce the political role of the military, were a threat to the established order. He said any challenge to Turkey's strict secular system was not a step forward to a moderate Muslim state, but a step backwards towards radical Islam.

Labels: Elections, Secularism, Turkey