Ioannis N. Grigoriadis

Islam and democratization in Turkey: secularism and trust in a divided society

The history of Turkish modernization has been inextricably linked with the question of secularism. From the advent of the Turkish Republic in 1923, Islam was held responsible for the underdevelopment and eventual demise of the Ottoman Empire. Based on the laïcité of the Second French Republic, the secularization programme of modern Turkeys founder, Kemal Atatürk, entailed the full subjugation of Islam to the State, its eradication from the public sphere and its limitation into a very narrowly defined private sphere. The transition of Turkey to multiparty politics in 1946 was linked with a rising role of Islam in the public sphere. Islam became a crucial element in the political vocabulary of peripheral political forces which challenged the supremacy of the secularist, Kemalist bureaucratic elite. While a number of military coups aimed – among other things – to control religion, Turkish political Islam showed remarkable resilience and adaptability. Most recently, the transformation of the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi – AKP) into the strongest proponent of Turkeys European Union (EU) integration brought Turkey closer than ever to EU membership, challenged the monopoly which the Kemalist elite enjoyed as the representative of Western political values and suggested a novel liberal version of secularism. Yet Turkey has been embroiled since 2007 in successive political crises which had secularism as their focal point. This article argues that the transformation of Turkish political Islam has produced an alternative, liberal version of secularism; yet, it has not resolved deep social divisions. Building a liberal consensus between religious conservatives and secularists is imperative for the resolution of deep social divisions in Turkey. The European Union as a guarantor and initiator of reform could play a major role in building trust between the secularist and the religious conservative segments of society.

On the Europeanization of Minority Rights Protection: Comparing the Cases of Greece and Turkey

The transformation of the character of the European Union and the diffusion of European norms facilitated a drastic improvement of minority rights in Greece in the 1990s. Nonetheless, significant problems have persisted, which have undermined the credibility of the role model that Greece wishes to comprise for neighbouring EU candidate states. The situation was different in the 1990s when Turkeys EU candidacy gained impetus. The promulgation of the Copenhagen Criteria in 1993 meant that respect for minority rights became a condition for EU membership. It is argued in this study that minority rights protection in Greece and Turkey remains one of the fields where Europeanization has triggered considerable progress, but not fulfilled its full potential. The asymmetry between current and past EU membership criteria led Greece and Turkey to diverse experiences of Europeanization in the field of minority rights.

Political Participation of Turkey’s Kurds and Alevis: A Challenge for Turkey’s Democratic Consolidation

This paper focuses on the political participation of Turkey’s two largest minorities, the Kurds and the Alevis. It argues that the political participation of Kurds and Alevis is disproportionately weak compared with their population size both for historical reasons and due to state practices. Creating an environment conducive to strong political participation of Turkey’s Kurds and Alevis will comprise a decisive step in the course of Turkey’s transformation from a procedural to a substantive democracy. Political integration of Kurds and Alevis would also mean the removal of a potential source of domestic conflict and enhance the long‐term stability of the Turkish political system.

Türk or Türkiyeli? The reform of Turkey's minority legislation and the rediscovery of ottomanism

Turkish nationalism was a latecomer to the Ottoman lands. Defensive in nature, it aimed to deter the disintegration of the Empire at the hands of the Great Powers and the minority groups which had already endorsed nationalist ideals. When this target proved unrealistic, it aimed at the formation of a strong Turkish nation-state. Under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, it proved successful in that aim. The abolition of the Caliphate and the proclamation of the Republic of Turkey in 1923 launched a rigorous nation-building campaign. The need for national unity and cohesion required an intensive programme of national homogenization. As the large Ottoman non-Muslim populations of Anatolia had been reduced to a numerically insignificant minority by 1923, nation-building efforts could only focus on the Muslim majority of the population. Every Muslim citizen of the Republic, regardless of his ethnic origins, was invited – and obliged – to adopt the republican Turkish national identity. There was no room for separate ethnic or religious groups. Kurdish, Alevi or any other group identities were persistently denied by the state. These efforts were intensified in the aftermath of the 1925 Kurdish insurrection led by Sheikh Said in south-eastern Turkey. The most famous of the measures was a campaign named ‘‘‘Vatandaş, Türkçe konuş!’’ – ‘‘Citizen, speak Turkish!’’’. This was launched in 1928 aiming to impose the universal use of Turkish by all minorities, while a series of additional measures aimed to further advance national homogenization. Preventing the formation of villages by non-Turkish-speaking refugees, resettling small groups of non-Turkish-speaking populations in Turkishspeaking villages, emphasizing the honour and benefits of being a Turk and speaking Turkish were all tools in a state effort to bring about the Turkification of Anatolian Kurds, Arabs, Circassians, Laz, Albanians, Roma and other Muslim ethnic groups. Non-Muslims were accepted as separate ethnic groups, but for that very reason their citizenship rights were often questioned. The denial of the existence of any minorities other than the Istanbul Armenians, Greeks and Jews, which in turn faced persistent discrimination, became one of the cornerstones of Turkish minority policy. This nation-building programme met with considerable success, until the rise of the Kurdish question in the late 1970s questioned its fundamental premises. Severe repressive measures throughout the 1980s and 1990s did not seem to offer a longlasting solution; on the contrary, they further alienated Turkey’s Kurdish population from the Turkish state. It also reinforced the appeal of the Kurdish Workers’ Party Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 43, No. 3, 423 – 438, May 2007

Friends No More?: The Rise of Anti-American Nationalism in Turkey

This article examines the rise of anti-American nationalism in Turkey. While Turkish public opinion has developed strong views against a set of foreign policies furthered by the United States, recent findings allude to the development of an emerging anti-US bias in large segments of Turkish society. The deterioration of the US image in Turkey could be considered a result of the recent US involvement in the Middle East, as well as socio-political shifts inherent to Turkeys democratization process.

Foreign Direct Investment in Turkey: Historical Constraints and the AKP Success Story

Economic development on an unambiguously national basis was one of the foundational principles of republican Turkey. Indeed, until very recently, foreign direct investment (FDI) was scant and had a marginal presence in the Turkish economy. Since Turkey’s Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi – AKP) came into power in 2002, however, Turkey has generated more FDI than in the previous 20 years. This study has two interlinked aims in its examination of this development. The first is to put it in its inescapably historical context. This is a worthwhile exercise, as it carries explanatory power in relation to the domestic forces which have shaped the interaction of the Turkish economy with FDI. Thus, one can also better evaluate the resiliency of the current market opening in Turkey, which is, after all, shaped by domestic political and economic forces, whether supportive or opposing, whose orientation is historically informed and whose very existence is historically determined. The second aim is to render visible the role that FDI in Turkey has played as a pillar of the AKP’s overall political strategy which is premised on winning and consolidating legitimacy through internal and external actors as a responsible steward of the economy with an unquestionably Western orientation – albeit one that also leaves room for the AKP to underline its representation of the country’s Islamic culture. In that respect FDI has been complementary to the country’s relationship with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the European Union and has thus consolidated post-Islamist AKP’s claim to be a worthy trustee of the country’s key strategic goals; it has been blessed by the country’s business elite which have appreciated its contribution to Turkey’s stability and the confirmation of its Western orientation, while also seeming to generate more market opportunities than threats; and, by involving investors from Muslim countries – mostly from the Gulf – it has strengthened the AKP’s ability to relate Turkey to the world in such a way that it can pay heed to the sensibilities of its own key constituencies. This article, while not directly addressing contributions on Islamist political participation in Turkey, indirectly relates to some of the interpretations that have been offered. In particular, it will be seen how state power has been employed by AKP in order to attract FDI to Turkey not in a defensive fashion but rather in a participatory one vis-à-vis both domestic and external agents in the context of globalization. In this manner, AKP will be shown to both appropriate and develop Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 44, No. 1, 53 – 68, January 2008

The Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) and the 2015 elections

ABSTRACT The Peoples’ Democratic Party (Halkların Demokratik Partisi [HDP]) was one of the leading actors in Turkeys double parliamentary elections in 2015. Under the leadership of Selahattin Demirtaş, it has enjoyed great success, crossing the ten percent threshold and entering parliament in the June 7, 2015 elections. Yet the hype was mitigated by the partys poorer results in the November 1, 2015 elections. This electoral performance manifested the strengths as well as the limits of the HDPs ability to maintain its support in a polarized political environment. Yet the HDP remains an indispensable actor for the peaceful resolution of the Kurdish issue.

Europe and the impasse of centre-left politics in Turkey: lessons from the Greek experience

This paper aims at exploring the state of centre-left politics in Greece and Turkey by focusing on the transformation of the two leading centre-left parties in the two countries, the Greek Panhellenic Socialist Movement (Panellinio SosialistikoKinima— PASOK) and the Turkish Republican People’s Party (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi— CHP). Such a comparison is warranted for a number of reasons, despite size discrepancy and religious differences between the two countries. Both Greece and Turkey emerged from the Ottoman Empire and share to a considerable degree a legacy of top-down and crisis-ridden modernization. In both countries, a reformist and an underdog culture clashed, thus making modernization the product of the compromise between the two. In the case of Greece, PASOK has succeeded in ruling Greece for more than 20 years. While the party emerged in the 1970s with nationalist, anti-imperialist third-worldist elements, it was able to gradually move to the centre of the political spectrum in the mid-1990s and become a trigger of political reform. This process peaked during the Simitis administration, in which Greece regained its lost international prestige as ‘the European country of the Balkans’ and was able to fulfil the economic criteria for its membership in the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). While still appealing to old slogans and rhetoric, the Simitis administration attempted to break old nationalist taboos on issues relating to Greek foreign and security policy. The early Simitis era became an ample example of how a centre-left party could form a greater winning social alliance, appeal to the winners of globalization and achieve high economic growth, while not compromising its social justice agenda. In the case of CHP, the party increasingly distanced itself from its social democratic legacy. Failing to win political power, it was trapped into a defensive nationalist, anti-globalization and anti-reformist political agenda spearheaded by the question of secularism. The consolidation of Turkish democracy and the promotion of human and minority rights lost their significance, and the CHP emerged as Turkey’s leading nationalist and anti-reform party, questioning the country’s European vocation and tolerating military interventions into Turkish politics. The diminution of the CHP into a party of the ‘secularist middle class’ has deprived it of any chances to lead a winning social coalition and lead Turkey’s political reform. This paper will seek conclusions on the future of centre-left politics in Turkey based on the Greek experience.

Redefining the Nation: Shifting Boundaries of the ‘Other’ in Greece and Turkey

While Greek and Turkish nationalisms have followed diverse historical paths, they share several features. Following the model of Zimmer, this study explores how inclusive and exclusive boundary mechanisms have shaped Greek and Turkish national identity and which symbolic resources were utilized in these processes. It is argued that a shift from the use of voluntaristic to that of organic boundary mechanisms has characterized both Greek and Turkish nationalisms and influenced the definition of national ‘self’ and ‘other’. This study aims to track a pattern of historic-political conditions which favour a shift from voluntaristic towards organic models of defining the nation and discuss possible future trends.

Struggling for the Kurdish vote: religion, ethnicity and victimhood in AKP and BDP/HDP rally speeches

ABSTRACT This study explores the competition for Turkeys Kurdish vote through the instrumentalization of religion, ethnicity and victimhood in political competition. This becomes possible through the study of rally speeches of the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi – AKP), the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (Barış ve Demokrasi Partisi – BDP) and the Peoples’ Democratic Party (Halkların Demokratik Partisi – HDP), in Turkeys June 2011 and June 2015 general elections. The AKP campaigns framed the resolution of the Kurdish issue along with an updated version of the ‘Turkish Islamic Synthesis’. The issue of ethnicity was toned down in contrast to the idea of common victimhood of pious Turkish and Kurdish Muslims in republican Turkey. On the other hand, the BDP/HDP moved from a more ethnic-oriented and exclusive identity approach in 2011 to a more inclusive, liberal and extrovert agenda based on a civic definition of Turkish national identity in 2015. Religion and victimhood appear as the two most enduring symbolic resources for political party mobilization.