Ataturk
Ever since it was established by Kemal Ataturk in an atmosphere of war against Islam, Turkish democracy has survived by alternating oppression of radical Muslims with concessions to them. From the Financial Times, with thanks to Nicolei:
Universities in Turkey are locked in a dispute with the government over a proposed change to admissions policy that has led to claims of a "hidden Islamic agenda" and has echoes of a previous clash between the secular state and an Islamic-oriented government. Some university rectors threatened to resign yesterday and opposition MPs walked out of a parliamentary commission in protest at a government proposal to give students from Islamic high schools the same access to secular third-level institutions as those from secular high schools.The general staff of the armed forces said anyone "devoted to the principles of the republic" could not accept the measure, which the government intends to put to a vote in parliament next week. It was approved by parliament's education committee yesterday despite the walk-out by members of the opposition Republican People's party.
The dispute goes to the heart of an increasingly fractious debate in Turkey over the rise to power of the ruling Justice and Development party (AKP). Its power base is among an emerging middle class of devout, socially conservative Muslims in the country's Anatolian heartland, whose children would be the chief beneficiaries of the proposed change.
The government's measure would overturn a 1999 law banning students from imam hatip high schools, where they get a solid Islamic schooling, from receiving third-level education in secular universities and pursuing careers other than as imams and preachers. That law was introduced after Turkey's first, unhappy experience with an Islamic-oriented government, and it drastically reduced the number of students at these schools.
Some opponents of the new measure said it would lead to a revival of imam hatip schools and greatly expand religious education, violating the republic's official secular ideology.
Many university-educated Turks remain convinced that the AKP has a "hidden agenda" to force all women to wear headscarves and to shift the country, whose population of 70m is 99 per cent Muslim, gradually towards a stricter interpretation of Islamic law. Any suggestion of a move in that direction would almost certainly end Turkey's chances of joining the European Union.
Ural Akbulut, rector of Middle East Technical University, said he would resign if the measure became law. In an interview, he said the higher education system would be "swamped" by religious students who would gradually take over state institutions. "The hidden agenda is for every government appointee to be a practising Muslim," he said.
Erdogan Tezic, head of the Higher Education Board, accused the government of pursuing a "political initiative" that would "irreparably damage" Turkey's secular education system. If the measure and other education reforms are approved by parliament, the leadership of the HEB will be replaced.
Turkey provides a salutary example for Infidels in many respects. First, that doctrine of delibeate de-islamization known as Kemalism, after its great architect, Mustapha Kemal, was not aimed at changing Muslim doctrines. Unlike the shallow "reformers" -- Anis Sorroush in Iran, who just spent a year at Harvard Divinitiy School, or some of the young Muslim academics busily getting grants, and the admiration of their innocent colleagues, for their noisy attempts to "reform" Islam (and where there is Grant Money to be shared, there will be true believers in "reform" among non-Muslims as well), or Azizah al-Hibri, who seems to be under the misapprehension that the Qur'an and hadith are, just like the American constitution with which she has become acquainted far from Lebanon, can have its little unpleasantnessses "interpreted away" (usually such people focus exclusively on the treatment of women -- the view of Infidels, the dar al-Islam/dar al-Harb distinction, is something that is for them the third rail and they won't touch it)--Ataturk understood Islam could only be constrained, not changed.
The second lesson that Turkey offers is that such reforms take place when a country is at the end of its tether, not when it is supported from abroad. After World War I, Turkey had lost its Empire. Greek troops had disembarked at Smyrna. The forces of the Allies paraded through Istanbul. It was only in such an environment, of total collapse and despair, that Ataturk could do the things that needed to be done to save Turkey -- by limiting the power of that belief-system which stood in the way of all progress and intellectual improvement -- Islam. He could do some things, and not others. He gave women the vote, he outlawed the tarboosh, and he traded Arabic script for the Latin, a very clever way to cut ties to Arab Islam.
3) the example of Turkey also shows that Islam keeps coming back, and back. Despite the decades of nearly all-out war by Ataturk, despite his successor Inonu, despite the 80 years in which secularism has developed in Turkey and permitted the enlargement of a class of thinking Turks who are recognizable to Westerners, who do not engage in kitman and taqiyya as their favored forms of expression, who are largely forthright, who have become appreciatiors of, and partipants in, Western culture. But these people are always in danger of losing their position, and of seeing the secularism of Ataturk undone. They are far more comprehending of the threat, far more vigilant about the wiles of the Islamists, than any Western peoples or governments. And they know that they must never let up, even for an instant.
It is likely that the EU will not let Turkey in. Let it be understood in Turkey, that the ensuing rage should be directed in two places. First, it should be directed at the Arab and Persian Muslims for their behavior, their Khomeinis and Bin Ladens and Arafats. Turkish Islam may have been different, but it is the Arabgs who are indelibly blackening all Muslims with their behavior. But the second party to be blamed are those Turks who, like those promoting this scheme to get devout Muslims into higher positions, to open fields up to imam hatip school graduates beyond those of Muslim preachers -- they, too, are to blame. If, then, that EU rejection is used to reassert Kemalism, to undercut Ergogan (and Richard Perle and hs friends, several of whom have been agents of Turkey, need to distinguish between the Kemalist army officers with whom they had dealings, and Erdogan and his ilk).
It was Erdogan, after all, who said that the "minarets are our bayonets" and "the mosques our barracks"just a few years ago. He is smoother now -- but there is no evidence that either he, or his followers, have changed.
Hugh, I understand why it would be positive to reassert Kemalism, but it should also be remembered that Mustafa Kemal Ataturk was himself a scoundrel, albeit of a different kind.
RS
Thank you, Hugh, the situation in Turkey becomes more clear each time you write about it. I would like some definitions though, or directions on how to find them on-line:
Tarboosh? Kitman? Taqiyya?
And also, Mr. Spencer, how was Attaturk a scoundrel?
'Scoundrel' is putting it lightly. For one, Ataturk, although staunchly secular, was very much a hyper-Turkish nationalist. The nationalists tried to completely wipe out the ethnic Armenian (Christians I might add) population from eastern Turkey. Turkey still denies this fact.
To this day, Turkey is paranoid about the situation of ethnic minorities, directly due the the Kemalist policies. The Kurds are the largest group, which is why Turkey is so opposed to a Kurdish state in Iraq. As for the once large Greek minority of Asia Minor and Constantinople, they've been almost completely run out of the country since World War I.
My dear Patricia,
Tarboosh: the brimless hat better known to us (and to Turks) as a fez. It allowed for the prostrations required in Muslim prayer. Ataturk outlawed it, mandating Western-style hats with brims, precisely because they interfered with those prostrations.
Kitman and Taqiyya refer to the Islamic doctrine of pious dissimulation: the idea that it is acceptable, even laudable, to lie about your faith when under pressure. See Qur'an 3:28 and 16:106. Although these ideas originated among Shi'ites, they are practiced today by many Salafis -- i.e., today's radical Muslims.
"And also, Mr. Spencer, how was Attaturk a scoundrel?"
See the post by "Crusader Front." Although I do owe a peculiar debt of gratitude to Ataturk, since if it weren't for his policies of exile, conversion to Islam or death for non-Muslims in Asia Minor, my grandparents would not have come to America.
Cordially,
Robert Spencer
another so called friend will eventually side as always with its muslim islamic religion to fight the infidal around the world and especially in the united states; there are no friendly muslims.
p.s. and this a nato country that is to defend the world against terrorists.
My dear Patricia,
I realize I may have created more confusion with my last answer: why would Ataturk have wanted non-Muslims in Asia Minor to convert to Islam if he was at war with Islam? Precisely because he was a Turkish nationalist. Part of the Turk's national identity as he saw it was Islam. A toothless, non-political Islam to be sure, but still Islam -- and decidedly not the Christianity of the Armenians and Greeks.
Cordially
Robert Spencer
I find it strange that an Islamic agenda should have to be hidden in a country as strongly Muslim as Turkey. And even so, we are not talking about actually imposing Shari'ah here - we are talking about repealing laws keeping religious Muslims out of public life and denying them an education. In the UK we have scores of practising Muslim Pakistanis and Arabs working as doctors in our National Health Service and strangely, nobody mentions them when problems in the system are discussed. It is absurd that people following a country's major religion should be shut out of its public life.
The fears of the more secular Turkish that their lives may yet be controlled again, as before, by a totalitarian theocracy are far from absurd.
Turkey like Tusnisa No head dress for women
I don't know if that helps but they are the most moderan Muslum Country's. Tusnisa is very Proud of the Graves of American's in their charge!
Catherine
I must mention that although turkey and tunisia are modern, i do have to mention that the UAE are the most modern muslim nations.
thanks
"Hugh, I understand why it would be positive to reassert Kemalism, but it should also be remembered that Mustafa Kemal Ataturk was himself a scoundrel, albeit of a different kind."
Indeedly he was a scoundrel, but he WAS yours planted by your ancestors to de-Islamize us...
When I see gay day parade in Saudi Arabia and other muslim countries then I will believe that they have been thoroughly "modernized."