Meanwhile, back in Istanbul.
Turkey's Islamist monster
Amir Taheri
National Post
Thursday, November 27, 2003
No, this was not the way that Recep Tayyip Erdogan imagined the first anniversary of his party's historic electoral victory. Earlier this year, at a meeting with a group of journalists in Switzerland, the Turkish Prime Minister spoke of his hopes for "a year of positive change" in a country thirsting for reform.
The idea, he explained, was to "speed up the process of restoring the armed forces to their proper role" and taking "the last big steps" towards Turkey's membership in the European Union while the economy, in the doldrums for a decade, would start showing signs of a turnaround.
What Erdogan had not counted on was a wave of terrorist attacks that could expose the basic weaknesses of his political strategy.
This month's attacks in Istanbul have already cast doubt on Erdogan's ability to press on with his plan to recast the Turkish republic by excluding the military leadership from politics. Many Turks, including some in Erdogan's Justice and Development Party (AKP), believe that with terrorism threatening the nation, this is no time to pick a fight with the armed forces. The attacks have already translated into an increase in popular support for the secularist parties that wish to keep the army at the centre of Turkish political life.
The terrorist attacks also undermine Erdogan's hopes of a real economic recovery. To be sure, the Turkish economy has been showing some positive signs in the past few months, partly thanks to an enlarged budget deficit. But there are already signs that the terrorist attacks are having a dampening effect on the Turkish mood as a whole. Tourism, the nation's third largest source of foreign currency, is hit in a big way while the effects on medium- and long-term investments remain to be gauged.
The third plank of Erdogan's strategy, Turkey's fast-track into the EU, is also threatened. The prospect of Turkey turning into a new battlefield for Islamist terrorism is unlikely to mobilize greater support for the Turkish aspirations within the EU.
As might have been expected, the Istanbul attacks have been conveniently attributed to al-Qaeda. The attribution suits Erdogan well.
The very mention of al-Qaeda is guaranteed to attract the attention, and hopefully the support, of Washington. Also, by pretending that the terrorists were "foreign elements," the Prime Minister can foster the illusion that the Turks are victims of an external enemy.
The truth, however, is that the terrorist attacks that have hit Istanbul are, in part at least, a result of almost a quarter of a century of attempts to " Islamicize" Turkish politics -- attempts in which Erdogan's party, and its four predecessors, played a leading part.
Turkey today is experiencing what Iran and several Arab states have experienced since the 1960s: an Islamist monster created by the establishment that ends up turning against it.
The first person to think of creating an Islamist force, at the time against the left, was prime minister Adnan Menderes, who was overthrown in a military coup and hanged in 1960.
The Islamist groups that he had encouraged, and partly financed through public funds, did not lift a finger to help him in his hour of need.
This was because, in the words of the Bektashi chiefs who had enjoyed his patronage, Menderes was not "Islamic enough."
Fast forward to the 1970s and we have Suleyman Demirel, a political heir to Menderes, playing the Islamic card. Demirel benefited tactically and managed to become prime minister on two occasions. In time, however, he, too, was ditched by his Islamist allies, who found him to be not Islamic enough.
One man who thought he had played the Islamist card to the full was Necmettin Erbakan, known to his followers as "Khojah" which means "master."
In 1996, the " Khoja" managed to turn a small Islamist party, known as Rifah (Welfare) into a senior partner in a coalition with several right-wing parties. Although the Erbakan government lasted just over a year, it managed to strengthen the Islamist groups in a number of ways, especially through government subsidies. But Erbakan, too, experienced the fate of his predecessors who had played with Islam as a political ideology against the left and liberal forces. By 1998, with his party disbanded, his career was at an end.
Out of national politics, Turkey's various Islamist-leaning parties have a 25-year history of exercising power at the municipal level. And it is at that level that they did the most damage to Turkey's political traditions.
From the mid-1980s, the Turkish Islamists forged a strange alliance with the security forces against what they regarded as "common enemies." At the time, the army saw the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), a communist secessionist movement, and its other Marxist allies, as the nation's principal enemies.
Sharing that enmity, the Islamic parties joined forces with the worst elements of the army and the security services to set up a number of death squads against the PKK and other leftist and liberal groups.
The most notorious of these death squads went under the label of Hezbollah, an outfit originally created by the mullahs of Tehran but later infiltrated by Turkey's secret service (MIT).
In July, 1993, the Turkish Hezbollah authored one of the most tragic chapters in the history of modern terrorism in Turkey. Hezbollah militants attacked a hotel in Sivas, in eastern Anatolia, where the Alevis, a moderate sect that has always supported secularism, were holding a public meeting. The attackers blocked all exits in the hotel and then set it on fire. Some 40 people were burned alive while the local police, under the control of the Rifah Party municipality, beat up those who tried to escape.
By 1997, so infiltrated was the Turkish Hezbollah that Tehran decided to break ties with it and set up a new group known as Islamic Faction.
In the meantime, another Islamist terror group had come into being under the name of Grand Orient's Combatants Front. Ostensibly set up to recruit " holy warriors" to fight the Armenians in Nagorno Karabakh and the Russians in Chechnya and Daghestan, the "front" soon found it easier to kill people in Turkey itself.
Between 1985 and 2000, more than 800 people died in various acts of violence carried out by Islamist groups. And that does not include the victims of clashes between the security forces and various ethnic and religious terror groups. Those assassinated by Islamist terrorists include judges, journalists, academics, politicians, medical doctors and even housewives.
A pattern has been established over the past quarter of a century. Each time Turkish politics has taken an Islamist turn, the broader Islamist movement has become more radical and violent.
Erdogan has made the mistake that Menderes, Demirel and Erbakan made before him: assuming that the Islamist ideology could be exercised in moderation.
What they did not realize is that even if you are Islamist yourself, there will always be someone to pretend he is more Islamist than you.
In Iran, the Khomeinists who had seized power in the name of Islamism were the first victims of their own ideology. Between 1979 and 1983, more than 400 Khomeinist mullahs and politicians were murdered by Islamist militants who regarded them as not being quite Islamist enough. And in Algeria, for example, even Abbasi Madani and Ali Benhadj, the two leaders of the Front for Islamic Salvation (FIS) ended up top of the hit list of the GIA (The Islamic Armed Group) that regards them both as "pagans who must be put to death."
The terrorist attacks that have hit Turkey have little to do with Iraq or even rising hatred for the United States. Both Iraq and hatred for the United States are used as pretext by Islamist groups who wish to destroy Erdogan's government because they believe it is not " Islamic enough."
The only way to deal with the threat is to form a broad popular front dedicated to the values and traditions of Turkish democracy. Erdogan can take the lead in that direction. But before he does, he must realize that anyone who mixes politics and religion risks having that mix explode in his face.
Amir Taheri is an Iranian author of 10 books on the Middle East and Islam.
© Copyright 2003 National Post
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