A Turkey in need of pragmatism

KUALA LUMPUR: These are heady days in many parts of the world. The war in Ukraine persists well beyond its first anniversary, with no end in sight. Peace proposals came and went, some more pragmatic than others, but they did not seem to catch on with the warring parties. With large parts of Europe seeming to be consumed or at least preoccupied with the armed conflict in Ukraine, there is also at least another sociopolitical development around the world which are of increasing concern.

Located not far away from Ukraine, Turkey may be said to have been somewhat dragged into the conflict as well. Straddling the Asian and the European continents, Turkey controls the main access into the Mediterranean from the Black Sea, and thus the major maritime egress of both Ukraine and Russia into a strategically crucial part of the world. Turkey remains essentially neutral in the conflict and famously brokered a deal whereby Ukrainian grains were allowed to be exported even during the conflict, thus ameliorating food shortages in some parts of the world, as Ukraine has long been one of the world’s major food growers. It was a pragmatic deal partly proposed by a supposedly pragmatic Turkey, and so far it appears to have run smoothly. The wider peace proposal, if indeed there is one, and perhaps equally pragmatic, remains on the back burner.

But for Turkey, pragmatism is unfortunately placed on the back burner not only on the foreign front but domestically as well. Modern Turkey was built on the core remains of the Ottoman Empire a century ago, and it was supposed to be a decidedly modern Turkey. Kemal Ataturk, the founding father of Turkey, was first and foremost a military officer but also a Europhile. He admittedly wanted to restore the glory and influence of Turkey. But he wanted to do so through the modernization of the whole Turkish sociopolitical system along the modern European path to success. Although the overwhelming majority of Turks were Muslims, Ataturk almost single-handedly de-theocratized Turkish politics and society, and laid the foundations for a fiercely secular Turkish society and nation.

Ataturk’s legacy, both positive and negative, left a stark mark on Turkish politics and society long after his passing. For many decades, Turkey remained the prime model of an overwhelmingly religious nation that practiced a strict separation of religion and government, whereby religion was relegated to the private sphere, and no overt expression of religiosity was allowed in the public sphere. And Turkey achieved moderate success on its path to modernization, not having prioritized and thus preoccupied itself with religious expression. The then Turkish military, steeped in both secularism and Ataturk’s teachings, was in a sense the ambivalent guardian of such a pragmatic sociopolitical arrangement, not hesitating to step in and take power, often by force, whenever it saw Turkey as having deviated from Ataturk’s way.

But there has always been an undercurrent of very conservative religiosity in Turkey which yearned to burst onto the surface. If one were to carefully read the moving books of Turkish Nobel laureate in literature Orhan Palmuk, one cannot help but feel that palpable tension in Turkish society between a secular, cosmopolitan elite and a very pious, parochial majority. Like many other Muslim societies, there is a yearning for a more religiously oriented society that has come to find its expression in political Islam, which merged that yearning with political activism to enable the ascendancy of religious discourse in politics.

And around the turn of this century, political Islam made a breakthrough in Turkey, when Recep Erdogan and his Islamist party were voted into power. Erdogan at first appeared to be a moderate democrat who could shepherd Turkey out of the shadows of the unelected military juggernaut onto a path of social democracy. There were high hopes for him from the mainstream international community.

But very soon Erdogan showed his religiously oriented true colors. The previous, longstanding policy of discouraging or even prohibiting religious expression in the public sector was first rolled back and then entirely overturned, such that all and sundry are now actually encouraged to showcase their unbridled religiosity. He also ruthlessly cracked down on his political opponents. The more cosmopolitan segments of Turkish society did at one point go to the streets to protest this religiously inspired regression and Erdogan’s autocratic ways, but they were suppressed. The Turkish military also attempted a coup but did not succeed, and has been purged ever since. Erdogan’s religiously inspired public policy extended to his government’s handling of the economy as well. To be in line with what he perceived to be religious frowning upon usury and interest, his government kept the interest rate deliberately low, even amid a globally rising interest rate environment. The result was disastrous for the Turkish economy, with inflation running into high double and even triple digits. Some even opined that the Turkish economy was teetering on the verge of total collapse.

But this dire situation did not appear to be of huge concern to a majority of Turkish voters, who days ago returned Erdogan for another five-year term as president. It is hard to fathom the minds of these voters. Are livelihood issues of much less concern to them than spiritual ones? A Turkey previously famed for its secularism and thus attractiveness for trade and investment looked set to go down the sliding slope of socioeconomic challenges.

But the repercussions of Erdogan’s win ripple far beyond Turkey. In Malaysia, many states are up for state reelections in just a few months, and the Islamist win in Turkey will no doubt be of encouragement to the Islamists in Malaysia, who already made significant inroads in the last general elections. And a large Islamist win at the state level will have profound implications for the stability of the federal government. And neighboring Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim-majority country, will also be holding presidential elections next year. It remains to be seen if an Islamist, or at least one closely affiliated with Islamism, will be voted into office. If that were the case, Southeast Asia will be in for a stretch of uncharted sociopolitical territory.