Moderate Islam and the New President

In one of his farewell speeches the outgoing Turkish President Ahmet Necdet Sezer reiterated his belief that the regime in Turkey is in danger. He thinks that if Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan becomes president the secular principles of the republic will be jeopardized. President Sezer is not alone in this.

The secular nationalists in Turkey believe that the Bush administration supports the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) government as part of its policy of supporting what it calls “moderate Islam.” Some even believe that the US has given the go-ahead to Erdoğan to take the presidential palace for the same reason. Turkey’s secular elite doesn’t hide its anger with the US for allegedly supporting the AK Party government. The anti-Americanism of our secularists is stronger than that of both religious and nationalist groups, and yet they that insist it is they, and not the Islamist AK Party, who are America’s true friends. While all this is fuzzy logic, it has a certain ideological and emotional appeal. So let’s try to understand it. A “moderate Islam” was formulated by US policy makers to set off the rising tide of what they called perceived as “radical Islamic movements.” This effort started during Bill Clinton’s presidency but reached a new ascendancy within the administration of President George W. Bush. After Sept. 11 many observers in the US believed that these “radical Islamic movements” could not be eradicated. They can be countered and contained only if there is a parallel effort from within Muslim societies themselves. The argument is that when there are enough “moderate Muslim” voices out there, the radicals will lose their constituency and their influence will be limited, and that Islam’s “soul-searching” will curb its own sharp edges. The fatal flaw of this assumption was that more democracy would bring about less opposition to US policies in the Middle East. Democratization was promulgated on similar grounds, that radicalism raises its head when people don’t find legitimate ways to voice their political concerns. Certainly Middle Eastern countries need both democracy and economic development so that they will not be desperate losers and thus resort to violence. But we very quickly discovered that the primary goal of this policy was not the ending of oppressive regimes in the Arab world. In essence it had very little to do with spreading democracy, human rights or civil society. What the Bush administration had hoped to achieve was to create public opinion in favor of US policies. The plan has clearly failed miserably in Egypt, Lebanon, Palestine and Iraq. Now Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is saying that stability is more important than democracy. Would it be a stretch to say that the so-called policy of “moderate Islam” has failed in Turkey as well? If there ever was a policy of bringing a moderate Islamist government to power in Turkey so that the Turkish public opinion would be pro-American, it has certainly failed. The AK Party is neither an Islamist party nor pro-American. True, it has Islamic roots and many of its core leaders would consider themselves devout Muslims. Yet it is still wrong to classify the AK Party as “Islamist.” Nor is the AK Party as pro-American as the Bush administration would like to see it. As the ruling party, the AK Party knows the importance of having good relations with the US, and there is no reason why Turkey should turn its back on the US as long as this alliance is in the mutual interests of both countries. Yet this has not prevented the AK Party, which has dominated the Turkish Parliament since 2002, from rejecting the March 2003 motion. Nor has it held the AK Party government from establishing good relations with the major players in the region, including Syria, Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah, Iraq and Arab countries. The only exception to this is Massoud Barzani, but there is no compelling reason to assume