CHP, DSP Slam ErdoÄŸan’s Comments
There is still a lot going on in Turkey (the CHP is the party founded by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk):
Republican People’s Party (CHP) leader Deniz Baykal and Democratic Left Party (DSP) leader Zeki Sezer criticized the prime minister’s comments on the election alliance of their parties Saturday, with Baykal accusing Recep Tayyip ErdoÄŸan of being out of control.
Wondering what Erdogan said? Erdo: “If you combine 40 rotten eggs, you cannot get one fresh one.”
Baykal responded, calmly: “It is upsetting to see that the prime minister of the country is so out of control. I wish him good health.”
Sezer was more confrontational: “Turkey does not deserve such a prime minister. I don’t know how open he is to our warnings. However, I believe the people will give him the necessary warning on July 22.”
Let’s hope so: Erdogan’s government did some good things for Turkey’s economy but his AK Party has Islamist roots. For those who don’t know much if anything about Turkish politics: Erdogan tried to get a law passed that would make it illegal to commit adultery. He also isn’t a big fan of Turkey’s strict secularism (laicité): he wants to make it possible for women to enter / work in public buildings / places while wearing a headscarf; a big no-no for Kemalists.
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2 Responses to “CHP, DSP Slam ErdoÄŸan’s Comments”
Isn’t the ban on headscarves a symptom of the Turkish government’s suppression of religion. This is not just separation of Church and State, but active suppression of personal belief–the equivalent of not allowing a jewish man to wear a yamaka in the License Bureau.
Kemalism seems, from my limited knowledge, a fanaticism most unique and disturbing to American sensibilities.
I’m asking (because I don’t know) if when you say it has Islamist roots, do you mean Islamic or radical Islamic?
Ataturk basically viewed religion as backward, socially necessary perhaps, but ultimately backward. He was not beyond using it as a powerful motivator to protect the “homeland” when it served his purposes, such as during Turkey’s War of Independence or throughout WW1. He was pretty much a pragmatist. But his main inspiration was NOT the Islamic world, but the Western. But he was first and foremost a Turkish nationalist. So he turned Turkey upside down by trying to eliminate as much as possible of Islam from virtually all public life and to thrust it squarely into the private sphere (unheard of in the Muslim world at the time). So he dissolved the Caliphate, moved the Turkish capital from imperial Islamic Ottoman Istanbul to Turkish Anatolian Ankara, switched the Turkish script from Arabic to Latin, replaced Arabic/Persian vocabulary with Turkish equivalents (thus rendering modern Turkish an almost completely different language from Ottoman Turkish), he banned any type of religious attire and had his countrymen import Western type dress, he banned Sharia law and replaced it with Swiss law, every mosque was to be completely administered by the State, he introduced the concept of last names, etc. A complete revolution that was only made possible because, having saved the country from annihilation, the Turkish people trusted him completely.
And since his death, the Turkish military have been the ones to preserve Kemalism. It may be viewed as fanatic, the way the people revere the man and Kemalism in general. But maybe that’s perhaps because what is trying to replace it, Islamism, is equally fanatical wherever it has assumed power over the state and the people. To be clear, Kemalism itself has morphed into a sort of cult, an almost extreme form of Turkish nationalism. And in its present form throughout Turkish society, it helps to render the country completely unsuitable with regards to the EU. So one has to have a certain degree of sympathy for Erdogan and his party. The question is: “can they be trusted to preserve the separation of mosque and State that, at least Kemalism is sworn to protect, notwithstanding its very flawed approach?” Because by its very nature, Islamism or political Islam seeks to dominate virtually all aspects of life. Do they want an Islamic state governed by Sharia or are they prepared to live with the millions of Turks who clearly want nothing of the sort, who love their alcohol, who are not that religious and who want absolutely nothing to do with the medieval and backwards headscarfs (a cultural rather than a religious symbol)?