The Latest in Battle for Turkey’s Future
Is Islamic fundamentalism Turkey’s future, with secularism, what we in the West would call democratic pluralism, its past?
Apparently secularists who plotted a coup against Turkey’s democratically-elected Islamic fundamentalist government fear that seemingly topsy-turvy scenario. Many have been arrested for plotting against the government there.
Many in the West have presumed that because democracies have tended to be less aggressive or oppressive, having elections will necessarily result in less aggressive or oppressive regimes. But that’s faulty logic. Without what I would call the idea base, the metaphysical turf from which true pluralism arises, being in place, exercises in democracy may be little more than legitimized mob rule, the proverbial lipstick on a pig.
Most democratic and pluralistic societies have arisen from ways of thinking that support the value of individuals and free inquiry, not values upheld by fundamentalists of any religious tradition, really. (Historian Rodney Stark argues in The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success, that democratic pluralism and capitalism arose in Europe and North America arose because Christianity, particularly Protestant Christianity, encouraged a belief in reason.) If those basic cultural assumptions don’t exist or if they’re questioned by large enough numbers of people, regimes that don’t conform to Western notions of democracy or pluralism may be duly installed.
Is that what’s happened in Turkey, a country that, unlike many of its neighbors, has had a tradition of democratic pluralism? And are the Turkish secularists wrong or right to plot the current government’s downfall?
Whatever the answers to those questions, the battle over Turkey’s future continues.
[This has been crossposted at my personal blog.]
5 Responses to “The Latest in Battle for Turkey’s Future”
Here's the celestial definition of the word: “fundamentalist”.
Someone of any faith, worldwide [insert the name..doesn't matter] who has turned their back on the inner voice of their God and instead listens to the dogmatic agendas of men and drowns out the voice of their God with prescribed rituals, chants or other manifestations of idolitry with the purpose of keeping the inner voice beaten back and silent..
That was the reason for Commandment #4 BTW. (Its rough equivalent in several faiths worldwide) to preserve and reaffirm the connection with the God voice inside. A day of contemplation and silent thoughts.
How simple? And how many devices we have to assist us in ignoring it..
…yeah, because Jews and Hindus and Buddhists have been such uter, complete failures. Republican democracy was invented by whom? Not Christians, but pagan Greeks.
No, the keys, really, are, yes, putting reason first, and moderacy and tolerance and civil society. Confucians and Buddhists and Muslims invented tons of things for a millenium while intolerant Christians burned people with big mouths at stakes. So, DEFINITELY not just Christianity.
I've been paying attention to events in Turkey. What kind of party are these coup-minded so advancing as a reason for why the democracy must be seriously hurt rather than letting them 'in'? Yes, an Islamic one, but a moderate one. It wants Turkey to join the EU and has been cutting down on persecution of opposition figures. It also serves as a vital conservative party to face the secular left parties. It's the Muslim equivalent of Christian Democratic parties. You can't have a healthy democracy without both sides.
jkay:
I think that you misunderstood my point or that I didn't make it clearly. First of all, I was simply mentioning the thesis of an historian's look at the rise of modern capitalism and modern democratic pluralism in the West. The Enlightenment, while certainly interested in the Greeks, was made possible by the Biblical understanding of the value and giftedness of individual human beings that permeated Western culture, however attenuated and perverted by people who identified themselves as Christians.
None of that is to say that the Church has not often veered from faith to religion, the distinction which I think Silhouette was making and a critique with which both the Bible and historic Christianity would be in accord.
And of course the concept of democracy comes to us from the ancient Greeks. But even they thought that the concept of democracy was inapplicable to regions larger than their relatively small city-states and that, like the Founders and Framers, the franchise should be enjoyed only by landed aristocrats.
But Stark has string reasons for espousing his thesis that Biblical faith supports the use of reason and the value of all people. I will remind you that the abolitionist movements in both England and the US, for example, were primarily Christian agitations, most notably led by William Wilberforce, also a committed Christian, in Britain and William Wilberforce, a committed Christian, in the US. (Not to mention the remarkable Beecher family.) The civil rights movement drew its leadership from preachers who also operated out of a Christian worldview.
Christians sin just like everybody else. No amount of sanctimony will change that. And I didn't mean to imply otherwise. I was simply talking about the Biblical metaphysic as one potential catalyst for the development of modern democratic pluralism. As a preacher friend of mine once noted of John 3:16 which speaks of God giving his Son to “the world”: “That means ALL people. You know what ALL means? It means ALL. There ain't nothing or nobody on the other side of all.”
By the way, had you followed my links, you would have seen my discussion of Turkish and Muslim democracy, Turkish desires to be part of the EU, and moderate Muslims in Turkey who want to pursue a different way.
Thanks for your comments.
Mark
Sorry – I misjudged you on the religion issue. Yeah, I shoulda actualy read the linked articles, which are good stuff. Of course, as you say, many early strands of Protestantism did value thought. I was just reading a book of my own on it – Sarah Vowell's book on early religious thought in America.
It's not so well known, because neither its inventors nor Rome let it have much time to grow, but representative democracy, scaling to many cities, was invented by the Classical Greeks as well. The first and biggest one, the Delian League, was invented by Athens. Athens betrayed to empire when no healthy opposition party grew, and lost everything by bad and arrogant leadership (IMHO, they needed either a more multipolar gummint or opposition in the League to keep them on keel).
BUT,others copied the Delian League, without betraying the idea, and improving with with balanced executive, unicameral legislature, and courts like we have. The idea got as far as Southern Italy before the Romans conquered them all, one by one.
P.S.: I LOVE Istanbul. The only problem was that I had a neck injury going in, and Hagia Sophia DIDN'T help with it. Now, whenever I read about somebody visitingi Hagia Sophia, I keep wondering how their necks did.