Turkish Daily News has two interesting articles up about Erdogan and Gül.
– The first one: “Gül’s presidency will fade Turkey’s apartheid, not secularity.”
– The second one: “Is ErdoÄŸan undecided, or trying to impose?.”
In the second article, Yusuf Kanli wonders, “What should we understand from the remarks of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip ErdoÄŸan that while the July 22 election message of the nation cannot be ignored, democracy requires protection of the interests of the minority but seeking political consensus (on the name of the presidential candidate) should not be taken as the majority succumbing to the minority either?”
A little later: “Then, why is ErdoÄŸan pondering the issue so much? Due to the psychological atmosphere provided by the election results and the inner-AKP balances, he might have difficulty in opposing Gül’s candidacy, but if he is not really opposed to it, why is he not endorsing Gül’s candidacy?”
Good questions. The answers remain – as of yet – unknown. Erdogan is an experienced and smart politician. Savvy even. He made only one true mistake since he became prime minister: he did not handle the election for president well. As Kanli writes:
With the MHP’s decision to attend presidential voting sessions and the AKP having 340 votes with which it can easily elect the next president in the third round of voting, there is of course no threat of going to fresh polls, but if ErdoÄŸan, as he did in April, keeps the name of the candidate in his mind, right to the end of the nomination period and try to impose on the last day, we may still have a new president but the country will definitely plunge into a new period of political tension.
The second article is written by Mustafa Akyol. He is – or so it seems – a supporter of Gül. He writes:
Abdullah Gül is a ‘son of the nation,’ as they call him, not a commissar of the state. And his presidency will be a major step forward toward abolishing the official apartheid against Turkey’s practicing Muslims.
Nowadays the big question in Turkey is whether Mr. Abdullah Gül, arguably the most successful foreign minister in the history of this country, will be the next president. Actually the same issue was a bone of contention in April, too, when Prime Minister Tayyip ErdoÄŸan declared Mr. Gül as his candidate for the top post. Mr. ErdoÄŸan’s party, the AKP, had enough seats in Parliament to elect Mr. Gül, but the secular elders of Ankara got infuriated, simply because Mr. Gül is a practicing Muslim and his wife wears the headscarf. Hence they blocked the parliamentary process. Consequently Mr. ErdoÄŸan called for early elections, and, alas, won them on July 22 with an astounding victory.
I see things quite differently. Secularists are not persecuting practicing Muslims. In fact, the far majority (99%) of Turks are Muslims – the far majority of secularists – then – are Muslims (yes, practicing Muslims) as well. As you all know, my fiance is Turkish and I recently spent four weeks in that wonderful country. I spoke to many, many Turks – some of them voted for the AK Parti, but the ones I dealt with mostly were secularists (most of them voted for the CHP even though they detest its leader, Deniz Baykal). All of them – yes, every single one of them – are practicing Muslims. All of them believe very strongly in Allah, and all of them believe that Mohammed was Allah’s prophet. All the men go to the Mosque regularly – every Friday. They believe, however, that politics and religion should be separated. They believe that religion and politics do not mix. History and experience taught them this lesson.
Akyol’s big mistake is that he seems to believe that practicing Muslims cannot be secularists. That is in my opinion not true. They can. Just as practicing Christians can be secularists. Some practicing Muslim women wear a headscarf, some do not. That is not dependent on whether or not she is a practicing Muslim: it has to do with how she interprets the Koran (Qur’an). Some practicing Muslim women simply believe that there is no need for them to wear a headscarf. In secular circles in Turkey, the headscarf is also associated with the oppression of women. Therefore, secular women often choose not to wear one. They believe that they are equal to men. When they enter a mosque, they wear a headscarf (they have to), but in every day life, they believe there is no need for them to cover their head / hair.
The danger with Akyol’s reasoning, is that it almost looks like he is playing the “you’re not a true Muslim card,” or – and that is more likely – that others will use his reasoning like that.
He also writes:
Moreover, the remaining 53 percent of the voters can’t be considered as in opposition to Mr. Gül. The voters of the Nationalist Movement Party (14 percent), the Democratic Party (5 percent), the independents (5 percent), the Saadet Party (2 percent) and other little political parties do not share the Islamophobic fixation that lies behind the anti-Gül hysteria. It is only the ultra-secularist CHP, which gained just 20 percent of the votes, that is obsessed with the presidency of Mr. Gül. It was actually Deniz Baykal, the party’s leader, who initiated this artificial crisis many months ago by swearing, “We won’t allow the headscarf at the top of the state!â€
Again, the people I lived with in Turkey and met, mostly voted for the CHP. I do not recognize them in the description given by Mr. Akyol. They are not Islamophobic: they are Muslims themselves. In the West, Islamists often accuse those who are not Muslims and who are secularists of being Islamophobes. This is the first time that I see a Muslim accusing fellow Muslims of being Islamphobes.
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