By Joseph V. Micallef
In 1994, an aspiring Turkish pol named Recep Tayyip Erdogan leveraged his fame as a instrumentalist for Istanbul's Kasimpasa Soccer Club into a successful run for mayor of Istanbul as a candidate of the Islamist Welfare Party. His initial success proved short-lived. In 1998, he was dismissed from his seat as mayor, banned from farther political business office as well as imprisoned for 4 months for having recited a poem, during a speech, that promoted an Islamic betoken of see of the role of government.
Erdogan afterwards abandoned his explicitly Islamist views as well as recast himself as a socially conservative democrat who espoused liberal economical policies. In 2001, along alongside a onetime ally Fethullah Gülen, he founded the Justice as well as Development Party (AKP) to reverberate his newfound objectives of social conservatism as well as economical reform.
In 2003, next the removal of the ban as well as his reinstatement inwards Turkish politics after the electoral success of the AKP inwards the 2002 elections brought it to power, he was elected to the Turkish Parliament inwards a by-election inwards Siirt.
That victory heralded the ascent of Erdogan into the highest reaches of Turkish politics. He became, inwards turn, prime number government minister from March 2003, until he was elected president of Turkey inwards 2014. He has continued inwards that role through the nowadays day.
Initially, the AKP-dominated parliament stayed truthful to its programme of political as well as economical reform. In 2004, it passed a serial of v reform packages designed to convey Turkey inwards employment alongside European Union practices. These reforms included, amidst other things, increased legal protections of social, cultural as well as political rights, as good as protecting liberty of facial expression as well as limiting the role of the military machine inwards Turkish politics.
Over the final 10 years however, Erdogan as well as the AKP receive got veered significantly from their initial reformist agenda. Erdogan has been criticized for beingness increasingly authoritarian as well as for orchestrating changes inwards the Turkish constitution designed to farther concentrate political authorisation inwards the presidency.
Turkey's external policy, inwards the meantime, has grown increasingly nationalistic as well as antagonistic to American as well as NATO objectives inwards the Middle East. Ankara's policies inwards the Syrian civil war, its back upwards of radical Islamist groups as well as its intervention against the U.S.-supported Syrian Democratic Forces, has led to pregnant tensions inwards its human relationship alongside Washington.
Domestically, the AKP has supported the reintroduction of many Islamic cultural practices. These receive got ranged from promoting the usage of the veil past times Turkish women to a radical expansion of government-funded religious schools.
In addition, the AKP has promoted the glorification of Turkey's Ottoman heritage. It has, for example, adopted Ottoman ceremonial wearing clothing for Turkish troops providing laurels guards for visiting dignitaries. It has encouraged Ottoman-themed television set programs. It has also promoted the revival of traditional Ottoman military machine band music -- termed Janissary music. The Janissaries were an elite Praetorian guard charged alongside protecting Ottoman sultans.
Recently, Ankara announced that Turkish schools would get teaching the Turkish linguistic communication using its historic Standard Arabic script. It afterwards modified the policy, after it was heavily criticized, to say that educational activity would live optional as well as non mandatory as originally announced.
Finally, most significantly for Turkey's neighbors, Erdogan has raised questions well-nigh the legitimacy of the postwar treaties signed past times Turkey after World War I, which established its nowadays borders.
He has claimed, for example, that Mosul, Kirkuk as well as portions of northern Iraq, roofing much of what is directly Iraqi Kurdistan, were seized illegally past times the British at the destination of World War I as well as should live returned to Turkish sovereignty. Similar claims receive got been made for the Dodecanese Islands, currently controlled past times Greece, as well as for portions of the Turkish-Syrian borderlands.
Ankara's domestic as well as unusual policies receive got been described past times some critics as a revival of Ottoman values as well as policies. Termed "neo-Ottomanism," it is defined as a political ideology that promotes greater political engagement of Turkey alongside regions formerly controlled past times the Ottoman Empire. This engagement manifests itself as Ankara's advertisement of its role inwards protecting ethnic Turkic inhabitants of the onetime Ottoman domains, as good as beingness a champion of Sunni interests.
In addition, it manifests itself inwards promoting a revival of Ottoman traditions as well as culture, including its Islamic religious heritage, amidst Turks both inside Turkey as well as amidst the ethnic Turks living exterior the country. The latter includes both the historic ethnic Turkic communities inwards the Middle East as well as Central Asia, as good as the Turkish immigrant communities throughout Western Europe.
What precisely does Erdogan's as well as the AKP's neo-Ottomanism signify? Is this the foremost of a reversal of the Kemalist revolution orchestrated past times Kemal Ataturk when the modern Turkish Republic was founded or political expediency on the part of Erdogan as well as his followers?
THE ROOTS OF NEO-OTTOMANISM
The term neo-Ottomanism is non new. It has been around since the 1970s as well as was oft used to push clit Ankara's irredentist terra firma claims, particularly alongside observe to Greece. It resurfaced over again during the Turkish invasion of Republic of Cyprus inwards 1974 as well as has reappeared intermittently ever since. Its usage has larn to a greater extent than prevalent inwards the final decade, however, as well as directly applies every bit to both Ankara's irredentist claims as good as the increasing Islamization of Turkish society.
Neo-Ottomanism reflects, inwards part, political expediency past times Erdogan as well as the AKP. It has been a successful strategy for mobilizing the AKP's base of operations as well as its nationalist element has been used to isolate the Erdogan regime's enemies. It also, however, is the final result of the complex evolution that Turkey's relations alongside Europe as well as the U.S. receive got undergone since the establishment of the Turkish Republic.
The Kemalist revolution was both modernizing as well as nationalistic. It represented a decisive plough toward Western concepts of modernity piece soundless extolling Turkish civilisation as well as nationalism. Those aspects of Turkish civilisation that were deemed incompatible alongside modernization, similar the historic Standard Arabic script or traditional dress, for example, were eliminated. Hence, amidst other things, the Standard Arabic alphabet was replaced alongside the Latin alphabet, Turkish was purged of Standard Arabic as well as Western Farsi words as well as the wearing of a fez, a headdress associated alongside an oriental cultural identity, was made illegal past times Ataturk.
Islam, piece non proscribed per se, was seen as an impediment past times the Kemalists to Turkish modernization. Hence, piece religious life was allowed, as well as liberty of religion was specifically protected nether the Turkish constitution, Ataturk insisted that the novel Turkish province would live secular.
Religion would non live allowed inwards Turkish politics, a proscription that was regularly enforced, as Erdogan found out, as latterly as the 1990s. The military, fifty-fifty to a greater extent than so than the courts as well as the authorities inwards general, took upon itself the responsibleness of protecting the secular nature of the Turkish province from religious interference.
The Kemalist revolution's comprehend of modernity on occasion went fifty-fifty beyond the European practices it was designed to emulate. The Turkish constitution, for example, gave women the correct to vote to a greater extent than than a decade before French women won the same correct inwards 1944.
Nationalism was an explicit part of the Kemalist revolution. Ataturk himself had been a state of war hero. His actions as an Ottoman Army officeholder during the Gallipoli motion was what foremost brought him to national prominence.
The role of the Ottoman Army during the Gallipoli Campaign or against Russian military machine forces inwards the Caucasus as well as eastern Anatolia was extolled as well as a source of Turkish pride. Turkish nationalism, however, was stripped of whatever religious context. As defined past times Ataturk as well as the Kemalists, it was Turkish as well as secular fifty-fifty when it was praising military machine events that had occurred during the Ottoman caliphate.
Turkey began its give-and-take to locomote into the European Union (EU) inwards 1963 when Ankara signed an association understanding alongside the European Economic Community. Its stated aim as well as so was to eventually live a total fellow member inwards the EU. The procedure would proceed past times lucifer as well as starts for the side past times side 50 years -- far as well as away the longest negotiation of whatever prospective member. Ultimately, it would fail.
Three military machine coups over this catamenia -- inwards 1971, 1980 as well as 1997, as good as the Turkish invasion of Republic of Cyprus inwards 1974 -- resulted inwards a intermission of the ascension process. European misgivings, foremost well-nigh the province of the Turkish economy, Ankara's observe for the dominion of police as well as human rights, as well as afterwards well-nigh the consequences of giving eighty meg Turkish citizens, many of whom were practicing Muslims, immigration rights into the EU, also acted to wearisome downward the process.
Nonetheless inwards Oct 2004, the European Commission extended an invitation to Turkey to get formal negotiations for total membership inwards the EU. Membership would require Turkey to institute a serial of legal, economical as well as political reforms designed to convey it into compliance alongside European Union standards as well as regulations.
Full membership inwards the European Union seemed similar the culmination of the Kemalist revolution launched some eighty years earlier. The AKP as well as so inwards power, alongside Erdogan as prime number minister, began implementing the prerequisite reforms required for European Union membership.
The timing was perfect. Turkey was well-nigh to locomote into a prolonged catamenia of economical expansion that would run across its GNP grow from $400 billion inwards 2004, to to a greater extent than than $850 billion inwards 2016. Per capita income doubled to $11,230 during this period. While soundless significantly below the to a greater extent than advanced European Union economies, that number was comparable to newly entered states such as Poland as well as Hungary.
The ascension talks, however, went nowhere. In the wake of the ascent of jihadist violence inwards Europe as well as the Middle East, pregnant political opposition began to emerge, foremost amidst right-wing parties, but as the decade wore on also amidst centrist political parties, opposing Turkish membership inwards the EU.
In June 2016, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe issued a study inwards which it noted that, "recent developments inwards Turkey pertaining to liberty of the media as well as of expression, erosion of the dominion of police as well as the human rights violations inwards relation to anti-terrorism safety operations inwards southeast Turkey receive got ... raised serious questions well-nigh the functioning of its democratic institutions."
In short, the growing consensus inside Europe was that Turkey was merely non laid for membership inwards the EU.
Starting around 2007, the AKP began moving away from its goal of total membership inwards the European Union. Officially, Ankara continued to insist that it wanted to bring together the European Union but, inside the AKP, in that location was a growing realization that it was non going to happen.
Even though many of the elements of neo-Ottomanism had been around for decades, it was at that betoken that they began to characteristic to a greater extent than prominently inwards the AKP's politics. In other words, rejected past times modern, secular Europe, the AKP looked to define a novel role for Turkey -- i that would comprehend its Ottoman as well as Islamic heritage rather than rejecting it as the Kemalists had done. Neo-Ottomanism was the ideology that would seat Turkey as an Islamic as well as Middle Eastern power.
The roots of the AKP had e'er been inwards Turkey's rural areas amidst socially conservative voters who had never fully embraced Ataturk's vision of a completely secular Turkey. The fact that Islamist political themes resonated good inwards these areas meant that Ankara's search for a novel role for Turkey also played good to its domestic political base. Even now, the AKP to a greater extent than oft than non loses the urban vote inwards Turkish elections but makes upwards for it alongside widespread back upwards inwards rural areas.
As the chief guarantors of Turkish secularism, the AKP's domestic political agenda was fountain to convey it into conflict alongside the Turkish military. Starting inwards 2007, Erdogan began to rid the military machine of senior officers he believed would stand upwards inwards the agency of a to a greater extent than politically Islamist Turkey. The government, claiming that it had uncovered plots to phase a military machine coup, brought courtroom cases against what it claimed were complicit senior officers inwards the armed forces.
The courtroom cases against the Turkish Armed Forces, known as the Sledgehammer as well as Ergenekon cases, were highly controversial as well as tainted past times questionable evidence. For example, a document produced past times the authorities purported to receive got been written inwards 2003, laying out the plans for the coup, was afterwards shown to receive got been written alongside a 2007 version of Microsoft Word.
Erdogan's efforts to rid the leadership of the Turkish Armed Forces of potential opponents reached its crescendo inwards July 2016, when he announced that the Turkish military machine had attempted to phase a coup against the government.
Using the alleged coup as a pretext, Erdogan would, betwixt July 2016 as well as Dec 2017, dismiss some 150,000 authorities as well as military machine officials. He also imprisoned or had dismissed almost 2,000 journalists as well as he near downward to a greater extent than than 50 media outlets that the authorities defendant of spreading falsehoods as well as insulting the Turkish president.
In 2017, Erdogan also orchestrated a pop plebiscite designed to ameliorate the Turkish constitution to expand the executive powers of the presidency at the expense of the Turkish parliament. The plebiscite narrowly passed. It was defeated inwards Turkey's chief urban centers such as Istanbul or Izmir but got widespread back upwards inwards rural areas.
The referendum, combined alongside the crackdown of his critics next the alleged coup, was cited past times Erdogan's opponents as proof of his growing authoritarianism.
TURKEY'S NEO-OTTOMANISM TODAY
From a practical standpoint, what is referred as Ankara's neo-Ottomanism tin live summarized as having v chief tenants:
1. THE RESTORATION OF MANY TRADITIONAL ISLAMIC PRACTICES TO TURKEY'S SOCIAL AND CULTURAL LIFE.
These practices are far ranging, from the restoration of the traditional populace telephone telephone to prayer v times a twenty-four hr catamenia past times the muezzin inwards mosques, a practise specifically outlawed past times Ataturk, to promoting state-sponsored religious schools, directly alongside to a greater extent than than i meg students; to encouraging, as well as inwards sure enough instances mandating, to a greater extent than conservative as well as traditional Islamic wearing clothing amidst authorities employees -- for example, teachers inwards populace schools, or such symbolic acts such as proposing to convert Istanbul's famed Hagia Sophia from a secular museum dorsum into a functioning mosque.
This policy is a de facto cultural Islamization of Turkish society. It represents a reversal of the secularism as well as the explicit partitioning of religious life from political affairs championed past times the Kemalists. It is non yet a consummate reversal of that policy, as well as it may never attain that point.
Turkey has a rich, secular urban culture, i that volition resist the encroachment of religion into civil companionship as well as politics. While Turkey has grown noticeably to a greater extent than Islamist inwards recent decades, it soundless stops brusk of the pervasive influence that Islam plays in, for example, Saudi social as well as cultural life.
2. H5N1 GLORIFICATION OF TURKEY'S OTTOMAN HERITAGE.
The Kemalists had explicitly rejected Turkey's Ottoman heritage as a legacy of its oriental past, i that was seen as backward as well as reactionary as well as incompatible alongside a modern, secular state. Neo-Ottomanism has at its centre a revival as well as glorification of Turkey's Ottoman history. It is the comprehend of a cultural legacy that the Kemalists had turned their backs on.
This glorification is evident inwards Turkey today, from lather operas based on Ottoman history as well as themes, to the revival of laurels guards dressed inwards Ottoman military machine uniforms to, amidst other things, Erdogan's regular visits to shrines dedicated to Ottoman heroes as well as a revival of Ottoman military machine marching band music. Surprisingly, piece the military machine marching band is seen as a quintessential Western legacy, it was inwards fact a practise foremost introduced past times the Ottomans.
3. PROMOTING SUNNISM.
From a unusual policy standpoint, Ankara's comprehend of a greater role for Islam inwards political as well as social life expresses itself inwards back upwards of Sunni Muslim interests as an of import objective of Turkish unusual policy. Promoting Sunnism does non receive got to follow as part as well as parcel of glorifying Turkey's Ottoman heritage. The 2 are distinct, but they are compatible, as well as their back upwards stems from the same root causes.
That advertisement of Sunni interests has seen Turkey compete alongside Saudi Arabia, for example, inwards beingness a prime number benefactor of unusual mosque building. It has also led Turkey to seat itself as the defender of Sunni communities inwards places similar Syrian Arab Republic as well as Republic of Iraq inwards much the same agency that Islamic Republic of Iran has positioned itself as the defender of Shia communities elsewhere inwards the Middle East.
4. MOVING TOWARD AUTHORITARIANISM.
Domestically, neo-Ottomanism does non receive got to live authoritarian or anti-democratic. From a practical standpoint, however, to the extent that Turkey's comprehend of neo-Ottomanism is also a rejection of a Western as well as secular future, it makes the drift to authoritarianism that much easier.
As long as Turkey aspired to total membership inwards the EU, as well as so the guild rules exerted some constraint on what was permissible. Those rules did non preclude military machine coups or anti-democratic activities, but it made it clear that progress toward European Union membership was incompatible alongside such conduct as well as that conduct would ask to modify if progress was to resume. Stripped of those constraints, in that location is no longer a cost to live paid for Ankara's anti-democratic behavior
5. CHALLENGING POST-WWI TREATIES.
Finally, neo-Ottomanism is reflected inwards Turkish unusual policy as a greater willingness to challenge the legacy of the diverse treaties that settled the post-Ottoman Middle East. Promoting such irredentist claims is non an inevitable legacy of embracing its Ottoman past times or accepting a greater Islamization of political, cultural as well as social life. In fact, many of those irredentist claims receive got been made against beau Muslim countries.
What it does reflect, however, is Ankara's perception that it is less subject on the West for its safety as well as thus less fountain past times the rules of the Western-designed international system. It also reflects Turkey's ongoing exertion to define a novel role for itself inside the footing community.
From the mid-19th century to the like shooting fish in a barrel 20th century, the Ottoman Empire as well as and so Turkey were subject on Western back upwards to counter Russian as well as Soviet aggression, a catamenia that lasted roughly from the Crimean War until the collapse of the Soviet Union. Rejected past times Europe as well as no longer threatened past times the Russian bear, it has brought Turkish unusual policy a marking of independence that it has non had since the early on 19th century.
This independence has been underscored past times Erdogan's Syrian policy. First inwards supporting diverse Sunni militias as well as political groups, including radical Islamist jihadists, against the Assad regime, as well as and so openly siding against the U.S. inwards attacking the American-sponsored as well as supplied Syrian Democratic Forces.
In fact, Ankara sought Russian approving as well as back upwards to laid on the SDF, an American proxy strength -- unusual conduct from a province that is part of NATO as well as which, for to a greater extent than than one-half a century, has looked to American safety guarantees as a critical chemical element inwards protecting its sovereignty.
How Turkish politics volition evolve is anybody's guess. It's difficult to imagine that Erdogan as well as the AKP volition larn out the political phase anytime before long nor that they would select an electoral defeat. Turkey's 20th century ambition to cast itself as a European province as well as to select the rules of engagement that such an aspiration would require, however, has been set aside.
The secular legacy of Ataturk as well as the Kemalists is beingness reversed, but it is soundless unclear how far-reaching that reversal volition be. Ankara is looking to define a novel role for itself as a champion of Sunni interests as well as as a major ability as well as leader of the Islamic world.
It is every bit unclear what the ramifications of that policy volition be, whether it volition ultimately live compatible alongside its NATO obligations or its long-term safety agreements alongside the United States.
This does non hateful that the Ottoman Empire is making a comeback, nor does it hateful that Erdogan intends to cast himself as a 21st-century Ottoman sultan. It does mean, however, that after disappearing from the footing phase for almost a century, the Ottomans, or at to the lowest degree their stylized civilisation as well as legacy, are back.
Could the Middle East larn whatever stranger?
-- The opinions expressed inwards this op-ed are those of the writer as well as do non necessarily reverberate the views of Military.com. If you lot would similar to submit your ain commentary, delight ship your article to opinions@military.com for consideration.
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