Peter Wertheim
Aus­trali­an Jewish News, July 21, 2016
Turkey’s descent into Islamism

What began late on July 15 as a coup by sections of Turkey’s military forces against the civilian gov­ern­ment has very quickly been turned into a coup by the Erdogan regime against the military and judiciary – and other insti­tu­tions that stand in the way of the regime’s goal of Islam­ising the country.
To under­stand what has been happening, a knowledge of Turkey’s recent history is essential.
The modern Republic of Turkey was pro­claimed in 1923 on the rubble of the old Ottoman Empire, which was dis­mantled after being com­pre­hens­ively defeated by the military forces of Britain and its Dominions, including Australia, during World War I.
The new Repub­lic­an gov­ern­ment was headed by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (“father of the Turks”), a former military commander who had been instru­ment­al in his country’s suc­cess­ful defence of the Dard­anelles in 1915.
Atatürk was determ­ined to drag his country into modernity. His gov­ern­ment sys­tem­at­ic­ally dis­mantled the old dis­cred­ited Ottoman insti­tu­tions.
The Islamic caliphate, the theocracy under which the Ottomans ruled most of the Middle East, was abolished. Secular, demo­crat­ic gov­ern­ment and the rule of law were enshrined in Turkey’s new con­sti­tu­tion. Far-reaching modernist reforms were intro­duced into the education system, the economy and culture. Women were given equal civil and political rights.
The paradox of modern Turkey is that Atatürk and his legacy continue to be widely revered, yet most Turks remain deeply religious and con­ser­vat­ive in their political and social views.
Turkey’s military has always seen itself as the guardian of Atatürk’s secular legacy. It has suc­cess­fully inter­vened five times – in 1960, 1971 and 1980, 1993 and 1997 – to scotch any threats it sees to that legacy. Other elements of Turkey’s elite, most notably the judiciary and an inde­pend­ent media, have provided the addi­tion­al bulwarks of sec­u­lar­ism.
This also ensured that Turkey’s foreign policy was pro-western and friendly to Israel. As a member of NATO, Turkey played a key role in the con­tain­ment of Soviet communism during the Cold War.
However, since the 1990s the Turkish Republic’s secular, modernist character has clashed headlong with the global Islamic revival.
After the 1997 coup, Turkey’s Islamists were crushed and their Welfare Party was dissolved. One of their leaders, the mayor of Istanbul, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, was imprisoned for four months. At this time Erdoğan and his followers sup­posedly re-invented them­selves. They formed a new Justice and Devel­op­ment Party (AKP), appearing to abandon Islamist policies and to embrace a con­ser­vat­ive, non-religious program.
The apparent remake of Erdoğan was never sincere. It was a ruse to enable Erdoğan and the “reformed” Islamists of the AKP to make another bid for power without the military inter­ven­ing.
The sub­ter­fuge worked. The AKP won the 2002 general election in a landslide. Erdoğan, who had pre­vi­ously been banned from holding political office, became Prime Minister the following year, was re-elected at sub­sequent general elections and became President in 2014.
The electoral success of Erdoğan and the AKP was legit­im­ately earned with mostly sound economic man­age­ment. Between 2002 and 2012 Turkey exper­i­enced a growth of 64% in real GDP and a 43% increase in GDP per capita.
Unlike the short-lived, openly Islamist gov­ern­ment of Mohamed Morsi in Egypt, Erdoğan and the AKP provided competent gov­ern­ment and avoided, at least initially, crude repres­sion.
Economic success ensured that Erdoğan and the AKP continued to enjoy pop­ular­ity, but Erdoğan, slowly but surely, used that pop­ular­ity to introduce measures which enabled the gov­ern­ment to infilt­rate and dominate all rival centres of power, prin­cip­ally the military, the judiciary and the media, and to move Turkey towards Islam­isa­tion and a res­tor­a­tion of its Ottoman-era regional hegemony.
The defeat of the attempted coup last week and the public humi­li­ation of the Turkish military was a watershed, but not the kind of watershed it appeared to be. It did not mark the end of the Turkish military’s long-standing role as the guardian of Turkey’s demo­crat­ic, secular polity, because that role was effect­ively ter­min­ated by Erdoğan and the AKP some years ago.
Turkey’s military was purged of its senior pro-sec­u­lar­ist officers in a series of show trials between 2007 and 2012, during which the officers were accused of plotting against the gov­ern­ment.
With the military neut­ral­ised, Erdoğan then moved on the judiciary. Even though Turkey’s 1982 Con­sti­tu­tion provides that “Turkey is a demo­crat­ic, secular and social state governed by the rule of law…loyal to the nation­al­ism of Atatürk”, and demands that the judiciary remain strictly inde­pend­ent of the legis­lat­ive and executive arms of gov­ern­ment, Erdoğan removed unfriendly judges and replaced them with compliant ones.
At the same time, Erdoğan moved to close down or squeeze out sections of the private media which were critical of the gov­ern­ment.
Erdoğan’s ally in this process was the Islamic theo­lo­gian and preacher Fethullah Gülen. Gülen’s Cemaat movement managed to infilt­rate and take over many, large com­mer­cial enter­prises and civil society organ­isa­tions, changing them from secular to sup­posedly moderate Islamic entities.
As Erdogan suc­cess­fully moved towards achieving a monopoly of power, he no longer needed Gülen, and they had a spec­tac­u­lar falling out in 2013. Gülen fled to the US.
It was at this point that Erdogan’s increas­ing author­it­ari­an­ism and con­cen­tra­tion of power in his own hands provoked the first serious popular oppos­i­tion in the form of a series of mass protests against Erdogan in Istanbul.
The real sig­ni­fic­ance of the failed coup last week was that one Islamist movement, led by Erdoğan, has now finally prevailed against a rival Islamist movement, led by Gülen, and against any residual sec­u­lar­ists still remaining in positions of power. It was not about democracy at all.
The 6,000 people who have now been arrested in Turkey are mainly Gülenists and sec­u­lar­ists in the Turkish military and judiciary. According to Johannes Hahn, the European Union’s Com­mis­sion­er over­see­ing Turkey’s mem­ber­ship bid, Erdoğan already had a prepared list of targets for arrest before the coup was launched.
Erdoğan has since announced that Turkey will consider rein­stat­ing the death penalty. Nobody has been executed in Turkey since 1984. Capital pun­ish­ment was abolished in 2004.
Although Israel’s Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu is probably correct in saying that recent events will not interrupt the ongoing rap­proche­ment between Israel and Turkey, in the long-term the prospect of an author­it­ari­an, Erdoğan-led Islamist Turkey with neo-Ottoman pre­ten­sions cannot be good for Israel, Europe or the US.
Peter Wertheim is the Executive Director of the Executive Council of Aus­trali­an Jewry. The article above is as submitted.