Esposito: Authoritarian versus democratic politics defines the Turkish debate

Interview with John L. Esposito

An alternative elite group is emerging in Turkey, and Turkey is moving at a good pace in terms of democratization. Certain people speaking to the American audience define the debate in Turkey as a clash between secularists and Islamists, but it is more an issue of democratic versus more authoritarian politics.

In the past you might not have been able to get a position in a university if you had a religious profile, but now, one has to move beyond that. The Turkish government is working with the EU, US and Israel independently on the issues that it sees as in its own national interest.

John L. Esposito is a renowned professor of international affairs and Islamic studies at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., and the founder of the Prince Alwaleed Bin-Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding. Esposito's scholarly work helped bring about not only an understanding between Muslims and Christians but also a better understanding of what Islam is and what is going on in the modern Muslim world. In contrast to Muslim-democracy-skeptics, who accuse religiously motivated Islamic political movements of having secret agendas and using democratic means for their own ends, Esposito is quite hopeful of the future of democracy in Turkey and in other Muslim countries. He is aware of the pains of change, though, and prefers to portray the recent debate in Turkey as a contestation between the old order -- classified by him as the secularist fundamentalists -- and a new order. Personified in the ascendance of the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) to power in Ankara -- a move commonly referred to as the periphery mobilizing towards the center -- this new order is characterized, or at least characterizes itself, as being more pluralistic and more inclusive of others, including the members of the old elite and other religious groups. Esposito warns that the AK Party's success in being truly what they claim they will be should be judged by what they do. Turkish government and society, Esposito says, is opening up with new elites coming in rather than with old elites kept out, and Turkey is moving at a good pace of democratization. He thinks that the old order, where people with religious leanings joining the military or attending university were approached with suspicion, is changing slowly. He adds, however, that there is still more to do on a number of issues, from the headscarf ban to the Kurdish question.

A member of the High Level Group of the Alliance of Civilizations, Professor Esposito was in İstanbul in March to speak at a conference within the scope of the Alliance of Civilizations İstanbul Conferences. The Turkish Political Review asked Professor Esposito about his understanding of what is going on in Turkey and about the pitfalls in the way of Turkish democracy.

Where do you see Turkish democracy moving towards?

I think that Turkey is moving forward at a good pace in terms of democratization. In the past, there was a legal sense that somehow the military was the protector of democracy and therefore could intervene in politics. That goes against the whole notion of democracy. I think what I see unfolding now is a process of capability. What is being said is that this is going to be a real democracy, and you cannot have sectors of the military thinking of or planning a coup, whether it's an actual coup or a soft coup. Also, if one looks now at the Turkish landscape in terms of positions in society, in government, in security, in the military or in the corporate world, we see an extended arena where there are people from different backgrounds. These people are becoming more and more represented.

In fact both society and government have become more representative because those who are part of the old establishment are not necessarily kept out; rather, new people are coming in. Those who were part of the old establishment can still be political players as long as, as in a democracy, they are able to get votes. The important thing is that you now have people who were not able to move into certain positions before being represented in those positions.

There are still things to be resolved. There is this initiative with regard to the Kurds in the society, but there is still more that needs to be done. There are still things to be done about the place of other religious bodies in the society. For example, the ability of a Christian group to have its own training seminary or the ability of women who choose to wear a headscarf to attend universities.

You mean religious freedoms?

I wouldn't make this headscarf issue an issue necessarily of religious freedom. I would frame it more in terms of basic human rights in the society. Men and women in a democracy have a right to express themselves whether verbally or through their dress in any way they want as long as it is not a direct threat to the security of others. If she wants to wear a very short skirt, that's her business; a long skirt, that's her business; to wear a hat, that's her business. So why not a scarf or hijab?

There are people in the West who claim that Turkey is passing through a conflict between the secularists and the religious people. What is your position?

There are two things. One is that many of these people (who claim a conflict between the secularists and the religious) have a political agenda. There is a staunchly secular Turk who is at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP). This is a very strong pro-Israel think tank. Well, he has an agenda. You could see it not just in his recent article (Esposito is referring to Soner Çağaptay and his "What's Really behind Turkey's Coup Arrests?" published in the February 2010 edition of Foreign Policy), which I wouldn't allow an undergraduate to publish, because he has no evidence. What we normally say in public life is that you can engage in an argument, but then we say "OK, you can put [forward] your argument, but where is your proof?" And that did not occur there. Now I had seen him just before the national elections on public television in the US. Again he was portraying the debate in Turkey as a secular versus Islamist one. Rather than that, I would see it as an issue of more authoritarian versus more democratic. That's what the debate is about.

Do people in the West listen to him or to you?

When a Western audience hears the world "Islamist," they don't distinguish between mainstream and extremist Islamists, and Islamist means dangerous. "Secular" in the US means that there's public space for people who believe and who do not believe.

From my point of view, people who subscribe to the ideology of "laiklik" in Turkey or in France are often anti-religious and secular fundamentalists. Before the last election, this particular person gave an example, again playing to the American audience, saying that these people's wives (AK Party supporters) wear a headscarf and that they don't drink alcohol. I find this as an American insulting because significant numbers of Americans don't drink alcohol. There are American Jews who don't drink alcohol, and somehow he was trying to portray that as a threatening thing.

The other side of the problem is that Turkey has not been sufficiently interested or visible in the US. I remember having a conversation, 10 or 12 years ago, with a member of the Turkish Embassy in Washington. I said, "Turkey is not visible enough in American society, and Turkey is not interested in being visible." What she said to me was, "You know the attitude of many people in the Turkish government, with a sense of national pride, is 'Who cares?'" And this kind of conversation has occurred more than once. Their attitude was almost like "Who cares?" or "Why should we do it?"

If you don't address issues like the role of religion in Turkish society, the question of the meaning of secularism or the role of the military, then how do you expect Americans to understand you? They will just see it as a struggle between seculars and Islamists, and in their minds secularist people are good because they believe in an open society and in a secular society, people are free to worship or not to worship.

So Turkey is in fact losing a PR campaign?

Things are changing. When I first came to Washington in 1993 there was no significant representation of Turks and Turkey even in the universities. Turkish was not taught at Georgetown University, and there was very little visibility of courses on Turkey. The same thing was also true for Johns Hopkins University and others in Washington. Now, for example, at Georgetown we have Turkish language taught and we have courses on Turkey. The idea that you would not have visibility in Washington was very problematic. That is changing. Even Turkish academics and diplomats were rarely coming and speaking to think tanks, but now it is much different, and we have regular programs on Turkey.

What additional challenges await Turkey?

I think there is a process all societies who want to become more pluralistic have to pass through. Part of the problem that Europe had and in a sense that Turkey has is that the older definitions of what constituted a nation were more limited in terms of how pluralistic they are going to be. I mean, in terms of who is a French person or who is a German and here in terms of how does one define Turkish nationalism and what role does religion play in this definition.

You had a fear of extreme religious fundamentalism, but you also had extremist secularists who are just as exclusivist as religious fundamentalists in their vision. In my society there are distinctive differences between atheists and believers. One of the problems we had is that as Americans became more religious, atheists have become marginalized. But we have to learn to live together. The challenge in Turkish society is to work out a set of values and attitudes of mutual respect and tolerance.

Do you think the traditional elite will adopt this set of values?

It is very clear that any elite group grasping economic or political power will have concerns about change. What you see in Turkey is that the establishments of the secular elites were used to defining the norms according to their identity, excluding other possibilities. Now the challenge to them is that you have alternative elites. They have just as good an education as the traditional elites have. That means power sharing, having a more pluralistic world and tolerating the practices one doesn't like. That also means competition on positions. There is a resistance to change, but they will have to adjust to that.

The old elite claims that the newcomers will do just what they did to them: exclusion. Isn't this a legitimate concern?

The challenge with new elites is obviously how the new elites will manage power and treat the old elites. When you come to power, if you will in fact follow the very model of your predecessors, then there is a problem. The challenge to those new elites is to show that what they wanted and what they now have is the ability to participate and to take over old positions that were previously closed to them. They have to be able to say that all they want to see is a society that is more pluralistic and a public space open to both belief and non-belief. Are they going to demonstrate that they are part of the inclusive and pluralistic society with what they have now? That is their challenge.

How do you evaluate their score up until now?

I think the AK Party should be judged by this question: "Do they live up to the standards of a pluralistic, inclusive, diverse political ideology which their party suggests?" And if their critics espouse an exclusivist and non-pluralistic position going back to the old order, then they should be judged by that also.

Is this government going to take a proactive position on being inclusive of old elites and also of other religions to broaden their space in society? It is very important to see whether or not this government and its policies will remain pluralist. It is a little bit like President Obama trying to signal that he wants to be inclusive and so he appoints people from the Republican Party. The AK Party's core establishment may be religiously oriented, but the party itself identifies as pluralistic.

I think the message of the AK Party to the Muslim world, as well as to the West, is that the best way to develop politics in a country, whether we're talking about people of secularly oriented or religiously oriented politics, is to develop it from within the country. If you're going to play a role in society, then you have to become more pluralistic because you're asking the establishment to become more pluralistic.

When people ask what the AK Party really is, I would say judge them by what they do, not just by what they say.

The WINEP member you mentioned is trying to portray the Gülen movement as a natural ally of the AK Party and is criticizing the movement with the same claims. How do you evaluate the activities of this particular movement in terms of inclusiveness?

I was asked a number of years ago by a Turkish academic to co-sponsor a conference on the Gülen movement held at Georgetown. They are much more visible in the US, in Washington. I have been co-editing, more recently, a new book on the Gülen movement and its educational initiatives. I think that the challenge with the Gülen movement will be to assure that its profile remains pluralistic and inclusive. I read an article that says it's suspicious that members of the Gülen movement are now in the military or the police, but I see nothing suspicious about that. This suggests that they were not welcomed in the military and the police, and this is exclusivism. In the old days you were called politically Islamist or religiously oriented, and if that was known then you might not be able to hold that kind of position and you might not be able to get into top universities. That's more common in the old order than the new order.

I think one has to move beyond that. When it comes to the university profile, whether you are religious or not, whether you wear a headscarf or a short skirt, the issue is: "Are you academically qualified?" That's what education is about. And that should work in every sector of society.

There was an old order in Western universities when it came to studying Islam and the Middle East. Its name was Orientalism. Are things changing in American universities also?

Yes, they are clearly changing. First of all, it's not that the old order should not exist. They have a perfect right to exist. But there is a new order. If you look at the membership of MESA (the Middle East Studies Association) you'll see it's far more diverse. It is not dominated by the white order. There are many people from the Middle East region, who are now citizens in the US and are the dominant order. In my Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown, we just hired a Muslim scholar. If you look at the issue of Palestine and Israel, there are prominent scholars who are strong critics of militant Zionism. There are American Jewish scholars who support a Palestinian state and therefore are criticized by strong Zionist Jews or non-Jews for their position. That diversity exists in America. It exists in books we read that are available to students, it exists in positions we take.

In fact I would say there is much more of a challenge for people in the Middle East by means of diversity. There are far more Americans who understand Islam and the Muslim cultures than the reverse. There aren't significant numbers of Muslim scholars who are experts in American studies, or in Christianity and Judaism.

Turkey's new foreign policy is motivated by the ideas of 'peaceful coexistence' and 'zero problems with neighbors.' Do you foresee a success story in the future of this policy?

The current government has attempted to work very closely and effectively with the EU, US and to a certain extent with Israel, with the Muslim countries and Iran at a certain point of independent foreign policy, which is important for Turkish nationalism. It is very capable of saying to the US: "We will work with you so far. When you ask for cooperation, if we see it as in the Turkish national interest, that's fine, but if we don't see it as in the Turkish national interest, we will say no!" That is what the Turkish prime minister did with regard to Israel. On the one hand having relations with Israel, but on the other hand speaking out at that Davos meeting. Some people here and there might say that he kind of lost his temper. Why is it OK when Prime Minister Netanyahu takes a hard stance, but not okay when Prime Minister Erdoğan does the same?

Erdoğan wants to be inclusive also when dealing with the Iranians. I see Turkey as attempting to say: "We will have relations with, to the extent we can, all the Middle Eastern Muslim countries, and we will have relations with the EU and the West. When we disagree significantly we will say we disagree." That's a very important role. Turkey is no longer saying: "We will accept and want all the things you can give us at the cost of threatening our own independence and identity."

Do you think this policy can work on the Armenian front also?

The Turkish-Armenian issue is a very, very deep-seated historical issue. It is like talking about US-Iranian relations. You can move up to some point, but then there is a scratch, and old memories come up. I think that Turkish-Armenian relations can move two steps back, three steps forward, one step back two steps forward. The acceptance of both sides that you'll not have a solution to anything unless you really negotiate is important. Negotiation means that parties are never going to totally agree. Each of us has a right to feel that the other is more responsible for the problem, but we can't come to the solution if each of us feels the other is totally responsible. Part of the recognition, then, is to be able to look and say that people were killed, there were atrocities, but there were very legitimate reasons also. It is not a black and white situation. One may be tilted more to one side than the other, but one has to find a constructive way to move forward to negotiate.

Published on Turkish Review, 05 February, 2011, Saturday