This course will discuss the developments in the Middle East from the early 20th century to the present. It will discuss the rise and retreat of Arab nationalism, the problems of internal cohesion of the Arab states, issues of religion and state, and the evolution of Islamist politics. It will also focus on the evolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict and its impact on the region and will conclude with an in depth analysis of the “Arab Spring” by placing these contemporary revolutionary events in their historical context. Please note that this course builds upon a previous course - The Emergence of the Modern Middle East - Part I Learn about the history of the Middle East for a deeper understanding of current regional developments!
9.4.1 The Non-Arab Countries - The Republic of Turkey : From WWII to the Present
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From the course by Tel Aviv University
The Emergence of the Modern Middle East - Part II
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From the lesson
WEEK 5
The Middle East from 1967 to the present including the Arab Spring
Meet the Instructors
Professor Asher SusserSenior Research Fellow
Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies
But now we shift to what has transpired in the meantime in
the non-Arab states of Turkey and Iran.
Both Iran and
Turkey had long traditions of independent statehood that went back for centuries.
They also had their own specific linguistic identities.
But here too in both cases, secular nationalism has given ground,
albeit in very different forms to Islamic revival.
But though they have their domestic difficulties,
there is no serious challenge to the territorial integrity or
national identity of either of these two countries.
So first, let's talk about the Turkish Republic.
Kemal Ataturk, the founding father of the new secular Turkish Republic died in 1938.
Since his passing from the scene,
the secularist Kemalist vision has been gradually eroded.
Beginning with Democratization and
multi-party politics introduced after World War II, religion has gradually
re-established a high profile in Turkey's society and political life.
In 1950, the New Democrat Party won the elections, in part, thanks to its policies
in favor of expanding the role of religion in education and in society, in general,
in reaction to the secularist policies of the Kemalist elite.
In 1960 after ten years of the Democrat Party in power,
which included an exhibition of both social disorder and strong authoritarian
tendencies in limiting the freedom of action of the opposition, the army
intervened in what was to be the first of three such military coups in Turkey.
The military regarded itself as the ultimate guardian of the secular order,
and its interventions in politics were ostensibly designed to uphold
the principles of the Kemalist republic.
But after the return to power of the politicians,
the trend of Islamic revival continued.
The 1960s were a period of rising radicalism and
political violence from both the extreme left and from the national and
religious right, coming in the wake of rapid urbanization,
expanding education, and especially, the growth of the universities.
Political violence between left and right escalated severely in 1970 and 1971, and
the army stepped in again in March 1971 and
remained in power for two years until 1973.
In 1970, the National Order Party emerged as the first
Islamist party in Turkey where it was banned by the Constitutional Court for
violating the secularist principles of the Constitution.
The banned National Order Party was succeeded by another Islamist party,
the National Salvation Party, in 1972.
These parties reflected the ever-increasing role of
religion in society and politics, which continued unabated during
the 1970s as the National Salvation Party rapidly expanded its power base.
Towards the end of the decade,
Turkey entered another period of domestic turbulence.
The country faced economic difficulties in the wake of the international oil crisis.
The politicians and
the police force proved incapable of dealing with the political violence.
Matters were made worse by the apt surge of guerilla activity by the disaffected
Kurdish minority in Turkey, and the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979,
which further encouraged the Islamists in Turkey.
The National Salvation Party now had the self-assurance to openly call for
the restoration of the Sharia in Turkey.
In 1980, the army intervened, staging the third and thus far last coup,
remaining in power this time for three years, until 1983.
Ever since the late 1940s, a remarkable proliferation of the religious school
known as the Imam Hatip Schools, that is, schools for prayer leaders and preachers.
But essentially,
religious schools were a mixed curriculum of secular and religious subjects,
expanded from a handful in 1949 to about 1,000 in their peak during the 1990s.
The expansion of the Imam Hatip schools produced increasing numbers of graduates
who joined the ranks of the party activists of Islamist political parties,
very much in contrast to the views of the Kemalist elite.
That regarded public education as the chief instrument for the transformation of
the people into citizens committed to the principle of secularism.
These schools expanded at a pace that was most disturbing
to the secularists in Turkey.
In the minds of the secularists, these schools were where students were infused
with Islamist views, were the training grounds of the Islamist movement.
Ironically, the military itself, historically the ardent protector of
the secular order, had contributed further to the Islamic arrival.
After the 1980 coup, the army was seeking societal reform
that would counterbalance the extreme ideologies of both the Marxist left and
the fascist right, both of which had disrupted Turkish politics.
The alternative they presented came to be known as the Turkish Islamic Synthesis,
which meant a controlled Islamization process,
undertaken through the vehicle of state-supervised religious education.
The military now redefined the role of religion as a possible
source of solidarity to cushion the tensions arising from the multiple
ideologies between left and right.
State-sponsored Islam, it was thought,
would serve as a barrier to the penetration of more radical Islamists.
As a consequence, religion made some headway into Parliament and
personal religious devotion was now considered normal, and so
religiosity became much more publicly visible from the 1980s.
After all the political parties were shut down by the army in 1980,
new parties were established in 1983, when military rule ended.
The newly established Motherland Party, which was a heterogeneous coalition
of liberal secularists and Islamists, dominated politics in the 1980s.
They adopted a conciliatory stand towards religion,
due in part to the rising influence of the Islamist Welfare Party,
which had replaced the National Salvation Party in 1983.
In the December 1995 general elections,
the Welfare Party emerged as the largest party and joined as senior partner
a coalition government with the True Path Party in early 1996.
Religious mystical orders became more active and
there was another huge increase in the number of Imam Hatip schools.
The army, displeased by the growing Islamist influence,
now represented in the ruling government, intervened again, but
not by a coup this time, but by what was called a postmodern military intervention.
The army applied great pressure on the government to dissolve the coalition
in May 1997 and the government was indeed brought down.
The Welfare Party was soon banned by the Constitutional Court,
under similar pressure from the military.
The Welfare Party was eventually succeeded by the more liberal Justice and
Development Party, known by its Turkish acronym as the AKP, established in 2001.
Eventually, these albeit more moderate Islamists of the AKP came to power and
won the elections three times in a row, in 2002, 2007, and again, in 2011.
Under the AKP,
there was a systematic marginalization of the military from Turkish politics.
Hundreds of officers were imprisoned by the government on charges of having con,
conspired against the AKP government.
It was not clear whether the charges were well-founded, or
possibly contrived to suppress legitimate opposition to the government.
There are more imprisoned journalists in Turkey under the AKP than anywhere else.
There are signs of growing opposition in the more secular liberal public and
also in certain religious circles to the seemingly authoritarian ways
of the AKP government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
No other Muslim country had ever undergone a process of intensive state-imposed
secularization as had the Turkish republic.
But there too secularization was being pushed back to the extent
that in the eyes of some Turks a quiet counter-revolution was underway.
The Kemalist revolution had never really penetrated into the depths
of the rural periphery.
And the rural folk who had migrated in ever-increasing numbers to Turkey's major
cities were still deeply attached to their traditional norms and values.
Instead of the cities bringing secular Kemalism to the villages,
the Islamist periphery has brought religion back into the city.
The population of Turkey has increased from 21 million in 1950
to 52 million in 1986 and to 75 million in 2012.
And though Turkey has enjoyed impressive economic development,
rapid population growth has been a constant socioeconomic liability.
Moreover, new liberal policies have, as in other countries,
led to widening gaps between rich and poor, and poverty is widespread in Turkey.
Most of the students in the Imam Hatip schools come from poor rural families,
all from city-born children of migrants from the villages, and
it is they too who seek the comfort of the mystical religious orders.
As Islam reasserts itself as a critical component of the Turkish identity,
a much more positive view towards the Ottoman-Islamic heritage
is being encouraged in comparison to the early days of the Turkish Republic.
For decades, the Turkish Republic was in bitter conflict with its Kurdish minority,
but the AKP government has adopted a more conciliatory attitude
towards Turkey's Kurds.
As Sunni Muslims, the Kurds are more easily assimilated into a more
Islamist Turkey, than they were previously under the more strict,
secular nationalist Turkishness from which they were essentially excluded.
In the over 70 years since the death of Ataturk, Islamist
political parties have become an ever more salient feature of Turkish politics.
This was, of course, in stark contrast to the orignal Kemalist formulations
of the basis of the Turkish republic.
And they could not, but
eventually make their mark in the upper echelons of the political order.
There is, as a result a growing sense of trepidation within the ranks
of the secular center that the Islamist periphery will gradually erode
the founding secularist principles of the republic and establish a new regime
that would not pay homage to the Kemalist revolutionary heritage.
Very significant and increasing opposition to the Islamist trend,
only time will tell what end result will eventually emerge.
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