The Rising Tide of Conservatism in Turkey
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The Rising Tide of Conservatism in Turkey Ali Çarkoğlu and Ersin Kalaycıoğlu
the rising tide of conservatism in turkey Copyright © Ali Çarkoğlu and Ersin Kalaycıoğlu, 2009. All rights reserved. First published in 2009 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN® in the United States - a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN-13: 978-0-230-60262-5 ISBN-10: 0-230-60262-2 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Çarkoğlu, Ali, 1963– The rising tide of conservatism in Turkey / Ali Çarkoğlu and Ersin Kalaycioğlu. p. cm. ISBN-13: 978-0-230-60262-5 ISBN-10: 0-230-60262-2 1. Conservatism—Turkey. 2. Turkey—Politics and government—1980– I. Kalaycioğlu, Ersin. II. Title. JC573.2.T9C37 2009 320.5209561—dc22 A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library. Design by Macmillan Publishing Solutions First edition: June 2009 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America.
2008047726
To Ayfer, Güres, Öykü, and Petek
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Contents List of Figures
ix
List of Tables
xi
Foreword and Acknowledgments
xiii
Introduction: Going Back to the Future
1
1
Shock, Awe, and Suspense
7
2
Change, Reform, and Fear
17
3
Socioeconomic Change and Accommodation
27
4
Coping with Uncertainty
65
5
Explaining the Character of Turkish Conservatism
75
6
Consequences of Conservatism for Turkey’s Domestic Politics
97
7
Consequences of Conservatism for Turkey’s Foreign Relations: Turkey, the EU, and the United States
121
Conclusion
141
Notes
151
Index
171
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List of Figures 3.1
Religious conservatism vs. liberal-democratic variables
34
3.2
Authoritarianism and dogmatism scales
40
3.3
Old-fashioned values: Demographic variables
42
3.4
Old-fashioned values
43
3.5
Anomie/rulelessness and political inefficacy scales
45
3.6
Political-social intolerance, unwanted neighbors, and the total intolerance scale
52
3.7 Tolerance measures: Demographic variables
53
4.1
Attitudes toward uncertainty—1
66
4.2
Evaluations of uncertainty
67
4.3
Attitudes toward uncertainty—2
70
4.4
Net uncertainty attitudes at micro and macro levels
71
5.1
Self-evaluated conservatism
76
5.2.1
Conservatism and public policy preferences
77
5.2.2
Net responses in support of rendering policies easier
78
5.3
Factor plot for policy attitudes
81
5.4
Dimension of conservatism—1
84
5.5
Dimension of conservatism—2
84
7.1 Support for EU membership in a referendum setting, 1996–2007
122
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List of Tables 3.1
An index of Alevi orientation
29
3.2 Worship practices of Muslim men in Turkey
31
4.1
Factor analysis: Attitudes toward uncertainty
69
5.1
Factor analysis of policy attitudes
80
5.2
Factor analysis: Dimensions of conservatism
82
5.3
Component correlation matrix
83
5.4
Explaining dimensions of conservatism and the status quo scale
86
6.1 The self-placement of the Turkish voting-age population on the left-right ideological spectrum in the national surveys (1990–2007)
98
6.2
Dimensions of conservatism: Shares of different clusters
103
6.3
Dimensions of the aggregate conservatism scale: Average cluster factor scores
104
6.4
Evaluations of the türban issue
106
6.5
Examples of pressure exerted on religion in Turkey (2006)
107
6.6.1
Conservatism and preferences concerning the türban ban
108
6.6.2
Conservatism and preferences concerning the türban ban
109
6.6.3
Conservatism and preferences concerning the türban ban
111
6.7.1
Attitudes toward change and reform
114
6.7.2
Attitudes toward change and reform
115
6.8
Protest potential in Turkey (2002, 2006, 2007)
117
6.9
Repression potential in Turkey (2002, 2006)
117
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Foreword and Acknowledgments This book is the product of deliberations and arguments that originated from a series of surveys we conducted from the 1990s onward. More specifically, in chronological order, the research by Ali Çarkoğlu and Binnaz Toprak in 1999 gave clear indication of the strong influence of religion in Turkish sociopolitical behavior and attitudes. Later in 2003, a survey of attitudes toward women in business, politics, and society in Turkey conducted by Ersin Kalaycıoğlu and Binnaz Toprak unearthed some evidence that a staunch belief in traditional, parochial, and highly conservative norms about family life undermined the chances of girls and later women from getting an education, seeking employment in businesses away from home, and following interests and careers in politics. Research conducted by Ali Çarkoğlu, Fatos¸ Göks¸en and Murat Çizakça in 2004 on charitable foundations in Turkey similarly indicated that strong attachments to traditions and sensitivity exhibited toward their preservation played a critical role in social solidarity and charitable donations. It looked as if highly traditional and conservative standards, norms, and values were dominating Turkish society just as Turkey was transforming from an agricultural society into an industrial one and simultaneously becoming increasingly integrated into the global markets of the post–Cold War era. We further observed that while the new government policies of a liberal market economy and privatization were settling in, mounting criticisms of these practices as undermining national independence and bringing the country under Western domination were also developing. It was under the influence of these social, economic, and political events and research findings that we wanted to systematically examine the mind-set of the Turkish population in the early years of the twenty-first century. More specifically, we wanted to probe into why the Turkish population seemed to be becoming more conservative as the Turkish economy became more integrated with global markets and industrial development, urbanization, and overall socioeconomic change gained pace in the country. Was it change, the pace of rapid social mobilization, globalization, or democratization and freedom, which were setting roots in the country, that precipitated an interest in traditions, family, the state, the nation, and the like? Were the correlations between change and the increase in traditional, religious, and conservative values, beliefs, and practices that we thought we were observing in the previous studies of Turkish society in fact true? How then could we best account for the associations between rapid socioeconomic and cultural mutation and religiosity, traditionalism, family values, and conservatism? We shared our observations, preliminary findings, and speculations with our colleagues, university administrations, and organizations that fund social science research in Turkey. Our deliberations and debates generated interest among our colleagues and some potential
xiv
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Foreword and Acknowledgments
sponsors, who extended support to our research efforts, and we began to conduct focus group discussions in Istanbul, Kayseri, Trabzon, and Diyarbakir in late 2005. The focus group discussions—consisting of a voting-age (18 years and older) population of men and women around the country—not only further fueled our interest in our research matter but also provided us with valuable clues as to how we could ask various questions in and through a survey of mass beliefs, attitudes, values, and opinions. In late March through May of 2006 we were able to survey the socioeconomic and political attitudes, values, and opinions of about 1846 voting-age adults in Turkey. This book is a report of our findings from that field survey. Sabancı and Işık Universities and the Open Society Institute in Turkey thus supported this book and the findings from the field survey on which it is based. We are very grateful for the financial support they extended to our survey project. We are also grateful for the efficient and kind service the Turkish Statistical Institute (TUIK) provided to us in drawing a nationally representative sample through a probability procedure we devised with it. Çağlayan Işık and Ebru Tetik of Frekans Fieldwork Company provided reliable research aid and coordinated the fieldwork organization. Ali Çarkoğlu is particularly grateful to the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences (NIAS) for providing a peaceful and comfortable working environment that helped him finalize the manuscript for publication in the fall of 2008. We would also like to extend our gratitude to our wives, Gül Çarkoğlu and Sema Kalaycıoğlu, for their understanding and encouragement during the field survey and the composition of this book. Our gratitude is also due to Anthony Wahl of Palgrave for his review and support of our initial proposal for this book and Emily Hue of Palgrave for keeping us on track and on schedule while composing this book. The secretarial help of İpek Dübüş, then at Işık University and now with the Istanbul Policy Center of Sabancı University, was invaluable to us, both in aiding coordination and maintaining our appointment schedules. Hasret Dikici Bilgin helped us prepare the index for our book. Our students at Sabancı University were the first to hear about our findings and as usual gave us their feedback and their healthy skeptical evaluations. The fact that some of them are using these findings as the basis of their own future research is our main source of academic reward.
INTRODUCTION
Going Back to the Future
A
n institutional military coup on September 12, 1980, led to the third breakdown of Turkish democracy since 1945. The military government that took over the reins of government dramatically overhauled the Turkish political regime, as it drew up and adopted a new constitution in 1982 through a popular referendum, in which 90 percent of the voters participated and slightly more than 90 percent of those who participated voted in its favor. A series of related political laws and regulations were put in place for what may best be termed a semiparliamentary regime, where the office of the president was entrusted with new powers of administrative oversight, which converted it into an almost tutelary organ of the state. The legislature was further relegated to a subservient position vis-à-vis the executive in a parliamentary design in which the prime minister would serve as the leader of the largest group in the unicameral National Assembly and also use the powers of the executive branch of the government. Further endowed with the powers of the decree that had the force of law and could only be submitted to legislative oversight after the decree’s adoption and implementation, the executive would reign supreme and protect the country against the alleged perils of communist defiance and political turmoil. The improved powers of the executive branch of the government were formulated as a method of rendering the state strong, which was assumed to be necessary to cope with the chronic political instability of the pre-1982 era of Turkish politics. The administrative tutelary powers and position of the president of the country, which would be entrusted to a retired general or a similar “statesman” figure, were designed to ensure that irresponsible politicians, who are motivated to promote their specific and often selfish personal or party interests, would be kept under control. The president as statesman would be induced to observe and look after the collective interests of the realm and protect it against the irresponsible politicians, who would compromise any values for votes. On such assumptions, and under the watchful eyes of the leader of the military junta, General Kenan Evren, who was elected as the president in 1982 for a seven-year term, Turkey went back to multiparty politics in 1983. A highly restricted and closely monitored list of political parties could participate in the 1983 general elections, but the one least controlled by the military junta, the Motherland Party (Anavatan Partisi—ANAP), won. The two parties most favored by the military junta were not supported at the polls, and they bowed out of politics in a
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The Rising Tide of Conservatism in Turkey
few years. When the tenure of the president, General Kenan Evren, ended in 1989, the prime minister and ANAP leader, Turgut Özal, successfully ran for the presidency. For the first time since the 1950s, the Turkish Grand National Assembly (Türkiye Büyük Millet Meclisi—TBMM) voted for the leader of the majority group in the National Assembly to become the president of the country. Thus, the design of the 1982 constitution received a major blow. The presidency, which was devised as the preserve of statesmen who would only look after the collective interests of the realm, came under the dominance of the “irresponsible politicians,” who would promote partisan and special interests as a vocation.1 In the course of these events as the grip of the military on free competition among political parties and politicians was relaxed, the political rights and liberties of former politicians were reinstituted by 1986. In the 1987 general elections, the older leaders of the once-powerful parties of the pre-1980 era of Turkish politics reemerged to lead their their newly recognized political parties The former powerhouses of the left-ofcenter Republican People’s Party (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi—CHP) and the former right-of-center Justice Party (Adalet Partisi—AP) had been closed down along with all the other legal parties in 1981. The political Islamist National Salvation Party (Milli Selamet Partisi—MSP) and the ultranationalist, anticommunist Nationalist Action Party (Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi—MHP), both of which had played critical roles in establishing and running coalition governments in the 1970s, had also been banned. The old parties were reestablished under new names to claim their old turfs in the party system. Two parties emerged on the left-of-center, the Democratic Left Party (Demokratik Sol Parti—DSP) of the former CHP leader Bülent Ecevit and the Social Democratic Party (Sosyal Demokrat Parti—SODEP) that later merged with the Populist Party (Halkçı Parti—HP) and eventually emerged the Social Democratic Populist Party (Sosyal Demokrat Halkçı Parti—SHP), in which the bulk of the cadres of the former CHP were reorganized under the leadership of Professor Erdal Inönü. The Welfare Party (Refah Partisi—RP) was established by the political Islamists under the leadership of their former leader Necmettin Erbakan, the MHP was reorganized by their old-time leader Colonel Alparslan Türkeş into the National Toil Party (Milliyetçi Çalışma Partisi—MÇP), and the former AP was regrouped as the True Path Party (Doğru Yol Partisi—DYP) of Süleyman Demirel. However, the DYP found itself sharing almost the same ideological spot as Özal’s ANAP. With two parties emerging to claim the same ideological position on the left-of-center and two on the right-ofcenter, new turf wars started among them and the other political parties in the country. In the 1987 elections, the ANAP was again able to win a plurality of votes and a majority of the National Assembly seats, though the DYP and its leader, Demirel, wreaked havoc in the country in the opposition, arguing that the last-minute election law amendments had not only caused a gross disproportionality between the distribution of votes and parliamentary seats, but also rendered the 1987 elections illegitimate. In the late 1980s, it looked as if the old game of left-of-center versus right-of-center was reemerging, with the additional complexity of twin parties representing each of those ideological positions, as opposed to the CHP of the left and the AP of the right in the pre-1980 politics.2 In light of the preceding depiction about the nature of politics in the Turkey-to-be of the 1990s, the 1991 general elections results were a total surprise. The RP had joined forces with the MÇP and another small extreme right-wing party called the Reformist Democracy Party (Islahatçi Demokrasi Partisi—IDP), all of which fielded candidates
Going Back to the Future
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3
on the RP ticket and won an unprecedented 16.9 percent of the national vote. This is in contrast to the 1973 elections in which the MSP, the RP’s predeccesor, had won about 11 percent of the vote. The MHP had not surpassed 6.4 percent of the vote since the 1970s. The political Islamist–ethnic Turkish nationalist alliance appeared to be able to attract about one out of every six votes in the 1991 general elections. In fact, two thresholds were surpassed in these elections. The first was a legal barrage, established by the military government that had drawn up the election laws of a very steep 10 percent national threshold for the political parties to obtain in the general elections to gain any representation in the TBMM. The joint RP ticket had enabled the “Turkist-Islamist” alliance to go over that 10 percent barrage first. The RP also surpassed a second threshold, which was more of a political-psychological barrage, of voters casting their votes for the first time in their lives in favor of a political Islamist ticket representing the “Turkist-Islamist alliance.” The 1991 elections appeared to be a harbinger of the new politics emerging in Turkey. However, the first Turkish Values Survey of 1990 had not detected any shift in the ideological spectrum of Turkey.3 A major shift in the voters’ ideological orientations had begun to occur, and by the 1995 elections the RP, this time alone, would obtain more than 21.4 percent of the national vote and establish itself as the largest group in the TBMM. In fact, it was possible to observe the ideological background of the most important voter realignment in Turkish politics that occurred in 1995 only about a year later, in the 1996 field survey of the Turkish Values Study. A Sharp Shift to the Right By December 1996, Turkish voters had shifted their allegiances sharply to the right, with an unprecedented 18 percent registering themselves as “far right” supporters, and the center of the left-right divide was rapidly eroding. In 1990 about 21.8 percent of the voters had placed themselves on the left of the ideological spectrum scale; 22.7 percent on the right; and about 43.5 percent somewhere in the center. However, in 1996, the percentage of voters at the center dwindled down to 32.6 and that at the left to 19.8, whereas the percentage of voters on the right went up to 38.9. Since the 1950s Turkish voters had often supported the parties on the right. The Democrat Party (Demokrat Parti—DP) of the 1950s and the AP of the 1960s attracted massive support from the voters. The exceptional 1970s had the left-wing parties obtaining a little over 40 percent of the national vote by the 1977 elections, but the right-wing parties still shared close to 60 percent of the vote among themselves.4 The pundits and students of Turkish politics could easily argue that Turkish voters have always tended to lean to the right of the ideological spectrum. However, what we observed in the mid-1990s were two major changes in the already right-heavy mindset of the Turkish public. From the 1950s to 1996 Turkish voters tended to show a centripetal tendency in their ideological leanings. The distribution of their ideological inclinations seemed to follow the pattern observed in 1990. However, in the 1995 general elections, the center of the left-right spread of ideologies seemed to be eroding rapidly, while the far right was gaining popularity equally rapidly. The unimodal distribution of ideological leanings was rapidly becoming multimodal. The Turkish voters had been ideologically centripetal, but did not refrain from voting for the rightof-center or left-of-center parties in the past. Their voting decisions were made on pragmatic, not ideological, grounds. As of 1996, the data seemed to indicate that the
4
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The Rising Tide of Conservatism in Turkey
Turkish voters were coming under the influence of ideologies, and thus their voting behavior was becoming less pragmatic and more ideological. The same pattern of ideological sensitivity seemed to continue in the 1999 general elections but occurred to a lesser degree in the 2002 and 2007 elections when predominantly economic pragmatism seems to have resurfaced. Nevertheless, ideological sensitivities continue to divide voters along a new left-right definition that underlines the religion versus secularism debate more intensively.5 Third, ideological orientations have also been coming under the influence of such primordial and ascriptive characteristics as lineage, religion, sect, and ethnicity.6 Fourth and finally, this ideological development indicates that Turkish voters were getting polarized. Turkey had experienced polarization in the past, but then the ideological differences between the poles were relatively close, and the centripetal orientation of the voters was able to somehow and somewhat bridge the gap between the poles. The post–Cold War Turkey was now hosting voters who were divided into cultural blocs that were deeply separated by huge ideological rifts. The divisions were also incorporating ideas that were more primordial and ascriptive in character. With the pragmatic centrists rapidly decreasing serious conflicts that threatened to rip the voting blocs and the country apart began to emerge. It seemed as if the very mind-set of the Turkish voters had dramatically changed between the end of the Cold War and the start of the post–Cold War era.7 The Turkish voters seemed to have come under the spell of the new post–Cold War global era and their political attitudes seemed to have shifted dramatically toward the right of the leftright spectrum. Indeed, even the far right and its parties benefited from this change of heart and mind in Turkey. The new forces of Turkey were no longer only separated as left-of-center and right-of-center parties, but as the Sunni political Islamist and the ethnic Turkish nationalist political movements, parties, and intellectuals, and their Alevi, secularist, and ethnic Kurdish nationalist opponents. Turkish political thinking, ideological nomenclature, and discourse began to change in the 1990s. Voters, political leaders, party spokespersons, civil society gatherings, and nongovernmental organizations dropped the earlier rhetoric about class differences and wars, false class consciousness, infrastructure and superstructure, and rights of labor and began to employ such terms as “believers” (inanan), “faithful” (mümin), “oppressed” (mazlum), “identity” (kimlik), “laicism” (laiklik), and the like. Sectarian and ethnic origins began to gain notoriety in the political discourse of the newspaper editorials, magazine and journal interviews, media reporter and panelist discussions, as well as in the rhetoric of political leaders and campaign activists, pickets at rallies, and slogans in demonstrations. Religious brotherhoods, Sufi orders, and religious communities, although all of them had been closed down and banned by the Republican governments from the early 1920s onward, began to gain visibility, as if they were legal and conventional part and parcel of the polity in Turkey. Turkish mental maps had changed from being organized around social class and class relations, economic growth, and income generation and distribution to being built upon identity and the creation of ethno-religious political selves in the country. Turkish political thinking and understanding of politics underwent a dramatic transformation in the early 1990s. Why did such a transformation occur, and why was it so easy to orient the masses toward an ethno-religious understanding of the polity? In the following chapters of this book, we will try to simultaneously tackle three core issues. First, we will define and describe the new mass politics and political thinking in Turkey. Second, we will examine why such a change occurred the way it did. Finally,
Going Back to the Future
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5
we will examine the domestic and international consequences of such an ideological shift in Turkish politics. In the first chapter, we scrutinize the peculiarities of the international context within which the Turkish political system came to experience the transformation of its political thinking at the end of the Cold War era. We trace the transformation of an increasingly reactionary, conservative rhetoric among the political elites, pundits of politics, and some intellectual circles that conveniently fit into the ideological context of both Turkish and Kurdish ethnic nationalisms and that of political Islam. In the second chapter we examine the domestic circumstances that led to the phenomenon of the rising right, political Islam, and ethnic Turkish nationalism in Turkey. Within this conceptual framework we provide for an assessment of the social and political developments in modern Turkey to help contextualize the progression of conservative attitudes in the country from a domestic politics perspective. We examine how the international environment’s impact upon elite perceptions and ideologies that overlapped with suitable individual-level traits shaped the mind-set of the Turkish electorate in a way that increasingly became more conservative and reactionary on various domestic and international political issues. In the third chapter, we, on the basis of out nationwide representative survey data, delve further into the measurement of the right-wing political mind-set of several major intellectual groups in Turkey that form the foundation of resistance to modernization and thus make up the backbone of rising conservatism in the country We will base our measures of religiosity, authoritarianism, anomie, political efficacy, dogmatism, self-confidence, tolerance, and finally xenophobia on empirical data from our survey of national attitudes, orientations, and values conducted in 2006. We thus hope to show the intricate complementarities and contrasts that are empirically reflected in our observations of the Turkish political culture. In the fourth chapter we develop different measures of a major explanatory variable in all accounts of conservatism—that is, the influence of uncertainty, change, and the way individuals tend to deal with these issues in a fast-moving society. We first exemplify in a historical context the rapid pace of social change in the country, then develop empirically based measures of reactions toward change and account for individual-level differences in different strategies people use to deal with both change and uncertainty. Our main argument here is that change is rapid and uncertainty is inherently very high in Turkish society. Institutionally, through the education system, as well as culturally, the mass public is not well equipped to deal with these challenges in a way that could be supportive of a stable democratic system. We argue that given the overall attitudes and reactions toward change and uncertainty, and the dire effects of rapid social mobilization and the turbulence it causes, democratic consolidation is essentially problematic. In the fifth chapter we lay down the characteristics of the multidimensional composition of Turkish conservatism. As such, we suggest that a number of competing as well as complementing facets of conservatism have to be taken into account if one is to fully grasp the complex nature of Turkish political development. We offer an empirical explanatory framework and assess the competing hypotheses to explain the nature of conservatism in Turkey. What is striking in this account is primarily the multidimensional character of conservatism in the country. It is not only religiosity that defines conservatism in Turkey, but also authoritarian stands on politics as well as an old-fashioned social perspective, especially concerning the youth and women in
6
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The Rising Tide of Conservatism in Turkey
Turkish society. These different dimensions of conservatism obviously are relevant in shaping its consequences in domestic and foreign policy areas. In the sixth chapter, we present historical cases of tension that stand to challenge consolidation of Turkish democracy. We empirically analyze three major issues in current Turkish politics that are directly linked to consolidation of democratic rule in the country. The first is the issue of the role of religion in Turkish society and its challenge to the political system, as represented by the demonstrations for lifting the ban on women’s türban (headscarves) in public offices. The second is the issue of reforms in the country that are geared toward meeting the Copenhagen Criteria for joining the European Union (EU). The third is the issue of democratic values, as they support or hinder all political reform in the country. Our objective here is not only to provide a short summary of historical developments in these three areas but also to present our findings of the public opinion on these and related issues. We will argue that all challenges that hinder reform in the country are deeply rooted in the slant toward conservatism present in the Turkish elites and masses alike. In the seventh chapter we focus on the role that international relations and geopolitics has played on the development and sustenance of conservatism in Turkey in the post–Cold War era. We examine how the public of Turkey, which is a potential member of the EU, views the union and how Turkey’s prospects for becoming an EU member country have also been influenced by the rising conservatism. Similarly, this rising tide of conservatism and religiosity in Turkey has contributed to Turkey’s rapidly changing opinion about of the United States and affected Turkish-U.S. relations. The invasion of Iraq and the events that have taken place in Turkey and in the north of Iraq ever since the Iraq War of 2003 seem to be weakening the image of the United States among Muslims the world over, and particularly those in Turkey. The same events also seemed to have fostered greater suspicion and fear of the “real U.S. intentions” and thus seemed to have contributed to a further development of xenophobia, chauvinism, and hence conservatism among the Turkish masses. Our data analysis seems to point out that international affairs, which appear to have piled up many thorny issues at the doorstep of Turkey in Iraq, Georgia, Armenia, Cyprus, and Greece, have played a role in increasing fears, uncertainty, and risks, and thus in creating a fertile environment for the emergence and sustenance of conservatism among the Turkish public. In the final chapter of this book we provide a conclusion of this study, which also encompasses an evaluation of the degree to which the Turkish experience fits into comparable contexts wherein similar phenomena have been analyzed. As such, we offer a series of empirical and conceptual implications for the study of developing democracies all around the world on the basis of the Turkish experience. We also propose suggestions concerning the implications of our findings for the study of Turkish society and public policy making. What kind of a public policy is most suited to deal with rising religious conservatism and its demands for increased visibility in the public space, as demonstrated by the türban conflict? What kind of reform process is likely to develop in the country as it aims for full membership in the EU? What are the implications of the cultural traits, and conservatism in particular, of Turkish society for Turkish foreign policy making? It is these and other similar questions that we have attempted to provide answers for in this book.
CHAPTER 1
Shock, Awe, and Suspense
T
urkey has been governed since 1982 according to the semiparliamentary regime that was drawn up by the military junta in the aftermath of the September 12, 1980, military coup. This military coup occurred when the democratic regime broke down, which led to the annulment of the liberal constitution of 1961 and the introduction of a new constitution in 1982 that stressed law and order. The new political regime of semiparliamentarism was based on three main assumptions. The first assumption was that Turkish democracy could not perform in an environment of liberty and vigorous civic participation that operated through a pluralist interestgroup system. The previous parliamentary regime of the 1961 constitution provided a liberal democratic context for political participation, which produced a wide spectrum of associations, activists, and activities married with a plurality of political parties that spanned almost the entire gamut of left- and right-wing ideologies and interests in the 1960s and 1970s. However, such a rich and vigorous political milieu of political participation coincided with a rising spiral of protests and unconventional political participation. In the 1970s the political situation in the country began to deteriorate into a civil war of various Marxist and Marxist-Leninist organizations, on the one hand, and the ultranationalist, anticommunist, and fascist organizations, on the other. When the Turkish liberal democratic regime broke down in 1980, it was popularly assumed that the liberal-pluralist interest-group system had contributed to its downfall. The second assumption was about the nature of democratic government in Turkey. Turkish governments of the 1970s were odd coalition governments. In 1973 the CHP obtained the plurality of votes and seats in the TBMM and decided to form a government with the newly established political Islamist MSP on the grounds that both the CHP and the MSP were antiestablishment parties.1 For the next seven years, Turkey experienced great difficulties in forming governments, when a host of shaky coalitions and minority governments came and went. These events gave the impression that coalition governments could not manage government affairs and should best be avoided.2 The third assumption was about the culture of political democracy in Turkey. The framers of the semiparliamentary regime of Turkey assumed that the popularly elected politicians were bound to fail in getting along with each other and would eventually get locked into a “no-holds-barred war.”3 Unless some mechanism of monitoring the populist politicians was established the democratic competition between politicians
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would degenerate into populist promises and cross-party bickering, for popularly elected politicians would only seek their personal or their party’s political interests to the detriment of national (collective) interest. The framers of the 1982 constitution seemed to have assumed that national (collective) interest could not be entrusted to the popularly elected politicians. The powers of the president’s office were overwhelmingly strengthened, and the 1982 constitution intended to create a tutelary overseer of Turkish democratic politics in the guise of the president. The powers of the TBMM and the judiciary were curtailed in the new regime of executive supremacy, whereby the government deviated significantly from its customary parliamentary regime and yet failed to form a semipresidential democracy. Instead, in its semiparliamentary format it seemed to have created a new form of the neo-patrimonial power structure, which was no more than the resuscitation of the old-style rule by executive fiat in a democratic guise that hence was referred to as neo-Hamidianism.4 Other political laws, such as the Parliamentary Election Act of 1983, were also enacted to remedy the tendency toward fragmentation of the parliamentary party system by introducing a 10 percent national threshold for political parties to overcome for them to become eligible for parliamentary seats to become eligible for parliamentary seats. An illiberal constitution that stressed executive supremacy and law and order, the establishment of presidential tutelage and control over the government, and the establishment of a 10 percent threshold in the general elections set the stage for a regime that was presumed to be capable of coping with the challenges of the Cold War in Turkey. In the meantime, a vacuum emerged in the political system when leftists and their activities began to be targeted as the main enemy of Turkey and harshly suppressed by the military junta. The socialist and social democratic associations and vigilantes had been effectively organized among the downtrodden in the shantytowns of the major cities throughout the 1960s and 1970s. When they were persecuted and liquidated in the early 1980s, the shantytowns began to be penetrated by alternative organized movements that effectively targeted the same audiences. In due time, Muslim brotherhoods (tarikat) and communities (cemaat) with deep pockets—armed with the ideology of political Islam—and traditional social welfare and solidarity networks began to fill the vacuum left behind by the socialists and social democrats. The political Islamist system of governance that was emerging in Iran in the early 1980s served as a moral and political inspiration for the establishment of the same model in Turkey. The Muslim brotherhoods seemed to have learned from Iran’s experience with theocracy that if enough financial and human resources could be mobilized and if modern organization could be adopted (obviously acquired not from Iran but from Europe, and most specifically Germany, where they had found a hospitable political environment in which to blossom), the Turkish government could be wrested out of the hands of the secular, democratic, moderate left- and right-of-center parties and those political forces that came to be associated with them. Two important and simultaneous developments helped the resurgence of the Islamic movement of Muslim brotherhoods, sectarian communities, and Sufi orders, which had been banned from public life and politics in Turkey since the early 1920s. One of these developments had its roots in the activities of the MSP in government in the 1970s, which led to the infiltration by the MSP of the agencies of the state that had been assigned to the MSP portfolio in the coalition governments. The resources and facilities of the state were wielded to promote the interests of organized religion in the
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1970s. Ironically enough, the military government of 1980–1983 continued to show tolerance, if not outright support, for increased religious activism and proselytizing by Muslim brotherhoods and Sufi orders in Turkey. Some of those orders began to enjoy political approval by the military government as, for example, when the state radio and television network (TRT) began to air programs on the values and virtues of such brotherhoods and communities as the Mevlevi. In the early 1980s the number of students attending the Imam-Hatip High Schools (IHL) increased in leaps and bounds.5 The military government established a cap on the number of IHL schools that could be established, but the IHL schools that were already established were permitted to open new sections ( șube) and enroll new students. The military government felt the need for an ideology that could effectively mobilize the people against what they perceived to be the existential threat of communism, and Sunni Islam provided an immaculate contrivance.6 Coincidently, the second development was the United States’ strategy against the Soviet Union in which it promoted the Islamic ideology in an area extending from Indonesia in the east to Morocco in the west. A green crescent of Muslim societies and their governments were mobilized by political Islam and supported by the petrodollars of the Middle Eastern oil sheikhdoms, on the one hand, and the sophisticated weapons technologies symbolized by the Stinger antiaircraft missiles from the United States, on the other. The power of Islam would be unleashed to fight the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, which had begun in 1979, to eventually infiltrate the Central Asian republics of the Soviet Union and gradually challenge the atheist Marxist-Leninist regime. The collusion and cooperation of the the jihadist youth of Arab, Philippine, Indonesian, Indian, and Turkish origin, Pakistani secret service (ISI), and the U.S. industrial-military complex formed the green crescent in and around Central Asia.7 The Turkish military government seemed to forge proximal ties with some of these critical actors, such as the Pakistani government of General Zia-ul Haq, the Saudi (Rabeta) organizations, and their U.S. mentors. It is possible to observe a correlation between the emergence of green crescent practices in the regions surrounding Turkey and the simultaneous Islamization of Turkish society and politics in the early 1980s. Was there any causal connection between the two? We have no conclusive evidence to elucidate on the matter. However, it is curious to note here that the champions of laicism and Kemalism in Turkey were none other than the military commanders themselves, ostentatiously engaging in public debates over the true message of Islam and using the verses of the Holy Koran to instill good citizenship in the hearts and mind of the citizens for the first and only time in Turkish society since the establishment of the republic in the early 1980s. It was under these circumstances that a group of conservative intellectuals began to emerge into the limelight of politics in Turkey. Their association called the Hearth of Intellectuals (Aydınlar Ocağı) began to gain prominence in the most important political talk shows and daily newspapers and popular journals of the country. Their aim was to unite the two mainstream ideologies in Turkey. The Hearth proposed to establish a synthesis of Turkish nationalism and Islamism, which was popularly known as the “Turkish-Islamic Synthesis” (Türk-Islam Sentezi ).8 In fact, Turkish nationalism had been established as a modern ideology in the early days of the twentieth century with the assumption that religion (Islam) had its day with the end of the Ottoman empire, and thus failed to provide any meaningful solutions to the problems of the present day.9 Early writers of Turkish nationalism had also objected to the call for
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international solidarity in the message of Islam (ümmetçilik), which they considered to be detrimental to national identity and culture and which they believed to be essential for the popular appeal of Turkish nationalism.10 Islam also had traditionally depicted nationalism as tribalism (kavmiyyet), which undermined the solidarity of the international community of Muslims (umma) and was thus an act of heresy. Now, the Hearth seemed to have come up with a solution to reconcile the differences between the two ideologies and argued that there was nothing incompatible between being a Turkish nationalist and an Islamist revivalist at the same time. Islam, in their eyes was an inherent characteristic of being an ethnic Turk, though the reverse was more difficult to argue, for it is a matter of fact that Islam was established first among the Arabs, who are considered among the Turkish Muslims as well to be the chosen race (kavm-i necib). What the Turkish-Islamic synthesis was suggesting constituted a sharp deviation from the original nationalist creed, which had often stressed the pre-Islamic, Central Asian, and even pagan characteristics of the Turkish identity and roots. The MHP, the powerhouse of ethnic nationalism, had failed to get more than a few percent of the national vote in the general elections of the 1960s and 1970s, when it projected an image of ethnic nationalism that brinked upon racism and stood aloof from Islam. It had become obvious to the Hearth that such a pristine form of ethnic nationalism had very limited popular appeal in Turkey. Unless ethnic nationalism was married with Islamism, it stood little chance of attracting popular support and a following. When the two ideologies were packaged together, they became attractive to the military government of the 1980s as well. In the guise of nationalism, the military government could also exploit Islamism to reach the men and women in the street and mobilize them against what the government considered to be the existential challenge of communism. Turkey now seemed to have developed its own official ideology of TurkishIslamic Synthesis, on the one hand, and had its think tank of ideologues, a form of Opus Dei, to create and scatter that official ideology under the protective shield of the military government, on the other. Ironic as it may be, Kemalism had been shortchanged in the process and was relegated to an ideology for the literati, intellectuals, educated urban class, and university students, while the ideology of Turkish-Islamic Synthesis was spread among the masses. Various organizations, providing instruction of the Holy Koran and religious education, began to spread out under the circumstances. The mass public came under the influence of various religious solidarity groups, brotherhoods, associations, and communities, whose existence and activities, though still officially illegal, began to be tolerated by the praetorian political authorities of the early 1980s in Turkey as the Turkish–Islamic synthesis became somewhat of an official ideology in the struggle against Marxism–Leninism. With socialism and social democracy, and even Kemalism with its secular and thus anti–“Islamic revivalist” essence, being properly sidelined by the military government of the early 1980s, all obstructions were removed between the Islamic revivalists and their goal of controlling the minds, hearts, and votes of the Turkish citizens Islamic revivalists used this window of opportunity with utmost efficiency from the 1980s onwards. As Turkey reverted to multiparty politics and the conservative ANAP emerged as the champion of the 1983 elections and formed the government under Turgut Özal (1983–1989), Islamic revivalism continued to be treated with the utmost sympathy. Özal himself had a long career as a member of a major Islamist movement in
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Turkey before he was co-opted by the military junta of 1980 into the cabinet post of state minister in charge of the economy. Many Islamists have served in the ANAP governments and in the ranks of the ANAP parliamentary group in the TBMM. In the 1995 general elections, the RP received plurality of votes and seats in the TBMM. In early 1996, the leader of the RP, Necmettin Erbakan, became the first Islamic revivalist prime minister of Turkey. It was under the RP-DYP coalition government (1996–1997) that Turkish democracy began to experience severe political strains and stresses, which led to increasing pressure on them to yield power from various interest groups and voters, such as the trade unions, big businesses, middle-class women, Alevis, and eventually the military. From 1980 to 1997, all levels of educational institutions the media, and political debate in the country came under the influence of Islamic revivalism and traditionalism. It is also interesting to observe that the end of the Cold War and the uncertainties of the emerging, yet undefined, new world order further added incentive to the strengthening of Islamic revivalism, traditionalism, chauvinism, and parochialism in Turkey. The End of the Cold War and the New Struggle for Supremacy The bipolar international political structure of the Cold War ended when the Soviet Union imploded and collapsed on December 31, 1991. By that time Turkey had already been robustly moving toward a new voter realignment in which the socially uprooted masses had come under the spell of the Turkish-Islamic Synthesis’ Islamic revivalist, traditionalist, and conservative teachings for at least a decade. The sudden downfall of the Soviet Union and its socialist ideology eliminated the main threat to the viability of the Turkish Republic. However, in Europe, and eventually in the rest of the world, the foundations of international relations were fully demolished. It became possible for the world to to be interconnected through a new communication web that provided new opportunities and efficiency in the flow of capital across the globe. A new era of globalization that promoted freedom of ideas, initiatives, and partnerships emerged to dominate not only economic relations but also civic movements, cultural associations, and political affairs. Simultaneously, the treaties established during the Cold War era began to lose their legitimacy, for they had been negotiated between the now-defunct Soviet Union, without consent of the former–Warsaw Pact countries of Central and Eastern Europe. The former Warsaw Pact countries had new ways of declaring their will in the form of democratic elections and showed increased eagerness to redress their former grievances and denounce their former ties. In consequence, the Helsinki Accord of 1975, which had been negotiated between NATO and Leonid Brezhnev’s Soviet Union and which incorporated the inviolability of borders in Europe, lost its legitimacy in the eyes of the Europeans. If the Helsinki Accord was to be delegitimized and rendered irrelevant, then it was to be assumed that the borders of European countries would become violable, negotiable, and alterable. In almost no time, East European countries encountered a new political situation in which they simultaneously attempted to redefine their political and economic systems and regimes, which eventually incorporated the questioning of their national roots and identities. The overall consequence of the lifting of the iron curtain in Europe was the reemergence of the older nationalist claims in Eastern Europe. The revisionist nationalist claims over territories had already caused various conflicts and wars in the Balkans since the nineteenth century. The claims and counterclaims over territorial rights of
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states, which were fueled by the “grand” visions of national sovereignty, had caused almost incessant friction, stress, conflict, and civil and international wars in the Balkan Peninsula, and hence the term “Balkanization” was coined to refer to political bickering over borders married with irredentism, revanchism, and chauvinism between the Balkan states.11 Balkanization had boded ill for peace in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and thus the resurfacing of Balkanization again precipitated a strong drive toward the dismemberment of the East European states. In Central Europe, Czechoslovakia split into the independent states of the Czech and Slovak Republics peacefully, yet in the Balkans the dismemberment of Yugoslavia turned into a vile, nasty, and brutal series of civil wars. The Slovene’s were the first to split from the Yugoslav state, and their move was promptly legitimized by Germany’s recognition of the new state of Slovenia. It was a fait accompli for the EU, yet, after a short debate, the EU member countries went along with Germany; thus extending the clout of legitimacy to the dismemberment of the Yugoslav state. With the wholehearted approval and encouragement of the EU and its member states, Balkanization resurfaced to take Yugoslavia in its grip. To make matters worse, the former confessional alliances, following the religious and sectarian differences that had been the pillar of the Ottoman “millet system” of the earlier centuries, across the Balkans also resurfaced. The cause of the Orthodox (Serbs) was supported by the other Orthodox nations, such as Russia, Greece, and Greek Cyprus, and their former western European allies. The Catholics (mainly Croats and Slovenes) began to seek and obtain the help of their former West European ally, Germany. Muslims (mainly Bosniaks, but also Albanians, Turks, and others) also turned to Turkey and other Muslim countries such as Saudi Arabia and Iran, to prevent them from annihilation by the Serb-dominated Yugoslav army. In no time, Yugoslavia became the new theater of political conflict where the Orthodox, Catholic, and Muslim communities got locked into a war that involved foreign fighters and interests and further fueled the war. The emerging international situation provided another golden opportunity for the Islamic revivalists to proselytize their message with increased effectiveness in Turkey. They argued that those who were subjected to ethnic cleansing were the brethren of the Turks, those of “us” who were left behind from the Ottoman Empire. People were persecuted for what they were—Turks, Muslims, or both. The Ottoman heritage imposed upon the Muslims of Turkey the moral obligation to declare a jihad against the Orthodox and Catholic armies in Yugoslavia. The RP, MÇP, and other right-wing party offices began to collect donations in the streets and mosques of Turkey to help save “our fellow Muslim-Turkish-Ottoman brethren” from ethnic cleansing. Mass rallies and political demonstrations organized by the RP and the MÇP began to attract large crowds. One should be reminded of the fact that there are millions of Turkish citizens whose ancestors had been subjected to similar pogroms in the Balkans in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Some still speak Serbo-Croat, and few still have relatives in the Balkan states with who they had been in regular contact. In no time Balkan (Rumeli ) nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) began to mushroom in Turkey, and started to mobilize the masses to join the struggle against the Turkish communities of the Balkans. It was probably the pleas of the persecuted Bosniaks in intelligible Turkish, which were beamed into the living rooms of the Turkish population via satellite TV that hit a sensitive nerve in Turkey. The coalition government of the liberal-conservative DYP and the left-of-center SHP wanted to tread a careful path of avoiding military involvement in the new Balkan
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imbroglio, while following a conspicuous and assertive foreign policy of putting a stop to the ethnic cleansing of the Bosniaks, Albanians, Turks, and other Muslims, and terminating hostilities as quickly as possible. News coming into Turkey indicated that the suffering of the Muslim communities of Yugoslavia went on in spite of whatever the Turkish government did, and diplomacy seemed to be an inefficient tool to employ under the circumstances. The developments seemed to point to a government that was callous, ineffective, and meek in its approach to the new Balkan conflict. The demands of the Islamist and the Turkish nationalist parties grew to be more radical, and their propaganda began to attract more popular support. Moderate left and right parties seemed to be portrayed as too involved with patronage politics and petty populism at home and too servile to the European and U.S. interests to make an assertive move to defend their brethren abroad. Turkey was increasingly pressured in the mid-1990s by another major domestic conflict that had originated in 1984. The Partiye Karkeren Kurdistan (PKK) had been established in the late 1970s as a Maoist political organization to challenge the rule of the Turkish state and the socioeconomic structure in the southeastern parts of Turkey, which were inhabited by large numbers of Kurdish citizens. The PKK began to implement terror tactics to oust the Kurdish landlords and eventually the Turkish state from power. During the military coup of September 12, 1980, the PKK took refuge in Syria, only to resurface in 1984 to challenge Turkish sovereignty over its southeastern territories. It seemed as if the PKK had the full support of the Syrian state, which also had its qualms over the former Sanjak (province) of Alexandretta, and now the Hatay province of Turkey. The PKK benefited generously from the irredentist challenge posed by the Syrian state to the territorial sovereignty of the Turkish state over Hatay. Interestingly enough, it was the Gulf War of 1991 that provided an immaculate opportunity for the PKK to gain a foothold in the no-fly-zone of northern Iraq, which was imposed upon the Iraq of Saddam Hussein by the United States, Britain, France, and Turkey from 1991 to 2003. The PKK gained logistic support from the Iraqi regime to stage further terror attacks in the southeastern and eastern provinces of Turkey. When Turkey imposed an embargo on Iraq, as Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, the southeastern provinces of Turkey began to experience a sudden economic downturn. Indeed, between 1980 and 1988 the southeast of Turkey experienced a major economic boost due to the Iran-Iraq war as Turkey had built the largest fleet of trucks in Europe to haul the necessities that Iran and Iraq demanded through Turkey. A service industry built around commerce, transportation, catering, automotive repair and parts, etc., had mushroomed in the Turkish areas bordering Iran and Iraq. The end of the war led to a downturn in that economy in 1989; however, the embargo that Turkey imposed on Iraq in 1990 at the beginning of the Gulf War was the straw that broke the camel’s back in eastern Turkey. Almost all commercial activities with Iraq came to a standstill, and the service industry of the southeast experienced bankruptcy as unemployment skyrocketed in the region. This sudden economic downturn occurred as the rest of the Turkish economy continued to grow robustly through 1989–1991. The impact of the embargo was therefore twofold. On the one hand, the southeast of Turkey experienced a sudden slackening of economic activity and growth after almost a decade (which was enough in itself to create fertile circumstances for a social revolution),12 yet, on the other hand, as the rest of Turkey continued to grow in leaps and bounds, the area inhabited mostly by Kurds experienced a slide into increased poverty. Such conditions provided not only fertile conditions for an ethnic uprising but also immaculate
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circumstances for PKK propaganda to gain increased effectiveness. Throughout the 1990s, Turkey experienced a major challenge from the waves of terror and anti-Turkish protests in the east of the country. The social democratic and socialist parties had formerly been successful at mobilizing the Kurdish vote through their emphasis on class-based politics and their internationalist ideology. However, in the 1990s, when the socialist and social democratic ideologies were on the wane, other ideological calls started to attract the Kurdish vote. Kurdish nationalism and political Islam began to attract large numbers of Kurds to their slogans and organizations. The call of political Islam stressed religious (Sunni Islam), internationalist (umma), and anti-Republican symbols and values, which seemed to provide an alternative route to solidarity among those who lived in Turkey. Instead of the Turkish nationalist and secular bases of solidarity that the Republican governments had been trying to forge, Islamic revivalists began to proselytize a much more traditional and folkloric (and anti-Turkish nationalist) form of solidarity based upon Sunni Islam, which was a set of values with which the Kurdish masses were more at home. Now, the appeal of political Islam suddenly began to look like a threat to the Republican regime with which the military had been closely identified. The coalition of the 1980s between the military junta and the Islamists began to fall apart, and the security establishment and political Islam began to clash in the 1990s. Economic Recession and the New Bases of Political Solidarity It was at this juncture, toward the mid 1990s, that Turkey began to experience a major economic downturn that took the entire economy in its grip. The economic performance of the DYP-SHP government (1991–1995) had failed to make any dramatic changes in the performance of the Turkish economy. The stable high inflation of the late 1970s continued into the mid-1990s. The DYP-SHP government had failed to take the necessary steps to bring down the rising consumer prices. In the early days of 1994, a financial crisis, the first of several to come, erupted. The Turkish Lira (TL) was sharply devalued and consumer prices increased once more. After consultations with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the government adopted an austerity program in April 1994. Due to these circumstances the government began to attract increasing criticism from the opposition, mainly provided by the DSP on the left, and the conservative ANAP, the Islamic revivalist RP and ethnic Turkish nationalist MÇP, on the right. The ANAP held office between 1983 and 1991 and had followed liberal economic policies, similar to the DYP-SHP government. In the eyes of the public, the laissez-faire liberal policies of the moderate left and right had been associated with corruption, when the big corporations and propertied classes prospered as small business owners were then pauperized due to the sharp devaluations of the TL and skyrocketing consumer prices. The liberal policies of the ANAP and later the DYP-SHP governments were associated with corruption and a lack of fairness. When the political Islamist RP staged its election campaign on “Just Order” (Adil Düzen), it touched upon a very sensitive public chord. In the 1995 general elections, the RP was able to obtain plurality with almost 21.4 percent of the national vote. The DSP also used a similar campaign slogan based upon fairness, and its votes also doubled to 14.6 percent of the national vote, while the ANAP further slid down to 19.6 percent of the vote. A major psychological threshold in the move toward the right of the ideological spectrum was surmounted, and a major realignment of the Turkish
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voters had occurred. Turkey is set on the road to becoming a more conservative society, where right-wing politics will dominate for a long time to come. Conclusion Four major developments shaped the revitalization and preponderance of conservatism in Turkish politics since the end of the Cold War. The first development originated with the military coup of 1980 when the military government that reigned between 1980 and 1983 persecuted and suppressed communists, socialists, social democrats, and left-of-center politicians, intellectuals, and voters in Turkey. The military junta also simultaneously promoted a new ideology called the Turkish-Islamic Synthesis, which was formulated and proselytized by a group of right-wing intellectuals, academics, and journalists organized around the association of the Hearth of Intellectuals, with the full cooperation of the state TV and radio network in the early 1980s. The political regime established by the military junta of 1980–1983 through the 1982 constitution and the related laws and regulations also reflected the political thinking of the time, which identified left-wing ideas and associations as the main threat to the political order of the country. From the early 1980s onwards, Islamic (Sunni) and ethnic Turkish nationalist ideas were systematically promoted in the media, press, and educational policies of the conservative party governments that came to rule Turkey between 1980 and 1991. When the Cold War came to an end in 1991, Turkey had already been in the grip of almost a decade-long propaganda of Sunni Islam and ethnic Turkish nationalism through the government-controlled media monopoly and in the schools of the country. In that atmosphere of political tolerance, if not encouragement, various religious Sunni associations and communities were able to find fertile ground to organize and proselytize with increased effectiveness. The second major development emerged in the early 1990s with the Gulf War and the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, in which large numbers of Muslims were killed. Turkey cooperated with the United States and the EU member countries, but dramatically failed in preventing large numbers of Muslims from being massacred. At the end of the Gulf War of 1990–1991 when half a million Kurds from northern Iraq took refuge in Turkey within a very short period of time, the Turkish government came under increasing criticism from the EU and the United States for its mismanagement of the refugee situation. The Turkish government moved swiftly to gain the cooperation of the U.S., British, and French governments in establishing a no-fly zone in the north of Iraq and provide a safe haven for the Kurds. However, such a move exacerbated the wave of terror taking place in Turkey. The Maoist PKK took refuge in northern Iraq and began to launch more effective attacks on the Turkish security forces. The no-fly zone aided the efforts of the PKK, which also seemed to have received new weapons from the Hussein regime of Iraq to fight the Turkish forces. The overall image of the Gulf War of 1990–1991 on Turkey was a deepened perception of a simmering conspiracy between the EU and the United States to divide Turkey. The third development that occurred simultaneous to the second development was when post–Cold War Europe rescinded the Helsinki Accord of 1975, which did away with the inviolability of the borders in Europe, Turkish borders included. The old land-, sea-, and airspace claims of Greece, Armenia, and Syria against Turkey were pressed with added fervor under the circumstances. Although the establishment of the Turkish borders had preceded the Cold War and had no relationship with Stalin’s
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policies and demands of 1945, the new era of redrawing borders provided its revisionist neighbors opportunity to pressure Turkey anyhow. With the post–Gulf War developments and the end of the inviolability of the borders in Europe, Turkey began to feel as if it was encountering strong regional pressure to rescind the Treaty of Lausanne (1923) and revert to the Treaty of Sevrés (1920). The Treaty of Lausanne was the final peace treaty that established the current Turkish nation-state, whereas the Treaty of Sevrés was the document that partitioned the Ottoman Empire, which heavily punished the state for its role in World War I. The Turkish media and press were replete with editorials of the resurgence of Sevrés, which seemed to argue that Turkey was faced with a new international conspiracy that aimed to divide the territory of the state among Kurds, Armenians, Arabs, and Greeks. Popularly referred to as the “Sevrés syndrome,” indicating a mood change in the country, it assumed that Turkey was again under siege and a new War of Liberation of sorts was imminent. Editorials began to call for readiness to fight “two-and-a-half wars” with Syria, Greece, and Armenia at the same time. The status quo foreign policy stand of the governments and liberal democracy seemed too meek to meet the imagined post–Cold War international conspiracy facing the country. The fourth and last development was the downturn of the economy in the 1990s. Turkish governments had a long track record of deficit financing of economic development, a practice that coincided with stable high-level consumer price inflation since the late 1970s. Such a policy continued while the government could acquire loans from the public at very high interest rates. However, servicing such loans became increasingly difficult by the mid-1990s, and the Turkish economy experienced a severe financial crisis at the end of 1993 and adopted an economic austerity package in April 1994. However, it was not enough to save the Turkish economy from experiencing a series of economic crises in 1999 and 2000, and finally a big financial collapse in 2001. The confidence of the Turkish consumers and voters in the government’s management of macroeconomics in Turkey were shattered by the early 2000s. By that time all the left- and right-of-center parties had served in the Turkish governments, and none of those governments had been able to provide a cure for the continuous high inflation in Turkey. Although it was the coalition government led by the leader of the DSP, Bülent Ecevit, that finally invited Kemal Derviş of the IBRD ( World Bank) to provide a solution to the economic ailments of the Turkish economy and it was the economic policies designed by Derviş that finally seemed to break the backbone of the continuous high inflation, the confidence of the voters in the left- and right-of-center political parties had already been compromised. Under the conditions of the economic downturn and instability, and domestic and international political uncertainties, Turkish society and politics rallied around traditions and religious conservatism. The 2000s ushered in an era of conservative revival in Turkish politics and society. In the next chapter we will look into the characteristics of the emerging conservatism in Turkish society and politics.
CHAPTER 2
Change, Reform, and Fear
T
urkey, being at the hub of the Balkans, Caucasus, and the Middle East, which constitutes the most turbulent, volatile, and effervescent neighborhood in the world, began to feel the deep impact of the changing international political system in the 1990s. It would have been relatively easy to manage the impact of the moving fault lines of international politics, in spite of there being so many of them surrounding the country, if the domestic socioeconomic and political processes and structures were not in flux, but stable, institutionalized, and functioning effectively. Turkish politics came under the spell of the dramatic changes in global politics at a time when the Turkish society and economy were experiencing all the pains, strains, and stresses of transforming from an agricultural to an industrial society. In the 1990s, Turkey began to experience double turbulence in the spheres of foreign and domestic policy simultaneously. Under the circumstances, all past certainties about the political regime, especially the written constitution of 1982, the ideological positions of the political parties, economic policies, and sociopolitical identities, as well as the content of citizenship, the structure and substance of the unitary, republican state, and the role of religion in society, began to be debated. In addition, the Cold War era understandings, definitions, and practices came to be doubted and debated and suggestions for reformulations abounded. In the previous chapter we focused on the international developments of the post–Cold War era and their impact on Turkish politics and society. In this chapter our focus is going to be on the domestic developments of the post–Cold War era in Turkey and their sociopsychological and political influences on the attitudes and behavior of the Turkish adult population. Going Urban and Industrial The Turkish republic inherited a war-ravaged country from the Ottoman Empire and in the 1920s attempted to jump-start economic growth through liberal economic and free trade policies, which had received a severe blow with the Great Depression of 1929. The Turkish government of the time swiftly changed tack, designing and following state-initiated and state-sponsored economic growth, (which has been named étatism [devletçilik] ever since), especially through investment in heavy industry from 1932 onwards. In less than a decade, Turkey faced the daunting challenge of another
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world war. Even though Turkey did not participate in World War II, the Turkish economy experienced the conditions of a war economy, which not only halted the economic development efforts of the state but also short-circuited Turkish efforts in industrialization and development. After World War II, Turkey had to redesign its economic policies from scratch in line with the developing international alliance characteristics and democratization within the country. When the government changed hands in 1950 through free and fair general elections, Turkey reverted to liberal economic and free trade policies and practices. In the meantime, the new Democrat Party (DP) government received support from the United States, which became Turkey’s North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) ally in 1952, to strengthen its transport infrastructure through investment in paved roads. The DP assumed that such a policy would provide the opportunity for the government to procure services from the villages and hamlets of the country, while the United States acquired a new market for its automotive, home appliance, and hardware industries. A dramatic increase in the number of paved roads in Turkey provided for the movement of goods and people throughout the country at affordable prices. It also enabled an increase in the supply of manual labor for the burgeoning Turkish industry that got another jump-start in the 1950s. However, the increased social mobility of the people precipitated several socioeconomic and political consequences, not all of which had been anticipated by the DP government. There is little evidence that the DP government anticipated that their transportation and industrialization policies would trigger an increasing outflow of population from the rural areas. What happened indicates that once the paved and asphalted roads began to reach provincial and subprovincial cities of the country, private enterprise began to sprout in organizing transportation between those towns and the bigger cities of the country such as Ankara, Istanbul, Izmir, and Adana. In a relatively short period of a few years, many landless peasants and farmers perceived the opportunities that the new road and transportation system provided them in the bigger cities, where the burgeoning industry of the country was taking root. All those who had little that was worth leaving behind in their villages packed up and left. The assumption of the DP government that the new road system and ease of transportation would result in the flow of social services into the villages and hamlets of the country, which in turn would provide the peasants who supported the DP at the polls with the fruits of economic development and enhanced rural social welfare, turned out to be partially correct, at best. Many of the most needy peasants failed to show patience for the DP government’s effort to provide them with benefits and left for urban centers in search of better paying jobs, education, and healthcare facilities for their families. What started as a trickle in 1950–1951 became a deluge of rural migrants shifting into the cities and establishing new roots at their fringes (suburbs) by the late 1950s. The urban centers and their municipalities had been caught unprepared by the sudden increase in the horizontal social mobility of the rural masses. The major increase in the urban populations overloaded their systems and overstretched their frail resources. Unaided by the municipal and national authorities, the rural migrants began to settle wherever they could find unprotected, usually common yet occasionally private, land. In a matter of years, this process of migration resembled a sack of the major cities and their environs.1 The demands for municipal services, public utilities, schools, and healthcare increased in leaps and bounds in the newly settled suburban areas of the bigger cities of the country. The availability of abundant and thus cheap labor
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provided the business community and aspiring entrepreneurs with new opportunities to establish business ventures in the suburbs of the major cities. It was under these circumstances that a burgeoning domestic industry began to emerge in the fields of household appliances, kitchenware, furniture, and textiles. The rural migrants not only provided the labor input for such industry but also constituted the consumers who began to purchase the produce of the newly emerging Turkish industry. This socioeconomic transformation altered the lifestyles and expectations of the Turkish masses. However, another crucial factor that almost revolutionized the expectations and aspirations of the men and women in the street took hold by the late 1950s and continued through the 1960s and 1970s. Germany, pressed with the need to rebuild its war-ravaged country, discovered the cheap Turkish semiskilled labor pool. Large numbers of Turkish blue-collar workers began to migrate in increasing numbers to Germany in the 1950s, and eventually to France, Britain, the Netherlands, and Scandinavia in the 1960s and 1970s. The same time period coincided with the growth of the Turkish movie industry, which precipitated the spread of movie theaters throughout the country. Turkish migrants and guest workers began to have firsthand experiences of the capitalist consumer societies of Europe, on the one hand, and large populations in Turkey fell in love with Hollywood movies and the images of the “good life” they projected, on the other. It was not until the late 1970s and the early 1980s that a true mass-media revolution gripped the country. The sharp rise in the sales of color TV sets in the late 1970s and soon after of the VCRs in the early 1980s exposed the Turkish masses to the vivid and true-life images of the “good life” in the modern developed capitalist market economies of North America and Western Europe. What had started with the Hollywood movies of the 1950s and 1960s continued much more intensely, easily, cheaply, and frequently in the homes of the Turkish masses through the mid-1980s. This mass exposure to the media led to new tastes, standards, expectations, and aspirations in Turkish society. Not only did such amenities of modern life as refrigerators, vacuum cleaners, washing machines, dryers, and dishwashers become absolute necessities of life, which every bride aspired to and even insisted on having with marriage, but so also did a house, or even a villa, and a family car begin to define the proper contours of the “good life” in the country by the late 1980s. Such a sharp rise in living standards obviously necessitated a middle-class or even upper-middle-class income for the families, and the concomitant worry of affordability of such a lifestyle began to make its impact on Turkish society. Turkey began to experience a revolution in its social and economic expectations of lifestyle. Economic Liberalism and its Outcomes The mass-media revolution of the 1980s coincided with the sudden shift away from the state-led (étatist) mixed economy and economic policies based on import substitution to liberal capitalism of the modern market economy. In a sudden and desperate move, Turkey lifted all sorts of price controls and many customs permits and began to liberalize its economy on January 24, 1980, to avert a deepening economic recession and stagnation at the time. The former head of the State Planning Organization (Devlet Planlama Teşkilatı—DPT), undersecretary of the Prime Minister’s Office, and later state minister, Turgut Özal, experienced a stellar rise to power in the 1983 general elections, when his ANAP party won 45 percent of the national vote and a majority of
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the seats in the TBMM. Özal had been the champion of economic liberalization since the 1970s. In the eyes of many voters he was the technocrat behind Prime Minister Demirel’s cabinet liberalization decree of January 24, 1980. When Özal became the prime minister he was able to move rapidly to push the economy further down the road of liberal economics. The country began to adopt a spirit of laissez-faire capitalism in the 1980s. The new liberal economic policies of the government and the environment of freedom of enterprise contributed to the start of a new era in Turkish society. On the one hand, the mass-media revolution and the German connection provided alluring images of consumerism as “the good life”, on the other, the economic policies of the government provided for a laissez-faire capitalism, where it seemed that all one needed to do was to establish his or her corporation and sail to the new image of a “good life”. Few considered feasibility of their business ideas, the depth of their human and financial resources, and the overall stability and reliability of the Turkish economy and polity. From the late 1980s onward, the Turkish economy and society entered a new era of economic entrepreneurship and venture capitalism. New opportunities emerged for those who could start new economic ventures. Turkey seemed to host a large population of entrepreneurs, though this was combined with a lack of abundance of financial resources. Most ventures started out with a shortage of capital but a deep faith in the self-capabilities of the entrepreneurs. Operating on borrowed capital and with little or no feasibility and planning, most economic initiatives were doomed. In the meantime, the plenitude of services and goods provided at different prices also began to confuse the consumers. Popular reactions and demands began to emerge for the reimposition of controls, for most consumers failed to understand that they should make an effort to search for the lowest price and best quality before they made a purchase. The feeling that in the new laissez-faire liberal system one is often swindled out of one’s money by fly-by-night operations began to resonate among the public. A substantial percentage of the public began to react to the economic liberalization policies of the 1980s as practices that promoted skullduggery and corruption. Indeed, several shady characters also found an impeccable economic environment to operate in. There were many instances of bounced checks, broken promises, and unhonored signed contracts. Many in the country began to feel and react against liberalization as nothing else than immoral economic dealings of corrupt and corruptible entrepreneurs, bureaucrats, and political authorities. Several grandiose political corruption scandals that emerged to capture the headlines of the daily newspapers in the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s further reinforced the image that the liberal economics promoted by the political elites was a mechanism to promote several special interests and corrupt relations between businesses and the political class in the country. Under the circumstances, it is plausible to assume that there would be a popular call or even demand for the mixed economy of the past. However, there is scant evidence that such a popular demand existed. Indeed, the majority of the Turkish population seemed to believe that state-initiated and state-led development was no longer acceptable. However, there also existed a popular call for morality, fairness, justice, and decency in socioeconomic interactions to be married with clean politics. The inflation of consumer prices continued unabated from 1979 onwards at the rate of 60 to 80 percent per annum. The measures taken by the party and coalition governments of the 1980s and 1990s failed to bring this inflation under control. Liberal policies seemed to provide no cures for the institutionalization of high
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double-digit consumer price inflation, and the occasional sharp devaluations of the national currency the Turkish Lira (TL). When the government started to unfold new policies of deregulation and privatization in the 1990s, it not only looked as if the economic prospects of the country were uncertain, but also that all the assets of the country in food, textile, steel, telecommunications, banking, and other industries were on sale. With the onslaught of globalization, foreign capital seemed to be rushing into Turkey to grab the strategic assets of the country. In most provinces of the country, privatization was tantamount to the closing down or selling out of the only industrial plant in the locality that was the main source of employment and income for the inhabitants. People began to react against privatization, which they equated with being sacked from their jobs and losing their livelihood. The liberal policies of the government and global capital seemed to unite to threaten the livelihood of the Turkish working classes. The same process ushered in major international chain stores and supermarkets, which began to undermine the family owned grocery, greengrocery, hardware stores, and the like. Globalization began to hit the small and midsize entrepreneurs very hard and seemed to threaten them with pauperization, thus dashing the hopes of many to live the “good life” they had envisioned in the aftermath of the mass-media revolution of the 1980s. The Sky Falls Down: Isolated, Challenged, and Threatened Unstable coalition governments and economic instability continued from 1991 to 2002. What made the situation even more unstable than it seemed was the fact that many political, economic, and natural disasters and crises overlapped each other in this decade. The PKK was established as a Marxist-Leninist-Maoist organization in 1978 by some college students under the leadership of Abdullah Öcalan, then a student at Ankara University, Faculty of Political Science. It had been waging war against some landlords and their tribes in the southeast of Turkey, mainly fighting in Siverek, Urfa, against the Bucak family. However, after the coup of 1980, the PKK fled the country, relocated their headquarters to Syria, and used the facilities provided in the Bekaa Valley of Lebanon under the auspices of the Syrian government. By the time Turkey went back to multiparty politics in 1983, the PKK had gained enough training to wage terror against Turkey. The military government had also launched a Turkification policy2 that not only alienated large swaths of citizens of Kurdish origin in Turkey but also created sympathy for Kurdish nationalists, who had been resisting the Turkification policies of the military government. When the PKK waged attacks against Eruh, Siirt, and other provinces in the southeast of Turkey, they found the opportunity to exploit the antiestablishment mood of the Kurdish population in that region. However, the more intense challenge for the PKK occurred after the Gulf War of 1991. When Saddam Hussein’s army vacated the north of Iraq and fled without securing their weapons, the PKK found a new opportunity to not only use the vacuum of power and control created in the north of Iraq, which was located immediately to the south of southeastern Turkey, but to also set up camps there and launch attacks into Turkey with improved firepower capability. In the meantime, the Turkish government’s early and effective imposition of an embargo on Iraq in 1990 had debilitated the economy of southeastern Turkey, which had become dependent upon trade with Iraq and Iran. Indeed, the East of Turkey had prospered through trade and transportation in the Iran-Iraq
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War of the 1980s, for most of the needs of both countries had been provided from or through Turkey. Turkey had built the largest fleet of trucks in Europe to facilitate this process. The embargo imposed on Iraq led to a sudden halt of the booming trade and economy in the east of Turkey at the end of 1990. The mood of the populace in the southeast of Turkey again soured as youth unemployment rates skyrocketed to a stunning 40 percent. Unfortunately for the region, this downturn led to a standstill of economic growth while that of the rest of Turkey continued unabated. It was small wonder that a rebellious mood spread like bushfire in the east of the country. It is also small wonder that sympathy toward the PKK began to surge among the Kurdish citizens of Turkey in the early 1990s. The death toll from PKK-instigated terror increased from about 1,500 between 1984 and 1990 to about 30,000 between 1991 and 1999. The PKK argued that the Kurds had the right to establish their national homeland in eastern Turkey, for they constituted another nation and had lived under the yoke of nationalist Turks, who would not permit them to enjoy their cultural and political rights. The Kurdish nationalists seemed to have emerged to challenge the territorial integrity of Turkey and to repeal the Treaty of Lausanne (1923) and resuscitate the former Treaty of Sévres (1920), which had been rescinded by the Turkish War of Liberation. Suddenly, the borders and sovereignty of the Turkish republic encountered an existential challenge, which also seemed to coincide with the post–Cold War mood in Europe, which accepted the illegitimacy and violability of the European borders that were drawn by the Soviets in the immediate aftermath of World War II. In 1991, the ANAP lost the general elections and no other party emerged to obtain the majority of seats in the TBMM. Turkey began to experience another period of coalition party governments. The Social Democratic Populist Party (SHP) provided an opportunity for the Kurdish nationalist Democratic Labor Party (Demokratik Emek Partisi—DEP) candidates to run on their ticket and win seats in the TBMM. All of a sudden, Kurdish nationalists gained a voice in the TBMM, which they used to challenge the establishment in the legislative system. The armed conflict in the east could not be contained, and parliamentary processes could not be substituted for the terror campaign in the East. The DEP deputies failed to engage and reconcile their demands with those of the political establishment. They were eventually purged from the TBMM, and some of them were arrested, tried, and convicted of various charges against the integrity of the state. However, the very political fabric of the Turkish system seemed to have come under severe stress. The solidarity of the Turkish nation-state was called into question for a period of time in the 1990s. In the meantime, another fundamental characteristic of the Turkish political system was challenged as well. The former political Islamist MSP had been banned from politics by the political laws of the 1980 military regime. However, the leader and his comrades of the former MSP established the RP in the 1980s and managed to get 16 percent of the national vote in the 1991 general election, when the RP shared the same ticket with the MÇP and IDP. The RP, MÇP, and IDP had jointly gained representation in the TBMM. It was not very clear whether or not it was the RP that received most of the 16 percent vote. Previously, the best that the MSP could do in any general election was about 11 percent in the 1973 elections. However, when the three parties ran separately in the 1995 elections, the RP received about 22 percent of the national vote alone. The RP not only obtained the control of the plurality of seats in the TBMM but its leader, Prof. Dr. Necmettin Erbakan, was also appointed as the
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prime minister. The RP as the new party of the National Outlook (Milli Görüş), which is an organization solidly embedded in the Islamist Movement (Islamcılık Cereyanı) in Turkey, came to power in the laicist Republic only after seventy years since the political Islamist movements had been banned in the Turkish Republic. The RP campaigned on the idea of a “Just Order” and attracted the Kurdish voters to its call of Islam as the bond that united the Kurds with the rest of Turkish society. Kurds seemed to consider the internationalist (Islamist, ümmetçi) stand of the RP as acceptable and nonantagonizing, while they seemed to reject the Turkish nationalist stand of the other parties. Most Kurds were highly religious (Sunni Muslims) and thus viewed the RP with sympathy as a party of the Islamist movement. Turkey was coming under pressure to recognize that unless Turkish nationalism and secularism were jettisoned in favor of political Islam, Turkish national integrity would be at risk. As the political conflict deepened and intensified in Turkey, the country was engulfed in a double political crisis initiated by the onslaughts of Kurdish nationalism and political Islamism, which created grave doubts about the future of national integrity and political stability in the country. It looked as if the country was pushed into a grave political existential challenge both at home and abroad. It was under those circumstances that the economic crisis of 1994 erupted, and soon new economic crises occurred in 1999 and 2000. Finally in 2001 came the worst financial crisis of the Republic in which nineteen of the eighty-six banks in the country declared bankruptcy. They were either liquidated or nationalized. Some of the banks were also purchased by the state banks. The state guarantee on deposits helped to solve some of the problem. However, it is estimated that about 20 percent of the Turkish gross domestic product evaporated almost overnight in 2001. It was another amazing coincidence that the DSP-ANAP-MHP government was confronted a devastating earthquake caused by the movement of the North Anatolian fault line that affected the heavily industrialized northwest of the country, including Turkey’s megapolis, Istanbul, in August and November 1999. According to official figures, more than 10,000 buildings were completely demolished and about 18,000 inhabitants died, while many more were injured. Some industrial plants were severely damaged and so was the intercity highway connecting Istanbul to Ankara. It seemed as if its neighbors, allies, citizens, and even nature had turned against Turkey in the 1990s. Under such disturbing natural, economic, and political conditions the future of the Republican regime, government, political community, and national integrity of Turkey looked uncertain. Engulfed in great challenges, turbulence, and uncertainty, the Turkish population seemed to make a fundamental shift of their values toward a value system that would work as an anchor to which they could be tied. Conservatism to the Rescue Severely battered by the sociopolitical and economic turbulences and challenges, which caused a great uncertainty about the future of the country’s well-being, or of its very existence, people seemed to look for dependable ideological guidance and an anchor. They had perceived the development of great inequalities, and most felt relatively deprived, for they sensed being cast aside by the changing rules of the economic game in the country. A deep sense of socioeconomic frustration began to show in the everyday interactions of people from every walk of life. The country began to develop a marked tendency to resort to violence as a solution to simple problems of daily life,
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from traffic violations to getting in line at the movie theaters. A sense of being hampered from reaching the good life began to sink deep into Turkish society. Not only were people not getting enough out of life in spite of the fact that they worked very hard, but they also began to feel that those who deserved no better and probably much worse than they did seemed be doing much better. Economic liberalism, relaxation of government controls and regulations over domestic and foreign trade, and privatization were perceived as not providing for a fair playing field. The new liberal economic order seemed to lack fairness, justice, and even morality. It was perceived to provide large opportunities for the self-centered and amoral few, who were ready to go up the social ladder in a Machiavellian ride. Egoism, short-term personal interest, and selfishness were promoted as the main values of the new system of laissez-faire liberalism in the 1980s. When Turkey was hit with the news of political scandals involving large sums of money being usurped by the powerful and the rich who rubbed shoulders with political authorities, the general populace simply concluded that it was the new liberal economic policies of the government that caused political corruption. Most concluded that it was a small step from laissez-faire economic policies to cheating, reneging on promises, or other activities that enabled one to make a profit, which seemed to define the new contours of legitimate economic activity in the country. Neither mafia methods of extracting or extorting funds from small and midsize businesses nor wheeling and dealing seemed to be outside the reach of the “anything goes” mentality or legitimacy of the economic policies of the 1980s. The emergence of mafiosi-type organizations in the distribution and development of land in the metropolitan cities of the country and the appearance of the Kurdish nationalist, religious, and other terror networks that began to wield similar methods in extorting financial resources from the business community also coincided with the liberalization of Turkey’s economic system in the 1980s. It is therefore small wonder that a determined search for a “moral and just order” with strong connotations for a new economic policy began to emerge in the 1990s. There emerged lamentations that the country was veering away from the moral norms, values, and orientations that had been internalized by so many generations of Turkish citizens while they were growing up. There emerged a cry for restitution of the moral order of the past in place of the decadent practices of globalization, such as privatization, that rendered the country vulnerable to the encroachments of foreigners, who were perceived as coming in droves to usurp the land, state enterprises, and livelihood. In two national surveys conducted during April and May 2006 and June and July 2007,3 it was unearthed that the most important demand for change among the Turkish population was a return to a revered moral past.4 The masses seemed to shift toward a more traditional and religious society that promoted values stressing respect for the extended family and blood ties, religious solidarity, the elderly, local customs, and territorial solidarity, and suspicion of foreigners and foreign cultures. Such a mix of values often coincided with conservatism. In the words of Kemal Karpat, conservatism “has stressed adherence to religious values, and social customs and traditions, as opposed to reasoning and rational inference in reforming the established institutions and practices of sociopolitical life. In a rapidly changing environment, conservatism functioned in converting and adapting old concepts and practices into the new social milieu Turkey has come to experience.”5 In Turkey, muhafazakarlık (conservatism) has often been employed to
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signal another “m” word—Müslüman (Muslim). It is not possible to know whether it is conservatism that promotes Islam or vice versa in the Turkish context, though there is little doubt that the two belief systems coincide, cohere, and often reinforce each other. It seems as if, when faced with uncertainty, turbulence, and instability concerning the ethnic and religious identity and national solidarity of Turkey, the masses sought solace in going back to their roots and clinging on to traditions, customs, and mores, all of which are cloaked in religion. It is the complex of parochial, primordial, folkloric, and local customs and practices deeply rooted in the fading agricultural society of the country that is effectively penetrated and incorporated in the religious practices of the tarikat network, which provides the core of the conservative belief system in Turkey. Such an amalgam of values has also coincided with a deep suspicion of alien cultures and foreigners, and a deepening sense of chauvinism, which is often confounded with nationalism. Although neither xenophobia nor chauvinism is a necessary ingredient of a conservative belief system, they have often coexisted in Turkey. However, the same cannot be argued for Islam, which has been employed to provoke xenophobia.6 Perhaps it is the close nexus between conservatism and Islam as belief systems that operate in conjunction to precipitate xenophobia and chauvinism of sorts.7 As such, conservatism is purported to host a slant toward chauvinism and xenophobia, and is often confounded with nationalism in Turkey. It is also a matter of fact that the Turkish nationalist movements and parties have moved into closer contact with Islam. After years of frustration at the polls, the Turkish nationalist movements and their main main party the MHP turned to political Islam after the 1990s and this led to their successful performance at the polls in 1991, 1999, and 2007. In Turkish culture there emerged a movement in defense of “the old against the new, the past against the future, East against the West, traditions against the encroachment of modernism.”8 The roots of that movement travel back in time to the Ottoman Empire’s striving toward modernization, secularization, and emulation of the West. A major source from which this movement received its motivation has been the Ottoman-Islamic past of Turkey, which often appears as a cultural and aesthetic nostalgia for a golden age of traditional, Islamic, Ottoman, and Turkic customs, as well as of the eroding local traditions.9 When the first efforts at establishing political parties in the Ottoman Empire began to gain momentum in the Ottoman Royal Assembly (Meclis-i Mebusan), those who were striving to preserve the Ottoman traditional culture, society, and institutions began to adopt and propagate freedom (serbesti ) in society, decentralization, deregulation, and preservation of the religious, social, and cultural practices, mores, customs, and institutions.10 In reaction to political change, modernity, and secularization the Ottoman and later Turkish cultures developed a cultural and political movement that combined economic liberalism, sociocultural conservatism, and religion (i.e., Islam with a strong tendency toward Sunni Islam). The label of conservatism has often been attached to such movements in Turkey, and Turkish conservatism has been, first and foremost, defined as constituting systematic efforts in preserving “traditions, culture, religion and all those institutions that emanated from such sources.”11 The end of the Cold War, globalization, civil and international wars in the Balkans, Caucasus, and the Middle East, and the practice of redrawing borders in Europe, which coincided with rapid social mobilization, democratization, economic modernization, and crises seem to have created an atmosphere of turbulence, flux, and
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uncertainty in Turkey. Turkish society came under international and domestic forces that were rapidly moving the country into uncharted terrain and an uncertain future, the immediate impact of which was the economic downturn, financial meltdown, political corruption, and mismanagement. The outcome was the renewed appeal of conservatism in Turkey. The following chapters of this book are about the nature, character, and meaning of the conservative age in Turkey’s domestic and international political developments.
CHAPTER 3
Socioeconomic Change and Accommodation
I
n the preceding chapter we defined Turkish conservatism as a movement that combines several strands of thought that span liberal economics, traditionalism, sociocultural parochialism, primordialism, xenophobia, and religious activism. This shows that conservatism in the Turkish context hosts several irreconcilable strands. On the one hand, there is a considerable amount of skepticism toward modernization and secularization of the Turkish culture, and on the other, there is a demand for economic change, development, and improved welfare of the downtrodden. What seems to be demanded is a form of economic change that brings about improved standards of welfare without necessarily changing the traditional sociocultural values of Turkey’s rapidly fading agricultural society. What makes these ideas even more irreconcilable is that while some strands are well-supported, others lack almost any conviction among the masses. We will illustrate below that while the Turkish public seems comfortably traditionalist, primordial, and parochial in many aspects of social life, and increasingly religious over the years, there appears little mass conviction on the merits of liberal economic policies. When talking about xenophobia in the Turkish context, we need to be cautious in distinguishing between racial and ethnic xenophobia and fear of the outside world in a social setting that is quite closed to experiences with the outside world and foreigners despite rising tourism and foreign trade. Equally important to note at this juncture are other attitudinal traits that complement the above-depicted picture of Turkish conservatism. We emphasize the authoritarian and dogmatic mind-set that leaves one with the impression that the masses suffer from severe doses of low selfesteem. Similarly, while political efficacy seems to be evenly distributed amongst the masses, anomic attitudinal traits are quite widespread. Perhaps most important of all are the high levels of intolerance among the Turkish masses toward different lifestyles, beliefs, and believers and the even higher levels of this intolerance among the more conservative groups. However, we emphasize in the ensuing analyses that all of these conceptual debates need to be evaluated in light of the empirical data that we present in detail in the following pages. Like any interpretation, ours, too, is not immune from subjectivity. Yet, we present our findings as clearly as possible and underline our deficiencies as the need arises.
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We start our empirical journey with depictions of our measurements and link these to the literature on conservatism as we see fit. As always, the contextual peculiarities of Turkey as well as its conceptual currents, which are quite unique in some respects, need to be kept in mind in all of these evaluations. Tackling Conservatism from an Empirical Angle The core value of conservatism in Turkey is religiosity. Religiosity encompasses several dimensions. One dimension consists of faith (itikat), another of participation in religious rituals (muamelat), and a third, which may be somewhat intertwined with the practice of religion, is the legal and political expectations from the state in Turkey. This third dimension captures attitudinal traits concerning various issues of religious significance on the public agenda. A final, fourth dimension of religiosity consists of the subjective evaluations of individuals concerning their own religiosity. The Turkish religious scene is marked by a number of socioeconomic characteristics. The first among these is the divide between the Sunni and Alevi denominations, who form the two major sects of Islam in Turkey.1 The Sunnis are further divided into those who follow the Hanefi and Shafi schools of law (mezhep). The second characteristic is the divide between those who dictate their lifestyle according to the tenets of Sunni Islam and those who take a secular or anticlerical (laik) view of life. The Alevis, having historically been the minority, tend to support the secularist policies of the Republican era, which provided protection against Sunni infringements on their religious freedoms. Hence the term “pro-Islamist” here refers to Sunni revivalism and reactions to the secularist Republican establishment. It should be noted that the Republican regime, in its efforts to control and regulate Islamic movements in general through, among other means, the use of the Directorate of Religious Affairs has always had a Sunni orientation and has thus kept the Alevi sect mostly outside of the Republican administrative circles of influence. Although kept under control during the Republican era, the historical animosities between the Alevi and Sunni communities have pushed the Alevis into urban settlements and kept their sectarian identities concealed in the public realm. As a result, our questioning of the religiosity of our respondents attempted to distinguish between the Alevi and Sunni sectarian backgrounds together with examining other dimensions of their religious lives. Sunnis versus Alevis Our queries on religious beliefs and practices began with a simple question of whether our respondent considered himself or herself to be a member of a religion. Not surprisingly, our sample almost totally consisted of Muslims.2 Only about 2 percent asserted to be nonbelievers, and we had no Judeo-Christian minority group members in our sample. To those who considered themselves to be Muslims we asked whether they were also Sunni Muslims. Nearly, 10 percent replied that they were not. When further questioned, this group who asserted that they were not Sunni Muslims revealed that 5.5 percent of the total sample were Alevis. While 88.4 percent were self-proclaimed Sunni Muslims, 3 percent declared no affiliation with either the Alevis or Sunnis. Clearly, Sunni Islam is the predominant sect in the country. Despite historically justified incentives for the Alevi group to conceal their religious affiliation, we observe that 5 to 6 percent of the sample is ready to openly assert their Alevi sectarian background.
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However, we expect this group to be unrepresentative of the Alevi community in general. Their readiness to assert their sectarian affiliation is expected and is coupled with atypical levels of education and socioeconomic status in comparison to the latent Alevi community. This necessitates further efforts to estimate Alevism with additional questions. We continued our questioning of our respondents’ sectarian backgrounds by providing them with a list of names of religiously significant personalities and asking them to tell us who they thought was the most important among the group presented to them. Three out of seven names (Caliph Ali, Hacı Bektaş Veli, and Sheikh Ahmet Yesevi) in this list were significant in the Alevi tradition.3 Among the three names of significance, Caliph Ali is the most frequently cited followed by Hacı Bektaş Veli, and Sheikh Ahmet Yesevi. The Alevi names were mixed with others in the individual responses. Since some individuals may have given both of their choices from the Alevi tradition, we separated individuals who used Alevi names in their replies and identified that 11.1 percent of the sample comprised of such individuals. Clearly, some of these individuals did not assert themselves as Alevis in the previous question. We believe that replies to this particular question together with at least one other question asked immediately after provided an indicator of the number of Alevi respondents. As the last step in our efforts to assess Alevism among our sample respondents, we asked them whether they had pictures of religious figures and religiously significant locations in their homes. The most common picture was that of the Kaaba (nearly 37 percent asserted to have a picture of the Kaaba). Pictures of al-Aksa mosque (13 percent) came in a distant second, followed by the twelve Imams (5.5 percent) and pictures of the Caliph Ali (6.4 percent). When we separated those who declared that they had either pictures of the Caliph Ali or of the twelve Imams from the rest of the people surveyed, we obtained a group of about 9 percent in our sample. We see that while the percentage of Alevis in our first round of questions was slightly above 5 percent, the second and third round of questions yielded a group nearly twice that size or more. We combine all three sets of questions to form an additive index of Alevism. Those who provided no responses that suggested Alevi affiliation in all three questions, or Sunni affiliation by default, comprised about 83 percent of our sample. The remaining 17 percent had one, two, or three responses suggesting an Alevi affiliation (see Table 3.1 below).
Table 3.1
An index of Alevi orientation
Sectarian orientation (%) Religiously significant figures mentioned (%) Pictures of religious leaders at home (%)
5.5 11.1 9.0
Additive index of Alevi orientation (0) No Alevi/Bektashi orientation in three questions concerning sectarian orientation, religiously significant figures and pictures of religious leaders at home (1) One Alevi/Bektashi orientation observed out of three questions (2) Two Alevi/Bektashi orientations observed out of three questions (3) Three Alevi/Bektashi orientations observed out of three questions
83.4 10.4 3.4 2.8 100
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The Rising Tide of Conservatism in Turkey
We have to admit that this measurement of Alevisim is in no way a perfect diagnosis of who is an Alevi in Turkey. We did not question belief differences between the Alevis and Hanefi Sunnis, for instance, and implicitly assumed that the meaning of faith symbols and their importance would travel across the two branches of Islam. Yet we know this is not correct. However, we also know that given the oppressed-minority status of Alevis in the country, it is quite difficult if not impossible to question faith in daily practice and at the same time obtain measurements of different kinds. In order to obtain these other measurements concerning conservative ideologies, we refrained from developing any further measures of Alevism. Nevertheless, as our analyses below illustrates, we did find sensible and clearly expected differences between our group of Alevis and the rest of our sample. Those who we considered to be Alevis appear both in their behavior as well as attitudes and values to be different from the rest of our sample. Notably, further analyses of the Alevi group in our sample, with respect to their attitudes, revealed that any liberal, nonconservative, and nonconformist attitudes were more likely to be found among them than among the rest of our sample. We will further elaborate on this analysis below, but at this juncture such observations increase our confidence that this measure of Alevism is adequately valid for our purposes. Religious Faith In our analysis of the degree of religious faith in Turkey, we followed Charles Y Glock and Rodney Stark who identified five dimensions of religiosity.4 This approach was adapted to Muslim piety by Riaz Hassan,5 Ali Çarkoğlu and Binnaz Toprak,6 and Ali Çarkoğlu and Riaz Hassan.7 The ideological or faith dimension emphasizes a set of fundamental beliefs with which individuals are required to comply. A number of core doctrinal beliefs can be identified for this dimension: a belief in God, in sin, in the existence of heaven and hell, in spirits, in the afterlife, and in the existence of the devil.8 Believers in God formed the highest proportion—about 99 percent. Life after death and the existence of the devil, however, were believed by about 92 percent of the respondents. We aggregated these seven items into a single additive scale of faith. The Cronbach’s alpha reliability measure was 0.94, which is quite high for the additive scale in question. We used the same scaling technique throughout the analyses below. In all our scales we brought together items that had the same response categories or the same basic Likert-type scale, usually ranging in responses from 0 to 10. The items were then added to find the total score for each individual member of our sample. This score is then divided by the total maximum possible score that could be obtained to express each individual score as the percentage of the total maximum score. As such, all our scales can be represented over the same range of values from 0 to 100, and thus comparisons across measurements become much easier. The distribution of respondents across the scale values ranging from zero to one hundred show that only about 1.6 percent of our sample responded that they believed in none of the seven items in our scale thus obtaining a scale value of 0. About 5.5 percent reported to believe four out of seven of our items (a scale value of 57 percent) or less. Persistent believers who reported faith in all seven of our items comprised nearly 90 percent of our respondents. What emerged as an interesting point to note was the difference between the Alevi and non-Alevi communities. Clearly, the social context in Turkey of 2006 did not offer much help to a nonconformist or agnostic individual. Nine out of ten individuals
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believed in everything presented to them. However, among the Alevi community, this proportion went down to about eight out of ten. About 10 percent of the Alevis in our sample reported to believe less than 50 percent of the religious values presented to them on our list. Religious Practice The dimension of ritualistic or religious practice comprises acts of worship through which believers are expected to show their devotion to their religion. Such practices shape their religious identities through socialization experiences; individuals adopt certain key values commonly shared by their fellow believers and become part of a community of believers. Acts of worship, much more easily observed than any of the other beliefs in different aspects of faith, effectively shape the religious identities of individuals within the community. As such, they play a crucial role in defining the individual’s image as a pious person in their community. Among the large number of rituals in Islam, only one was brought up in the questionnaire. This referred to the frequency of worship for women and the frequency of mosque attendance for men. Other practices such as charitable payments (zekat and fitre), lamb sacrifice (kurban), and the pilgrimage to Mecca (the hajj) were not questioned in our interviews. In asking about the frequency of worship, we treated men and women differently on a similar scale. We have to underline that while mosque attendance is a publicly observable act for men, private prayer or worship may not be for women. Mosque attendance is also more relevant for men than women in Turkey. Examining the same question for men and women separately, we see that a larger group of women than men report to pray more than once a week and that a greater percentage of men than women report to attend Friday prayers (see table 3.2). Equally noticeable is that more than one fifth of the women reported that they prayed during the month of Ramadan compared to only about 5 percent of men. It is again noticeable that Alevi practices vary significantly from the dominant Sunni practices, as reflected in our measurements. Slightly less than one out of every four Alevi men seem to go to mosques more than once a week. The percentage of Alevi men who practice Friday prayers is higher than that of those who attend prayers at the mosque more than once a week. Nearly double the number of Alevi women than men go a mosque more than once a week. Slightly more than one out of every four Alevi men claim to be nonpracticioners of this ritual (“less than once a year,” “never, almost never” answers Table 3.2
Worship practices of Muslim men in Turkey Total sample
Scale value More than once a week Once a week (on Fridays) Once a month During the month of Ramadan Once or twice a year (during Bayrams) Less than once a year Never, almost never Total
Men
Women
Alevi sample Total
Total
Men
Women
(6) (5) (4) (3) (2)
29.6 39.4 4.4 4.9 7.3
47.4 8.3 7.5 22.6 1.9
38.5 23.9 6.0 13.7 4.6
35.0 18.0 7.5 10.8 5.6
23.6 31.9 3.5 4.9 9.0
45.1 5.6 11.1 16.0 2.5
(1) (0)
3.4 10.9
4.1 8.2
3.8 9.6
4.2 19.0
4.2 22.9
4.3 15.4
100
100
100
100
100
100
32
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The Rising Tide of Conservatism in Turkey
put together). For women this drops down to one in every five. When we compare these figures with the non-Alevi or Sunni majority practices, we see that the difference between the two communities is much larger for men than for women. In other words, only about 14 percent of Sunni men report to be nonpracticioners (“less than once a year,” “never, almost never” answers put together), whereas this figure is 27 percent for Alevi men—nearly double the size. For Sunni women, the nonpracticing group comprises only about 12 percent of the community, whereas the nonpracticing Alevi women’s group comprises nearly 20 percent of that community. We formed a simple linear scale out of this question by assigning a practice value of 0 to those who constituted the category of never praying/worshiping, 1 to those who reported to pray/worship less than once a year, and so on until we reach a value of 6 for those who reported to pray/worship more than once a week. We observed from this scale that about 39 percent of our sample reported to pray/worship/go to the mosque more than once a week. This group however comprised of more women than men. Similarly, a predominantly male group of about 24 percent reported to pray/worship/go to the mosque once a week. These were most likely predominantly Friday noon–service attendees. Accordingly, more than 60 percent of our sample reported that they worshiped once or more than once a week. Religious Attitudes The attitudinal predispositions of our respondents form one of the critical bases of our arguments on the developing conservative worldview in Turkey. Our attitudinal analyses were all based on the same framework. We presented the respondents with statements to which they had to respond according to the extent that they agreed with each one on a 0 (totally disagree) to 10 (totally agree) scale. The statements provided were evaluated not as separate groups, but mixed with other statements aimed at grasping different attitudinal dimensions. In other words, we did not ask the religious attitude questions as a separate group followed by the items of another scale. We analyzed those items measuring religiosity separately. Two branches in the religious attitude group can be distinguished: one that reflects a clear conservative stance and the other that reflects a less conservative position, which we refer to as a liberal religious position. The two-dimensional structure we present below is a simplification supported by more intricate factor analyses, however, we leave these details out of our presentation here and use the simplified version throughout our ensuing analyses. All statements are worded so that those who tend to agree with them can be grouped as individuals with either conservative (or liberal) religious attitudinal characteristics, as opposed to those who disagree, who are grouped as nonconservative (or illiberal).9 We do not see religious conservatism as the antithesis of liberalism and thus conceive of this ideological predisposition as a unidimensional construct. In such a unidimensional conception the more an individual scores on the liberal side, the less conservative he or she becomes. We have, rather, adopted a dualist approach, following Kerlinger,10 where liberalism and conservatism are viewed as orthogonal to one another and where unidimensionality appears to be a special case. This special case occurs in polarized issues when liberals (conservatives) favor an issue and conservatives (liberals) oppose it. However, not only does such polarization rarely occur but we also observe that liberals and conservatives are rarely focused on the same issues and, rather, emphasize different ones. As Kathleen Knight notes, “When both liberals and conservatives attend to the
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same issue, they may define it differently or bring different values to bear.”11 When considering the issues related to religion in the Turkish case, for example, while the conservatives focus on unisex and religious education, interreligious marriage, and religious marriage ceremonies, the liberals focus more on compulsory religious education and the content of education on religion, maintaining a balance between science and religion, and a separation between private and public spheres in religion. Looking into the statements that capture religious conservatism, the highest mean agreement value is observed for the statement concerning missionary activities and religious marriages. An almost equally supported view concerns the relationship between overcoming difficulties and religious belief. A large majority of about 75 percent believed that “we can overcome any difficulty if our religious belief is strong.” As reported earlier by Çarkoğlu and Toprak,12 nearly 60 percent agree with the objection to their daughters marrying a non-Muslim. While nearly half of the sample agrees to having restaurants and coffeehouses closed until the breaking of the Ramadan fast, about one out of four disagrees with this position. Similarly, nearly half of the sample (46 percent) agrees with sending their children to religious Imam Hatip Schools (high schools for imam and preacher training), while 28 percent object to such an idea. When it came to the statement suggesting that girls and boys should not attend classes together in schools, we observed a large group in disagreement (45 percent), while only about 31 percent of the respondents agreed with the statement. This statement obtains the lowest average agreement on a 0-to-10 scale. Two additional statements attract even larger percentages of respondents who agree with them. One of these statements emphasized restrictions upon missionary activities aiming to expand other faiths, and 65 percent of the respondents agreed that such activities should be restricted. The other statement was related to wedlock, and 67 percent of the respondents agreed that having only the legal, official (resmi ) civil marriage without the religious marriage ceremonies would not be enough. The groups that disagreed with both these statements consist of 8 percent and 12 percent of the total, respectively. When we look into the statements that reflect the religious liberalism dimension, the highest average agreement score is observed on the statement relating to religion being a private affair. The respondents who agreed with the statement that “religious belief is a private affair; no one should intervene into other people’s religious affairs” constituted 76 percent of the group. Nearly 60 percent agree with the two statements that “having elective classes on religion in secondary schools is a good idea” (average agreement score of 6 out of 10) and “those who are not believers are equally worthy of respect as believers” (average agreement score of 6.2 out of 10). Support for a rational, scientific line of thinking rather than a religious one on issues concerning morality was nearly 57 percent. A group of about 60 percent supported the views that information about different sects should also be presented in religious education and non-Muslim minorities should be able to pursue and use their civic rights fully. When we formed an additive religious conservatism scale following the procedure explained above, we observed a reliability measure of Cronbach’s alpha value of 0.62 for the seven items used in this scale. For the religious liberalism scale, we observed a Cronbach’s alpha value of 0.78 for the six items used in that scale. When we looked into the distribution of our sample across these two scales we observed that both Alevi and Sunni communities appeared quite religiously conservative, though the Alevis in our sample seemed to be somewhat more religiously liberal than the Sunnis. If we take the scale value of 50 as a point of reference, which shows an agreement score that is half the
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The Rising Tide of Conservatism in Turkey
possible maximum score obtainable, then we observe that for the religious liberalism scale, a larger proportion of our respondents agreed with liberal evaluations (nearly 86 percent of our sample) than conservative evaluations (nearly 76 percent agreeing). A more interesting result is that among the Alevi community, the conservative scores decline while the liberal scores increase. For example, about 89 percent of the Alevis received more than half the possible score on the religious liberalism scale, and about 65 percent of the Alevis received more than half the possible maximum score on the religious conservatism scale. In other words, though Alevis appear more liberal than the Sunni group on religious issues, it is through a slight difference of degree and not quality, and the level of religious conservatism among the Alevi respondents is also quite high. Figure 3.1 shows the relative standings of the various demographic groups along these two dimensions of religiosity. This is a graph type that we will frequently use in our ensuing analyses. It depicts a scattergram of mean values for different demographic groups across two dimensions. Any point on this figure represents the combination of average values of the two dimensions for a given demographic group. For instance, the average Republican People’s Party (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi—CHP)13 voter in our sample scores 53 on the religious conservatism scale and about 73 on the religious liberalism scale.14 We observe that the southeast corner of our graph, where higher-than-average religious conservatism is associated with lower-than-average religious liberalism, contains people with right-wing ideological inclinations. Similarly, those who are supporters of the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi—AKP)15 and Nationalist Action Party (Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi—MHP)16 are also in this corner along with people who have had no formal schooling and those who live in rural areas. While the Alevi respondents appear to be more liberal and less conservative than the country average, the non-Alevi respondents stand very close to the country average on these values. The northwestern corner, where higher-than-average religious liberalism and lower-than-average religious conservatism is found, contains left-wing ideological groups who are CHP supporters and who possess a relatively higher education and socioeconomic status. It is noticeable that those who speak Kurdish appear on the 74 CHP
University +
Religious Liberalism (RL)
72 High school High-SES Left Middle-SES
70
Alevi Urban
Regression Line RL=76,5-013 RC
Not Kurdish Women Men Total Non-Alevi
68
Rural No schooling Right AKP
Primary
Kurdish
Low-SES
66
64 MHP 62 45
50
55
60 Religious Conservatism (RC)
Figure 3.1 Religious conservatism vs. liberal-democratic variables.
65
70
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lower-than-average religious conservatism corner as well as on the liberalism corner at the southwest of our figure. Kurdish speakers are the only group with such an odd combination of liberalism and conservatism on religious attitudes. Self-Evaluated Religiosity Lastly, we had a self-evaluation of religiosity by our respondents included in the questionnaire. The specific wording of the question was, “Irrespective of how often you worship, to what degree would you consider yourself to be religious?” The distribution of the answers to this question was heavily skewed in favor of those who considered themselves to be religious. Nearly 68 percent of our respondents placed themselves at the religious end of our 0-to-10 scale, while about 12 percent placed themselves at the relatively nonreligious end. About 21 percent chose the very middle of our scale, equidistant to both ends. We also see that women were more likely to be on the religious side than men. When we looked into these self-evaluated religiosity figures for only the Alevi community, we observed that in about one in every four Alevis we have someone closer to being nonreligious in his or her evaluation. That figure was slightly more than double the comparable group of non-Alevis. The Alevi group who in their own evaluation was closer to being religious was about 14 percentage points smaller, at 68 percent, than the non-Alevi community. Looking further into the demographic components of self-evaluated religiosity across different groups, we observed that low education, rural settlements, right-wing ideological orientation, women, and those of a non-Kurdish ethnic background were all associated with a higher-than-country average score in self-evaluated religiosity values. Compared to the country average, we saw that those who had no schooling saw themselves as the most religious on average. The AKP constituency came a close second, followed by right-wing and rural populations. On the lower side of the picture, we have high school and university graduates and the CHP voters. We have so far created five different measures of religiosity. These measures are modestly but significantly correlated with one another with correlations coefficients ranging between -0.17 and 0.51. These correlations, not being very high, suggest that these measures grasp different dimensions of religiosity. In other words, if we were to obtain high correlations among all five measures, then we could be suspected of measuring the same phenomenon under different guises. However, here we are not only using different variables to operationalize these concepts but are also determining that they capture different phenomena. Right-Wing Authoritarianism and Dogmatism The study of authoritarianism from the perspective of individuals and their psychology can be traced to the turbulent decades of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries.17 The increase of the study of the psychological bases of political behavior coincided with rapid social change in many different corners of Europe. The social discomfort of the times was commonly seen as a factor of significant influence upon the psychological traits of individuals who formed the mass bases of chaotic sociopolitical systems that resulted in authoritarian regimes. Rooted in the earlier and contemporaneous studies of the psychology of mass and elite movements, the behavioral study of authoritarianism can be traced to the rise of German Nazism. The historical context within which these
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The Rising Tide of Conservatism in Turkey
studies developed could provide a guideline to our search for the determinants of Turkish conservatism, which carries significant doses of authoritarianism in its ideological bases as well as mass psychological traits. The case of German unification and resurgent capitalist development is perhaps a classic example of capitalist modernization that was built upon the ruins of a traditional communitarian and agrarian society. With the help of modern bureaucratic management forms, German social, economic, and political spheres of life have rapidly changed. While the state apparatus remained omnipotent, large private companies, labor unions, and political parties also emerged inevitably and contemporaneously, transforming the traditional German closed village life and uprooting the agrarian communities, who were pushed into busy industrial cities. Although similar to earlier experiences in Britain, the German case was a latecomer, was faster in pace, and created deeper social scars as a consequence. The emerging early German sociology was led by Max Weber and focused on the roots of capitalist development, bureaucratization, and alienation. With the loss of World War I and economic depression gaining ground in the late 1920s, the problematic development of German society in earlier decades seemed to have advanced. Contemporaneously, with the growing segments of alienated and disoriented masses, the fascist movement gained momentum and slowly captured all facets of German society. Strongly influenced by Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis, Wilhelm Reich pioneered the analysis of the authoritarian personality in his 1933 book The Mass Psychology of Fascism. From the very beginning, the analysis of authoritarianism developed in line with the historical development of various forms of authoritarian regimes, which were seen as emanating from the mass personality traits that provided their foundations. A more coherent and interdisciplinary analysis of the psychological bases of authoritarianism was put together at the Institute of Social Research in Frankfurt under the umbrella of the so-called “Frankfurt School.” The Frankfurt School undertook a series of research projects under the direction of Max Horkheimer that were geared toward an understanding of the working-class mentality. With the Nazi ascension to power in 1933, the institute was effectively dismantled. However, even the preliminary surveys conducted in the 1930s diagnosed significant doses of authoritarianism in the German mass psyche. Horkheimer published the preliminary results of this collective effort under the title Studies on Authority and Family.18 Two chapters, one by Erich Fromm and another by Herbert Marcuse, are relevant from our perspective for understanding the conservative mind-set. Fromm’s contribution underlined the origins of the authoritarian personality in family life. Marcuse’s essay underlined the contemporaneous rise in themes of freedom and authoritarian and totalitarian arguments in political discourse and debates. The empirical work in Horkheimer’s collection eventually led to Theodore Adorno’s collaborative study that came to dominate the studies of authoritarianism even in the post–World War II period. Right-Wing Authoritarianism or Old-Fashioned Values? Individuals characterized by the authoritarian personality according to the F (or Fascistic) scale of Adorno et al.19 show signs of unjustifiable conformity to their social environment and compliance with authority, intolerance to differences of opinion, and insecurity in their social relations, along with various forms of superstition. On a personal level, these personalities do all they can to find and maintain order, security, and stability in their
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lives. Any challenge to their worldviews renders them anxious and upset. However, rather than giving orders, it seems that the authoritarian personality is more inclined to take orders. Their intolerance to anything that goes against their standards of normality can be traced back to their search for security and order. Any divergence from “normality” that may be conceptualized in reference to their own terms of religion, race, shared history, or nationality, culture, language, and the like are seen as threats to be avoided and, if possible, punished. The authoritarian personality also exhibits a tendency toward stereotypical thinking concerning social, sexual, and ethnic minorities and/or oppressed groups. Adorno et al.’s approach aims at measuring authoritarianism and provides a complex psychodynamic explanation of how authoritarianism develops and what constitutes its main traits. However, many criticisms were raised against their approach.20 The F scale has increasingly been discredited on a number of conceptual as well as methodological grounds. Group loyalty, which forms the backbone of Adorno et al.’s perspective, came to be seen as a universal human attribute rather than a deviant behavioral trait. Even the focus on ethnocentrism and stereotyping is now seen by many as a “universal, ineradicable psychological processes.”21 On methodological grounds, it has been argued that the F scale is an invalid measure and that it does not predict authoritarian behavior.22 Politically left-wing voters have been observed to have inflated scores on the F scale.23 It has also been argued that the F scale does not help in explaining racism.24 John J. Ray gives a number of examples from the literature on authoritarian psychology that the F scale has not only been a failure, but has also been shown to correlate with a number of other variables, which suggest that it does “measure something that seems to have an effect on many other variables.”25 Howard Gabennesch’s research suggests that the F scale taps a certain “narrowness of world-view and a narrow breadth of perspective.”26 It can be assumed from this explanation that respondents with high F scale scores would possess low levels of education.27 Ray also suggests that research on myths and superstitions that was popular in the 1920s could provide an answer to what precisely the F scale grasps as a measure.28 High correlations between the F scale and the tendency to believe in popular myths and superstitions of the past can be taken to mean that the F scale and the belief in popular myths are parallel measurements.29 It is also argued that the F scale was a collection of old-fashioned views even at the time it was compiled and that the F scale psychology can be traced to periods earlier than the 1920s.30 Ray also suggests that high correlations of the F scale scores with age can also be taken as evidence of the claim that the F scale taps old-fashioned views rather than conservative, authoritarian, or racist attitudes.31 Another bias of the F scale toward authoritarian values may be due to its emphasis on child-rearing practices at the time, which were very different from current day practice and values: “About a third of the items stress the importance of authority in general and several specifically advocate obedience to authority by young people—exactly what we would expect of a scale embodying 1920’s values. Putting it another way, the pro-authority content of the F scale is an important part of its ‘old-fashionedness.’”32 Dogmatism We will illustrate below that in light of the Turkish data, authoritarianism à la Adorno et al. as reflected in their F scale has little to do with authoritarianism or racism but rather relates to old-fashioned values. However, our survey framework also provides yet another complementary attitudinal trait rooted in the literature: dogmatism.
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Dogmatism is another central concept that places personality characteristics as the root cause of political behavior. Open-mindedness as opposed to closed-mindedness forms the cognitive basis of the dogmatic personality, which tend to be antidemocratic and authoritarian in its approach to politics, intolerant to social differences, and is narrow-minded and rigid in its overall world view. With very little or no questioning, dogmatic personalities seem to respect customary values or beliefs and thus tend to conform to social dogma. Similar to the motivations of Adorno et al. (1950), dogmatism was used to account for the rising authoritarianism of the pre–World War II period. 33 Such focus on right-wing authoritarianism seems to have impeded analysts’ diagnoses of common mind-sets between the extreme left-wing authoritarian mind-set and their counterparts on the right.34 Since Milton Rokeach’s groundbreaking article in 1954 on the “Nature and Meaning of Dogmatism,” there emerged an ever-growing literature on dogmatism that developed as a more generalized theory of authoritarianism distinct from the Adornian approach that grasped a more right-wing authoritarianism. Rokeach’s original definition of dogmatism underlines a closed cognitive organization of belief and disbelief about reality. In addition, there is a cognitive organization around a central set of beliefs about absolute authority that establishes a basis for various patterns of intolerance toward others.35 These cognitive and attitudinal characteristics form the basis of the argument put forth by many that Rokeach’s definition of dogmatism is a more generalized theory of authoritarianism compared to the F scale, which only captures right-wing authoritarianism that could be reinterpreted as measuring just old-fashioned values.36 Dogmatic individuals are unable to distinguish between the information content and the status of the authority from which this information originates forms the source of the dogmatic cognitive bias.37 Fred Kerlinger and Milton Rokeach noted that a common authoritarian core existed in both the Adorno- and the Rokeach-type scales.38 Nevertheless, they also underline that most of the items from these two scales loaded on different factors. This observation forms the basis of our two-dimensional distinction between authoritarianism, or the old-fashioned value stance, and dogmatism among our respondents. Our approach to the measurement of the authoritarian/old-fashioned attitudes and dogmatism was similar in its logic of adapting the scale to already-developed scales in the literature. We offered a number of items to our respondents that were designed to tap their personality in terms of authoritarian/old-fashioned and dogmatic attitudinal traits. The respondents were asked to evaluate each assertion on an eleven-point scale where 0 indicated total disagreement and 10 indicated total agreement with the given statement. By offering a mixture of directions to be evaluated in our assertions, we tried to balance the judgment of our respondents who might have been inclined to agree or oppose a given line of argument. However, in forming our final scale judgments, we reverse coded those items to yield a unidirectional measure of our attitudinal dimension. Looking into the average agreement scores for all statements included in this analysis, we saw that all statements tended to attract agreement rather than opposition. The highest rate of agreement occured for the statement, “whatever serves the interests of the state also serves the interests of the people” (an average score of 7.2 on a 0-to-10 scale). The statement that “schools should teach children to be obedient” followed closely in eliciting overwhelming agreement. The following two statements, which slightly more than 60 percent of respondents agreed with, were more reflective of an oppressive fascistic attitude with a clear authoritarian tone. The first stated that
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“one good way to teach certain people right from wrong is to give them a good stiff punishment when they get out of line,” and the second, “those who run the country should be strong and intelligent and be able to rule, if necessary, single handedly.” Both statements obtained average agreement score of about 6 out of 10. The only statement that touched the private sphere of individuals raising children directly received slightly less than 50 percent support and got an average score of about 5 out of 10. Lastly, about three-quarters of our respondents disagreed with the statement that “uneducated people should not have the right to vote.” All in all, these six statements brought together a clear authoritarian posture for individuals who found themselves in agreement with the statements given for evaluation. As such, they represented very little discernible inclination of an old-fashioned attitudinal perspective but rather reflected an oppressive, homogenizing authoritarian preoccupation in their approach to the public as well as the private sphere of life. In a similar vein, the average agreement scores for the ten statements in the dogmatism scale reflected a clear lack of skeptical judgment on the part of the respondents and a close-mindedness that was reflective of a dogmatic worldview. The statement that received the highest agreement among our respondents argued that there were only two kinds of people: those who were for and those who were opposed to going against the truth. Belief in a single over-encompassing truth was also reflected in the statement “of all the different philosophies which exist in this world there is probably only one which is correct.” The glorification of heroism reflected in another statement received an equally high degree of agreement from our respondents. Similarly, dedication to a great cause, whatever that cause might be, was also glorified. Such dedication was seen as a source of meaning in one’s life. The two subsequent statements argued, first, that it is natural to know only those ideas one believes in and, second, that not much emphasis is to be placed upon having to understand alternative perspectives. Nonconformist arguments against group trends were rejected as part of the same dogmatic attitudinal approach. Intolerance was reflected in the argument that “most of the ideas that get printed nowadays aren’t worth the paper they are printed on.” One-sided and unbalanced analysis that reduced complex phenomena into black and white caricatures was common in all these statements. The complex nature of EU-Turkish relations was reduced to a forced simplification that nothing in common existed between Europe and Turkey. Finally, the inherently discomforting complexity of real-world phenomena was bypassed with reference to the guidance of experts and leaders. A factor analysis of the sixteen items summarized above yielded two clear dimensions: the first, dogmatism, and the second, authoritarianism. Following the same additive procedure we formed our two scales that are shown in figure 3.2 below.39 More than 85 percent of the respondents agreed with the statements given in both scales. Dogmatic tendencies seemed to exist more prominently than authoritarian ones. This tendency is partially related to the skeptical stance of the Kurdish-speaking respondents who showed less of a tendency to agree with the authoritarian items. Kurdish speakers scored higher than average on dogmatism but lower on authoritarianism. This is clearly attributable to their minority status that leaves little room for agreement with statements such as “whatever serves the interests of the state also serves the interests of the people” or “those who run the country should be strong and intelligent and be able to rule, if necessary, single handedly.” Similarly, we observe that Kurdish speakers, whose educational attainment is relatively low, found it difficult to agree with the statement that “uneducated people should not have the right to vote.”
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The Rising Tide of Conservatism in Turkey
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30
84.4 % higher than 50 on
Authoritarianism scale Dogmatism scale
26.9
25 22.9
22.1
23.0
% frequency
20 18.6
17.3
15.3
15
14.1
10
9.4 7.7 5.8
5 1.8 0
5.7
3.5 0.3 0.1 0
Figure 3.2
0.7 0.0 10
0.0 20
2.4 0.3 30
2.2
97.3 % higher than 50 on Dogmatism
40 50 60 Scale Values 0 to 100
70
80
90
100
Authoritarianism and dogmatism scales.
The voting-age population in rural areas with low levels of education and right-wing ideological tendencies and who intend to vote for the AKP form the basis of a constituency that represents the backbone of the Turkish dogmatic and authoritarian votingage population. The higher the socioeconomic status and educational attainment of an individual, the more likely it is that they would have a lower-than-average score on both the authoritarianism and dogmatism scales. The MHP constituency appears slightly more authoritarian on average, but significantly less dogmatic compared to the CHP constituency. However, we should note here that the average dogmatism score for the MHP voters is about 67 out of 100 and that of the CHP voters is slightly over 68, while for the AKP it is slightly below 69. In short, these differences are statistically significant but in substance fail to meaningfully demonstrate the different levels of dogmatism across party constituencies. All three major party constituencies seem to agree with about two-thirds of the dogmatism items on our scale. About five out of a hundred points of difference exist between university graduates and respondents who had never been to school. In short, the range of variation on this scale across almost all constituencies is quite small. Old-Fashioned Values Old-fashioned values consist of three dimensions. The first one captures youth-related conservatism, the second taps into yearnings about the past, and the third reveals attitudes to women and their role in society. The twenty-four items included in our factor analysis yielded these three dimensions that are clearly differentiated from one another. The factor analysis results are presented in the appendix to this chapter. We briefly present the descriptive properties of these items in three groups and then form our three additive scales followed by a short demographic analysis of their characteristics. The items that tap the first dimension of old-fashioned views were mostly concerned with the treatment, education, and place of young people in Turkish society. Three items captured the degree of respect shown by young people toward the older
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generation: their visiting older family members during religious holidays, not interrupting their parents’ conversation, and not drinking alcohol in front of older family members. Stressing the importance of formal attire or the necessity of safeguarding moral values against infringements from Western culture went hand in hand with the old-fashioned views concerning the place of the youth in social life. The occurrences of women going to work in inappropriate attire were seen as unacceptable, and it was mostly young women who were culpable in this regard. So it is not surprising that this item loads on this dimension of old-fashioned values that taps on youth-related rather than gender-related issues. Similarly, the reaction to movies that could be interpreted as “immoral” or contrary to “our” common set of traditions and customs was disapproved under this dimension as well. These items were loaded on the same dimension, separating themselves from the two other distinct dimensions that tapped on yearning for the past and gender-related old-fashionedness. When we formed an additive scale out of these ten items, we got a respectful measure of reliability through a Cronbach’s alpha value of 0.77. The second dimension of old-fashioned values captured gender-related issues. The defining characteristic of the items on this dimension was their tendency to keep women subjugated to an old moral code that primarily assigns to them the duty of raising children and being submissive to their husbands. Equality in marriage did not receive much support. On the political scene as well, we observe that wives following their husbands’ guidance gains prominence in evaluations of the item in question. We see that only about 45 percent disagreed with the statement that “generally women are less intelligent than men.” However, at face value, women’s participation in politics received a high level of support with about 80 percent of respondents in agreement (average recoded value being 2.5 on a 0-to-10 scale of agreement). Similarly, protection of women against honor killings by increasing the punishment against such offenses received the approval of about 83 percent of the sample. When we formed our usual additive scale from these eight items, we obtained a Cronbach’s alpha value of 0.69. The third dimension in our old-fashioned values analysis had six items loaded on the same dimension that tapped what we called a “yearning for the past,” which brought together views that sublimated things from the past. Music from the past appeared to be accorded greater value when compared with more contemporary forms of music. The previous generation’s lives were seen as more comfortable when compared to the present-day lives of our respondents. Familiar and secure but less profitable business undertakings had more approval from the respondents. Even inventions were seen as making lives more difficult rather than more comfortable. When we formed an additive scale out of these eight items, we got a respectful Cronbach’s alpha value of 0.66. This yearning-for-the-past scale also appeared highly correlated with our above-developed authoritarianism and dogmatism scales (Pearson product-moment correlation coefficients of 0.34 and 0.40, respectively). Figure 3.3 shows the relative standings of different demographic groups on the twodimensional space defined by our old-fashioned values scale reflecting youth-related conservatism and yearning for the past. The overall regression line taking the first dimension of youth-related conservatism (YRC) as the independent variable to explain the yearning-for-the-past (YP) scale values has a significant positive slope. What we observe in this picture is a reconfirmation of a pattern that has surfaced many times before in our analyses. Although the average level of old-fashionedness is quite high across all respondents, the relatively more old-fashioned constituencies, which are
Old Fashioned Values-Yearning for the Past (YP)
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The Rising Tide of Conservatism in Turkey
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66 Low-SES
64 Not Kurdish
Women
Rural Right MHP Primary AKP
Total
62
Men Regression line YP=33.8+0.4 YRC
60 High school
Left
Middle-SES
Kurdish
Urban CHP
High-SES
58
56 University + 54 64
Figure 3.3
66
68 70 72 74 Old Fashioned Values-Youth Related Conservatism (YRC)
76
78
Old-fashioned values: Demographic variables.
more conservative on issues related to the youth and who glorify the past more than others, are found among the right-wing constituencies and their parties—the AKP and the MHP—and the lower-educated rural constituencies. While a Kurdish background does not seem to differentiate individuals along the youth-related conservatism dimension, there is some small degree of differentiation along the third dimension of yearning for the past where respondents of Kurdish origin as a group are in a lower level than the countrywide average. The largest differences in old-fashionedness are found among educational and ideological groups. Another repeated pattern that shows up in this picture is that group averages for the rural highly old-fashioned-value holders, right-wing party supporters, and less educated groups appear to have a higher average value of yearning for the past than what was expected on the basis of their youth-related conservatism scores. Just the opposite trend holds for the comparatively low old-fashioned scoring groups that were relatively more educated, urban, left-leaning, and of a higher socioeconomic status.40 As authoritarianism and dogmatism increase so do the levels of scales for all three of the old-fashioned values dimensions. We observe that the MHP and AKP constituencies appear relatively more authoritarian and old-fashioned on youth-related issues when compared with the CHP constituencies. Similarly, more youth-related oldfashioned values and authoritarian average scores are found among the lower-educated and rural segments of Turkish society. High school and university graduates appear to have the lowest average scores on both youth-related old-fashioned values and authoritarianism. Those who chose a clear left-wing ideological stance on the conventional left-right scale are also significantly less authoritarian and less old-fashioned on the other two dimensions. What is also noticeable is that while a Kurdish background makes no difference in terms of youth-related old-fashioned values, Kurdish speakers possess relatively lower authoritarian tendencies than their non-Kurdish counterparts. A similar picture also appears for the relationship between youth-related old-fashioned attitudes and dogmatism. The overall relationship between these two measures is a positive and significant one. Relatively less dogmatic and youth-related conservative
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30 Old Fashiond values-Youth related issues
27.5 Old Fashiond values-Gender related issues
25
% frequency
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Old Fashioned Values-Yearning for the past
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94.4 % higher than 50 on youth related issues scale 32.6 % higher than 50 on gender related issues scale 76.2 % higher than 50 on yearning for the past scale
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Figure 3.4 Old-fashioned values.
groups are usually made up of higher-educated, left-leaning urban dwellers. The more dogmatic and old-fashioned groups are the right-wing voters of the AKP and the MHP, rural dwellers, and lower-educated groups. Figure 3.4 depicts the distributions of the three old-fashionedness scales in our sample. Not surprisingly, our sample scores high on the youth-related old-fashionedness and yearning-for-the-past dimensions. However, on gender-related issues, only about one-third of the sample scored more than 50 out of 100. The gender-related old-fashioned values scale is related positively to the authoritarianism scale but has no significant relationship with the dogmatism scale. Anomie and Political Efficacy Turkey’s society, economy, and polity have experienced rapid change since the 1940s. We have already stated in the previous chapters that such a change has led to great dislocations of people, who have resettled in the urban centers of the country and abroad. We have also pointed out that this dramatic and swift uprooting of the masses has created a social milieu of flux, turbulence, and uncertainty. Thus the values, attitudes, and beliefs concerning the various aspects of conservatism we have measured so far in this chapter have taken shape in a socioeconomic context in which former norms and rules lost their legitimacy and new norms and rules have not yet taken root. Such a society may best be defined as one under the spell of anomie.41 The introduction of anomie into modern social theory can be traced back to Emile Durkheim’s 1893 book The Division of Labor in Society. His diagnosis on the emerging state of deregulation in society was eventually tied to the breaking down of rules concerning the social fabric, leading to a state of uncertainty wherein people did not know what to expect of each other. Anomie thus refers to a state of society where expectations and behaviors related to norms and rules become ambiguous or just confused and unclear. This anomic state, or lack of norms, was inevitably linked to deviant behavior, such as suicide, where moral deregulation was the key motivating factor.
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The Rising Tide of Conservatism in Turkey
As a contextual basis for his concept of anomie, Durkheim asserts two stylized conceptual categories for the evolution of societies. In Durkheim’s conceptual model of social development, societies evolve from a simple, nonspecialized mechanical form toward a highly complex, specialized organic form. In its mechanical form, workplace organization is simple, requiring more or less the same routine tasks with commonly shared communal goals. As such, people behave and think alike. As societies evolve and become more complex, or organic, life at the workplace as well as in other non–work related social contexts dramatically changes and typically becomes more complex. In such a more complex, and thus organic, society, people are no longer tied to one another and social bonds become more and more impersonal. Anomie, thus, is a breakdown of social norms and is a condition in which norms no longer control the activities of the members of a society. It refers to a state of society and not that of the individuals therein. However, implications of an individual’s state of mind in an anomic society can be found in Durkheim’s work. The fact that a state of being devoid of norms is associated with deviant behavior is a starting point in this direction towards an individual level conceptualisation of anomie where deviance and distrust are expected to be prevalent. Equally important is that the diagnosis concerning individual level behavioral implications rests on the idea that the ambiguity of social prescriptions and norms governing an individual’s behavior also leads to a state of meaninglessness. In an anomic society Durkheim expects that individuals are unable to find their place without the guidance of rules. Changing conditions, as well as adjustments to these changes, inevitably leads to dissatisfaction, conflict, and as a result, deviance. Durkheim succinctly observes that periods of social disruption, such as economic depression and rapid socioeconomic change, are also likely to be wrought with higher anomie, which results in higher rates of deviant behavior such as crime and suicide. Our assumptions on social change and the resulting uncertainty being a partial but yet critical reason behind the rising conservatism in Turkey falls very much along the line of Durkheim’s argument, where he felt that sudden change caused a state of anomie. As a result of such developments, the whole social system eventually starts suffering from anomic breakdown. A measurement strategy similar to that used in previous cases was followed to grasp the extent to which individuals felt that they were an integral and effective part of the social and political system as a whole. Respondents were presented with a total of twenty-one assessments that clearly show a two-dimensional structure. On the first, we observe evaluations that clearly reflect a certain degree of normlessness.42 For example, evaluations concerning the extent of meritocracy in public administration suggest that meritocracy simply does not work in the eyes of our respondents. It seems that what is important in public administration is not what people know but rather who they know that assures them a certain position. A small and powerful group of people rules the country according to these evaluations, and they seem to be irresponsive to the needs and expectations of the laymen: for example, bureaucrats only think of their own interests and not the interests of the laymen. Besides these observations about the lacking meritocracy in the system, there also seems to be no real basis to respect a rule-based social system. Evaluations reflect a sense of normlessness in the way a social system functions. Earning money, for example, is seen to be a result of trickery and adulteration and not honest work. Our respondents supported the assertion that life is unpredictable and seemingly meaningless. The individual, according to these evaluations, is unable to make any headway in life, either politically
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or socially. A hidden sense of rebellion exists, reflecting the judgment that if one were to obey the regulations concerning construction, no apartment building can effectively be constructed. It seems that belief in the role of rules and regulations is also lost. One simply tries to survive each day without much control over the course life could take. The second dimension captures a pessimistic sense of inefficacy in the social and political dimensions of social life.43 A gloomy perspective on life is observed where evaluations are utterly pessimistic, for example. It was felt that an individual from a conservative family or from a poor and uneducated background could not even hope to accomplish much in society. No matter how hard he or she tried, nothing much was expected to be achieved, and as a result, control over their life seems to have been lost. We formed an additive scale with the evaluations on both these dimensions. Although the number of items in each of our scales was not the same, since our indices show the percentage of maximum scores in each scale, different scales are easily compared. For instance, figure 3.5 shows the distribution of anomie/rulelessness and political inefficacy scales among our sample. While nearly 89 percent of our sample scores more than 50 percent of the total attainable anomie/rulelessness scale scores, only about 38 percent similarly score more than half of the available political inefficacy scale scores. As such, we easily deduce that our sample consists more of individuals under the influence of anomie than those who feel politically inefficacious. When we look at our two scales from the perspective of the demographic indicators in our sample, we see that individuals of a lower socioeconomic status who have not had any schooling tend to be more anomic and more politically inefficacious. Those who are of Kurdish origin, however, are at about average levels of political inefficacy with significantly higher anomie levels. What is striking about this picture is that AKP supporters tended to be of relatively lower anomic tendencies compared to the country average but were more politically inefficacious. For CHP supporters we see just the opposite tendency, where lower-than-average political inefficacy was matched with higher-than-average anomic tendencies. Not surprisingly, women tended to be both more anomic as well as more politically inefficacious. However, we see the supporters 35 89% higher than 50 on anomie scale
30 29.6
% frequency
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23.5 Anomie Political inefficacy
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Figure 3.5
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40 50 60 Scale values (0 to 100)
Anomie/rulelessness and political inefficacy scales.
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The Rising Tide of Conservatism in Turkey
of the MHP being closest to the people of higher socioeconomic status who have a high level of education and thus possess lower-than-average levels of political inefficacy and anomic tendencies. Given our similar findings above that concern the MHP constitutency, these are just confirmatory of the fact that, as of the spring of 2006, MHP voters appeared to be the most highly educated and socioeconomically well-off of most other electoral groups. Lack of Self-Esteem Research on conservatism often emphasizes self-esteem, or the lack of it, as a critical aspect of the conservative personality. Self-esteem is an especially popular concept in personality research that has established connections with individuals’ private and public spheres of life. Letitia A. Peplau and Daniel Perlman44 note self-esteem’s links with loneliness while Philip Shaver and Kelly A. Brennan45 argue for its close relationship with depression. Mark R. Leary establishes its link with social anxiety and opens up a larger set of connections with phenomena that potentially shape Turkish society as well.46 Frank Johnson’s insightful argument that alienation is also directly linked with low selfesteem opens up the possibilities for the analysis of the conservative mind-set.47 In developing our measure of self-esteem, we aimed at grasping the extent to which individuals value themselves as members of a larger society. We treat an individual’s evaluations of himself/herself as a personality trait that has implications for the way the individual approaches his/her social relations and the society within which they find themselves to be a member. Self-esteem is by definition an affective measure that contains cognitive as well as behavioral components by necessity. It is impossible to come up with a series of definitive factors for one’s self-esteem. Cognitively every individual may have a different set of factors that they value. For instance, Jim Blascovich and Joseph Tomka differentiate self-conception from self-esteem.48 One’s self-conception may contain many attributes that contain deficiencies. Such deficiencies may contain anything from being physically weak to mentally uncompetitive or being deficient in some intellectual undertaking such as memorizing texts or singing songs, etc. As long as one is comfortable with these traits, one need not be hesitant in the way one prizes oneself. When an individual begins to take these traits as a basis for undervaluing his/her self, then any such trait could become an integral part of his/her self-esteem. “Feeling mildly or severely depressed because one cannot sing, however, is a matter of self-esteem, as is the behavioral consequence of jumping off the roof of an 18-story building to end one’s humiliation over this deficiency.”49 Self-esteem is supposed to capture a broad set of phenomena. It is not supposed to capture only self-confidence or only body esteem (i.e., being confident with one’s bodily features) or confidence in one’s academic ability as they are too narrow to capture the full breadth of the concept of self-esteem. We believe placing self-esteem within the largest possible social context renders it more relevant for the study of conservative attitudes. We followed Rosenberg to devise an eight-item scale.50 Half of our eight items went in a reverse direction and were reverse recoded (RC) to yield a scale that reflected a lack of self-esteem with increasing values. Factor analysis of these items reveal a clear two-dimensional structure that reflects one group of loadings with the presence of self-esteem and another with the lack of it. We observe that items reflecting a lack of self-esteem received a considerable degree of agreement from our respondents. When we form our additive scale on lack of self-esteem,
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we obtain a respectable Cronbach’s alpha score of 0.77. The distribution of our respondents across different levels of our scale values show that only about 30 percent of the sample agrees with more than 50 percent of our items that reflect a lack of self-esteem. There appear to be no respondents that score more than 80/100 on our scale. Who then possesses relatively lower levels of self-esteem? We observe that lowereducated groups of rural origin and voters of the right-wing party constituencies appear to have relatively lower levels of self-esteem. However, the nationalist MHP constituency is an exception to this generalization, since their average levels of self-esteem were significantly higher than those observed for the AKP constituency. Xenophobia The emotional differences between conservatives and others have attracted attention in the literature on the conservative mind. It has been claimed from the start in the work of Adorno et al. that conservatives are more likely to be motivated by fear and contempt coupled with aggression.51 Conservatives tend to be punitive towards “others,” an activity that is sanctioned in their social environment and that arises out of their uncertainty of themselves, as they need scapegoats to attribute the responsibility of psychological nuisances. Robert Altemeyer clearly argues that high-ranking right-wing authoritarian personalities are fearful and scared, as they tend to see the world as a dangerous place: “This fear appears to instigate aggression in them. . . . [They] tend to be highly self-righteous. They think themselves much more moral and upstanding than others—a self-perception considerably aided by self-deception, their religious training. . . . This self-righteousness disinhibits their aggressive impulses and releases them to act out of their fear-induced hostilities.”52 In the Turkish context, the enemy or the “other” is not of a different racial or ethnic background, but is typically a foreigner of, usually, Western origin. This leads to a peculiar form of xenophobia, or fear of the outside world, that is rooted in historical experiences and official ideological interpretations. Our four-item scale aims at capturing this fear of the outside world. Our items present assertions that render foreigners responsible for cultural decay in the country and the natives’ difficulty in finding a job. These two items are mildly supported with an average agreement score of about 6 out of a total of 10. There even seems to be some support, though to a lesser extent, for the belief that tourists instigate moral decay in the country. The highest level of agreement is obtained for the item that presents the rather archaic argument of protectionism against internationally produced import goods. Despite apparently intensive free trade and import activities in Turkey, for the post-1980 period at least, the protectionist stance clearly received the highest level of support from our sample. When we bring together these four items in our usual additive scale, we obtain a Cronbach’s alpha score of 0.74. Slightly more than three quarters of our sample obtained a score of 50 out of a maximum score of 100 from our four items. Only about 2 percent of our sample scored 0 on all four questions, while more than three times this group (7.5 percent) got a full score of 100, agreeing with all four of our statements. When we looked into the relative standings of the different demographic groups in both our lack of self-esteem as well as fear of the outside world or xenophobia measures, we saw a clear indication that individuals with a high education and socioeconomic status score lower than the country average on both these dimensions and their relatively lower-educated and lower-socioeconomic status counterparts score
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The Rising Tide of Conservatism in Turkey
higher than the country average. As a continuation of our already-established pattern, a right-wing ideological orientation is associated with higher-than-average xenophobic or fearful predispositions toward the outside world as well as a higher-than-average lack of self-esteem while those with left-wing ideological positions appeared more self-confident and less fearful. The AKP constituency is in the middle of the group that has low self-esteem and is highly fearful, and the CHP constituency appears to be part of the group that is less fearful and possesses higher-than-average self-confidence. The only oddity in this pattern is the case of the MHP constituency, whom we already know has higher-than-average scores in self-confidence but only slightly higher-thanaverage scores on fear from the outside world. Tolerance The popular foundations of democratic ideals have long been debated as a critical issue in especially the relatively new and unconsolidated democracies. A critical question at this juncture concerns the extent to which the masses are supportive of the values, norms, and procedures of democracy. The logic of the argument here is that unless the masses possess some cultural traits that are supportive of the ideals of democracy—such as trust in one another, tolerance of differences, a cooperation- and concession-oriented mind-set, and participation in public affairs—the electoral system is bound to collapse into instability and failure. Starting with Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba’s influential work on “Civic Culture”53 and comparative survey data, such culturalist arguments for the stability of democratic regimes have long stressed the necessity of a series of traits including tolerance for pluralism and interpersonal trust.54 In an insightful essay, Eric Uslaner links social capital to tolerance, a democratic regime, and stability.55 Uslaner further notes that people in democracies are more trusting of one another and underlines the fact that trusting societies have a livelier civil engagement with larger shares of citizens participating in voluntary activities. The trust measure commonly used at this juncture is the level of trust in fellow citizens who are not known individuals, but rather complete strangers to the respondents. Particularized trust is fundamentally different from generalized trust, since it is based on trust among people who are similar to one another, or part of a family or community of known individuals. In a sense, particularized trust captures the trust levels among in-group members and views the out-groups as potentially threatening or simply untrustworthy. Trusting unknown people (total strangers) is a reflection of tolerance. Thus, trusting individuals tend to be tolerant of others, such as people from other races, religions, women, homosexuals, and other minorities, whomever these might be in a given context, and thus support their rights in the public sphere as well.56 Clearly, in nondemocratic totalitarian regimes trust in unknown people cannot rationally be widespread but rather has to remain limited to people in closed circles of known individuals who do not pose the threat of being state informants. Thus, contextually, it is hard to think of a trusting environment within authoritarian regimes in which individual rights as a basic acceptance of differences of opinion are not present. Trust in fellow citizens is a good breeding ground for a healthy democracy, since it tends to “promote variety and admits criticism. . . . Trust makes us more comfortable with strangers and more willing to put our trust where we might otherwise not tread.”57 However, it is not clear which one of the two concepts, that is, trust or democracy, can be used as an explanatory variable of the other. Does trust lead to democracy, or is it the other way around, and does democracy breed trust? Uslaner asserts that it is a symbiotic relationship
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and underlines that trust is also associated with tolerance and acceptance of minority cultures.58 Since democracy and generalized trust have a symbiotic relationship, and trusting unknown strangers in a generalized way also breeds tolerance of differences, the importance of tolerance for the analysis of conservative attitudes follows naturally. For conservatives, however, it is not clear how desirable democracy might be. Nor is it clear how they would approach trusting individuals in a given social setting. Jerry Muller notes that although various exceptions to such a generalization are bound to exist, “conservatives have always been hostile to democracy in its original meaning of direct rule by the people. Towards representative democracy they have been suspicious.”59 Their suspicion of democracy was, however, primarily an institutional argument. Most conservative arguments are aimed at underlining the assumption that, unless restrained and counterbalanced by nondemocratic elements that allow for the formation and influence of decision-making elites, democratic institutions are most likely to fail. Thus the maintenance of order and stability cannot be entrusted to the potentially, if not naturally, capricious, unpredictable, and chaotic masses. However, conservatives are more likely to be distrustful of their fellow citizens at a more microindividual level? Conservative inclinations to value and deify religion, religiosity, and religious institutions provide us with an entrance point into conservative perspectives concerning interpersonal trust and tolerance. There seems to be no one-to-one relationship between religion or religiosity and conservatism in general. Although conservatives often found religion useful and functional in maintaining order and providing legitimacy to the state if and when religion sought to overturn the existing social order, they were defensive against religion as well. “Conservatives make several arguments for the utility of religion: that it legitimates the state; that the hope of future reward offers men solace for the trials of their earthly existence and thus helps to diffuse current discontent which might disrupt the social order; and that belief in ultimate regard and punishment leads men to act morally by giving them an incentive to do so.”60 Given such a functionalist perspective on religion, one may be tempted to claim that there need not be conviction about the true content of religion in conservatism. However, the usefulness of religion and belief in its truth can simultaneously exist as well. At a more individual level, it seems that belief in divine reward and punishment is more likely to be found among conservatives than among their intellectual competitors. Nevertheless, conservatism’s ties with tolerance need not be sought solely in relation to religiosity. Beyond belief in the usefulness of formal and informal institutions in maintaining social order, skepticism about human nature is also inherent in the conservative intellectual legacy. The inescapable fallibility of human nature into unruly and disruptive behavior is often used as a foundation for institutions to exercise restraint and control over the subjective impulses of mankind. Thus, society should be protected from liberalizing reforms that lift institutional restraints and open society to disruption and chaos. It is hard to find any optimism in conservative thinking that a dynamic variety of perspectives would bring any good in society. Acceptance of different perspectives, and thus the need for compromise and tolerance of others, is more likely to be rejected in a conservative analysis. The basis for a tolerant social order in interpersonal generalized trust among citizens is thus kept outside of a conservative framework of analysis. A more likely emphasis is found in the necessity of a bonding-type social capital that fosters in-group trust among closed community members of the same family, clan, religion, or sect. Given the emphasis on bonding-type social capital as a way of ensuring stability and maintaining social order, the conservative mind-set is likely to fall short of a tolerant perspective on social matters.
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The Rising Tide of Conservatism in Turkey
The American social science focus on tolerance and its implications for democratic regimes began in the early 1950s when McCarthyism was forming an alarmist social background. Samuel Stouffer’s work on attitudes toward communism,61 James Prothro and Charles Grigg’s analysis of political tolerance,62 and Herbert McClosky’s study of support for democratic norms63 formed the first wave of studies on tolerance. These studies have all constructed empirical measures of political tolerance and support for democracy within the context of the United States. Then came the second wave of studies through James Davis’s focus on Stoufer’s original claims about the generational impact upon tolerance toward communists and atheists64 and Clyde Nunn, Harry Crokett, and Allen Williams’ update on Stouffer’s work.65 A third wave followed with a conceptual reorientation by John Sullivan, James Pierson, and George Marcus66; John Sullivan, George Marcus, James Pierson, and Stanley Feldman67; and then James Gibson and Richard Bingham.68 John Sullivan and his colleagues argued that when conceptualization and measurement problems were corrected, levels of tolerance in the United States did not increase as suggested by second-wave researchers such as Davis and Nunn and Crokett and Williams. Sullivan et al. argued that the original tolerance measurements in the first wave of research were flawed. Focusing almost entirely on left-wing targets such as communists, socialists, and even atheists not only biased the distribution of tolerance across the samples chosen, but also led to biased estimates of the relationships between tolerance and other variables, since the dependent variable was measured under the influence of political ideology. Since these measurements of tolerance were not content free, they were only measuring tolerance for the left-wing targets and not other groups that conservatives might be worried about. The intolerant group that supported views in favor of repressing the extreme left, however, could conceivably be very tolerant of these groups that are not questioned in the first wave of measurements. This fact led to validity concerns of the measurements obtained. In an innovative way, Sullivan and his colleagues proposed a content controlled measurement and showed that the objects of intolerance had become more numerous and ideologically more diverse. As such, no decline in intolerance could be observed. Gibson and Bingham argued that political tolerance is a multidimensional concept and provided an alternative measure that consisted of four subscales. Although they did not develop a composite index based on these subscales, they showed that there exists a complex of interrelations between them and that political tolerance is contextsensitive. When no threat of conflict is incorporated in the original Stouffer items, for example, tolerance appeared quite high. However, when the context of evaluation was changed and a threat possibility was included in the measurement, tolerance declined. Our measurement allows for a simple multidimensional conceptualization of tolerance by devising two subscales: one for political tolerance and the other for social tolerance. We derive these two dimensions on the basis of evaluations of various statements. We also develop a separate measure of tolerance based on the World Values Survey type evaluations concerning different groups as acceptable neighbors. We then compare these two measures and form a grand composite tolerance scale. A Two-Dimensional Tolerance Scale Looking into the mean agreement scores for the items that form our political intolerance scale, we observe a number of issues that clearly represent intolerance toward some groups. The top two agreement ratings, for example, were obtained for the two items that capture reactions toward people who hold differences of opinion, either with members in a
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hypothetical community or with someone with whom the respondent has had a personal debate on important social and moral problems. Yet another statement clearly argues that minority views should not be tolerated, and this was supported by about 62 percent of our respondents. A similar majority was supportive of the view that freedom of speech could be restricted for certain political groups, again underlining a latent intolerance toward political minorities. The argument against compromise, which was portrayed as betrayal, was also similarly supported. When presented with a strong leader to run the country, we observed similar average agreement levels (62 percent in agreement). We also observed that even peaceful demonstrations by admittedly extremist groups were not tolerated and voting rights of uneducated people received the lowest rate of approval. When we aggregate these items into a political intolerance scale in the same fashion as for the previous measures, we obtain a similar reliability score to Cronbach’s alpha value of 0.69. Five items that capture social tolerance load on a second dimension. We see that these items do not receive much support from our respondents. The lowest mean agreement is obtained for the item related to respect for homosexuals. This is not so curious since the item on homosexuals as neighbors, for instance, also gets one of the lowest scores. Both these findings are evidence of a strictly macho culture in Turkish society that even shies away from recognizing the basic rights of its homosexual community. From an optimistic perspective, the rights of homosexuals to be respected in society seem to be supported in principle by about 40 percent of the respondents. The statement on newspapers’ right to publish articles “against national interests” receives support from about 43 percent of respondents. Those who disagree with the statement that “citizens should be able to protest against whatever they may dislike” form about 9 percent, while 80 percent assert to be in agreement with it. Only about 6 percent disagree with the statement that “everybody should be able to voice their views, whatever these might be,” and 10 percent disagree with the statement that “we should listen to all views even if we simply cannot agree with them.” We reverse coded these items to capture intolerance and observed a Cronbach’s alpha value of 0.46. Tolerance on the basis of Undesirable Neighbors We also posed a standard question found in many surveys nowadays about the different kinds of people that the respondents would like to have as neighbors. Nearly 90 percent of the respondents did not mind having a family in which women covered their heads with the türban as their neighbors. About 85 percent assert that they did not mind having a Muslim from a different sectarian background as a neighbor. This answer in the Turkish case would, for a great majority of our respondents, mean either Alevis for the Sunni majority or Sunnis for the Alevi minority. Different races or migrant workers were approved as neighbors by smaller groups of about 70 percent and 62 percent, respectively. A different race in the Turkish context most likely means African, but migrant workers would also include people from the Balkans and ex-Soviet republics. For Christians, the sample is almost evenly split. One half asserts that they would mind and the other half would not mind having Christians as their neighbors. A clear majority of the respondents minded having drug users, homosexuals, and HIV patients as neighbors, and this extended to potentially dangerous candidates such as ex-convicts, extreme left- or right-wingers, and heavy drinkers. As a religious group, only Jews were not wanted as neighbors by a dominant majority of about 60 percent. Although there is clear dimensionality in these evaluations, we formed a single index
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The Rising Tide of Conservatism in Turkey
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35
Political intolerance scale Soc intolerance scale Neighbor Intolerance Total Intolerance
30
68% higher than 50 on political intolerance scale
31.6
12% higher than 50 on social intolerance scale
28.5 25.4
% frequency
25
23.6
22.8
20.9
23.0
58% higher than 50 on neighborhood intolerance scale 49% higher than 50 on total intolerance scale
20 18.3 16.7 15
13.2
15.3 14.8
13.0
11.9 11.4 9.9
10 9.0
9.2
8.5
5.9 5 2.3
2.5 0
0.0 0
Figure 3.6
0.1 10
5.1 3.2 1.7 0.5 20
4.4
2.8
1.9 30
40 50 60 Scale values (0 to 100)
70
1.7 80
0.1 90
5.5 1.2 0.0 100
Political-social intolerance, unwanted neighbors, and the total intolerance scale.
of intolerance by simply calculating the number of unwanted groups for each individual and expressing this figure as a percentage of the maximum number of unwanted groups. As such, the unwanted neighbors scale is comparable to all previous scales. Figure 3.6 summarizes all four scales of intolerance in a comparative manner. We see from this picture that, with the exception of the social intolerance scale, all intolerance scales are skewed to the right, indicating that more people are closer to the intolerant end. For social intolerance, however, we see that about 70 percent of respondents got a score of less than 50 out of 100. For the unwanted neighbors scale, we observe that only 30 percent got a score less than 50 out of 100. This means that only 30 percent of our respondents would not mind having more than seven out of thirteen different types of people as their neighbor. For 70 percent, however, more than half of our thirteen groups of people are unacceptable as neighbors. For about one out of four respondents in our sample, 80 percent or more of our thirteen different groups are unacceptable. All three intolerance scales are significantly but only moderately correlated with one another. While the neighborhood intolerance scale is always positively correlated with the other two measures of intolerance, we see that the social and political intolerance measures are negatively correlated. As political intolerance increases there is a slight decline in the social intolerance index. Despite its small magnitude, there seems to be a trade-off between the two dimensions of tolerance. When an individual becomes more politically intolerant, supporting oppressive policy initiatives toward minorities and accepting a strong-handed authoritarian regime, that individual need not necessarily become more ready to accept oppressive arrangements toward homosexuals, the free press, and expression rights. This is similar to James Gibson and Richard Bingham’s results concerning civil liberties in the United States.69 The relative standings of different groups continue to yield the usual structure we encountered in previous analyses. The right-wing AKP and MHP constituencies, those who reside in rural areas, and those with low levels of education score higher than average on both intolerance dimensions. Respondents with a Kurdish ethnic background
Socioeconomic Change and Accommodation 61
MHP Primary
53
Rural
Right
60
●
No schooling AKP
Political Intolerance (PI)
59 Not Kurdish
Women Low-SES
Total
58 Regression Line: PI=52.79-0.10 NI
Men
High-SES
57
CHP
Middle-SES
Urban
56 Left 55 High school Kurdish
University +
54 53 45
Figure 3.7
47
49
51
53 55 Neighbor Intolerance (NI)
57
59
61
Tolerance measures: Demographic variables.
continue to score lower than average on both dimensions and closer to the highereducated and left-leaning groups.70 A similar picture of the relationship between neighborhood intolerance (NI) and political intolerance (PI) is presented in figure 3.7. This time the relationship is a positive one; for example, as the number of different types of people not wanted as a neighbor increases (i.e., as the NI increases), we observe that political intolerance also increases. In agreement with the previous results, the groups with higher-than-average intolerance continue to appear with the same relative standing as before. Similar to our previous relationship between political and social intolerance (SI), we see the same groups lie above the regression line. This suggests that rural, uneducated, rightwing AKP, and MHP voter groups exhibited predicted levels of political intolerance on the basis of neighborhood intolerance alone—lower than their actual average levels as a group. In just the opposite way our relatively more tolerant groups lie below the regression line, suggesting that our estimated regression line over predicts their actual levels of political intolerance on the basis of their neighborhood intolerance scores alone. Looking into the same relationship between the social intolerance and neighborhood intolerance measures, we observe a similar overall positive relationship and the usual relative standings of demographic groups (figure unreported for space constraints). However, this time neither the relatively more intolerant groups nor the less intolerant groups are homogeneously above or below the regression line. This is interesting since high socioeconomic status groups as well as the MHP and the AKP constituencies, for example, appear underpredicted compared to their actual group means. When we look into the demographic groups for the total intolerance scale, we see the usual suspects rank in the usual way. The lower-educated respondents, rural residents, and supporters of the right-wing AKP and MHP all lie significantly above the overall country average while those placed below are respondents with a higher educational background, left-leaning CHP voters, and high socioeconomic status voters.
54
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The Rising Tide of Conservatism in Turkey
Interpersonal trust measurements were also part of our survey. The three usual questions on interpersonal trust were measured on a 0-to-10 agreement format. We use the phrasing from Rosenberg’s (1956) question adapted by the University of Michigan’s Survey Research Center (SRC) (1969), that taps on different levels of agreement: “Generally speaking do you believe most people can be trusted or can’t you be too careful in dealing with people?” “Most people can be trusted” is placed at 10 and “you can’t be too careful” at 0. In the second version of this general trust question, we again adopted the SRC wording almost verbatim: “Do you think that most people would try to take advantage of you if they got the chance or would they try to be fair?” We offered an eleven-point scale, with 0 representing “most people would take advantage” and 10 representing “most people would try to be fair.” Our third general trust question was as follows: “Do you think that most people would try to be helpful or would try to look out for themselves?” We again offered an eleven-point scale, with 0 representing “most people look out for themselves” and 10 representing “most people try to be helpful.” All three questions have comparable direction and can thus be combined into an additive scale as we have done for other cases. When we form our additive scale with these three items we obtain a Cronbach’s alpha value of 0.78.71 However, our total intolerance scale and this additive total trust scale appear to be negatively but statistically insignificantly related at the conventional levels of significance (p < 0.05). State Interventionism One of the defining characteristics of modern conservatism anywhere is its emphasis on market forces for general economic policy advice. As an extension of the classical conservative preoccupation for the protection of age-old institutions and skepticism toward any reform initiative that intervenes with the natural development of institutions, conservatives have always tended to support market-based economic policies. Perhaps even more telling is that the inherent claim of the conservative argument that inequalities in the state of human affairs are legitimate and inescapable has helped them argue for the role of elites in all spheres of public life. Muller emphasizes the importance of the argument that purposive social action has unintended social consequences for the conservative mind-set. In contrast to the liberal argument that many unintended positive consequences do exist in such an undertaking, the conservatives have typically argued that there are inherent unintended negative consequences of purposive social actions.72 As such, conservatives regard state interventionism, as a basis for any social or economic policy, as unacceptable. In the Turkish context the role of the state in the country’s economic life has always been debated. From the late 1920s onwards the Republican elites experimented with state-controlled planning as well as with market-led liberal economic policies. However, until the collapse of the economy in 1980, primarily as a result of a political patronage driven slant toward profligate public spending practices in the 1970s, the main philosophy behind economic thinking in the country was one of state planning and import-substitution industrialization. Under the prime ministership of Turgut Özal in the 1980s, the country made a decisive move toward a market- and export-oriented production and growth strategy. However, many of the arguments that conservatives in other settings advocated came into the public agenda as part of a larger series of revolutionary policy changes. Liberal market policies had to be created almost from scratch.
Socioeconomic Change and Accommodation
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55
The objectives of the conservatives came about as a result of the economic crisis of the late 1970s that necessitated policy initiatives mostly under the guidance of international institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank. What then were the new flags of conservative economic policy? Not surprisingly, putting in place smaller state initiatives and a diminished public sector role along with a smaller and more efficient bureaucracy were the foremost policy principles emphasized. These measures necessitated privatization of almost everything under the state’s control, including the bridges across the Bosporus. The memorable televised debate between Necdet Calp of the Populist Party (Halkçı Parti-HP) and Turgut Özal of the ANAP during the 1983 national election campaign showcased harsh exchanges when Özal suggested that he would sell the revenues of the inner city (Atatürk) bridge over the Bosporus. Privatizing a bridge whose expenses were all paid for by the tolls from passersby (taxpaying citizens) was not an easily swallowed and digested idea at the time. Resistance to privatization among the labor representatives and the judiciary have never subsided in Turkey. Our aim here is to examine the extent to which such classic conservative lines of argument such as “inequality is inevitable,” “the state should be involved at a bare minimum,” and the like appeal to the Turkish voters. The practice of state initiatives in economic policy-making and especially in helping the poor or the needy has a large following in Turkey. Such an attitude runs closely parallel to an understanding of the equality of citizens. The well-intentioned assertions of getting rid of poverty and the state providing for those citizens in need attracted the support of almost more than three-quarters of our respondents. Would the economy do better if the state kept its hands off the system? Our respondents tended to think so, but there was not as much of a strong majority behind this view, as for the preceding one. When we join the six items together in our usual linear, summative scale format, we obtain only a relatively low Cronbach’s alpha value of 0.40. The distribution of respondents across our sample clearly shows that there is almost no one disagreeing with a heavy dose of state interventionism in the country’s economy (nearly 97 percent obtain more than 50 out of 100 on our scale). Who then are the most fervent supporters of state interventionism? The nationalist MHP and the left-leaning CHP voters appear significantly above the country average on our scale. The AKP voters remain far out on the other end of this scale. This is not the first time in our analyses that the political right wing has split into two. In terms of dogmatism and tolerance we have already observed that the AKP and MHP voters were placed close but somewhat apart on the dimensions defined by the scales employed in this chapter. However, this is the first time that we see these two party constituencies so far apart on the two diametrically opposing ends of a scale in our study. Conclusion Religion, especially the practice of Sunni Islam, in Turkey plays a major role among the traditions that the conservatives strive to preserve. The homemaker role of women in family and society, which encourages women to orient themselves to domestic chores and activities in the home and shun away from the roles they are likely to play in larger society, also emerges as a strand of traditionalism reinforced by Sunni Muslim dogma and practice.73 Although speculative at this early stage of our analysis, it can be argued safely that the mind of an average voter in modern Turkey works in a simplified or
56
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The Rising Tide of Conservatism in Turkey
caricaturized fashion when it comes to grasping the complexities of modern-day life.74 In the minds of the average voter, the status of women both in theory as well as in practice is deeply shaped by the dominant Sunni religious tradition wherein the segregation and separation of men and women in all walks of life is taken as a generally accepted norm. An additional reinforcer of the male dominant hierarchy in social life is the effective segregation of men and women, which starts early in some classrooms and sometimes on the commute to school and continues into the workplace. As is usual in other societies of different religious traditions, communal and even larger social interactions complement the dogma on the role of women in traditional society. Following the same dogma rooted in the interpretive Islamic theology firmly institutionalizes gender inequality. Men are given a patriarchal superiority over the women of the family. It is customary, for example, to find that brothers are favored over their sisters. Perhaps more critically than its similar counterparts in modern Jewish, Catholic, Hindu, or Taoist traditions, the Turkish Sunni Muslim tradition critically shapes its social conservatism around the status and position of women in society, whereby honor and integrity of the family is defined through the women in the family. Hence, women become a subject of protection and control, and are to be protected from the encroachment of strangers, in particular unrelated men, in the eyes of the tradition bound in Turkey. Tradition in Turkey includes parochial values and orientations, which have often been intertwined with other primordial orientations such as respecting and even depending upon the services of blood relatives; village, town, city, or provincial solidarity (hemşehrilik); and camaraderie within the religious orders and networks. It is the solidarity from and pressure exerted by such social networks that help to socialize the individual who becomes a member of such networks. It is also through these pressures of social conformity that traditional attitudes, beliefs, and values concerning religion, family, women, and men are shaped and reshaped. The identity of the self and by extension the construction of the political self thus gains a tradition-bound mentality. Parochialism creates an introverted orientation of the self that upholds local customs, mores, and practices and often develops a marked sensitivity toward their preservation. The perception that traditions, parochial and primordial practices, and culture are at risk of encroachment by alien agents and their domestic conspirators does not take much effort to emerge. Traditionalism seems to cohere with parochialism, primordialism, chauvinism, and xenophobia in this context. This is evident in the social context as well in which tolerance for different and dissenting lifestyles, ideas, and behavior is minimal. Religious belief systems do not provide much room for doubt in the faith and creed that form the core of religious values. Therefore, a tradition-bound religious belief system carries with it a major slant toward being respectful of religious and traditional authority in local settings. A form of reverence and submission to the authority of the learned men of religion and the elderly members (especially male members) of the family are incorporated in the belief system of Turkish conservatism. Under these circumstances, the individual in question does not necessarily consider relying on his or her rationale or intelligence and tends to submit to the established authority of the community of which he or she is a member. Self-reliance and self-confident attitudes are rare in the members of such a communal (gemeinschaftlich) sociocultural context. This submissive personality in a dogmatic, religious, and even authoritarian context exudes little tendency for autonomous individual initiative in the sociopolitical realms of society. However, the role of religion in promoting economic and, especially,
Socioeconomic Change and Accommodation
●
57
commercial entrepreneurship should not be underestimated. The example set by the Prophet of Islam, who had functioned as a merchant for many years before becoming the chosen one, creates a strong motive for the conservatives to launch into economic activism, often with the support of their primordial networks. Although the sociopolitical efficacy of the conservatives in Turkey may be markedly shallow, their capacity for economic entrepreneurship and taking economic initiative should not be underestimated. Yet, as far as the overall approach to economic matters in modern-day Turkey is concerned, we observe a heavy reliance on state interventionism rather than on market-system values. Nevertheless, we observed less of a tendency to value state interventionism among the most conservative constituencies of the AKP when compared to other and competing party constituencies. Turkish conservatism does not necessarily promote a lifestyle that shuns all forms of change. Conservatism is considerably tolerant and even supportive of economic change and entrepreneurship; yet, at the same time it is skeptical of modernization, secularization, and sociopolitical change that is promoted for the sole purpose of progress. The typical comparative reference of Turkish conservatism is perhaps found in Japan, which is assumed to be a country where people continue to practice their traditions in everyday life although it has grown to be one of the most developed economies of the world. The image of a good society held by a conservative in Turkey is one in which women continue to lead their traditional domestic lives, help raise children, and be the homemakers while men function as the breadwinners of the family. This preserves the traditional gender roles and relations of an agricultural society—which reflects the yearning for the traditions, moral order, and values of the postmedieval era of peasants, nomads, and farmers—while engaging in the benefits of an industrial society, such as improved socioeconomic welfare. Without an exogenous injection of wealth into Turkish society, such as the discovery of vast amounts of oil or natural gas, conservatism seems to be an impossible dream, for industry-produced wealth is only possible through new forms of organization and values, attitudes, beliefs, roles, and expectations that coincide with it. Families cannot be sustained by single breadwinners, so women need to seek gainful employment outside of the family, while children need to be brought up to function in an industrial society where they are trained outside of the home, most probably in schools, for increasingly longer spans of time. Extended families need to give way to nuclear families, and the number of children per household needs to dramatically decrease while the value per child increases as each child gets more training and education. Under those circumstances, women and children become more independent of the male patriarchs of the family and develop new values, beliefs, and attitudes that provide them with survival strategies for the industrial society in which they are to function. However, such a transformation often contradicts the pre-urban socialization of the older generation of family members, who try to promote their premodern cultural orientations by demanding the continuation of the strict control of male patriarchy over their families. One result of such a value conflict is the control exerted on women’s attire, over which much controversy exists in Turkey.75 Indeed, one’s sociopolitical attitudes toward tesettür (covering up—hicab) and türban can be quite revealing of one’s attitudes toward the role of religion in society and politics and the level of one’s conservatism.76 As a country that experienced late industrialization, the sheer speed with which Turkey underwent a major sociocultural transformation amazed and even shocked many who suddenly found themselves working in the metropolitan cities at manufacturing plants
58
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The Rising Tide of Conservatism in Turkey
and in the rapidly developing service sector. The metropolitan cities have attracted huge crowds from peasant and nomadic backgrounds since the 1950s. The first few migrants wanted to learn, comprehend, and even adapt to the styles of living in the metropolitan areas. However, by the 1980s, the migrant numbers started to soar and led to a deluge of population overtaking the metropolitan cities. It was then that migration started to look less like horizontal social mobility and more like an invasion of the bigger cities by the rural masses of Anatolia. When the numbers began to favor the incoming rural population they began to ignore the culture of the metropolitan cities. They assumed that whoever they met was a rural migrant, or the son or daughter of someone who had migrated earlier, and thus the metropolitan cities were assumed to consist of a culture of migrant cosmopolitanism in which no authentic, premigration culture worth taking note of existed. The old culture of the major cities and the people whose lives were a living example of such cultures were either overwhelmed by the influx of rural migrants or had to leave for other lands. Consequently, what emerged was not a brand new bourgeoisie and its culture, but a collapse of the old culture of the metropolitan cities and the emergence of a plethora of rural and small town cultures, which failed to define any set of guidelines and rules for the new inhabitants of the cities. This was now an environment in which few rules, mores, and customs mattered. One often operates with no clear guiding principle or rule in existence. One finds oneself in a state of anomie. Rules of civil interaction and even laws are overlooked or wholly ignored in the daily routine of metropolitan areas. A casual sojourn in the traffic of any big city is enough to give one the impression that traffic signs are nothing more than suggestions to be taken notice of at whim, and traffic rules are often violated. Rule-abiding behavior seems to frustrate those engaged in violations, while rule-breaking behavior is seldom noticed or punished. Under the circumstances, the survival strategies of the citizenry tend to be drawn up with the assumption that anomie is the norm and rule imposition and regulation are the exception. We are not arguing here that anomie is an integral part of conservatism, yet it seems that there was a curious relationship between anomie and conservatism in the Turkish society of the early 2000s. On the one hand, the lack of rules to guide behavior that is perceived as legitimate and is thus internalized causes the deepening of the sense that the country is suffering from the lack of a legitimate moral order, on the other hand, several socioeconomic networks and Sufi orders emerge to provide alternative rules that regulate the behavior of their members. The pious among the inhabitants of the metropolitan cities argue that anomie is the cause of the secular Republican order and call for the establishment of a strict set of religious rules of conduct, preferring even the Şeriat (Shari’a law) to the anomie of the bigger cities.77 In the meantime, the religious orders and networks also do not mind neglecting or overlooking the rules established by the secular Republic, for they believe that they are to follow the word of Allah and not of the infallible men who serve as the national representatives in the TBMM. Hence, they also contribute to rule-breaking or rule-ignoring attitudes and also ignore the law-abiding behavior of the secular political order to promote their religious proselytizing. The overall skepticism of conservatives toward the government and government regulation of the markets and social practices also seems to contribute to their disdainful attitude toward a secular government in Turkey. In consequence, the anomie of the big cities of Turkey provides a sociopolitical milieu that neither fosters conservatism nor undermines it, and conservatives tend to lead a lifestyle that does not prevent, but fosters anomie in return.
Socioeconomic Change and Accommodation
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59
Appendix: Factor Analyses Results The extraction method commonly used is Principal Component Analysis. The rotation method used is Varimax with Kaiser Normalization. Table A1
Factor Analysis: Dogmatism versus Authoritarianism Dogmatism
A man who does not believe in some great cause has not really lived. A group that tolerates too much difference of opinion among its members cannot exist for long. There are two kinds of people in this world: those who are for the truth and those who are against the truth. It is only when a person devotes himself to an ideal, or cause, that life becomes meaningful. In this complicated world of ours, the only way we can know what is going on is to rely on leaders or experts who can be trusted. It is only natural that a person would have better acquaintance with ideas he believes in than with ideas he opposes. Of all the different philosophies that exist in this world there is probably only one that is correct. It is better to be a dead hero than to be a live coward. Most of the ideas that get printed nowadays are not worth the paper they are printed on. There is nothing common between the EU and Turkey. Schools should teach children to be obedient. Whatever serves the interests of the state also serves the interests of the people. All children should be raised to be like one another. Those who run the country should be strong and intelligent and be able to rule, if necessary, single handedly. One good way to teach certain people right from wrong is to give them a good stiff punishment when they get out of line. Uneducated people should not have the right to vote.
Table A2
Authoritarianism
0.66 0.64
0.06 0.00
0.61
0.12
0.61
0.12
0.59
0.23
0.56
0.02
0.55
0.09
0.52 0.49
0.02 0.06
0.32 0.05 0.00
0.00 0.71 0.68
0.16 0.16
0.56 0.52
0.20
0.41
⫺0.15
0.37
% of Variance
20.5
12.3
Old-fashioned values—youth related
Old-fashioned values—gender related
Old-fashioned values—yearning for the past
0.67
0.38
⫺0.06
0.67
0.38
⫺0.06
0.64
⫺0.06
0.01
0.64
0.20
⫺0.06
Factor Analysis: Old-fashioned Values
Movies contradicting our moral values should not be shown in cinemas. Women wearing miniskirts or revealing their midriff in the workplace should not create any problems. Every young person should visit older family members during religious vacations and kiss their hands. Drinking alcohol in the presence of older family members is disrespectful for a young person.
(Continued )
60
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Table A2
The Rising Tide of Conservatism in Turkey (Continued )
Children should not interrupt their parents and contradict them. Conflicts of young persons with older family members is an outcome of westernization. It usually helps a child in later years if he is forced to conform to his parents’ ideas. Nowadays more and more people are prying into matters that should remain personal and private. Those who are disrespectful to our customs and traditions should be given a swift lesson. Having a decent, respectable appearance is still the primary mark of a gentleman. A wife does better to vote the way her husband does, because politics is a man’s affair. Some equality in marriage is a good thing, but by and large the husband ought to have the last word in family matters. Marriage is meaningless if the couple does not have any children. It is a woman’s job more than a man’s to uphold our moral code, especially in sexual matters. Generally speaking, women are less intelligent than men. Women should take an active interest in politics and community problems as well as their families. (RC) Stricter legal arrangements should be made to deter honor killings. (RC) A “woman’s place” should be wherever she wants to be, no one should intervene with her decisions. (RC) Every day our lives are changing ever faster for the worse. New inventions are rendering our lives more difficult rather than easier. The lives of our parents were much more comfortable as compared to today. Listening to new pieces of music, I miss the old days and those beautiful customary songs (türkü). I often prefer familiar-tasting meals rather than trying new ones. Instead of trying new and more profitable jobs, I prefer lower profit but more guaranteed ones. % of Variance
Old-fashioned values—youth related
Old-fashioned values—gender related
0.59
⫺0.06
0.10
0.56
0.12
0.25
0.55
⫺0.04
0.15
0.47
⫺0.13
0.11
0.39
0.22
0.28
0.20
0.18
0.08
0.00
0.73
0.24
0.16
0.72
0.19
0.02
0.59
0.19
0.14
0.55
0.18
0.08
0.51
0.10
0.02
0.38
⫺0.18
⫺0.35
0.38
⫺0.11
⫺0.03
0.30
⫺0.08
0.13
0.07
0.68
⫺0.06
0.23
0.62
⫺0.12
0.13
0.61
0.22
⫺0.08
0.57
0.35
⫺0.04
0.54
0.33
0.04
0.40
14.9
11.9
Old-fashioned values—yearning for the past
10.1
Socioeconomic Change and Accommodation Table A3
●
61
Anomie/rulelessness and political inefficacy: Factor analysis results Anomie/rulelessness
The regular citizens’ condition is getting worse every day. Nowadays one can hardly think of the future and simply tries to survive the day. There is no need to apply to the government in Ankara since the bureaucrats there only think of their own affairs. Knowing the right person to do you a favor is more important in getting a position in state bureaucracy than knowledge or hard work. Life is so full of uncertainties that we cannot be sure of anything. I sometimes feel that there is no meaning in life. It is impossible for people like me to pursue their preferences and interests. Turkey is being ruled by a small handful of people who are not responsive to the citizens’ wishes. If one were to obey the regulations concerning construction, one could never build any apartment buildings. One can resort to anything in order to reach an objective. There are no fixed rules of morality; everything changes in accordance to time and context. A lot of money can never honestly be earned without any adulteration. Turkey is being ruled by a small and powerful handful of people. Laymen like me have no possibility in influencing political decisions. Since I come from a conservative family, I am not particularly respected in society. Since I am not well educated, I am not particularly respected in society. Since I am not rich, I am not particularly respected in society. I am doing a number of things that can influence decisions in Ankara. I am doing my best in business, but I doubt I can be someone respectful. I often feel like other forces rather than myself rule my life. Life is, in general, gloomy and depressive. % of Variance
Table A4
Political inefficacy
0.70 0.70
⫺0.10 ⫺0.09
0.65
0.12
0.64
⫺0.03
0.62 0.61 0.58
0.00 0.10 0.15
0.54
0.23
0.47
0.26
0.47 0.46
0.14 0.23
0.45
0.04
0.32 0.28
0.15 0.05
0.01
0.80
0.09
0.80
0.16 ⫺0.06
0.74 0.62
0.43
0.52
0.15 0.04
0.50 0.31
21.3
14.8
Factor analysis: Self-esteem
I certainly feel useless at times. At times, I think I am no good at all. I feel I do not have much to be proud of. All in all, I am inclined to feel that I am a failure. I am able to do things as well as most other people. I feel that I have a number of good qualities. On the whole I am satisfied with myself. I feel that I am a person of worth, at least on an equal basis with others. % of Variance
Lack of self-esteem
Self-esteem
0.82 0.78 0.76 0.74 ⫺0.15 0.03 ⫺0.15 ⫺0.23
⫺0.12 ⫺0.18 ⫺0.10 ⫺0.10 0.76 0.74 0.70 0.69
31.2
26.9
62
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The Rising Tide of Conservatism in Turkey Table A5
Factor analysis: Fear of the outside world—Xenophobia Factor loadings
Foreigners are harmful to our culture. Foreigners render our finding a job more difficult. Tourists are harmful to our moral values. Domestically produced goods should be used even if they are of lower quality and of higher price.
0.84 0.82 0.77 0.55
% of Variance
56.7
Table A6 Factor analysis: Political and social intolerance
Radical and extremist groups should not be allowed to carry out a protest rally even if they remain peaceful. Even though freedom of speech for all groups is a worthwhile goal, it is unfortunately necessary to restrict the freedom of certain political groups. We should not have to tolerate those views that are against the majority’s preferences. Human rights can be violated when our country’s interests are under threat. Turkey’s problems cannot be resolved with an elected government but only by a military regime. To compromise with our political opponents is dangerous because it usually leads to the betrayal of our own side. The worst crime a person can commit is to attack publicly the people who believe in the same thing he does. Those who run the country should be strong and intelligent and be able to rule, if necessary, single handedly. Unfortunately, a good many people with whom I have discussed important social and moral problems do not really understand what is going on. There are a number of people I have come to hate because of the things they stand for. Uneducated people should not have the right to vote. Homosexuals are as worthy of respect as anybody. (RC) Citizens should be able to protest against whatever they may dislike. (RC) Newspapers should not be closed even if they publish articles against the national interests. (RC) Everybody should be able to voice their views, whatever these might be. (RC) We should listen to all views even if we simply cannot agree with them. (RC) % of Variance
Political intolerance
Social intolerance— oppression of freedom of expression
0.69
0.05
0.67
0.10
0.57
⫺0.06
0.56
0.10
0.50
⫺0.08
0.48
⫺0.09
0.45
⫺0.14
0.45
0.12
0.43
⫺0.32
0.41
⫺0.27
0.17 0.09 0.13
0.00 0.61 0.60
⫺0.08
0.57
⫺0.01
0.54
⫺0.22
0.35
18.1
10.8
Socioeconomic Change and Accommodation Table A7
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63
Factor analysis: State interventionism State interventionism
The state should help citizens in need by providing education and healthcare. If the state were to keep its hands off the economy the economy would do better. (RC) The divide between the rich and the poor has become threatening to social harmony in Turkey. Transferring state assets to the private sector through privatization weakens citizens’ economic power. Everyone should be equal since we are all human beings. If we were to undertake some fundamental changes in our socioeconomic system, we can sweep away poverty forever. % of Variance
0.64 0.16 0.46 0.49 0.67 0.60 28.2
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CHAPTER 4
Coping with Uncertainty
A
s recent research indicates and as Adam Przeworski aptly emphasizes, uncertainty remains an inherent part of any democracy.1 Individual freedoms and institutional autonomy in decentralized strategic action renders predictability and control of decisions and actions in a democracy impossible. Since everyone’s decisions and actions depend on what others do, the outcomes of an individual’s actions are, at best, uncertain if not chaotic. “Democracy appears to be a system in which everyone does what he or she expects is for the best and then dice are thrown to see what the outcomes are. Democracy generates the appearance of uncertainty because it is a system of decentralized strategic action in which knowledge is inescapably local.”2 However, given the institutional constraints, Przeworski continues to argue that democracy is neither chaos nor anarchy as is often claimed by conservative circles. Uncertainty in democracies concerns actors knowing “what is possible and likely but not what will happen.”3 The institutional framework serves the very purpose of providing a frame of reference for what the possibilities are in a given setting. Actors can rationally consider these possibilities and decide how they are likely to be hurt or rewarded, but they simply do not know if they will actually lose or win. “Hence, democracy is a system of ruled open-endedness, or organized uncertainty.”4 We take Przeworski’s argument as our starting point and ask to what degree different groups in a given society are in a position to deal with the challenges of uncertainty inherent in a democratic setting and are they acceptant to living with uncertainty. We then relate these microindividual level analyses concerning individuals’ abilities to deal with uncertainty to their likelihood of support for authoritarian and conservative attitudes that potentially can form a basis for unsettling the democratic regime in a country such as Turkey. Tackling Attitudes toward Uncertainty and Measurements of Perceived Change Our questioning on how uncertainty and change in social environments are perceived by our respondents begins with six evaluations of change expectations in different settings. We adopted a short-to-medium range of evaluations and related our questions to the next five years (see fig. 4.1). How much change is expected over the next
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The Rising Tide of Conservatism in Turkey
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5.5
2.42 Mean Std. Deviation
5.4
5.4
2.40 5.3
5.3
2.38
5.2 5.1
2.40
2.39 2.38
2.36
5.1
2.36 2.35
5.0 5.1 4.9
2.34 4.9 4.8
4.8 2.31
4.7
2.32 2.30
4.6 2.28
4.5
2.26
4.4 Daily life for your closest family and neighborhood or village.
Figure 4.1
Turkey’s social Turkey’s economy Turkey’s politics Turkey’s relations Turkey’s relations life as a whole as a whole as a whole with the EU with the USA
Attitudes toward uncertainty—1.
five years, for example, in “the daily life of your closest family and neighborhood or village?” The average answers for all six items were typically close to the midpoint of our scale, suggesting a moderate level of expected change. The respondents did not go to the extremes of expecting no change at all or of expecting a significant change. However, the social and economic life of Turkey obtains a relatively more change-prone evaluation compared to that of Turkey’s relations with the outside world, Turkey’s political life, or the evaluations on a more personal level. As reflected in the standard deviations of these evaluations, more disagreement around the average figures are observed for personal-level judgments, Turkey’s economy, and Turkey’s relations with the EU. The answers for the evaluations concerning a change in Turkey’s social life and its relations with the United States are more alike with a lower standard deviation. Cronbach’s alpha for the scale combining these six items is quite high at 0.9. Looking at the distribution of our usual scaling exercise, which takes the sum of all six items and represents it as a percentage of the maximum score obtainable in this summation, we see that expectations of change across all six items are quite balanced. About half of our sample scores around 50 or less on our scale, suggesting that a moderate rate of change is prevalent across all different areas of evaluation. Only about 11 percent of our sample scores 80 or above, while about 9 percent scores 20 or lower. In other words, neither very large nor very small change expectations are widespread among our sample. To those respondents who asserted a change evaluation in any one of the six items as being larger than the midpoint of moderate change, and who scored more than 5 on our 0-to-10 scale, an additional question on the direction of this change was posed: “Is the expected ‘larger than moderate change’ going to be one in the positive direction or will it be negative?” What we observed in all six items of an individual respondent’s judgment is that if they asserted that there would be more than a moderate change in a given area of evaluation, that change was predominantly said to be positive. For example, nearly 46 percent of our respondents asserted that they expected more than a moderate degree of change in the Turkish economy (an average change expectation
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of 5.4 out of 10), and nearly 90 percent of this group thought that this was going to be for the better and not for the worse. This tendency to expect more than a moderate change as a positive development declines slightly for the evaluations concerning the country’s foreign relations. We also observe that on an average happier people tend to expect a greater degree of change. Similarly, even after putting controls on the effects of happiness upon this relationship, more trusting individuals hold higher expectations of change. Expectations of higher degrees of change are on average associated with respondents who hold right-wing political ideologies and of the relatively lowereducated and low socioeconomic status rural masses. However, right-wing nationalists appeared to have lower expectations for change that were lower than the country averages and this placed them closer to the left-leaning CHP constituencies. This is again hardly surprising given the relatively high education status of the MHP constituencies in our sample. However, perhaps more than education and socioeconomic status variables, what distinguishes people on this change expectations scale are their political affiliations. Those who side with the ruling AKP tend to have higher expectations for change, which is also associated with change in the economy for the better through a relatively happier and trusting constituency. Expectations of change are inherently related to uncertainty. The greater the expected change in one’s social environment, the greater is the uncertainty these changes are expected to entail. Besides relating change expectations to measures of trust and happiness, we also directly asked our respondents what meaning they attach to uncertainty. This perspective gives a different view that complements the above findings. Nearly two-thirds of our sample picked a negative connotation in evaluating uncertainty (see fig. 4.2). About 28 percent were undecided on what meaning to attach to it, and only about 9 percent seemed to attach uncertainty with a positive meaning. Considering the fact that only about one-quarter of our sample are rather unhappy with their lives as a whole and more than half happens to be on the happy side on 40 35.2
35 30 28.5
27.7
25 For 63.7% uncertainty has a negative connotation
20 15
For 8.7% uncertainty has a positive connotation 10 6.5 5 2.1 0 Uncertainty is a scary threat
Figure 4.2
Uncertainty means risk Undecided, uncertainty Uncertainty is a result and increases costs is neither good of change−if we nor bad want change uncertainty is natural
Evaluations of uncertainty.
Uncertainty means opportunity− may increase our earnings
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our scale of general happiness, this may not be such a surprising result. However, it still shows that there is no one-to-one correspondence between happiness and positive evaluations of uncertainty. Even a good percentage of happy individuals happen to think that uncertainty is a bad thing and is to be avoided. When we relate change expectations to perceptions of uncertainty, we clearly see that there is a positive relationship between these two variables. After controlling for the influence of happiness, trust, and religiosity, we still observe that when individuals associate a more positive meaning with uncertainty, they come to expect a greater change on average in their social environment. In other words, change expectations grow as people become more trusting and happy and when they attach a positive meaning to uncertainty. How then do people approach uncertainty or how should uncertainty be treated as a more macro- or countrywide-level phenomenon? Does one avoid uncertainty or seek it, since uncertainty is more likely to bring benefits? Should we revert to tradition and customs to reduce uncertainty? Do we as individuals try to keep up with uncertainty by taking precautions against risks or should we avoid uncertainty as much as we possibly can? Should people as a nation try to reduce uncertainty by looking inwards rather than expanding upon our relations with the outside world? Should we form more linkages with a more heterogeneous set of groups within the framework of democracy and try to keep up with the changing environment or should we return to our well-known customary social settings? In order to grasp the different aspects of approaching uncertain settings as an individual or as a country, we compiled a series of twelve items for which we sought evaluations on a 0-to-10 scale. These twelve items load quite clearly on two factors that grasp positive as opposed to negative predispositions concerning uncertainty (see table 4.1). On the positive dimension we see loadings for statements that value the perceived benefits of uncertainty at both the micro (individual) and the country level. For example, the highest loading appears for the item that prefers contacting as many people as possible and making use of their experiences to running away from people when faced with uncertainty. Similarly, at the individual level, trying to keep up with the pace of change is valued as a way of withstanding uncertainty. At the macro (country) level the highest loading appears for the option of trying to foresee what uncertainty could bring and taking the necessary precautions against the risks. Similarly, keeping up with the pace of change at both domestic and foreign policy levels loads equally high on this dimension. The lowest loading appears for the item that taps on the role of customs and traditions in standing against change. The fact that this item loads highly on this dimension suggests that it is seen as a positively valued property. Table 4.1 below summarizes these findings that account for nearly 53 percent of the total variation in our twelve-item battery of evaluations. We observed that positive items gathered a higher agreement on average than did the negative approaches to uncertainty. The lowest average agreement rate (4.5 out of 10) was observed for the item asserting that as a country we should reduce our relations with the outside world. The highest average agreement rate was observed for the macro-level evaluation that underlined the role of democracy in tackling the challenges posed by uncertainty and for the micro-level evaluation that tapped on the necessity of precautionary measures for dealing with the risks of uncertainty. We can differentiate between micro and macro as well as between positive and negative approaches to uncertainty. Such a differentiation yields several interesting results that characterize the evaluations of our respondents. As suggested by the above-reported factor analysis (see table 4.1), we brought together the four macro-level positive items
Coping with Uncertainty Table 4.1
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Factor analysis: Attitudes toward uncertainty
Instead of running away from people when we face uncertainty, we should try to contact as many people as possible and make use of their experiences in similar situations. (Micro) We should try to keep up with the pace of change and thus learn how to withstand uncertainty. (Micro) As a country we should try to foresee what uncertainty could bring to us and take the necessary precautions against these risks. (Macro) In both domestic and foreign policy areas we should try to keep up with the pace of change. (Macro) We should remain in touch with different circles and resolve our problems with more democracy. (Macro) We should try to foresee what uncertainty could bring to us and take the necessary precautions against these risks. (Micro) As a way of standing against change, we should adapt our customs and traditions to modern conditions. (Macro) In order to reduce uncertainty, we should resist change and embrace our customs and traditions. (Micro) We should try to live according to our customs and traditions. (Micro) We should avoid places of high uncertainty and live in a familiar environment. (Micro) As a country we should embrace our values and find a way of standing against ways of life that increase uncertainty by returning to our core. (Macro) Percent of variance explained
Positive
Negative
0.77
0.05
0.76
0.05
0.75
0.09
0.75
⫺0.01
0.72
⫺0.01
0.70
0.29
0.49
0.22
0.11
0.80
0.22
0.78
0.09
0.75
0.23
0.70
30.8
22.0
Note : Extraction Method: Principal Component Analysis. Rotation Method: Varimax with Kaiser Normalization.
and two negative items and formed our usual additive scale separately for both at the macro (country) level. When we look at the distribution of our scale scores in our sample, we see that at the macro (country) level, nearly 90 percent of the respondents scored more than 50 on our positive attitudes scale compared to only 60 percent on our negative attitudes scale. In other words, there are more people scoring above 50 out of 100 on positive approaches to uncertainty than on negative approaches. While 17 percent of the sample scores a full 100 on the positive attitudes toward uncertainty at the macro level, only about 7.5 percent obtains a full negative score. Few respondents have a positive score that is less than 40 out of 100, while this group comprises nearly 17 percent of the respondents for the negative attitudes scale. A similar pattern is observed for the individual-level evaluations. At this level there exists a larger group of individuals supporting a positive approach compared to a negative one. It is also noticeable that for the micro-level evaluations, the tendency to agree with both negative as well as positive approaches to uncertainty is much larger than for the macro country-level evaluations. As a result, a larger group of individuals are found to be at scale scores above the midscale level of 50 out of 100. We combined these two scales into macro- and micro-level attitudes scales separately and into a single scale that combines both macro- as well as micro-level evaluations of positive and negative approaches toward uncertainty. Since all our scales range between 0 and 100 it is a straightforward exercise to take the difference between the positive and negative scales into a single one that ranges between ⫺100 and ⫹100. For the
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35 Individual attitudes towards uncertainty scale Country attitudes towards uncertainty scale Combined Macro+Micro approaches scale
30
33.0
64% has net positive attitudinal approach towards uncertainty at the country level 63% has net positive attitudinal approach towards uncertainty at the combined macro+micro level
25 % frequency
42% has net positive attitudinal approach towards uncertainty at the individual level
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0 -100 -90 -80 -70 -60 -50 -40 -30 -20 -10 0 10 20 30 Scale Value (-100 to 100)
Figure 4.3
40
2.1 1.9 2.0 1.1 1.5 50 60 70 80
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100
Attitudes toward uncertainty—2.
combined micro- and macro-level scales, the range is doubled but we constrain the scale into the ⫺100 to ⫹100 range. The resulting scales are shown in figure 4.3. What is striking about the findings presented in this figure is that there seems to exist a greater tendency to agree with the negative approaches to uncertainty. In fact, a majority of respondents (58 percent) obtained a net negative score. In other words, the respondents tended to agree with statements about uncertainty that emphasized a negative predisposition toward uncertainty as individuals (micro), whereas they tended to agree with statements that emphasized negative predispositions toward uncertainty less at the country-level (macro) assessments. About two-thirds of our respondents demonstrated a net positive score at the macro-level assessments (64 percent). When we combined the positive evaluations at the micro and macro levels, subtracted from these scores the sum of the negative evaluations at the two levels, and constrained the resulting figure within ⫺100 and ⫹100 we got the combined score the distribution of which is also given in figure 4.3. We see in this figure that a more positive inclination at the macro level pulls the combined score distribution toward the positive end and yields a similar pattern to that of the macro level. Where do various groups stand on these two levels of approaches toward uncertainty? We depict demographic patterns in these two levels in figure 4.4. First of all, it is clear that as the micro-level positive approach toward uncertainty increases so does the macro-level approach. The lowest scorers on both scales can be found in the southwest corner of the figure. These groups consist of the relatively lower educated rural dwellers with right-wing ideological convictions. The nationalist MHP constituency breaks out of this pattern by remaining above the average level on the macrolevel evaluations, indicating that they are more inclined to obtain positive scores and therein suggesting that they tend to see uncertainty as a positive factor with potential benefits for the country-level judgments. The MHP voters, however, are more similar to the AKP constituency on the micro-level judgments. The CHP voters on an average remain in the northeastern corner where higher-than-country-average values are found
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University + 26 High-SES 23
Macro
20 17 14 11 Rural
AKP
MHP
Men
Right
Regression line Macro=12.2+0.5 Micro
Urban Not Kurdish
Not Alevi Primary
High school CHP
Middle-SES Left
Total Women Alevi Kurdish
Low-SES 8
No schooling 5 -6
-1
4
Micro
9
14
Figure 4.4 Net uncertainty attitudes at micro and macro levels.
on both scales. In this corner, we also observe voters with relatively higher education levels and who are urban dwellers of middle- to high-level socioeconomic status. The figure above depicting the relationship between micro- and macro-level approaches toward uncertainty replicates a pattern that is all too familiar by now. We have already seen the relative placement of the same demographic groups many times before in our analyses related in the previous chapter. Once again, we see that urban and rural settlers are on opposing sides in the dichotomy concerning attitudes on uncertainty. Those who find uncertainty to be a positive element in their lives, that adds to its richness, and who find in uncertainty potential benefits more than risks and detriment are more likely to be urban dwellers. It appears that urban dwellers can afford to take risks associated with uncertainty since they are also likely to be of higher socioeconomic status groups. Their intellectual capacity is also likely to help them in understanding and interpreting the potential benefits of uncertainty more easily, since their education levels are also higher than those who happen to be on the negative side of this issue on both the macro as well as micro level. A respondent who has never been to school and with no literacy credentials sees on average a net negative inherent value in uncertainty with potential detrimental impacts that need to be avoided rather than the potential benefits inherent in uncertainty. A university graduate, however, is on the complete opposite end of both these scales and sees more benefits than disadvantages in uncertainty. The fact that these two groups, one with predominantly negative predispositions toward uncertainty on both the macro as well as micro levels and the other with above average positive predispositions on both dimensions, overlap with demographic groups who define previously noted patterns that shape the determinants of a conservative mind forms a key feature of the phenomenon of conservatism in Turkey as we have argued from our introductory chapter onwards. This overlapping pattern suggests that more or less the same types of individuals who approach uncertainty positively also happen to be, relatively speaking, more tolerant on our earlier measures, less authoritarian, less religious, less old fashioned in their approach to youth and women,
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less dogmatic, more engaged in anomic behavior, and more supportive of state interventionism. We obtain a clear pattern here that suggests that those individuals who cannot comfortably live with uncertainty also tend to be close minded, dogmatic, and thus more authoritarian, old fashioned, and xenophobic. This is very much in line with Jost et al.5 who argued that, as an epistemic motive, uncertainty avoidance is the key to understanding political conservatism. Political conservatives, being less flexible in their thinking, form the backbone of the argument by Adorno et al.6 concerning authoritarian attitudes. Rokeach’s7 argument on the nature of the dogmatic mind, set together with the intolerance of ambiguity in shaping personality traits, and leading to a more close-minded formation by Frenkel-Brunswick8 all underline a similar personality trait that forms the foundation of political conservatism. Political intolerance correlates positively with ethnocentricism9 and authoritarianism.10 Wilson et al.11 similarly argue that conservatism is directly associated with uncertainty avoidance. Not only do the conservatives seek external stimuli at a lower rate than comparable other groups, but they also find ambiguity and uncertainty threatening. The conservative mind, argued Wilson et. al.,12 also seeks simplicity rather than abstraction and complexity. More recent research on cognitive sophistication and integrative complexity complements this picture by providing an epistemic motivational base to political ideology. Integrative complexity refers to “the extent of differentiation among multiple perspectives or dimensions.” The higher the level of integration or synthesis of these differentiated components, the higher is the level of integrative complexity. Philip E. Tetlock13 and collaborators14 developed content analytic methods to analyze archival data drawn from the speeches of political elites. Their analyses suggest that the extreme-left and conservative political elite generally tend to be less integratively complex than their liberal and moderate-left counterparts. When we consider more recent research by Mark Schaller et al.15 on the personal need for order and structure, we see that the right-wing authoritarianism scales positively correlate with the scales on the personal need for structure.16 This is clearly in line with research on the dogmatic mind in which a similar intolerance of ambiguity is underlined together with the uncertainty avoidance arguments of conservatives presented by Wilson et. al.17 Conclusion In short, what our findings and the findings from the literature concerning the demographic bases of micro- and macro-level approaches toward uncertainty suggest is a simple relationship between uncertainty and conservatism. Simplified worldviews that do not exhibit much of an uncertainty about possible or causal relationships provide a comfortable background to the conservative mind-set. It seems that conservative minds are not only uncomfortable with uncertainty and complexity but are also unable to cognitively deal with their implications. This is very clearly suggested by the low levels of education within such groups in our sample. As such, conservatives are expected to shy away from and avoid facing uncertainty in their social interactions. As Tetlock et al.’s research suggests,18 at the elite level we can deduce from these findings that simplified, integratively noncomplex, interpretive, and explanatory frameworks are more appealing to conservative minds. This search for simplicity, or avoidance of complexity, that is brought about by uncertainty, easily switches toward dogmatism and close-mindedness. As we argued earlier, the Turkish masses might have experienced increasingly complex social dynamics in their lives after the 1980s or, more specifically, in the post–Cold
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War era. This external environmental complexity was rendered more complex by the large segments of Turkish society who moved to urban settings after leaving their relatively more predictable, stable, and less complex rural social surroundings. The market reforms of the early 1980s also contributed to the increased complexity of Turkish society and created socioeconomic and political uncertainty. As these market reforms took root, people not only felt more uncertain of their social status in the economic sphere but also found themselves more likely to be pushed away from their more predictable and simple rural environments into the vulnerability of urban settlements. The immediate implication of migration from smaller and socioeconomically simpler rural settlements into larger and much more complex urban settlements was a defiance of rules and regulations and, thus, a tendency toward anomie, but also a personal inclination toward uncertainty avoidance. Such a mind-set is more inclined toward dogmatic and authoritarian approaches, in general, and toward political conservatism, in particular. We are not able to show the temporal development and rise of conservatism in the country as we simply do not have historical data on comparable cross-sections of the Turkish public. Not only do we not have properly conducted panel surveys, we also do not have temporally differentiated cross-sections of voting-age Turkish population samples with relevant measurements on the various components of conservative mindsets. As such, our argument on the historical development of conservatism in Turkey has to remain empirically speculative. However, given the patterns of relationships observed in our analyses, such speculations need not remain uninformed and conceptually unfounded. We will not be able to show with any strong empirical evidence that Turkish citizens looking at the outside world beyond their borders have slowly but unmistakably become more and more disturbed by the increasing complexity of the post–Cold War world uncertainties. We will not be able to show that such uncertainties have largely been seen and interpreted as threats to their personal and community security or identity. However, the lack of access to such evidence need not imply that our systematic observations of increased perceived uncertainty are an unfounded phenomenon. At the root of this increased uncertainty lies the fact that, over the past two decades, Turkey has undergone a major series of reforms for a more participatory democracy. Ever since the general elections of 1983, a new wave of democracy has changed many facets of Turkish politics. It is beyond our scope here to provide a historical summary of these developments that can be found elsewhere.19 However, after a long armed struggle against secessionist Kurdish rebels, Turkish democracy has made it possible for a Kurdish ethnic party to be included in the TBMM while the military operations continue. Following a long series of judicial and administrative reforms, Turkey has met the EU’s Copenhagen political criteria, which are a complex set of tests for an effective functioning democracy. In the process, capital punishment was abolished, Muslim and Christian minority rights were significantly expanded, and administrative reform especially in civilian security forces was introduced to significantly reduce incidences of torture. Perhaps most importantly, the military’s institutional role was curtailed by the way the defense budgets were drafted and in the way security policy was shaped in the National Security Council, which was altered to give more prominence and control to the civilians. Many of the taboos in Turkish politics became hotly and openly debated issues in the public realm. However, more debate does not necessarily mean a resolution of differences, but rather an increased frustration for not reaching a consensual solution. What we know about the institutional structure of the Turkish media, for example, is
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enough to suggest that uncertainty or simply increased heterogeneity of argumentation in the Turkish public debate has dramatically increased with market reforms implemented in the media sector starting with the liberalization of the print and electronic media market from 1989 and 1993 onwards. As the monopoly over broadcasting held by state enterprises was lifted and private TV (1989) and radio (1993) networks were founded, the sophistication, depth, and breadth of political debate dramatically increased in the country. In short, compared to the state-monopoly years, the political debate in the country now is much more vivid, pluralist, and thus contributes to an image of complexity and confusion in the minds of the laymen who are exposed to such mass media. This new wave of democratization emerged contemporaneously with the rising rate of urbanization in the country. First, as a result of the market reforms of the early 1980s, the dynamism of the urban settlements and the desperation of the rural segments helped foster a virtual flood of rural peasants in to the major urban centers. However, the locus of attraction has slowly shifted from the old metropolitan centers of Istanbul, Ankara, and Izmir to new ones in Mersin, Antalya, Bursa, Kayseri, and other smaller Anatolian towns whose populations grew in disproportion to their municipal resources, resulting in increasing difficulties for extensive and comprehensive municipal service delivery in an equitable manner. As a result, increasingly problem-prone urban sites started to host uneasy and vulnerable new urbanites with a marked tendency toward conservatism. A second wave of urbanization came as a result of the military operations against PKK activity in the east and southeast, which started to send significant populations of Kurdish origin into the already problem-prone new and old urban sites.20 A similar phenomenon seems to have taken place for the Alevi minority following the Sivas incident in 1993. Shankland argues that at the beginning of the new millennium Alevism became an almost totally urban phenomenon since there remained very few Alevi establishments in the rural areas. The regained momentum of urbanization inevitably helped to create potentially explosive tensions between Kurds and Turks and between Alevis and Sunnis in the urban settlements.21 All of these domestic sources of change and increased uncertainty coupled with increasing conflicts in Turkey’s immediate neighborhood added to the perceived sociopolitical uncertainty even further. We are now ready to construct a measure of conservatism and analyze its causal determinants in the next chapter.
CHAPTER 5
Explaining the Character of Turkish Conservatism
T
urkish society is fast changing. This is nothing new, yet a retrospective evaluation of the experiences of several decades suggests that the pace of social transformation might just be increasing. We believe that the evolving democratization of the last two decades is primarily responsible for this fast pace of change and the new external and internal dynamics that shape Turkish society. We argued in the previous chapter that social change and its associated uncertainty account for rising conservatism in the country. However, so far we have only used simple bivariate analyses of a mostly graphical nature to depict the underlying dynamics that shape the relationships between our variables. In this chapter we first develop the alternative measures of conservatism from our survey and then offer a multivariate analysis of the determinants of these variables. Measuring Conservatism In the last two chapters we showed how an empirical measurement strategy can be employed to diagnose the character of Turkish society’s attitudes. We demonstrated how different components and reflections of an overall conservative mind-set could be depicted with the use of our survey data. Before using these different dimensions as constituent parts or as explanatory variables for measures of conservatism, we want to first present several direct measures of conservatism. The most direct way of questioning one’s conservatism is to ask directly to what extent does one see himself or herself as a conservative. We used the following wording for this self-evaluation: “Some people are said to be conservative on the basis of their world views, preferences in social life and attitudes towards social phenomena. Whatever specific meaning you might attach to this term to what extent would you rate yourself as conservative? Use a scale from zero meaning not at all conservative to ten meaning very conservative.” Given this evaluation scheme, the respondents appear to lean toward the conservative side, but not very heavily (see fig. 5.1). About 28 percent of the respondents pick the very middle of the scale, equidistant to both extreme ends. However, 51 percent are clearly closer to being very conservative, and only about 22 percent remains closer to being not conservative at all.
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30 27.6 25 51% above 5 on self-evaluation of conservatism scale Frequency (%)
20
15 11.9
12.4 11.7
10
9.0 5.7
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3.7
3.9
0 Not at all conservative
1
2
3
4
5
6
Scale values (0 to 10)
7
8
9
Very conservative
Figure 5.1 Self-evaluated conservatism.
Looking into the demographic components of these evaluations, we see that lower educated groups tend to see themselves as being more conservative than higher educated groups. For instance, those who had no schooling score 6.6 on the 0-to-10 scale of self-evaluated conservatism on average while university graduates get 4.1 out of 10 on average. It is remarkable that even the highest educated group on average scores near the mid-range of the scale and no group scores below 4 out of 10. The lowest score on this scale is obtained by the CHP voters who score 4 out of 10 on average and remain 2.6 points below the AKP voters. The MHP voters score lower than AKP supporters and score an average of 6 out of 10 on this scale. Not surprisingly, Alevis perceive themselves to be less conservative than non-Alevis, but Kurdish origin does not significantly raise one’s self-evaluation of conservatism. Women and older people tend to see themselves as more conservative compared to men and the younger generation. Conservatism as a Way of Preserving the Status Quo Conservatism is often defined as a desire to maintain the status quo and as resistance to change in the public realm. In order to tackle this issue, we used a series of assessments to determine what specific policy should be made easier or more difficult to follow as public policy. More specifically, we provided sixteen different policy options and asked whether each should be made easier or more difficult or if the presently available status quo should be maintained. Our objective here was to provide as wide a range of issues as possible to cover the different dimensions of the Turkish social policy domain. We included private sphere issues that receive little public debate, such as abortion, divorce, and birth-control methods, as well as many of the wider publicly debated issues with economic and political significance. The issue of women’s rights in general as well as the very publicly debated issue of women’s punishment according to customs, or “honor killings,” that break many laws in the country were also part of our questioning. Ethnic and religious cohabitation, the türban ban, and regulation of
Explaining the Character of Turkish Conservatism
Figure 5.2.1
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77
Conservatism and public policy preferences.
private Qur’an courses cover the more important publicly debated issues of religious significance. Similarly, we posed questions on a number of economic issues from negotiated contracts to price controls and entrepreneurial rights. We also underlined a number of issues that tap attitudes toward human rights, censure, and protection of national interests. Figure 5.2.1 provides a summary of the responses given in this module of evaluations. We first determined that those who would like to see the status quo prevail constituted the plurality. The status quoists range between 14 percent and 40 percent across the attitudes relating to the issues tapped in our survey (see fig. 5.2.1). Significantly, the largest support for the status quo occurred for the option stressing cohabitation of different ethnicities. However, even for this case, those who would like to see the status quo prevail comprised only about 40 percent of our sample. More than 50 percent supported the idea of rendering cohabitation of different ethnicities easier. The status quoists group was the smallest for the case of custombased punishment for women. We hoped in this case to capture the reactions of people to “honor killings” that received wide media coverage in recent years. What is apparent here is that there was little support for the present state of affairs with regard to punishment of women according to so-called customs. About three-quarters of the sample supported the view that such punishment should be made more difficult. Nevertheless, about 10 percent argued that customary punishment should become easier.1 The status quoist group comprised again about 20 percent and scored among the lowest in our module for the cases of the use of women’s rights and registration of türban-wearing women to universities. These two issues reflect potentially opposite positions. While one might be fully in support of rendering the use of women’s rights easier, one could still be opposed to türban in the universities. However, such an opposed perspective does not seem to be very widespread. It is clear, from whatever perspective one might be looking at, that the status quo is the least preferred option for the average respondent. On both issues, a progressive stand of rendering the use
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of rights and registration into the higher education system for türban wearers was heavily supported. There is no contradiction between these two objectives in the mind of the average respondent. About 52 percent of our respondents asserted that both the use of women’s rights and the registration of türban-wearing women in universities should be made easier than the status quo permitted at the time of the interviews. Only about 11 percent of the total sample preferred rendering the use of women’s rights easier but were opposed to türban in universities. A group of about 13 percent favored the status quo despite the fact that they were supportive of the progressive position on both these issues. In other words, being on the progressive side of the debate on one of these two issues rarely leads to an opposing position limiting freedoms on the other. Having an abortion and a divorce were the only two issues where reactionary, antiprogressive, or conservative positions garnered a larger group of supporters than their more progressive counterparts. These two highly private issues attracted more conservative reactions (see fig. 5.2.2). Although much debated publicly, there does not seem to be much support for a progressive agenda to render divorce or abortion easier. Although support for the status quo on both issues is stronger, rendering both abortion and divorce more difficult still attracts about 25 percent of support. Looking into the “easier” responses to different evaluations of policy positions, we see that promoting the use of women’s rights, use of freedoms in general, living according to customs and traditions, and laborers’ right to a negotiated contract attract more than 63 percent of approval. What seems to emerge from these responses is the desire to have a lifestyle dictated by customs and traditions that do not condone punishment of women in accordance with these customs, but which also does not include making divorce or abortion easier. Therefore abortion or divorce is not considered as an integral part of women’s rights per se. Yet when it comes to birth control, these more traditionalist respondents do not seem to have many reactionary responses. The modern urbanite respondents of the sample and even a significant part of the rural dwellers are in support of rendering birth control easier.
Figure 5.2.2
Net responses in support of rendering policies easier.
Explaining the Character of Turkish Conservatism
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79
Issues of a more macro-level cohabitation of different cultures and ethnicities attracted a predominantly progressive perspective, in which support for the idea of “rendering cohabitation of differences easier” increases. Yet, when phrased in a nationalist tone, protection of national interest politics also received a net dominant support. Clearly these two issues might be in conflict with one another but this complication is left unanswered here. Using the information in this module we derived two scales: one for the status quoist tendencies and another for the reformist tendencies. For the reformist tendencies, we recoded some of the issues so that all represent a progressive nonconservative position. For example, attitudes toward life dictated by customs and traditions, censure of books and movies, opening of private Qur’an courses, state control over prices, politics to protect national interests, and registration of türban-wearing women to universities were all reverse coded. Then an additive index was formed with sixteen evaluations all pointing to nonconservative reformist positions. The status quoist scale only took the answers for the preservation of status quo on all items in our module and formed an additive index of status quoist approvals. The status quoist tendencies index was, as usual, expressed on a 0-to-100 scale to render comparisons easier with the reform support scale, which ranges between –100 (for total conservative position) to ⫹100 (total reformist position). Only 14 percent of our respondents answered in support of the status quo on more than 50 percent of our items. This clearly reiterates our earlier observation that maintaining the status quo is not supported in the country. While less than 1.5 percent of our respondents agree with a status quoist answer to all our items, about 12 percent give no status quoist answer at all. It is clear that maintaining the status quo on different policy issues is not supported much in Turkey. This invites or demands changing the status quo. However, as we have already seen, change or the uncertainty that it brings is not welcomed either. Change and uncertainty are perceived more as threats than as opportunities. So we seem to have a paradox here of Turkish conservatism: old customs and traditions are respected at large, but beyond a limiting scope for women’s rights, there is no support for maintaining the status quo. However, asking for reform of some kind or change in the state of affairs also invites uncertainty, which in turn is a basis for discomfort. While change in the status quo on economic affairs goes in the direction of more state interventionism, a more hands-off approach on political issues seems to emerge for the role of the state in general. The traditionally restrictive position of the state toward cohabitation of cultures and thus recognition of cultural and ethnic rights are not supported much. Most people seem to favor some kind of co-existence of differences, but the specific basis for such an arrangement is not clear in their minds. If there is not much support for the maintenance of the status quo, then to what degree is there support for change or reform in the country across the sixteen different policy areas we probed in our survey? We rely on a factor analysis of the responses obtained in our module to tackle this question. As noted above, the items offered for evaluation had three alternative answers. One was that the item offered for evaluation should be rendered easier; another option was that the status quo should be maintained and lastly that it should be made more difficult. We coded the maintenance of status quo as 0 and rendering the item “easier” as 1 and more “difficult” as ⫺1. As such, the status quo option has no impact upon the factor scores eventually calculated in our analysis, but only the minus (for making the item more difficult) or plus (for making
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Table 5.1
The Rising Tide of Conservatism in Turkey Factor analysis of policy attitudes
Pattern Matrix Use of freedoms Laborers’ right to negotiated contract Cohabitation of different ethnicities Cohabitation of different cultures Use of freedoms of entrepreneurship Use of women’s rights Politics to protect national interests State control over prices Life according to customs and traditions Use of pills and other birth-control methods Censure over books and movies Opening of Qur’an courses Registration of türban-wearing women to universities Having an abortion Divorce Punishment of women according to customs % of Variance
Progressive policy position
Reactionary conservative policy position
0.68 0.65 0.64 0.64 0.61 0.58 0.52 0.48 0.47 0.43 0.08 0.18 0.23 0.22 0.20 ⫺0.07
0.06 0.04 ⫺0.32 ⫺0.34 0.06 ⫺0.01 0.10 0.04 0.31 ⫺0.12 0.02 0.72 0.69 ⫺0.51 ⫺0.48 ⫺0.11
21.9
11.5
Extraction Method: Principal Component Analysis. Rotation Method: Oblimin with Kaiser Normalization. Note: The two factors derived capture only about one-third of the total variation in all items included in the analysis. These two factors are also correlated but only at a low level of about 0.06. The Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) Measure of Sampling Adequacy is obtained at a comfortable level of 0.78 indicating that that “patterns of correlations are relatively compact and so factor analysis should yield distinct and reliable factors.”3 None of the items has a KMO statistic values for individual variables on the anti-image correlation matrix is observed to be less than the suggested bare minimum value of 0.5, so no item deserves to be excluded from the analysis.4
the item easier) is effective in determining the composite index scores calculated for each respondent in our sample after factor analysis. The factor analysis results are presented above in table 5.1.2 The first dimension, or factor, that arises seems to capture the progressive policy positions from the secondary more reactionary or conservative positions. The first dimension has the highest loadings for items that emphasize use of freedoms, women’s rights, birth-control methods, and cohabitation of different ethnicities and cultures. From an a priori expectations perspective we would not be surprised to see these items load as highly on the same factor. However, on the same dimension we also observe that politics to protect national interest and life according to customs and traditions also appear highly loaded. Economic policy positions, such as price controls by the state, freedoms of entrepreneurship, and laborers’ right to negotiate their contract, that do not appear on conservative policy agendas also highly load on the same factor. In other words, we see a sui generis issue agenda for the progressive policy position in which the usual conservative economic policy positions appear to co-vary together with socially more progressive positions. On the second factor, we see a high loading of a much clearer reflection of reactionary or more conservative social policy positions. Opening of Qur’an courses or registration of türban-wearing women at the universities both appear highly positively loaded on this factor. The negatively loaded divorce or abortion items are thus to be interpreted as reflective of a conservative tone in this factor. Two items, censure of books and movies
Explaining the Character of Turkish Conservatism 0.80 Reactionary/Conservative policy position
●
81
Opening of Qur'an courses Registration of türban wearing women to universities
0.60
0.40 Life according to customs and traditions Laborers' right to negotiated contract 0.20 Punishment of women according to customs 0.00 0.00 -0.20 -0.10
Censure over books and movies 0.10
0.20
Politics to protect national interests Use of freedoms of entrepreneurship State control over prices Use of freedoms
0.30
0.40
0.50 0.60 0.70 Use of women's rights
0.80
Use of pills and other birth control methods -0.20 Cohabitation of different ethnicities Cohabitation of different cultures -0.40 Divorce Having an abortion
Progressive policy position
-0.60
Figure 5.3
Factor plot for policy attitudes.
and punishment of women according to customs, have the expected loadings but their magnitudes are too small for meaningful impact upon the two factors. Figure 5.3 contains the factor loadings that clearly depict polarization along two dimensions. While on the first dimension of progressive reform attitudes we observe a focus on the positive end of the dimension, the second factor has two opposite groupings, one with positive loadings and the other with negative ones. Typically a loading is deemed to be important if it exceeds 0.3. Only then does a variable account for a minimum variance of about 9 percent. We see that punishment of women according to customs and censorship of books and movies do not appear to account for much significant variation in the two factors derived. All other items, however, do satisfy this bare minimum requirement for significance of factor loadings. These two dimensions have a similar distribution within our sample. About 83 percent of our respondents receive a positive factor score, suggesting that the weighted average of their item evaluations on both factors using their answers to different items is positive. Only about 17 percent of the sample obtained a negative score, suggesting that their weighted average answers were more dominantly supportive of the option that policy items evaluated should be made more difficult (as coded ⫺1) than easy (as coded ⫹1). We subtract the factor scores for each individual on factor two from factor one to obtain a net reform support index. Since the item coding has zero values for answers supporting the status quo on each item, the factor loading takes only the net pro-reform or antireform positions of individuals. As such, they are comparable to our status quo scale as well. Conservatism as a Composite Attitudinal Trait We now focus on the intercorrelations of different attitudinal measures developed in the previous chapter within a factor analytic framework. Factor analysis is well-suited for this search of a pattern in the interrelations of the various measures obtained about the attitudinal milieu within which individuals live. Our summarized experimentation below consists of giving different kinds of tests to the same sample of individuals on
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The Rising Tide of Conservatism in Turkey
different phenomena or attitudinal perspectives. Each respondent is then assigned a score on each of these tests. These scores are then intercorrelated and the resulting correlations are then factor analyzed. We thus reduce these tests down to fewer common factors that underlie them. More than a dozen different measures on concepts that are expected to be instrumental in building a frame of analysis of different dimensions of conservatism were obtained in the previous chapters. We use these measures in principle components analysis with oblique rotation allowing for the factors derived to be correlated with one another. After various trials with higher and lower degrees of dimensionality and checking the scree plot of the eigenvalues, we decided to derive three components that are reported in table 5.2. A total of about 57 percent of the total variation in our fourteen variables are accounted for by these three dimensions. The solution reflected in the factor loading patterns seems clear and fairly unambiguous. The meaning and nature of the factor analytic solution can be fairly easily attributed to these loadings that also seem to conform to our theoretical expectations. Several of our scales, such as old-fashioned values (OFV) concerning youth-related and gender issues, dogmatism, and religious conservatism, load highly on several dimensions and serve as a connection between different factors. Similar to the findings reported by Fred Kerlinger,5 we observe that instead of a bipolar conservative-liberal divide we obtain several dimensions with liberal and conservative items loading differently on each. We do obtain some negative loadings, but they remain small for the most part. A delta value of 0.35 in the oblique rotation yields significant intercorrelations among the three factors (Table 5.3). How are we to interpret the factor solution obtained here? The significant high loadings are taken to be those above 0.3. These high loadings on the first dimension underlie a factor solution comprising of authoritarian, intolerant, and old-fashioned values. We also observe that religious conservatism and dogmatism also yield some influence upon this factor, which reflect some xenophobic attitudes as well. The second dimension appears Table 5.2
Factor analysis: Dimensions of conservatism Conservatism 1
Conservatism 2
Conservatism 3
Authoritarian, intolerant, old fashioned
State interventionist, religious liberal, dogmatic
Religiosity, youth-related issues
Political intolerance Authoritarianism OFV-Yearning for the past OFV-Gender issues Xenophobia Religious conservatism State interventionism Religious liberalism Dogmatism Social intolerance Self-Evaluated religiosity Religious practice Religious faith OFV-Youth related issues
0.82 0.74 0.70 0.64 0.61 0.54 ⫺0.15 0.14 0.48 ⫺0.11 ⫺0.05 ⫺0.07 0.06 0.40
0.12 ⫺0.10 0.12 ⫺0.58 ⫺0.07 ⫺0.08 0.82 0.61 0.58 ⫺0.50 0.03 0.07 ⫺0.14 0.31
⫺0.10 0.04 ⫺0.11 ⫺0.01 0.18 0.46 0.22 ⫺0.27 0.05 0.26 0.80 0.80 0.61 0.47
% of Variance
30.0
17.5
9.1
Extraction Method: Principal Component Analysis. Rotation Method: Oblimin with Kaiser Normalization. OFV: Old-fashioned Values
Explaining the Character of Turkish Conservatism Table 5.3
●
83
Component correlation matrix
Component Authoritarian, intolerant, old fashioned State interventionist, religious liberal, dogmatic Religiosity, youth related issues
Authoritarian, intolerant, old fashioned
State interventionist, religious liberal, dogmatic
Religiosity, youthrelated issues
1 0.10
1
0.35
⫺0.20
1
to gather the liberal dimension as opposed to the first factor. This dimension is primarily shaped by state-interventionist evaluations concerning the economy that are taken together with religiously liberal evaluations. Old-fashioned values concerning gender issues load significantly and negatively on this dimension. Interestingly, dogmatic evaluations obtain their highest loading in this dimension among the three factors derived. Although liberal on gender issues due to its negative loading and highly significant positive loading for religious liberalism scores, we observe that OFV concerning the youth also has some prominence in this dimension, suggesting that neither the conservative nor the liberal mind-set in the country is very liberal when it comes to youth issues. The third dimension is distinguished by items reflecting religiosity in either the selfevaluated format, or in religious practice or faith scores. Religious conservatism that shapes the authoritarian, intolerant, and old-fashioned first dimension also appears with a significant loading in this dimension as well. Once again youth-related old-fashioned values appear highly loaded with their highest loading on this third dimension. Illustration of these loadings reveals the underlying nature of these dimensions a bit clearer. For instance, figure 5.4 plots the first against the second dimension and clearly shows the bipolar nature on the second dimension defined by high loadings for state interventionism, religious liberalism and dogmatism opposing social intolerance, and old-fashioned values concerning gender issues. In other words, socially tolerant individuals tend to be less old fashioned on gender issues and both these traits go hand in hand with dogmatic, state-interventionist, and religious liberalism in our sample. The first dimension appears less polarized than the second dimension. The authoritarian, politically intolerant, and xenophobic attitudinal traits go hand in hand with dogmatism, religious conservatism, and old-fashioned values on both youth and gender issues. Religious practice, faith, or self-evaluations appear closer to the origin, reflecting insignificance of these items in defining both the first as well as the second dimensions. When we plot the first against the third dimension we again see that compared to the first, the third dimension appears more polarized along religiosity. Religious liberalism is negatively loaded on the third dimension where all other items concerning religiosity appear opposed to it with positive loadings. The first dimension is linked to the third via religious conservatism and old-fashioned values concerning the youth. The bipolar nature of the second dimension compared to the third dimension is also reflected in figure 5.5. The relatively more socially tolerant and less old-fashioned conservative values concerning gender issues appear opposed to the state-interventionist dogmatic religious liberalism of the second dimension. Religious conservatism and oldfashioned values concerning the youth together with the practice and faith dimensions of religiosity define the second dimension. However, there appears to be no polarized opposing item on this dimension.
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The Rising Tide of Conservatism in Turkey
State intervent, rel liberal, dogmatic and socialy tolerant
1.0 State interventionism 0.8 Religious liberalism
Dogmatism
0.6
0.4
-0.4
-0.2
OFV-Youth related issues
0.2 Religious practice Self-Evaluated Religiosity 0.0 0.0 0.2 Religious faith -0.2
Political intolerance OFV-Yearnig for the past 0.4
Xenophobia
0.6 Authoritarianism0.8 Religious conservatism
1.0
-0.4 Social intolerance OFV-Gender issues -0.6
-0.8 Authoritarian, intolerant, old fashioned
Figure 5.4
Dimension of conservatism—1.
1.0
Self-Evaluated Religiosity 0.8 Religious practice
Religiosity, youth related conserv
Religious faith 0.6 Religious conservatism
OFV-Youth related issues
0.4 Social intolerance
State interventionism 0.2
Xenophobia
Dogmatism
Authoritarianism OFV-Gender issues -0.8
-0.6
-0.4
0.0 0.0Political intolerance 0.2
-0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1.0
OFV-Yearning for the past -0.2
Religious liberalism
-0.4 State intervent, rel liberal, dogmatic
Figure 5.5
Dimensions of conservatism—2.
Before we form a multivariate explanatory framework for these three dimensions, we ask where different demographic groups stand along them. The first and second dimensions have a positive correlation and thus a positively sloped regression line defines the bivariate relationship between the two. However, when we check the relative standings of different groups on average with respect to one another, we see an interesting picture arise. The state-interventionist, religiously liberal, and relatively more dogmatic second dimension has higher average values for the left-leaning and CHP voters. Similarly, higher-education groups appear on the extremes of this
Explaining the Character of Turkish Conservatism
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85
dimension, whereas lower-education groups obtain relatively lower scores on average on this dimension. While these higher-education groups of left ideological leanings and urban dwellers appear high on the second dimension, they appear low on the first dimension defined by authoritarian intolerance and old-fashioned values. On the first dimension we observe that while the CHP voters appear as low scorers, the AKP voters on average appear as high scorers. The MHP constituency remains closer to the origin on both dimensions. While Kurdish speakers and Alevis appear within the more state-interventionist, religiously liberal, low authoritarian, old-fashioned, and intolerant northeast corner of this figure, their Sunni and non-Kurdish counterparts appear closer to the origin on both dimensions. In other words, the distinction between the first and the second dimensions appear to be shaped more by left-right political ideology, education, and the rural-urban divide rather than ethnic or sectarian ones. Imposing the first dimension against the third we get the same picture from a different perspective. The first and third dimensions are positively correlated and thus a positively sloped regression line defines their relation. The southeast corner of this figure contains those demographic groups that on average score low on both dimensions— that is, low on authoritarianism, intolerance, and old-fashioned values and low on average religiosity measures. This corner is occupied by the relatively highly educated, left-leaning high socioeconomic status urbanites. The northeast corner is defined by higher-than-average scores for both the first as well as the third dimension. In other words, this corner not only has relatively more religious groups but also on average relatively more authoritarian, intolerant, and old-fashioned groups. This north eastern corner of the figure contains the MHP as well as the AKP voters, right-wing ideological groups, rural as well as low-education and socioeconomic status groups. The ethnic and sectarian divide appears closer to the origin and thus insignificant in differentiating the opposing ends of these two dimensions. When we focus on the relationship between the second and third dimensions, we see that the religiosity emphasized by the third dimension is set against the stateinterventionist, dogmatic, religious liberals. As such, we observe that party preferences shape the extreme ends on both dimensions. While the right-wing AKP and MHP constituencies appear on the relatively more religious and less state-interventionist, dogmatic, religious liberalism at the northwest corner of the figure, their opposing groups are placed on the southeastern corner. The CHP voters and relatively highly educated groups appear at the extreme end of this corner. In contrast to previous results to the contrary, we see that Alevis are significantly separated on the liberal southeast corner of the figure from the non-Alevis. Ethnic differences between the Kurds and the non-Kurds once again appear as not that significantly opposed along these two dimensions. Explaining Different Dimensions of Conservatism in Multivariate Framework All of these figures so far depicting different demographic groups’ mean values across our scales only report bivariate relationships involving only two variables without controlling for the effects of other variables. Although we can pictorially see where different groups stand with respect to one another on single or two-dimensional settings, we have so far not tested whether these observed differences actually correspond to statistically significant differences. Table 5.4 depicts an extensive multivariate regression analysis involving two or more independent variables using our three
86 ●
Unstandardized coefficients
(Constant) Men (DV) Age above 35 (DV) Primary school graduates (DV) High school graduates (DV) University graduates (DV) Negative difference between realized and necessary income (DV) Number of people living in the household Ethnic Kurdish (DV) Alevis (DV)
Conservatism 1 author itarian, intolerant, old fashioned
Conservatism 2 State interventionist, religiously liberal, dogmatic
Conservatism 3 Religiosity, youthrelated issues
Status quo Scale
Collinearity statistics
B
Sig.
B
Sig.
B
Sig.
B
Sig.
VIF
⫺2.52 0.10 ⫺0.01 0.01 ⫺0.14 ⫺0.18 ⫺0.08
0.00 0.01 0.79 0.91 0.06 0.06 0.20
⫺1.01 ⫺0.09 0.00 0.02 0.00 ⫺0.05 ⫺0.01
0.00 0.03 0.99 0.79 0.97 0.62 0.82
⫺0.24 ⫺0.01 ⫺0.07 ⫺0.22 ⫺0.53 ⫺0.66 0.00
0.15 0.70 0.08 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.99
32.68 ⫺2.21 ⫺3.67 2.27 5.10 4.79 2.87
0.00 0.02 0.00 0.12 0.00 0.04 0.07
1.18 1.33 2.64 3.06 1.84 1.05
0.01
0.17
⫺0.01
0.40
0.03
0.00
⫺0.51 0.04
1.38
⫺0.01 0.00
0.92 0.96
0.08 ⫺0.01
0.21 0.91
⫺0.06 ⫺0.19
0.33 0.00
⫺5.00 0.00 0.33 0.79
1.67 1.10
0.07 ⫺0.05
0.20 0.46
⫺0.05 ⫺0.10
0.39 0.11
0.05 0.06
0.35 0.29
6.22 0.00 2.38 0.13
1.24 1.23
⫺0.28
0.00
⫺0.19
0.05
0.33
0.00
⫺2.66 0.26
1.89
⫺0.03
0.63
⫺0.10
0.08
⫺0.03
0.63
7.55 0.00
1.25
0.19
0.00
0.06
0.13
0.12
0.00
⫺1.12 0.29
1.30
Geography Cluster 1: Coastal provinces (DV) Cluster 2: Inner Aegean provinces (DV) Cluster 4: East-southeastern provinces (DV) Cluster 5: Inner Anatolian provinces (DV) Rural dwellers (DV)
The Rising Tide of Conservatism in Turkey
Table 5.4 Explaining dimensions of conservatism and the status quo scale
Attitudes toward change and uncertainty ⫺0.18
0.00
⫺0.13
0.02
⫺0.34
0.00
4.13 0.00
1.41
⫺0.16
0.00
⫺0.20
0.00
⫺0.02
0.58
6.67 0.00
1.46
⫺0.03
0.61
⫺0.11
0.04
0.07
0.17
5.11 0.00
1.31
0.01
0.87
⫺0.01
0.88
0.06
0.22
⫺1.24 0.32
1.60
⫺0.04
0.36
⫺0.08
0.09
0.04
0.43
1.31 0.27
1.61
⫺0.15
0.07
⫺0.08
0.29
⫺0.03
0.68
⫺0.56 0.78
1.22
0.18
0.17
0.09
0.50
⫺0.14
0.26
⫺1.98 0.54
1.10
⫺0.04 0.002
0.01 0.04
0.16 ⫺0.002
0.00 0.02
⫺0.13 0.00
0.00 0.51
⫺7.10 0.00 ⫺0.01 0.63
1.35 1.25
⫺0.01 0.40
0.00
0.01 0.41
0.00
⫺0.004 0.49
0.00
0.03 0.21 0.27
1.42
0.05 -0.03 0.17 0.14
0.00 0.49 0.01 0.17
0.02 0.03 0.08 0.03
0.09 0.58 0.22 0.75
0.08 0.07 0.05 0.26
0.00 0.08 0.37 0.01
Ideology and party preference Left-right positions (1⫺10) AKP voters (DV) CHP voters (DV) MHP voters (DV)
⫺0.60 ⫺1.84 ⫺0.85 1.93
0.01 0.11 0.59 0.44
1.63 1.59 1.24 1.11 (continued )
Explaining the Character of Turkish Conservatism
Attitudes towards change: Revolutionaries (DV) Attitudes towards change: Slow reformists (DV) Attitudes towards change: Status quoists (DV) Attitudes towards uncertainty: Threat (DV) Attitudes towards uncertainty: Risk increasing costs (DV) Attitudes towards uncertainty: Natural outcome of change (DV) Attitudes towards uncertainty: Opportunity (DV) Net reform scores (FS) Perceived change evaluations scale (0⫺100) Uncertainty evaluations scale (0⫺100) Adjusted R Square
●
87
88
Table 5.4 (Continued )
B
Conservatism 2 State interventionist, religiously liberal, dogmatic
Conservatism 3 Religiosity, youthrelated issues
Sig.
B
Sig.
B
⫺0.01
0.34
0.02
0.11
0.02
0.01
0.34
0.00
0.74
0.03 ⫺0.03
0.00 0.07
⫺0.01 0.00
0.03
0.04
⫺0.01 0.02 0.01 0.01 0.003 0.00 0.004
Sig.
Status quo Scale B
Collinearity statistics
Sig.
VIF
0.08
0.20 0.56
2.65
0.01
0.51
⫺0.21 0.53
3.01
0.19 0.87
0.02 ⫺0.05
0.12 0.00
⫺0.08 0.76 ⫺0.02 0.95
1.95 2.50
0.02
0.15
0.07
0.00
⫺0.34 0.39
2.94
0.07 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00
0.02 0.03 0.00 ⫺0.01 ⫺0.003
0.01 0.00 0.15 0.00 0.00
⫺0.04 ⫺0.003 0.00 ⫺0.01 0.002
0.00 0.04 0.47 0.00 0.01
0.54 ⫺0.16 0.05 0.05 0.03
0.00 0.00 0.08 0.10 0.20
1.20 1.41 1.73 1.48 1.21
0.08 0.00
⫺0.004 0.00
0.00 0.27
⫺0.003 0.002
0.00 0.05
0.10 0.00 ⫺0.02 0.43
1.20 1.70
Economic evaluations Retrospective pocketbook economic evaluations (0⫺10) Retrospective sociotropic economic evaluations (0⫺10) Present economic evaluations (0⫺10) Prospective pocketbook economic evaluations (0⫺10) Prospective sociotropic economic evaluations (0⫺10) Attitudinal traits, trust, and happiness Belief in destiny (0⫺10) Anomie scale (0⫺100) Political inefficacy scale (0⫺100) Lack of self esteem scale (0⫺100) Intolerance scale with neighbor data (0⫺100) Interpersonal trust scale (0⫺100) Happiness scale (0⫺100) Adjusted R Square
0.40
0.41
0.49
0.27
DV: Dummy variable; FS: Factor scores Reference category: Women living in metropolitan urban areas, with no schooling, non-Alevi, non-Kurdish speaker, below the age of 35, undecided about uncertainty, supports conservative reform agenda, who voted for parties other than the AKP, CHP, and MHP.
The Rising Tide of Conservatism in Turkey
Conservatism 1 author itarian, intolerant, old fashioned
●
Unstandardized coefficients
Explaining the Character of Turkish Conservatism
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dimensions of conservatism and the above-developed status quo scale.6 A common set of independent variables are used in these analyses. Since some of these variables can be highly correlated with one another, we provide collinearity statistics for each of them, suggesting that, in fact, the existing collinearity problem is not serious since the variance inflation factor, or VIF statistic, remains persistently below 10 for all variables. Accordingly, we need not worry about inflated variance due to the multicollinearity problem that typically leads to insignificant statistical tests for the influence of independent variables. Several patterns catch our attention in these results. For example, men and women appear to be at significantly different levels of conservatism. While men appear more authoritarian, intolerant, and old fashioned compared to women on the first dimension, they are less state interventionist, religiously liberal, and dogmatic on the second. There appears no statistically significant difference between males and females on the third dimension that depicts a summary measure of religiosity. However, a higher percentage of women appear to hold on to the existing status quo on issues, thus leading to a lower average value on the status quo scale for men. Older generation women appear only significantly different on the status quo scale. However, we see that women of an older generation are less inclined to hold on to the status quo on the sixteen different issues compared to the younger generation. It seems that the younger generation of women do not want to project an image of change by going against the status quo in their answers whereas the older generation do not mind demanding change on our different items. Higher levels of education also increase the tendency of women to want to maintain the status quo. We observe no significant impact of education upon the first and second dimensions of conservatism. However, higher education levels are persistently reducing the level of religiosity on the third dimension. We also see that while Kurdish speakers are less inclined to maintain the status quo, the Alevi community appears low on the religiosity dimension compared to non-Alevis or the predominant Sunni community. However, on the first and second dimensions, no standard demographic variables beyond the dummy variable for men appear to exhort any significant result. Social Setting (Location) We also observe that while coastal and inner Anatolian provinces appear only significantly different on the status quo scale, the east and southeastern provinces appear significantly different from the reference category, which consists of the metropolitan provinces in all three dimensions of our conservatism scale, but not for the status quo scale. Rural dwellers appear to be more authoritarian on the first dimension and more religious on the third dimension. This solidifies our bivariate impression from our analyses above, that urban dwellers who are also relatively of higher education levels appear less conservative as defined by the first and third dimensions, that is, they are less authoritarian and less religious compared to rural dwellers. However, we do not observe significant regional differences beyond the east and southeastern provinces for the three dimensions of the conservatism scale. Only a blanket urbanrural difference across all provinces seems to matter. The east and southeastern provinces, however, exhibit a surprising tendency to be less authoritarian and less state interventionist on the first two dimensions but more religious on the third. There seems little if any support for a homogeneously more conservative east and
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southeast from our data that indicates that conservatism evaluations have to be subtle and balanced with regard to the east and southeastern Anatolian provinces. It should also be noted that urban dwellers include many new urbanites who were born in rural areas and who continue to live in the urban areas in shanty town settlements that carry rural lifestyle traits. Nevertheless, even if we do not differentiate these settlers from the long-term city dwellers, we still observe significant differences between urban and rural settlers. Attitudes toward Change and Uncertainty From an attitudinal perspective, we see that as a block the attitudes toward uncertainty do not appear to be significantly related to either one of our four measures of conservatism after controlling for the effects of other explanatory factors. The net reform support measure is negatively linked to the first and third dimensions of conservatism and to our status quo scale. In other words, those who are increasingly in support of reformist positions in different policy areas tend to be less authoritarian and old fashioned as well as less religious and less supportive of maintaining the status quo. However, more support for reformist positions is associated positively with state intervention, religious liberalism, and dogmatism. When perceived change evaluations increase, we also observe that authoritarian and old fashioned tendencies grow and state-interventionist religious liberalism declines. It seems that the more people perceive change in their environment, the more they want to revert to authoritarian tendencies to reduce the uneasiness attached to expected change and the less they want to deal with further potential crises due to religious liberalism or state interventionist policies. However, perceptions of change do not appear to be significantly related to religiosity or status quoism. A rise in positive evaluations of uncertainty reduces tendencies toward authoritarian old-fashioned values. However, the same increase also seems to produce a positive change upon the state-interventionist and religiosity dimensions of conservatism but has no impact on status quoist tendencies. These influences are all very small in magnitude. So much so that a rise of 100 units in the uncertainty evaluations scale, that is, a move from zero positive uncertainty score to fully positive evaluations on all items, produces about 40 percent of a standard deviation increase in religiosity factor scores and about only one standard deviation rise in the second dimension. Similarly, the same increase reduces the first dimension scores by about one standard deviation. A problematic and complicated impact upon these measures of conservatism perhaps comes from the different options made available to our respondents in evaluating social change. As we described it in previous chapters, when offered a conservative change item among the usual three options available in the World Values Surveys our respondents predominantly picked the conservative-reform agenda. About 17 percent of the respondents picked the option that our society should be reshaped with a radical change, and about double this group picked what we call the reformist conservative agenda of giving our society what it used to have in its past customs and traditions. This regressive focus on change has a perverted change perspective, but we observe especially among women that those who pick this option obtain the lowest status quo scores, suggesting that they are the most change-favoring group, scoring even higher than the so-called revolutionaries who support radical social change. Those favoring gradual reform form the second largest group with about 30 percent, and the
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self-designated status quoists appear at about the same level as the self-designated revolutionaries. However, these two groups score much higher on the status quo scale we operationalized and used. This picture is clearly reflected in the coefficient estimates for the dummy variables separating these four groups. Our base reference group consists of conservative reformist women below the age of thirty-five with political preferences that did not support the three largest parties at the time of our survey. We see that while the revolutionary group scores significantly lower on the three dimensions of conservatism, they stand higher on the status quo scale compared to the conservative reformist group. We tested whether these groups were significantly different for men as well as women but rejected this hypothesis. Male revolutionaries or slow reformists and even the male status quoists are no different than their female counterparts. We conclude by noting that the least status quoist tendency appears to be prevalent among those who support the view that our society should be changed by reforms so as to give itself back the customs and traditions it once had in the past. This option seems to be the most highly associated with reform and change in Turkish society. Ideology and Party Preferences We observed little persistence in the relationship between political ideology and political preference variables and conservatism in our data analysis. More right-wing self-placements along the conventional left-right scale appear to bring about higher authoritarian and OFV scores on the first dimension and more religiosity on the third. Given the nature of the Turkish right-wing, this is hardly a surprising result. However, consistent with our findings about the conservative reformist group, more right-wing ideological predispositions do not necessarily mean higher status quoist tendencies but rather just the opposite; they brings about lower status quoism. We believe this is a largely ignored aspect of Turkish conservatism. Perhaps, not surprisingly, conservative argumentation often refers to the so-called good old days of a past era. We aimed at capturing this aspect primarily by reference to a distinct dimension in conservative thinking we called old fashionedness and yearning for the past. However, perhaps more important in this respect than selecting the past as a reference point or object of yearning, what we observed here was a distinct activist agenda to recreate an idealized golden age. In contrast to their Western counterparts, Turkish conservatives seem to be less focused on the old traditional institutions of the past centuries or idealized capitalist market system but are more focused on a set of values reflected by the customs and traditions of the agricultural society of the recent past. This is also hardly surprising given the revolutionary Westernization project that defines Turkish Republican elites. The total rejection of the old Ottoman system leaves very little room for maneuver in terms of institutional structures that can be revitalized concretely and credibly. The Ottoman tradition did not leave much of a credible administrative, judicial, educational, or economic system that could provide any basis for yearning-for-the-past institutions. Instead it seems that for the laymen, a clearly intangible and idealized lifestyle of core values reflected in customs and traditions preoccupy their political agenda. Instead of a reformist agenda for a return to the past institutional setting, what is called for is a return to the realm of old values. These values need not emerge intact from the past. Perhaps more concretely they refer to what a popular song by a famous Turkish musician Ferdi Tayfur states most patently: “Let’s go back to our village! (Hadi gel köyümüze geri dönelim! )”7
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As the translation of the song hopefully makes lucid, the yearning for the past and the inability to break out of old-fashioned values are the still fresh among the new urban settlers. This is hardly a new idea. However, we believe the above diagnosis of an activist conservative reform agenda is something relatively new and so far not much studied. What seems to be increasingly gaining popularity among the Turkish voting-age population is an activist agenda in support of the myth of recreation or resuscitation of what was lost from the good old days of the agricultural society in the urban sprawl of the new industrial society. Considered together with the support for old-fashioned values on issues related to the youth and women, this activism has the potential to breed new tensions in the future. In fact, the debate over the issue of the türban and publicly observant religiosity could all be taken as reflections of the same phenomenon. However, unfortunately, our survey does not provide the necessary linkages to these topics that need to be further. With regard to partisan preferences, after controlling for the influences of other explanatory variables, the AKP voters do not appear to exert any significant influence from the rest of the sample on any one of the four measures of conservatism, while the CHP voters appear more authoritarian and old fashioned, and the MHP voters appear more religious on the third dimension. This is in contrast to all our previous bivariate analyses and underlines the importance of multivariate controls in regression analysis. When we control for the geographic and urbanrural differences, the differences between the Alevis and ethnic Kurds with their complements in Turkish society, as well as other attitudinal traits and economic evaluations, the preference for the largest party at the polls does not seem to be correlated with any dimension of conservatism. Put this way this result is hardly surprising since the AKP constituency was the largest, the most heterogeneous, and most like the whole sample compared to the relatively smaller CHP and MHP constituencies. These smaller groups of voters appear to be more easily distinguishable compared to the rest of the sample by their character on different dimensions. However, even these distinct traits should not be exaggerated since these influences are observed on only two out of eight possibilities of influence. These influences derive from dummy variables distinguishing party preferences for each individual, and their magnitudes are quite large compared to other variables of significance for the same dimension of conservatism; therefore they appear to be significant. For instance, on the first dimension of conservatism that grasp authoritarian and old-fashioned values, we observe that being a CHP voter raises a respondent’s score by about 17 percent of a standard deviation on this factor score. In comparison, economic evaluations should move by more than five notches out of a scale of 0 to 10 to yield a comparable impact. Similarly, only the anomie scale seems to have some ease in producing a similar impact upon the same dimension if it changed by more than ten points on a scale of 0 to 100. All other significant attitudinal scales have to exert a larger change to produce a larger impact upon the first dimension. In comparison, geographic impacts of the east and southeastern Anatolian regions or of the rural areas as places of residence all have larger influences on conservatism than identification with the CHP. Similarly, the magnitude of attitudes concerning change that appear to be significant are all in absolute terms larger than the partisan impact of being a CHP voter. The influence of being an MHP voter is greater upon the third dimension of religiosity. However, increasing levels of education, the geographic impact of being in the east and southeastern Anatolian provinces, and
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revolutionary attitudes toward social change all have larger absolute influences upon this dimension than just being an MHP voter. Economic Evaluations We would expect that relatively short term influences, just one year retrospectively or prospectively in the respondents’ horizons of memory, should not have much of a significant impact upon the attitudinal traits that shape conservatism, since these are expected to have been shaped by longer-term dynamics and thus should not be subject to short-term fluctuations reflected in these variables. We clearly observe that retrospective evaluations of the pocketbook or sociotropic kind are not significant for any dimension of conservatism. However, those respondents who are presently happy with their financial conditions and those who are sociotropically hopeful of the year to come tend to be significantly more conservative on the first dimension even after controlling for the influences of other independent variables. Prospective evaluations of the pocketbook type exert a negative influence upon the third dimension, suggesting that better expectations for future economic conditions tend to be associated with lower levels of religiosity. However similar prospective evaluations, but this time of a sociotropic kind, concerning the economic conditions of the whole country rather than just one family, lead to higher levels of religiosity in this dimension. This suggests that there might be a trade off in the influence of these evaluations about the future. We should underline here that our third dimension solely captures the private sphere religiosity of individual respondents when they respond to our questions concerning their self-evaluated religiosity, or faith in different aspects of Qur’anic rules and religious practice, as they choose in an interview setting. The public sphere evaluations of religiosity are captured by the religious conservatism and liberalism scales that load on the first and second dimensions, respectively. When things are expected to get better for the closer circle of family members, a lower degree of religiosity is reflected in respondents’ answers concerning their religious life in the private sphere. In a sense, when people expect to have more resources available in their own family pockets, they seem to tell us that they can “afford” to be less religious. However, prospective evaluations for the improvement of the whole country rather than just for the individual’s family lead to higher levels of revealed religiosity in the individual’s self-evaluations, practice, and faith. That is to say, when individuals expect the socioeconomic welfare of the whole country to improve, they seem to reflect a more religious image in their private sphere and leave observers and possibly their community members as well to think that these individuals are devout Muslims and perhaps more deserving of the public benefits of rising affluence. However, this aspect of the relationship between relatively short-term economic expectations upon the private sphere of religiosity of individuals requires a more extensive study. To what extent do individuals use their private sphere image concerning their religiosity in their relations in the economic sphere potentially for economic benefits? Is reflection of a more private sphere of religiosity a sign of conformity to larger public pressures for economic benefits that may get difficult to share when things get better unless one is acceptably religious? However, when only private pocketbook economic benefits are concerned, individuals may find it relatively easier to do without a strict image of religiosity that may be necessary for economic success in an increasingly more conservative environment. These issues will have to remain unresolved until better future data becomes available on these dynamics.
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Attitudinal Traits, Trust, and Happiness Among the different groups of variables, this group that brings together attitudinal traits, interpersonal trust, and happiness appears to have the highest occurrence of significance in explaining different dimensions of conservatism. Anomic attitudes, for instance, exert a significant impact upon all dimensions. The more anomic an individual becomes the more conservative he or she becomes on the first two dimensions of conservatism, but less religious and less inclined to prefer maintenance of the status quo. Since anomie contradicts the divine rule-based lifestyle of the religious mind-set, this is hardly surprising. Similarly, accepting the status quo also implies abiding by the rules and regulations of the present order, which is too constraining for the anomic individual and thus a lower status quo tendency among anomic individuals is not surprising. More trusting individuals are more inclined to accept the status quo on different policy areas but are less religious and less state interventionist and religiously liberal as well. This is hardly surprising considering the nature of interpersonal trust relations. When an individual becomes more trusting, that individual’s vision of the society within which he or she exists is likely to be more satisfactory, and thus he or she becomes more likely to be supportive of the maintenance of the status quo. However, more trusting individuals are less likely to be more religious, since trust is likely to work against the exclusivist nature of religious boundaries in any major faith. Instead of approval on the basis of religion and its hierarchical rules, trusting individuals tend to believe in one another almost by fiat rather than experience.8 More trusting individuals do not, however, seem to support state interventionism, dogmatic perspectives, and religious liberalism. Similar to the impact of ameliorating economic evaluations, we observe that happiness is positively related to the first dimension of conservatism even after controlling for the impacts of other variables. A similar relationship also holds for the case of the third dimension capturing religiosity. Not surprisingly, when lack of self-esteem increases so do authoritarian tendencies. However, a lack of self-esteem seems to have a negative impact on state interventionism as well as on the religiosity dimension of conservatism, yet no influence on the status quo scale. Intolerance of unwanted neighbors is positively related to both authoritarian as well as religiosity dimensions of conservatism, but negatively related to state interventionism and religious liberalism. Again, unsurprisingly, we observe that the political inefficacy scale is positively related to authoritarian tendencies on the first dimension of conservatism. Conclusion Our analyses above helped us clarify the underlying nature of conservatism in Turkey. We argued in the previous chapter and in our introduction that Turkish society is more likely to be experiencing a rise in conservatism simply due to internal and external factors that are conducive to such a development. We keep developing democracy as the main factor responsible for the rising salience of conservatism in Turkish politics. However, we also underlined that an uncontrollable conservative national mood may actually bring an end to the still-developing democratic regime in the country. Thus, we need to understand the nature of this rising conservatism.
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Several features catch our attention from our analysis of different dimensions of conservatism. First among them are the persistent, statistically significant differences between men and women in their evaluations of all dimensions of conservatism, except the third, which covers religiosity and youth-related conservatism. However, we cannot say that men or women are persistently more or less conservative on all these dimensions. While men are more authoritarian on the first dimension, women tend to be more state interventionist and religiously liberal as well as being less supportive of the status quo. Education appears to be only statistically significant in explaining religiosity and no other dimension of conservatism. Geographic impact brings forth the importance of the urban-rural divide. Rural dwellers are significantly more conservative on authoritarian as well as religiosity dimensions. In the provincial regions we see that east and southeastern provinces appear less authoritarian and state interventionist, whereas these same regions are more religious and conservative on youth-related issues. Most probably, in the eyes of the citizens of Kurdish origin in Turkey, state intervention is not perceived as a benign phenomenon, whereas the state is considered as a “Papa State,” a source of benevolence, by the rest of the population. However, attitudes toward uncertainty as a threat or risk as opposed to an opportunity are, as a block, insignificant in explaining any one of our dimensions. Nevertheless, the net reform scale appears significant for all dimensions of conservatism, and uncertainty evaluations concerning six different areas of social life in Turkey are significant in explaining all three dimensions of conservatism but not the status quo scale. What then do these results tell us? If we leave the clouding technical details of scale formation aside, we see that if individuals are more inclined to ask for change—that is, asking to make things harder or easier than the present status quo—then these individuals are not likely to score higher on the conservatism scales. However, the more an individual perceives change in his or her environment, the more authoritarian, intolerant, and old fashioned that individual becomes. Yet, the same developments, on an average, lead to a lower state interventionism score. What people seem to be saying is that if they perceive a lot of change taking place around them, they revert to conservatism of an old fashioned and authoritarian type, but when they demand reform in different policy areas, they would like to see more state interventions or state initiatives, yet they refrain from increasing their conservative attitudes. Although partisan preferences remain of limited significance in accounting for variation in conservatism, the conventional left-right scale appears significant in all four variables except in the second dimension that captures state interventionist, religiously liberal, and dogmatic attitudinal stances. This implies that as people move from left to right on the conventional left-right scale, they become more authoritarian and old fashioned as well as religious, but they do not seem to experience a significant change in the second dimension that captures state interventionism in especially the economic sphere. Happier people seem to be more conservative as well as more religious, or vice versa. However, a more trusting individual is insignificantly related to the first dimension of conservatism but negatively related to state interventionist, religiously liberal, and dogmatic individuals and so cannot play a significant role in the other three exercises. More trusting individuals are negatively related to state interventionism and are religiously less devoted. Different dimensions of conservatism are also captured by our anomie scale. People who are less bound by social rules seem to be positively linked to conservatism as well
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as authoritarianism, intolerance, state interventionism, and dogmatism, but negatively linked to religiosity and status quoism. Politically more inefficacious people tend to be supportive of the first dimension of authoritarianism that captures intolerant authoritarianism and old fashionedness. We also see that political inefficacy is not significant for the second and fourth dimensions. What do these findings capture that we did not know before? Following earlier findings and conceptual arguments in the relevant literature that a multidimensional measurement of conservatism is necessary, we conducted all our preceding analyses carrying out a simple explanatory framework applied in exactly the same way across four different measures of analysis of this data. Our results indicate that a different set of explanatory variables is necessary to deal with these dimensions. In other words, conservatism is complex, multidimensional, and necessitates a different set of explanatory tools to account for significant differences. We depended on psychology and social psychology to derive our expectations of what underlie this process. Uncertainty and change attitudes appear significant as expected in these models, while partisan differences appear only insignificantly related to conservatism measures. Among the different measures of conservatism, the first dimension used above captures authoritarian, old fashioned, and intolerant tendencies. These tendencies seem to increase as anomie, political inefficacy, lack of self-esteem, intolerance, and interpersonal trust and happiness increase. As Turkish society plunges into a mind-set defined by these indicators, it is likely that the resulting political regime will be faced with demands and pressures to maintain an oppressive authoritarian regime that looks to the past rather than the future.
CHAPTER 6
Consequences of Conservatism for Turkey’s Domestic Politics
I
n the preceding chapters of this book we analyzed the conditions, factors, and sources that helped to breed conservatism in Turkey’s society and polity. In this and the following chapter we are going to focus on the consequences of conservatism on Turkish politics. It goes without saying that one major consequence of increasing conservatism is the voter realignment that occurred in what we considered to be a secular realignment of the vote between 1995 and 2002.1 A ripple effect of the sharp shift of public opinion toward the right end of the left-right ideological spectrum in the mid-1990s seems to continue into the new millennia. As a conservative political agenda developed, a stagnant left-wing remained constant in the last two decades. The Turkish left entered a state of paralysis right after the end of the Cold War in which it continues to stagnate. Given the electoral performance of the left-leaning establishment in the party system, it seems to enjoy almost no chance of emerging from this paralysis in the near future (see table 6.1). Several characteristics of this rising right-wing conservative electoral tide and its reflections on the shrinking left are worthy of mention.2 First is the natural dependence and complementary character of these two phenomena. With the rising conservatism and electoral vibrancy of the right-wing comes the inevitable shrinkage of the leftwing. While the conservative agenda dominates not only the very basis of the political agenda, it also seems to dictate the terms of the political debate in the country. The political struggle waged around türban is at the core of these debates. While the right wing seems to exploit this issue much to its electoral advantage, the left wing also seems to consolidate and strengthen its shrinking electoral constituency with its own opposing secularist perspectives on the issue. It is also important to note that the presently dominant pro-Islamist branch of the Turkish right wing has its electoral roots in the MSP of the 1970s that followed the MNP, which is characterized less by its marginal ideological policy positions and more by its convenient political pragmatism. The founding cadres of the MNP and MSP under Necmettin Erbakan’s leadership first formed a coalition government with the CHP in 1973, then the largest political party, of Bülent Ecevit who placed the party
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1990
1996
2002
2006
2007
7.0 14.8 43.5 13.3 9.4 12.0
9.1 10.7 32.6 17.3 21.6 8.7
7.9 7.4 32.2 19.1 24.2 9.2
11.0 8.1 40.7 21.3 16.5 2.4
8.5 8.4 32.0 24.7 22.2 4.1
100.0
100.0
100.0
100.0
100.0
Ideological position Extreme left (1–2) Center left (3–4) Center (5–6) Center right (7–8) Extreme right (9–10) No response
Sources: The data sources are from the Turkish Values Surveys of 1990 and 1996, Ali Çarkoğlu and Ersin Kalaycıoğlu, Turkish Democracy Today: Elections, Participation and Stability in an Islamic Society, (London: I. B. Tauris, 2007), p.116, and the Turkish Election Study of June–July 2007 conducted by Ali Çarkoğlu and Ersin Kalaycıoğlu.
on a social-democratic path. This coalition had a series of eventful developments in its tenure, the most notable being the military intervention Turkey undertook in Cyprus in 1975 followed by tense developments in Turkey’s relations with the United States, who imposed an arms embargo on Turkey. The MSP then became a permanent power broker in two coalition governments with two right-wing partners; the more centrist AP of Süleyman Demirel and the then ultranationalist MHP of Alparslan Türkeş. These so-called Nationalist Front (Milliyetçi Cephe) coalitions have been unable to control rising violent political turmoil in the country. However, these three coalition government experiences have signaled to the electoral masses that an Islamist party with all its ideologically loaded policy preferences could come to power and be part of a government delivering executive initiatives to its constituencies. Similar pragmatism again surfaced under different circumstances when the same Islamist cadres formed a preelection coalition with their ultranationalist ideological neighbors of the MÇP to bypass the representational threshold of a 10 percent nationwide vote share in the 1991 elections. Success in securing seats in the Assembly have helped raise the RP to the largest party of the system with only about 21 percent of the popular vote four years later in 1995. The RP negotiated with both right-of-center parties of the ideological spectrum and formed again an eventful coalition with the DYP that eventually collapsed in the aftermath of rising pressures from the secularist circles spearheaded by the Turkish military after the so-called post-modern coup of February 1997. In short, the rising conservative political agenda reflected in the increasing electoral appeal of the Islamist parties had always had a political pragmatist stand and was never hesitant about building coalitions with competitors of the opposing or neighboring ideological neighborhoods. However, all such coalitions in which they took part dramatically failed. From an electoral perspective, such failures in the executive office did not seem to push the voters away from the Islamist cadres but rather helped expand the electoral power of the Islamist branch of the conservative electoral movement. Another interesting development in the same period was the rising electoral significance of the ethnic Kurdish vote in Turkish politics. Although the ethnic Kurdish vote is expected to be closer to the conservative-leaning parties with significant doses of Islamism, the ethnic Kurdish identity politics has found reflection in the left-leaning
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political movements. They not only found their adversaries on the conventional ideological grounds within the nationalist camp, but also have helped the Islamist branch of the conservatives in the electoral scene. In the 2007 general elections, it was the AKP, with its Sunni Muslim credentials, that distanced itself from ethnic Turkish nationalism, which won not only the conservative votes of the Turks but also that of the Kurds and increased its vote share from 34 percent of the valid national vote in the 2002 general elections to 47 percent in the 2007 general elections. Interestingly, the MHP, which represents ethnic Turkish nationalism more than Sunni Islam, also managed to increase its vote of 8 percent in the 2002 general elections to almost double its previous level to 14 percent of the national vote in 2007. The CHP was able to increase its vote share of a few percentage points only in a preelection coalition with the DSP and reinforced its stagnant image as the major party of the left in the 2007 elections, which also coincided with the overall ideological space that has been stagnant since 2002 (see table 6.1). This new voter realignment in Turkish politics is the most critical outcome of the rise of conservatism since the end of the Cold War. The rise of conservatism not only resulted in the systematic shift of voter choice to the right, but also changed the major political issues, and the very contours of public debate in Turkey from class issues, left-right conflict, distribution of land, mineral resources, property rights, economic growth and development to the role of religion in public space, the meaning and role of secularism in the Republican era, ethnic identity of the Turkish population, and the ethnic conflict between those who purport to know that they are Kurds and all the rest who they designated as Turks. With rising conservatism, the center of gravity of the left-right spectrum shifted to the right, and the new public issues began to occupy the top of the agenda. An examination of what Turkey pondered about during the last two decades in Turkish politics would reveal the importance attached to covering up of the Turkish women, which is referred to as tesettür (hicab), an Arabic word, as are most other concepts associated with Islam in Turkey. However, the core within the issue of the tesettür has been the türban, which not only occupied the center stage of debate, legislation, and litigation, both domestically and internationally, but also overwhelmed the more general issue and debate concerning women’s rights in Turkey. Türban and Tesettür: Where Religious Conservatism Meets Modernity Türban refers to a style women employ in covering their heads with a headscarf, which is part of covering up (tesettür). Its modern origins of political significance are rooted in the sociopolitical developments of the 1960s. It was a style that was initiated in France and was inspired from African women, who covered their hair with a headscarf that was called “türban” in France at fashion shows in the early 1960s and “türban” in Turkey, for it looked like a traditional Ottoman “türban” (sarik). African women used a large scarf to cover their hair, wrapping it around their head a few times and covering just the hair while exposing the face, ears, and neck. It was presented in fashion shows in Turkey as well. For a brief period some women used it as a part of their accessory in social events and parties in Istanbul and other big cities. It eventually dropped out of the Turkish fashion shows and shop windows in the 1960s. However, some conservative middle-aged and elderly urban women, who had recently turned religious (which often occurs with the loss of a loved one such as a husband, child, or some close friend), began to don the same style of headscarves in the 1960s and the 1970s. The most one can make of that practice was that it began with some urban women turning to
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religion, or coping with aging and fear of death, and becoming somewhat conservative in a context where they would not also want to let go of their modern lifestyles. The political significance of what would eventually be referred to as the türban began in the mid-1960s,3 and in a university campus in the year 1968, when a student at Ankara University, of the Faculty of Theology, began to cover her head with a scarf that not only covered her hair but part of her forehead, ears, neck, and the shoulders. When the faculty member who was lecturing on Islamic History reminded the student that the course did not involve the recitation of the Holy Qur’an, a male student verbally abused the instructor, and both the female student who donned the headscarf and the male student who insulted the faculty member were subjected to disciplinary action.4 When the protesting students were dismissed from Ankara University, likeminded students staged boycotts in May 1968 that attracted the attention of the national press and the rest of the country.5 The initial interpretation of the donning of the headscarf in a blatant style that covered up not only the hair but also the ears, neck, and shoulders of the woman student was interpreted as a political act by the dean of the Faculty of Theology of Ankara University, and he was opposed and criticized while the student was supported, defended, and encouraged by the Islamic revivalist press and forces at the time.6 The press eventually began to refer to the female student and others who emulated her as “sıkmabaş” (literally meaning “squeezed head”), in the 1960s and then 1970s. Soon after this incident, and following similar student uprisings at Berkeley (California), Paris, London, Berlin, and other major campuses and cities in West Europe and North America, the student protest movement of 1968 started and rapidly captured the headlines of major newspapers in the country. In the mayhem that followed, which eventually degenerated into an armed struggle between the left- and right-wing student organizations, political forces and parties, and even of the police force of Turkey, the sıkmabaş failed to attract much attention and dropped out of the political agenda by the 1970s. It was in the aftermath of the military coup of 1980 that a new regime for the administration of the universities was established that began to operate in an environment of relative calm and resuscitated the Islamic movement, which in turn was perceived as an ally against the atheist communists by the military government of 1980–1983. This time it was the medical and nursing schools of the Turkish universities that seemed to experience the challenge of the sıkmabaş in the early 1980s. A student who submitted a photo with the sıkmabaş style of headscarf to be affixed on her diploma at a nursing school was not issued her diploma until she provided a “proper” passport photograph that exposed her face and uncovered head. She sued the school and lost the case at the local administrative court. She then appealed the case and was also turned down by the Higher Administrative Court (Conseil d’état, Danıştay). With the appeal mechanisms in Turkey fully exhausted, she turned to Europe and appealed at the European Commission of Human Rights (ECHR) of the time. The ECHR also declined to accept her point of view and decided that the student should abide by the rules and regulations of the school and could not request to have the school waive its regulations on religious grounds. Thus started the long road of litigation for a number of students who were attending medical and nursing schools and who trekked the same road on numerous occasions. All the student legal appeals failed and yet political activities, such as protest marches, clashes with the security forces, petitioning, and agenda setting, continued until now.
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In the meantime, the Higher Educational Council (YÖK) of Turkey established on November 6, 1981, began to suggest measures to cope with the challenge of the sıkmabaş. The Director of the YÖK, a student of medicine himself, began to refer to the sıkmabaş style of donning the headscarf as “türban,” which he might have considered as another version of the earlier style of the 1960s that left an indelible impact on his perceptions of the women brandishing a French-fashion fad for a while. When the YÖK regulations began to make references to the concept of “türban,” the police, courts, press, politicians, and political activists started to adopt the same terminology. The concept of “sıkmabaş” began to be used less frequently and was eventually replaced by türban, which has become the standard concept of reference to the headscarf style of tesettür most widely used among upwardly mobile urban women in Turkey since the early 1980s. Academic interest on the topic began to gather momentum in the 1990s, as political parties with explicit Sunni Muslim agendas began to make inroads into the Turkish political arena and the political issues of the day started to veer away from social class, distributive justice, economic regime, industrial relations, and labor issues and rights to issues concerning religiosity, morality, ethnicity, territorial integrity, national identity, and the like. One sociological interpretation of tesettür and türban consisted of defining them as a protective shield for conservative and rural women, who were trying to integrate into the modern urban lifestyle without abandoning their traditional values and identification. This was absolutely essential for them so as not to incite the wrath of their conservative-rural-religious reference group. According to this approach, women in tesettür are not rebels who are challenging the secular order of the Turkish Republic. On the contrary, they are attracted to the modern and secular lifestyles in the cities, and they would like to work outside of their homes and become members of professional middle class, blue-collar labor, or small shop owners and employees.7 The tesettür and türban give them the green light from their conservative family members and their neighborhood to participate in the workforce and business life outside of their homes. Only in such garb are they recognized as “ladies,” for their tradition-bound, rural, and religious cultural milieu would consider any woman who is not covered up as a “loose woman,” to say the least.8 So the ladies donning the türban are not only tradition-bound, and under the influence of conservative religiosity or even political Islam, but they are also modern individuals who are emerging in a sociocultural environment heavily influenced by traditional rural virtues and morality and deeply influenced by the orthodoxy of Sunni Islam. However, their traditionalism is not necessarily in contradiction with modernity. They may be traditional in certain respects, but they would still like to be part of the labor force and would refuse to be dominated by men. They may look strangely unmodern in their appearance, but they would still like to participate in all facets of social life. Their being under the influence of an Islamic movement does not necessarily disqualify them from being modern, equal, and participant in social life. The only way they can cope with such a heavy dose of religious morality is to signal to all the relevant actors surrounding them that they have the necessary credentials of a moral woman (lady) while they act under the motives of modernity or modernization. They have the work ethic, consumption, investment, and saving patterns, business and other social relations, social and cultural interests, and activities of modern women, while they function in tesettür, just to protect themselves from the wrath of their tradition-bound orthodox religious elders and peers. This perspective also assumes that the decision of the individual woman
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to don the türban is based upon her free choice, without any influence of social and political mobilization and conditioning that emerge from long years of socialization in a certain conservative religious family and neighborhood. The women in tesettür are of the opinion that the constraints of their social contexts are not acceptable or tolerable; they want to get out of their tradition-bound cocoons, and began to rebel against their social contexts, yet they do not have the capability to engage in open revolt, for the cost of such action could be very dire. Instead, they are showing off their tradition-bound credentials through their clothing, but take audacious strides toward modernity. Another reverse argument on tesettür and türban somewhat in contradiction with the one above is also possible. This interpretation argues that those women who cover up using the türban lead a conservative and traditional life. However, they also operate under the influence of political Islam (İslamcılık Cereyanı) in Turkey. They are the symbols of political Islam among women as they don that kind of attire to spread the message of Sunni Islam, which is a call to establish a religious order along the lines of Şeriat.9 The women in tesettür are also tradition bound, religiously conservative, and share the same values and moral order with the rest of the family members and neighborhood in which they were born and raised. They are not in any kind of conflict with their reference, peer, and secondary groups. They would like to preserve the rural, traditional, and conservative religious moral order in the mayhem of the metropolitan areas, and their way to do so is to don the türban and tesettür. Therefore, they are not modernists or nonreligious traditionalists in stealth, but tradition-bound religious conservatives who are forced to operate in a modern urban society due to economic reasons, which have made single-bread-winner families a virtual impossibility in the major cities of Turkey. Under these circumstances, the women of rural migrant families need to seek employment wherever they can. The urban society in which they function is essentially different from their rural society of origin, and thus they feel that their modesty is threatened by the alien culture of the urban environment. With their chastity at risk and the imposing need to function in the urban workforce, what better way to reconcile the two circumstances than to cover up as the Holy Qur’an instructs them to do and protect one’s chastity as they work for pecuniary goals as well? Thus, donning the türban is not a means of emancipating participation in the modern urban society, but more of a means to protect one from the ills and vices of the corrupting environment of the modern city while earning one’s living with honor. The two stylized arguments seem to be holistically incompatible or even irreconcilable. However, taken on a piecemeal basis, different parts of these arguments seem to complement one another. We unfortunately do not have data on who is a türban wearer and who is not in our survey.10 We only deal with attitudes toward türban in public spaces from the perspective of different dimensions and degrees of conservatism. In doing so, our main empirical strategy is first of all to classify our respondents into three simple rank order categories (low, middle, and high) for all our measures of conservatism. We then trace the extent to which these groups differ in their support of different assertions concerning the türban issue in Turkey. Table 6.2 below reports the distribution of our sample across three rank order categories of the measures developed for our analysis of the dimensionality of conservatism in the previous chapter. We separately ran a cluster analysis for each measure and derived three clusters. The clusters were then rank ordered according to their mean values as low, middle, and high. Accordingly 54 percent of our sample falls into the middle category on self-evaluated religiosity, while only 10 percent are in the low
Consequences of Conservatism in Domestic Politics Table 6.2
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103
Dimensions of conservatism: Shares of different clusters Cluster levels of scales Low
Middle
High
% share in the sample
1.7 10 11.9 4 0.3 13 26.1 16 45.3 19 17.1 25 49.6 23
5.9 54 62.1 2 3.1 25 58.7 43 64.4 44 43.0 46 66.8 46
8.9 36 99.4 94 5.6 62 82.7 41 85.1 37 59.7 29 84.8 31
% share in the sample
47.5 12
68.8 49
87.5 39
33.6 16 29.7 16 24.0 20 39.8 25
58.8 48 53.5 47 55.8 42 56.0 41
79.8 36 74.7 38 82.3 38 74.2 34
16.6 33 56.0 21
36.4 49 69.8 50
56.1 18 86.6 29
Self-evaluated religiosity (0 to 10) % share in the sample Faith scale (0 to 100) % share in the sample Religious worship practice scale (0 to 6) % share in the sample Religious conservatism scale (0 to 100) % share in the sample Religious liberalism scale (0 to 100) % share in the sample Gender issues scale (0 to 100) % share in the sample Dogmatism scale (0 to 100) Old-fashioned values–Youth-related conservatism scale (0 to 100) Old-fashioned values–Yearning for the past scale (0 to 100) % share in the sample Authoritarianism scale (0 to 100) % share in the sample Xenophobia scale (0 to 100) % share in the sample Political intolerance scale (0 to 100) % share in the sample Social intolerance and repression of freedoms of expression scale (0 to 100) % share in the sample State interventionism scale (0 to 100) % share in the sample
100 100 100 100 100 100 100
100
100 100 100 100
100 100
category, and 36 percent are in the high category. On the faith scale there exists very little variation, and 94 percent fall into the same category with the highest mean value for our faith scale. It should be noted here that these three categories are all defined in relative terms. For instance, on our faith scale we have 2 percent of the sample in the middle category with a mean faith scale score of 62 and 4 percent with 11 out of 100. The middle category thus represents 2 percent of the sample with an average of 62 percent of the total faith items believed by the respondents. However, on our religious practice scale we observe 13 percent in the lowest mean practice scale score and 25 percent in the middle. Those in the middle category get on average 3 out of a maximum of 6 on our practice scale and those in the low category obtain 0 out of 6. Keeping the relative nature of these rank order categories in mind we observe that on the attitudinal religious conservatism scale 41 percent obtain the highest cluster mean while 37 percent appear highest on the religious liberalism scale. On gender issues as well as on dogmatism scales those in the middle category form the largest group with 46 percent. On gender issues, the low category is comprised of those respondents who on average obtained 17 out of 100, which can be considered to indeed be low on
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The Rising Tide of Conservatism in Turkey
this scale. However, on the dogmatism scale, even those who appear in the low category obtain an average dogmatism scale value of about 50 out of 100, which is quite high but in a relative rank ordering gets the lowest mean score in a three-cluster grouping of respondents. Similarly, while about a one-third or higher share of the sample appears to be on the high end of our clustering exercise for the two old-fashioned values scales, we get about half of our sample in the middle category. On the state interventionism scale we observe that on face value of the scale scores almost everyone scores quite high as reflected in the average scale score of 56 out of 100 for the low category. However, relatively speaking, this group comprised 21 percent of our sample being the low state interventionism group, while 29 percent with about 87 out of 100 average scale score comprised the high cluster. We also conducted a similar exercise for our three dimensions of conservatism that were formed on the basis of a three dimensional factor solution to our above presented scales. This analysis comprises of five clusters derived simultaneously for the factor scores of the three dimensions of our conservatism measures. Table 6.3 shows the average factor scores across the five clusters and three dimensions of our three conservatism dimensions. The first cluster has the highest mean factor score on the third dimension of conservatism that reflects religiosity measures more heavily than others. On the other two dimensions the average scores reflect values closer to the sample mean (0 on the normalized factor scores). This cluster with heavier religiosity in its attitudinal component comprises 28 percent of our sample. The second cluster comprises of 10 percent of the sample and reflects quite extreme average values on all three
Table 6.3 Dimensions of the aggregate conservatism scale: Average cluster factor scores
Conservatism 1 Authoritarian, intolerant, old fashioned Conservatism 2 State interventionism, religious liberalism, dogmatism Conservatism 3 Religiosity, youth-related conservatism % share in the sample
High on state interventionism, low on authoritarian and religiosity dimensions
Low on religiosity, low on stateinterventionism and moderate on authoritarian dimensions
Low on authoritarian, low on stateinterventionist and average on religiosity dimension
High on authoritarian, high on stateinterventionist and about average on religiosity dimension
0.2
⫺1.4
0.4
⫺0.9
1.0
⫺0.3
1.3
⫺0.5
⫺0.7
1.0
0.8
⫺1.8
⫺0.7
0.1
0.3
28
10
17
23
22
High on religiosity, about average on the authoritarian and stateinterventionism dimensions
Consequences of Conservatism in Domestic Politics
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105
conservatism dimensions. While state interventionism, religious liberalism, and dogmatism emerge as dominant measures on the second dimension, the second cluster has a positive average value on the last dimension, which emphasizes authoritarianism and state intervention, yet it has average negative factor score values on the rest of the dimensions. As such, it brings together a sample of respondents who score low on religiosity (third dimension) and low on authoritarian, intolerant, and old-fashioned values (first dimension). The third cluster obtains a negative average factor score for the third dimension and about average scores on the first two dimensions. As such, it reflects an average attitudinal dimension for the first two dimensions of the attitudinal construct of conservatism while reflecting lower than average scoring respondents on the third dimension that grasps religiosity and youth-related conservatism more than others. In contrast to the first cluster the third one grasps similar individuals with respect to the first and second dimensions, but who differ in the third dimension since they are relatively less religious compared to those that appear in the first cluster. The fourth and second clusters are also comparable since they both grasp similar individuals in the first dimension. However, with respect to the second dimension, the fourth dimension grasps individuals who are on the relatively lower state interventionist side. Another critical difference between the two is that, while the second cluster reflects lower-than-average religiosity and youth -related conservatism, the fourth cluster has respondents that score about the average of the sample on the third dimension. So, while the second dimension grasps individuals who are not religious and authoritarian but significantly more state interventionist, the fourth dimension is comprised of individuals who are of about average religiosity on the third dimension but who are also low on authoritarianism and state interventionism. The fourth cluster comprises about 23 percent of our sample. Lastly, the fifth cluster contrasts to the first and marks individuals who are relatively more authoritarian, intolerant, and old fashioned on the first dimension as well as being more state interventionist, dogmatic, and of more religious liberal convictions while being of average religiosity on the third dimension. So, the fifth cluster grasps individuals who are of different ends of the first and second dimensions while being of average standing on the third dimension. The fifth cluster comprises about 22 percent of our sample. We now move on to diagnosing how respondents who cluster under different measures of conservatism with different configurations of relative standings along the three dimensions of conservatism evaluate the türban issue. Attitudes toward the Türban in Turkish Society The issue of the türban does not involve a general ban on what women in Turkey can wear, and it is not about regulating the dress codes of the Turkish women. Women are free to wear whatever attire they wish in Turkish society, and there has never been any attempt at regulating the attire of women, even in the heat of the secularizing reforms of the 1920s, until quite recently.11 Now that the Turkish courts have taken various decisions, which are also upheld by the ECHR, attitudes concerning the dress codes of women as state employees and their enrollment and attendance in undergraduate programs in Turkish universities wearing the türban define the gist of the controversy.
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In the field survey of April–May 2006 we posed three separate questions concerning the türban issue. Two questioned whether women should be left free to don the türban when they function as state officials, be permitted to register in university programs, and be free to attend courses, laboratories, and operation rooms in the universities of Turkey. A third was talked about in Chapter 5 when we developed the status quo scale as a separate measure of conservatism. In this module of evaluations in which we inquired what policies should be made easier or more difficult as opposed to preserving the status quo situation we also had an item concerning the registration of students dressed in tesettür in universities. Referring to figure 5.2.1, 21 percent of our respondents preferred to maintain the status quo while 66 percent wanted to render the registration of the türban-wearing women in universities easier. Only about 13 percent opted for making registration of türban-wearing women in universities more difficult. The responses given to those questions indicate that a huge majority seem to possess an attitude best described as “freedom to türban” (see table 6.4), which is in contradiction to the High Administrative Court, Constitutional Court, and ECHR decisions on this matter. The responses of women and men do not differ across the three items that tap attitudes toward the türban issue either.12 In order to further delve into the matter, the respondents were also asked whether pressure is exerted on those who observe religious practices in Turkey, and if so they were requested to give an example. This was an open-ended question, so the respondents gave their spontaneous examples for what they understood to be pressure on religious observance. The results indicated that an overwhelming number of them mentioned the practice of keeping the türban out of the state bureaucracy and the school system as the prime example of such pressures (see table 6.5). The correlation coefficient between gender and the response categories of types of pressure on religion is again very close to zero and statistically insignificant, which is another clear indication of the fact that attitudes toward what constitutes pressure on religion in Turkey fail to differ for men and women, and both tend to stress türban as the prime example of such pressures in Turkey. Table 6.4
Evaluations of the türban issue Women
Men
Total
Should state employees be permitted to wear türban, which cover their hair, head, and shoulders, as they function in their public offices?
No, they should not be permitted Yes, they should be permitted NR
31.8 67.3 1.0
35.5 62.9 1.7
33.4 65.3 1.3
Should university students be permitted to wear the türban, i.e., a headscarf that covers their hair, ears, heads, and shoulders while attending universities?
No, they should not be permitted Yes, they should be permitted NR
100 28.9 70.2 0.9
100 33.5 65.3 1.2
100 31.0 68.0 1.0
Should it be made more difficult, less difficult, or as difficult as it is right now for students to register in university programs brandishing their türbans?
Should be made more difficult The current situation be preserved without any changes Should be made less difficult NR
100 11.5
100 15.3
100 13.2
20.3 67.6 0.6 100
20.3 64.1 0.4 100
20.3 66.0 0.5 100
Consequences of Conservatism in Domestic Politics Table 6.5
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107
Examples of pressure exerted on religion in Turkey (2006)
Item Türban Worshiping in the workplaces Bans on religious meetings Banning religious instruction in schools Banning Qur’an courses Discrimination of pious people Unequal education opportunities for the graduates of religious vocational (Imam-Hatip) high schools Violations of religious rights and liberties
Women %
Men %
Total %
84.7 3.5 1.3 0.0 4.8 2.6
77.2 9.9 1.8 1.2 3.5 1.2
81.5 6.3 1.5 0.5 4.3 2.0
1.3 1.7 100.0
2.9 2.3 100.0
2.0 2.0 100.0
Notes: Cramer’s V= 0.18 (Statistically insignificant at 0,05 level of statistical significance)
Explaining Attitudes toward the türban: Modernity or Religious Activism Now that we have found very little evidence of gender differences making any impact on the way people think about the türban issue in Turkey, it is warranted that we look elsewhere for clues on what explains attitudes toward the türban. To what extent do we observe differences in the preferences of various groups of respondents at different levels of conservatism? We show in table 6.6.1 how different levels of conservatism and its components exhibit preferential differences concerning the türban ban in public offices and universities. All cross-tabulations except the two involving the political intolerance and state interventionism scales result in significant Cramer’s V measures of association between the türban ban preferences and the levels of different dimensions of conservatism. In other words, as we move from low to high levels of conservatism in its various measures of dimensions, we observe that preferences concerning the türban ban significantly change for all measures except the noted two. When we concentrate on table 6.6.1, which reports all measures that are directly related to religiosity, we observe remarkable differences in the proportion of respondents that approve/oppose the ban at universities and public workplaces. For instance, when we only take self-evaluated religiosity into consideration, we observe that those at the lowest level of self-evaluated religiosity (which comprise about 10 percent of our sample) and those who support the continuation of the ban are in slim majority. However, when we move to the middle and high levels of self-evaluated religiosity, we observe that the balances change in favor of those who oppose the ban. Among the middle level of the self-evaluated religiosity group, about 59 percent are opposed to the ban, and among the high level those who are in opposition comprise about 81 percent of this group. Thus, moving from the low level of self-evaluated religiosity to the high level, the support for türban-donning women nearly doubles and rises from about 41 percent to 81 percent within their respective groups. Sharp increases in the size of the group that opposes the türban ban are observed across different dimensions of religiosity for both the issue of students in universities as well as public employment issues. Similar rises are also observed across different dimensions of the conservatism measure we developed in Chapter 3. For instance, the low dogmatism group contains about 66 percent that oppose the ban, while for the high dogmatism group this is about 72 percent (see table 6.6.2). Larger increases are observed with increasing levels of conservatism measures that capture old-fashioned values (both youth-related as well as yearning for the past), authoritarianism, social intolerance, and xenophobia
Conservatism and preferences concerning the türban ban*
No, they should not be permitted
No, they should not be permitted
Yes, they should be permitted
NR
Yes, they should be permitted
NR
Low
58.8
41.2
0.0
100
53.7
46.3
0.0
100
Middle
39.0
59.1
1.9
100
35.8
62.7
1.5
100
High
18.4
80.9
0.7
100
17.8
81.6
0.6
100
Low
66.7
33.3
0.0
100
60.3
39.7
0.0
100
Middle
65.0
35.0
0.0
100
57.5
42.5
0.0
100
High
31.2
67.4
1.4
100
29.1
69.8
1.1
100
Low
51.2
48.0
0.8
100
49.2
50.0
0.8
100
Middle
41.3
57.2
1.5
100
39.7
59.0
1.3
100
High
26.4
72.3
1.3
100
23.5
75.5
1.0
100
Religious conservatism scale
Low
59.5
39.5
1.0
100
55.7
43.2
1.0
100
Middle
36.8
61.2
2.0
100
34.7
63.7
1.6
100
High
19.6
79.8
0.7
100
17.3
82.3
0.4
100
Religious liberalism scale
Low
21.0
77.8
1.1
100
20.5
79.3
0.3
100
Middle
33.0
65.4
1.6
100
29.2
69.6
1.2
100
High
40.4
58.6
1.0
100
38.6
60.2
1.2
100
Low
46.0
51.6
2.4
100
43.0
54.8
2.2
100
Middle
32.8
66.0
1.2
100
29.7
69.3
0.9
100
High
23.4
76.0
0.6
100
22.5
77.4
0.2
100
Total
33.4
65.3
1.3
100
31.0
68.0
1.0
100
Faith scale
Religious worship practice scale
Gender issues scale
*All cross-tabulations result in significant Cramer’s V measures of association between türban ban preferences and levels of different dimensions of conservatism measures.
The Rising Tide of Conservatism in Turkey
Should University Students be permitted to wear the türban? That is, a headscarf that covers their hair, ears, heads, and shoulders while attending Universities?
●
Self-evaluated religiosity
Should the state employees be permitted to wear türban as they function in their public offices which cover their hair, head, and shoulders?
108
Table 6.6.1
Table 6.6.2
Conservatism and preferences concerning the türban ban*
Dogmatism scale
Xenophobia scale
Political intolerance scale
Social intolerance and repression of freedom of expression scale State interventionism scale
Should university students be permitted to wear the türban, i.e., a headscarf that covers their hair, ears, heads, and shoulders, while attending universities?
No, they should not be permitted
No, they should not be permitted
Yes, they should be permitted
NR
Yes, they should be permitted
NR
36.0 35.6 28.3 50.4 37.4 23.1 33.8 35.2 31.0 45.0 30.6 32.1 42.4 33.1 29.1 35.5 32.3 33.3 39.0 33.3 23.9 38.3 32.1 32.2
60.4 63.9 70.8 46.5 61.6 75.8 62.5 63.7 68.6 53.6 67.7 67.1 55.4 66.0 69.6 62.4 66.7 65.8 59.2 65.8 74.6 60.9 66.1 67.0
3.6 0.5 0.9 3.1 1.0 1.1 3.8 1.1 0.4 1.4 1.7 0.7 2.2 0.9 1.3 2.2 1.1 1.0 1.8 0.9 1.5 0.8 1.8 0.7
100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100
31.4 33.2 27.5 43.4 34.7 22.4 31.4 32.6 28.7 43.3 28.3 29.3 40.5 30.7 26.3 33.1 29.1 31.7 37.0 30.0 23.0 32.9 29.8 31.7
65.7 66.6 71.7 54.4 64.6 76.5 65.2 66.9 70.7 55.7 70.3 70.2 57.3 68.5 73.0 65.2 69.8 67.8 61.0 69.5 76.4 66.6 68.8 67.6
2.9 0.2 0.9 2.2 0.7 1.1 3.4 0.6 0.6 1.0 1.4 0.6 2.2 0.8 0.7 1.7 1.1 0.5 2.0 0.6 0.6 0.5 1.4 0.7
100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100
Total
33.4
65.3
1.3
100
31.0
68.0
1.0
100
109
*All cross-tabulations except the two involving political intolerance and state interventionism scales result in significant Cramer’s V measures of association between türban ban preferences and levels of the different dimensions of conservatism measures.
●
Low Middle High Low Middle High Low Middle High Low Middle High Low Middle High Low Middle High Low Middle High Low Middle High
Consequences of Conservatism in Domestic Politics
Old-fashioned values–youth-related conservatism scale Old-fashioned values– yearning for the past scale Authoritarianism scale
Should state employees be permitted to wear türban, which covers their hair, head, and shoulders, as they function in their public offices?
110
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The Rising Tide of Conservatism in Turkey
measures. However, when it comes to state interventionism and political intolerance measures, we observe no discernible and statistically significant variation across different levels of these measures. When we conduct a binary logistic regression model to analyze preferences concerning the türban ban in universities and for public employment, we are able to detect the influence of one variable after controlling for the influences of the others. We know that our measures are correlated with one another and these correlations are the bases for our dimensionality analysis of conservatism. Such correlations are expected to result in insignificant influences of some variables. To save space, we do not report the details of the two binary logistic regression analyses in which we used a dummy dependent variable and where those opposing the ban are coded as 1 and the rest as 0. Besides the above presented measures of conservatism, we used demographic control variables that grasp respondents’ sex, education, ethnic background (Kurdish or not), sectarian background (Alevi or not), difference between desired and actual income, and the number of people living in the same household as the respondent. As suspected some of our variables drop out of statistical significance when included in a multivariate equation. For instance, faith and religious worship and practice measures cease to have a significant impact upon the likelihood of opposing the ban on public employment in a multivariate equation with all our different measures of conservatism are used as independent variables. Similarly, both dimensions of oldfashioned values are insignificant together with dogmatism. We observe that authoritarianism, both dimensions of old-fashioned values, xenophobia, and dogmatism are again statistically insignificant in influencing the likelihood of being in opposition to the ban in universities. Religious liberalism and conservatism measures together with self-evaluated religiosity, gender issues, and social and political intolerance appear significant for both the cases of opposing the ban in public employment as well as in universities. After controlling for the impacts of other variables, as political intolerance increases we observe a declining likelihood for opposing the ban in both public institutions and universities. For a social intolerance measure we obtain just the opposite positive impact with statistical significance. Obviously, a multivariate analysis reveals the expected inherent dynamics that shape the preferences concerning the türban ban much more clearly.13 Variations across three composite dimensions of conservatism measures are harder to discern since our five clusters do not have a simple rank order pattern. However, the Cramer’s V measure obtained for the two nominal variables concerning the türban ban in universities as well as public employment reveal a significant variation across the different categories (see table 6.6.3). For instance, while the first cluster grasps highly religious individuals on the third dimension of conservatism but about average scoring individuals on the first two dimensions contains about 83 percent opposing the ban at the universities and 81 percent for the public employment case. When we move to the second and third clusters of conservatism with low religiosity, we observe this group to comprise only about 37 percent and 55 percent, respectively, for the case of university students, and 35 percent and 49 percent for the case of public employment. The fourth and fifth clusters grasp average levels of religiosity and they contain about 68 percent and 75 percent of respondents opposing the ban at the universities and 64 percent and 73 percent for public employment. When we include these three dimensions as factor scores in explaining the binary variable for being in opposition to the ban of the türban in universities and public employment,
Table 6.6.3
Conservatism and preferences concerning the türban ban* Should university students be permitted to wear the türban, i.e., a headscarf that covers their hair, ears, heads, and shoulders, while attending universities?
No, they should not be permitted
No, they should not be permitted
Yes, they should be permitted
NR
Yes, they should be permitted
NR
High on religiosity, about average on the authoritarian and stateinterventionism dimensions High on state interventionism, low on authoritarian and religiosity dimensions Low on religiosity, low on stateinterventionis, and moderate on authoritarian dimensions Low on authoritarian, low on stateinterventionist, and average on religiosity dimension High on authoritarian, high on state-interventionist, and about average on religiosity dimension
18.4
81.4
0.2
100
17.5
82.5
0.0
100
64.1
35.4
0.5
100
63.0
36.5
0.5
100
49.7
49.4
1.0
100
44.5
54.8
0.6
100
32.9
63.8
3.2
100
29.7
67.5
2.8
100
25.9
72.9
1.3
100
23.9
75.1
1.0
100
Total
33.4
65.3
1.3
100
31.0
68.0
1.0
100
*Both cross-tabulations result in significant Cramer’s V measures of association between türban ban preferences and the levels of different dimensions of conservatism measures.
Consequences of Conservatism in Domestic Politics
Conservatismaggregate
Should state employees be permitted to wear türban, which cover their hair, head, and shoulders, as they function in their public offices?
●
111
112
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The Rising Tide of Conservatism in Turkey
we observe that only the third dimension that grasps religiosity measures more dominantly appears significant. The other two dimensions remain insignificant when we only have these three dimensions as the independent variables in our binary logistic regressions. Several points about these findings are worthy of mention. First, it is clear that various measures that tap on different dimensions of religiosity tend to shape preferences concerning the türban ban. Although the dynamics that shape the preferences concerning the ban on public employment as opposed to that in the universities are different, we observe that seven measures of conservatism appear consistently significant with the same directional impact on both cases of opposition to the türban ban. Faith and religious practice shape the preferences positively with regard to opposition to the ban in universities, but not on public employment. In contrast, xenophobia appears to have a significant negative impact for opposing the ban on public employment, but not in universities. As religious liberalism scores increase, the likelihood of supporting the lifting of the ban in both public workplaces and in universities declines significantly. For the case of religious conservatism, we observe just the opposite and significant influence on opposing the ban for both cases. State interventionism, self-evaluated religiosity, and gender-related conservatism have significant and positive influences upon opposing the ban in all those instances. The more politically intolerant respondents tend to support the maintenance of the status quo of the ban on türban in public employment and in universities, while the socially more intolerant individuals tend to oppose the ban at both locations. These findings may be interpreted in several different ways. We can clearly link rising conservatism with the opposition to the ban on türban-wearing women in public employment and as students in universities. The more religious individuals tend to be much more likely to oppose the ban. However, since conservatism and its opposing views in liberal attitudes appear to coexist, the picture is more complicated than it may appear at first. We also simultaneously observe that the likelihood of supporting the ban also increases with rising political intolerance. By implication, more politically tolerant individuals tend to oppose the ban. The fact that more conservative respondents on gender-related issues tend to support the lifting of the ban is also a telling story. The less gender conservative respondents tend to support the maintenance of the ban. In contrast, rising social intolerance leads to higher likelihood of opposition to the ban. So, more socially tolerant people tend to prefer maintenance of the status quo. As a result, the picture we obtain from these analyses is not simple and in ignoring its complexity, a grotesquely exaggerated black and white caricature of social reality emerges in Turkey. What we observe is not that more modern and thus more politically tolerant, less gender conservative, more religiously liberal, and relatively less religious individuals prefer the lifting of the ban on türban. These individuals, who also tend to be more socially tolerant, tend to support the maintenance of the status quo or ban of the türban in the public realm. So the more or less automatic formula that relates libertarian policy positions with modernity and by implication with secularization and lessening religiosity at the individual level, with rising social and political tolerance does not seem to work in the Turkish context. Conservatism and Sociopolitical Change Turkey has been rapidly transforming into an industrial and urban society and simultaneously acculturating and adapting its sociopolitical life to fit the Copenhagen Criteria
Consequences of Conservatism in Domestic Politics
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of the EU. Under these circumstances sociopolitical, economic, and legal change is a reality, if not an inevitable necessity, for Turkey. How do conservative values interact with the sociopolitical need to reform and change Turkey’s sociopolitical milieu? The overall attitude of the Turkish adult (voting age) population toward sociopolitical change forms an intriguing pattern (see table 6.7.1). About half of the adult population (47 percent) is for some kind of social change, which may be considered as progress. However, one out of three adults (34 percent) stands for a change to go back to a “past age,” and the rest are for preserving the status quo as it stands today. Therefore, those who desire change are divided between those who want to go back to the past (34 percent), and those who would like to move to the unchartered terrain of the future (47 percent). We should also note here that the modal response for this question was to reconstruct the old social order of the passing traditional, agricultural society in Turkey. The cross-tabulations of this variable with our different measures of conservatism indicate that although small in magnitude for a considerable number of variables, there appears to be some kind of relationship between our different measures of conservatism and attitudes toward change and reform. Tables 6.7.1 and 6.7.2 shows that for the case of youth-related old-fashioned values, the low-scoring group (20 percent) supports the return to now-defunct values in Turkish society, while the high-scoring group is more than double with about 42 percent of the group. Similarly, the low-authoritarian group that prefers going back to its old cultural roots comprises about 19 percent of the group. However, among the high scorers on the authoritarianism scale we observe about 41 percent of the sample. Although the youth-related dimension of the oldfashioned values exhibits a significant rise for the “return back to the good old days” option from about 21 percent to 42 percent, such drastic doubling of the group for this option does not seem to be present in different levels of the yearning-for-the-past dimension of the old-fashioned values. This leads us to suspect that this going back to the good old ways of doing things is most reflective of the treatment and role of the youth rather than anything else. What is clear however from this picture is that in no variable’s different levels do we observe a majority supporting this option. Nevertheless, especially for the cases highlighted above, this nostalgic return to the good old ways constitutes a dominant group preference of nearly 40 percent. This variable with the “going back” option is not a strict rank order variable. Accordingly, we applied a multinomial logistic regression for a multivariate analysis of the factors that influence preferences across these four options. Our results indicate that the youth-related old-fashioned values are the only persistently important variable that significantly increases the likelihood of preferring the going back option compared to all three alternatives. There seems to be very little differentiation between the strict status quoist option and the going back option. The only three other variables significant in differentiating preferences between the status quoist and going back to the good old ways options are xenophobia (increases the likelihood of choice for the going back option), religious worship and practice (increases the likelihood of choice for the status quoist option), and religious conservatism (increases the likelihood of choice for the status quoist option). Religious conservatism does not exert any significant influence upon any other comparison with the remaining two options and the reference category of going back. Religious practice and faith renders the choice of returning to the past more likely compared to the radical reform option. However, they have no significant
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Table 6.7.1
The Rising Tide of Conservatism in Turkey Attitudes toward change and reform
Self-evaluated religiosity Faith scale
Religious worship practice scale Religious conservatism scale Religious liberalism scale Gender issues scale Dogmatism scale Old-fashioned values– youth-related conservatism scale Old-fashioned values–yearning for the past scale Authoritarianism scale Xenophobia scale Political intolerance scale
Our society should change with a radical social revolution
Our society should be reformed by measures applied gradually
Low Middle High Low Middle High Low Middle High Low Middle High Low Middle High Low Middle High Low Middle High Low Middle High
39.0 16.9 11.3 57.7 17.5 15.2 30.7 17.3 14.0 29.4 17.9 11.2 11.9 17.9 18.6 20.2 17.0 14.2 15.3 18.2 16.4 28.1 17.6 12.8
25.4 31.3 29.7 26.9 27.5 30.4 32.0 34.1 28.2 39.2 30.3 26.5 37.5 27.7 29.3 35.5 29.0 27.4 36.0 30.0 26.3 36.0 31.4 26.8
9.0 17.8 17.9 3.8 17.5 17.6 7.0 19.4 18.2 6.4 18.6 19.4 15.9 18.8 15.5 16.3 17.5 16.8 17.7 17.6 15.5 15.4 18.7 15.4
24.9 32.7 39.3 9.0 37.5 35.4 29.9 27.9 37.9 23.3 32.5 40.6 33.0 34.5 34.9 26.2 35.6 39.4 30.0 33.2 39.2 20.6 31.4 42.4
1.7 1.2 1.8 2.6 0.0 1.4 0.4 1.3 1.8 1.7 0.6 2.3 1.7 1.1 1.8 1.7 0.8 2.3 1.0 0.9 2.6 0.0 0.9 2.6
Low Middle High
20.8 18.2 13.8
27.6 32.3 28.4
16.0 17.7 16.5
34.1 30.4 39.6
1.4 100 1.4 100 1.6 100
Low Middle High Low Middle High Low Middle High Low Middle High
26.6 16.0 14.3 23.9 16.5 14.0 17.2 17.0 16.9 20.9 17.1 9.7
45.3 28.9 25.5 31.0 31.9 27.9 40.0 30.2 22.8 29.9 29.6 32.2
7.6 19.7 17.6 15.5 18.8 15.8 13.8 19.4 16.6 17.4 15.8 19.5
19.4 34.3 40.6 28.3 31.9 40.2 27.5 32.1 42.1 30.0 36.1 37.5
1.0 1.2 2.0 1.4 0.9 2.1 1.5 1.3 1.6 1.8 1.3 1.2
19.0 16.4 16.6
29.8 30.3 30.2
17.5 18.8 13.6
33.7 33.3 36.7
0.0 100 1.2 100 3.0 100
17.0
30.2
17.0
34.3
1.5 100
Social intolerance and repression of freedom of expression scale State Low interventionism Middle scale High Total
Our society should be preserved as it is against all kinds of change
Our society should be reconstructed according to the old values NR 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100
100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100
Consequences of Conservatism in Domestic Politics Table 6.7.2
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115
Attitudes toward change and reform
Conservatism- High on religiosity, aggregate about average on the authoritarian and state-interventionism dimensions High on state interventionism, low on authoritarian and religiosity dimensions Low on religiosity, low on stateinterventionist, and moderate on authoritarian dimensions Low on authoritarian, low on stateinterventionist, and average on religiosity dimension High on authoritarian, high on stateinterventionist, and about average on religiosity dimension Total
Our society should change with a radical social revolution
Our society should be reformed by measures applied gradually
Our society should be preserved as it is against all kinds of change
10.1
29.5
20.4
38.3
1.7
100
37.0
42.7
4.2
14.1
2.1
100
23.2
26.8
13.9
36.1
0.0
100
17.2
34.8
19.0
28.3
0.7
100
11.3
22.6
19.1
44.2
2.8
100
17.0
30.2
17.0
34.3
1.5 100
Our society should be reconstructed according to the old values NR
influence upon other comparisons. Self-evaluated religiosity exerts a positive influence upon the likelihood of choosing the slow reform option compared to going back while religious liberalism has a reverse impact making the going back option more likely compared to the slow reform choice. However these two variables are insignificant in differentiating between other comparisons, such as education, age, and Alevi identity. Only a Kurdish ethnic background appears to increase the likelihood of the going back option compared to radical and slow reform options but has no significant impact in comparison to the status quoist preference. An urban or rural background measured by birthplace appears insignificant in all the comparisons of choices. Traditional values and religiosity could very well be attracting a majority who constructed their social and political selves in the rural agricultural society of the pre-1990s. We could conjecture that urban migrants would hark back to those days past, which seem not so long ago but also so far away from the hustle and bustle of the modern urban lives they lead and the industrial society in which they function. The socialization of the middle-aged and elderly members of Turkish society, who were mostly born and raised in a rural environment, occurred in a rural social setting that deeply influenced the beliefs, values, and attitudes they developed over the years.14 It seems as if the most prevalent attitude is to go back to the way of life they experienced
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while growing up in the countryside. However, a rural or urban birthplace does not seem to exert any significant impact upon the choices of individuals. In other words, individuals with or without a rural background are equally likely to pick the going back option after controlling for other influences from variables. The amalgam of traditional, religious, and conservative attitudes that we have unearthed seems to constitute a response to the urban, industrial society that the new breed of urbanites try to cope with, which may indeed be no more than a shield against what they perceive to be the corrupting influences of their new social milieu. This psychological reaction often coincides with joining solidarity groups based upon religion (Sufi orders, brotherhoods, religious communities, and the like) and place of origin (the soil-based solidarity groups of hemşehri networks, associations of the same fatherland, same village, town, city, province, and even region). Religion, soil, and blood relations continue to provide the foundation of major associational ties in Turkey. Although they were vestiges of the rural agricultural society, they managed to recreate their primordial bonds in the new urban industrial society, and demonstrated a spectacular capability to adapt to socioeconomic change.15 It is through these traditional solidarity associations that new survival strategies for individual citizens of the rapidly transforming industrial society of Turkey emerged. It is the familiar, traditional, religious, and the newly conservative values and lifestyles promoted and resurrected by such primordial associations and ties that provide the new city dwellers with families, jobs, neighborhoods, credit, and contacts. Such ties, bonds, and contacts are then mobilized to create political associations, relations, and careers based on religious brotherhood, soil-based solidarity, and even tribal or lineage solidarity. Politics of Conservatism We will now probe into what this sharp turn to the right connotes for Turkish politics. The main question is whether this turn has created a shift toward an increase in the protest and repression potential in political participation, a downturn in tolerance for dissent, a concomitant lack of tolerance for political opposition, and a slant away from multiparty democracy and support for single-party authoritarian or totalitarian regimes. There is little evidence that the increasing role of conservatism, religiosity, and traditionalism in the ideological spectrum leads to any increase in the protest or repression potential of the Turkish voting-age population (see tables 6.8 and 6.9). It seems as if protest potential has been stagnant, and there has been a slight drop in repression potential in the 2000s. A comparison with the EU member countries, North America, and Asia also indicates that Turkey has not been one of the countries with an enhanced protest potential since the end of the Cold War.16 Indeed, various national surveys conducted in Turkey since the end of the Cold War indicate that Turkey has much lower levels of protest potential than almost all other consolidated democracies. In other studies we established that protest potential is negatively influenced by religiosity.17 In this study we also unearthed that both protest and repression potentials are reduced by conservatism and religiosity as we defined and operationalized them.18 The consequence of the rightward shift in Turkish politics has not been one of political radicalization, nor has it been of an increase in the frequency and magnitude of unconventional political participation. On the contrary, the most pronounced trend has been the increasing impact of the rightward swing in the public opinion on the votes received by those political parties that have occupied the right-wing positions.
Consequences of Conservatism in Domestic Politics Table 6. 8
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117
Protest potential in Turkey (2002, 2006, 2007)
Protest Potential Never takes part (1) May take part (2) Have taken part (3) Do not know/ No Response Total
Petitioning (%)
Boycotts (%)
Official Rallies (%)
Unofficial Strikes (%)
Building Occupations (%)
68.8 64.5 73.7 20.9 19.2 18.6 6.6 12.6 5.2 3.8 3.8 2.5
81.4 76.0 83.7 12.1 13.4 11.2 3.2 6.9 2.3 3.3 3.7 2.7
77.3 74.9 79.0 16.6 15.3 14.4 3.3 6.5 4.0 2.8 3.3 2.6
90.5 87.8 91.9 4.8 6.8 5.0 1.2 1.9 0.9 3.5 3.5 2.2
93.3 91.2 94.1 2.7 4.0 3.3 0.6 1.2 0.5 3.3 3.6 2.2
100.0
100.0
100.0
100.0
100.0
Notes: The first row of every cell is from a preelection study conducted in 2002, the second row of percentages are from the 2006 national survey of political attitudes reported in this book, and the last row of percentages are from the preelection national survey of the 2007 elections All of those studies were conducted by Ali Çarkoğlu and Ersin Kalaycıoğlu as principal investigators. For the 2002 preelection study see Ali Çarkoğlu ve Ersin Kalaycıoğlu, Turkish Democracy Today, (London: I. B. Tauris, 2007).
Table 6.9
Repression potential in Turkey (2002, 2006)
Repression Potential Never takes part (1) May take part (2) Have taken part(3) Do not know/ No Response Total
Break an Official Rally (%)
Break an Unoffical Strike (%)
Break a Building Occupation (%)
90.3 91.8 5.0 3.1 1.0 0.8 3.7 3.5
90.4 92.6 4.9 3.1 1.0 0.7 3.7 3.6
86.8 88.8 6.9 6.6 0.9 0.7 5.4 3.8
100.0
100.0
100.0
Note: The first row of every cell is from a preelection study conducted in 2002, the second row of percentages are from the 2006 national survey of political attitudes reported in this book, and the last row of percentages are from the 2007 national survey of the preelections. All of those studies were conducted by Ali Çarkoğlu and Ersin Kalaycıoğlu as principal investigators. For the 2002 preelection study see Ali Çarkoğlu and Ersin Kalaycıoğlu, Turkish Democracy Today: Elections, Participation and Stability in an Islamic Society, (London: I. B. Tauris, 2007).
The shift in the ideological spectrum of the country has made a big impact on the political performance of the parties in the party system both in and outside of the TBMM.19 Consequently, general and local elections have produced right-wing party majorities in the TBMM, in the provincial and municipal councils, and in the offices of the mayors of the major metropolitan municipalities of the country since the beginning of the new millennium. It seems as if the religious conservative majority resorted to conventional participation, and most specifically conventional voting practices and
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preferences. When the political clout of the rising religious conservative current produces effective results through the general and local elections, there seems little reason for them to resort to unconventional methods of participation in politics.20 Religiosity, Conservatism, and Social Capital The slant toward right-wing ideologies, conservatism, and religiosity in Turkish politics also coincides with the sociopolitical context of relatively scarce social capital. Various national surveys conducted from the end of the Cold War onward have unearthed that the level of interpersonal trust is remarkably low, social tolerance toward others— specifically of those who display dissenting and deviating images from the social norms—is abysmally shallow, and associability is more of an exceptional characteristic for a significantly small minority of 7 percent, who seem to possess a large portfolio of associational affiliations.21 Three questions within a 0-to-10 scale inquiring on the feelings of trust toward fellow human beings of the Turkish voting age population yield a single component with relatively high reliability when subjected to principal component analysis. When the factor scores of the principal component are calculated and their distribution is observed we find a heavily skewed distribution to the right, which is indicative of the fact that feelings of interpersonal trust are a scarce resource in Turkey.22 As we noted earlier in table 6.2, the social tolerance of the Turkish voting-age population toward others is also not very high. The prevalent form of conservatism in Turkey does not seem to be strongly correlated with some of the most important indicators of social capital. Although religiosity and conservatism seem to have a moderately strong correlation, and thus reinforce each other, they are not correlated with associability at all. Conservatism and religiosity seem to be negatively correlated with overall tolerance, which indicates that tolerance for others and dissenting lifestyles and thinking suffers at times of increasing religiosity or conservatism. On the contrary, interpersonal trust seems to be positively, yet mildly correlated with overall conservatism and religiosity, which indicates that increasing religiosity and conservatism do not undermine interpersonal trust but help to enhance it. When surrounded by ostentatiously religious others, one may develop a feeling of interpersonal trust, for it seems to become easier for one to assume that others share the same moral stance as the person in question and as devout Muslims they ought to be trustworthy. However, in the same environment, tolerance for others who belong to different religions or lifestyles decreases as interpersonal trust toward other Muslims increases. Conclusion: Social Capital and Politics in Turkey When considered with the scarcity of associability of the Turkish adult population, the current social context in which the Turkish political system performs is best characterized by the scarcity of social capital. This lack of social capital resources undermines the development of civil society, civic activism, and initiative and further entrenches and capacitates primordial ties and associations based on blood, territory, and religious solidarity, which disables cross-cultural organizations from being established and maintained in the democratic regime of Turkey. Instead, religious brotherhoods, ethnic solidarity associations, territorial solidarity structures, and tribal networks fill the vacuum. However, this infrastructure provides for a deeply divided
Consequences of Conservatism in Domestic Politics
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sociopolitical terrain that operates with large swaths of the population acting as egoist individuals following their personal survival strategies side-by-side with a few extremely well-knit and relatively well-organized yet highly impenetrable closed circles of religious brotherhoods, tribal groups, and territorial associations who rest more on ascriptive and parochial values. The small number of organized primordial interest groups usurp tremendous power as they are able to mobilize a critical number of voters in various constituencies through the implementation of patronage ties and get involved in pacts with political parties that vie for power with which they may or may not share much ideological grounds. Under the circumstances, the democratic setup of Turkey produces immaculate opportunities for well-connected primordial groups and small payoffs for those who could not or would not want to take part within such interestgroup networks. The overall result of this form of organized mobilization is that it does not lead to the empowerment of the people but of the special interests of some groups or communities and those who lead them. Democracy in Turkey seems to favor the leaders and the followers of such primordial patronage groups as sheikhs (şeyh), imams, landlords, mafia bosses, and the like. The relatively modernized minority in Turkey seems to have severed their ties with the rural society and culture, yet they have not been able to create a new social context rich in social capital that in turn would enable them to construct a countervailing political force to those of the primordial patronage groups. Instead, the relatively modernized, including those embedded in the professional middle class, seem to be leading a highly individualistic lifestyle, with scant capabilities of social capital. Hence, this individualism, sliding into egoism at times, fails to provide much impact on the political authorities, especially when they compete against the organized and politically wellconnected primordial patronage groups. So far, all that such individualism has been able to do is take part in mass rallies organized by political parties, trade unions, and a few non-primordial interest associations. These acts have been in the genre of protest, where a highly disturbing news report creates immense motivation, and uproar against corruption, erosion of a value (such as laicism), or some such highly sensitive issue, and produces intense yet short-lived public reactions. The “Republican Demonstrations” (Cumhuriyet Mitingleri) of June and July 2007 or the “One-Minute-of-Darkness-tobring-about-Light” (Işık için bir Dakika Karanlık)23 are excellent examples when the individualists participated in collective action, which drew attention to a certain public issue, but also had no connotation for long-term, sustained commitment. All the primordial patronage groups need to do is to wait on the sidelines and go about with their usual routine of clientelism, which connects them to the political parties and authorities, on the one hand, and the masses of rural and urban migrants, on the other. Their institutionalized associative relations always provide them with a disparate advantage over the one-time, one-shot protest rallies that the few modernized individualists can muster. The latter is no match for the former powerhouses who are well embedded in the traditional cultural milieu of the country. Such primordial patronage networks have managed to adapt themselves into the democratic practices of the country and have contributed their support for democratic politics, which seemed to have clearly favored such networks at the polls and beyond. However, on occasions when the military coups occurred and when the military governed the country, the primordial patronage networks also provided their services to the military governments, and in a few occasions when the military had other ideas for them, they managed to fade into the underground with little difficulty only
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to resurface later on. The risks for primordial patronage networks are minimal in a democratic form of government, though they have demonstrated that they can also thrive under an authoritarian government.24 However, those who have been following an individualistic survival strategy have not fared well in either form of government, for in this day and age organization obviously matters. Finally, organized primordial interests have done well in the democratic system and have therefore been supportive of it, yet they also breed fertile ground for corruption. Support for democracy and even the consolidation of Turkish democracy has gone hand-in-hand with corruption, which also nurtures a paradox whereby the rule of law erodes as democracy sets root.25 In an environment rife with traditionalism, religiosity, and conservatism that operates under the influence of primordial patronage groups emergence of such paradoxical outcomes for democracy should not be a cause of amazement.
CHAPTER 7
Consequences of Conservatism for Turkey’s Foreign Relations: Turkey, the EU, and the United States
I
n the preceding chapter we examined the domestic political consequences of conservatism in Turkey. In this chapter we will probe into what conservatism means for the Turkey’s foreign relations. Turkey is connected to three of the most volatile and turbulent regions of the world, the Balkans, the Caucasus, and the Middle East, and is simultaneously located at the hub of three seas, the Mediterranean, Black, and Caspian seas, which are the most important passage ways for energy supplies to Europe from the Middle East, the Caucasus, and Central Asia. As the most important inheritor of the legacy of the Ottoman Empire, history has created for Turkey a large cultural hinterland, which connects its people and its government with vast areas of Eastern Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, the Caucasus, and Asia.1 Turkey has also been a member of the Council of Europe since its establishment in 1948, and a member of the NATO since 1952. It is also an associate member, as well as a candidate negotiating for full membership, of the EU and has a functioning Customs Union with the EU in effect since January 1, 1996. It is also the founding member of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation (BSEC), which connects the Balkans with the Caucasus. Turkey is also a member of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) and Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO) in Asia and the Middle East. Such organizational connections also reinforce Turkish cultural ties and economic relations with its neighboring regions and beyond. Consequently, any change in the political culture and ideological orientation of the Turkish population is likely to create many repercussions across a vast geography, and vice versa. Obviously, not all such repercussions can be incorporated in a single chapter of a book. Therefore, we have chosen two major international actors and will examine the character of foreign relations between Turkey and the EU, on the one hand, and the United States, on the other. Our choice of focusing on the EU in this chapter is dependent upon the long-term and comprehensive relations between the Common Market, European Community, and eventually the EU and Turkey, which started in 1959. Turkey’s economy and politics have been deeply influenced by the interactions between Turkey and the EU and
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will continue to do so even if Turkey fails to become a full member of the EU at the end of the protracted process of negotiations. The Copenhagen Criteria of membership have already been adopted by the Turkish economy and polity and have impacted on the character and quality of democracy and business practices in the country. Finally, since most of Turkey’s foreign economic relations are with EU member countries, among them Germany, and since most Turks who live outside the country reside in the EU zone, again most densely in Germany, any major shift of political thinking, ideological sway, and frame of mind will show its impact upon the Turkish-EU relations. Similarly Turkish-U.S. relations extend further back than the Turkish-EU relations. If Turkish-EU relations are critical primarily for the quality and sustainability of economic development, the rule of law, and the democratic regime in Turkey, so are the relations between Turkey and the United States, which are also relevant to the national security and defense of the Turkish nation-state, with NATO at focal point. When Turkish foreign relations and foreign policy goals are considered, the relations with the EU and the United States span all the major domestic and international elements of the Turkish political system and their characteristics. We will first examine the impact of conservatism on the Turkish-EU relations and then turn to the role on the Turkish-U.S. relations. Becoming Conservative and the EU-Turkish Relations Turkish public attitudes toward the EU have been measured in various national surveys and have indicated an oscillating pattern since the mid-1990s, when the eligibility of Turkey as a full member became a credible expectation (see fig. 7.1).2 As Turkey and the EU signed and ratified a Customs Union Agreement in 1995, which was implemented on January 1, 1996, only a little over 50 percent of the Turkish adult population seemed to support EU membership.3 The immediate impact of the Customs Union Agreement and its implementation on the public mood was quite positive,4 for the Turkish voters who argued that they would cast a “yea” vote if a referendum for Turkey’s full membership in the EU were held at the day of the survey jumped from a
Figure 7.1
Support for EU membership in a referendum setting, 1996–2007
Note: For the references of the above data points see endnote 3.
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little over 50 percent to more than 60 percent. However, that mood suffered a set back from the end of 1997 through the end of 1999 but recovered soon after. Indeed, in the aftermath of the implementation of the Customs Union Agreement Turkish-EU negotiations for full membership gained pace, and it led to a sudden halt in the Luxembourg Summit of 1997 in the EU, where the prime minister of Luxembourg, who acted as the president of the EU argued in the name of the European Council that the Turkish government consisted of a bunch of torturers5 and refused to extend eligibility for full membership to Turkey, yet it did not refuse candidacy status. In the same EU summit where the Turkish political authorities were insulted and shoved to a side, new candidates for membership, such as Slovakia emerged. Incredibly, the Slovakia of 1997 did not even have a properly elected national legislature. When the journalists questioned the prime minister of Luxembourg in the press conference on the authoritarian nature of the Slovakian regime, his remarks were insult over injury for Turkey. He argued that the EU’s decision to include Slovakia into the list of candidates was not a gesture made to the government of Slovakia, but for the Slovakian people. From the Turkish side, this message was read as follows “The Turkish people who helped our efforts to defend Europe against the Soviet encroachments during the Cold War deserve to be left out of the list of candidates, while the Slovakian people who showed no distaste for Soviet rule deserve to be included in the club of EU states!” Such a perspective is hard for Turks to appreciate and resonated as blatant racism. Furthermore, it sounded as if the Slovakian assessment was based on ethnic and religious solidarity of peoples, and in the Turkish case it was the nature of government that mattered.6 We have no data to measure the impact of that decision on the Turkish public, though the Turkish government of the time decided to put all political relations with the EU on hold. It took two full years for Turkish-EU relations to pick up from where they had been left off in 1997. It was at the Helsinki Summit of 1999 that Turkey was accepted as an eligible candidate for the EU, and soon enough the Turkish image of the EU seemed to pick up again. By the early 2000s, most Turks seemed to have developed a positive image of the EU (see fig. 7. 1). Turkey was in the grip of the worst financial crisis of its history and this seemed to heighten the attractiveness of EU membership in 2001. In 2002, support for the EU slid back to the 1996 level, only to pick up and climb over 70 percent in the aftermath of the establishment of the second AKP government in 2003, founded by Tayyip Erdoğan who could not become the prime minister immediately after the October 2002 election because he was not eligible for election, but was elected as an MP in a by election that allowed him to form the second AKP government following the one founded by Abdullah Gül (see Fig. 7. 1). Even the Second Gulf War and the invasion of Iraq, which precipitated a major crisis between Turkey and the United States seemed not to have diminished the Turkish public support for the EU. On the contrary, the support for Turkish membership in the EU continued at 70 percent in December 2005, coinciding with the process of accession negotiations (which started in October 2005) between Turkey and the EU. However, there were many qualifiers in the decision to start negotiations between the EU and Turkey. The European Council, the gathering of the heads of states of the EU member countries, endorsed Turkish accession negotiations but declared that they were “openended,” which seemed to insinuate that they may be different from all of the other accession negotiations that the EU had engaged with in the past. More clearly put, Turkey may never become a member and could be kept in a state of limbo forever.
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Ironically, since Turkey has been in the Customs Union with the EU, integrating its markets with those of the EU and liberalizing its markets and opening them up to EU competition, the Turkish governments have been following the economic directives of the EU but could make no impact on the substance of those directives, for Turkey is not a member and therefore cannot take part in the decisions made on economic directives, regulations, and treaties in the EU.7 Therefore, it seems as if market integration has occurred in a way that the EU member countries benefit from exploiting the resources and opportunities offered by the Turkish market, an economy with the sixth largest gross domestic product in Europe and the seventeenth largest in the world, without exposing themselves to any of what they consider to be relatively hazardous practices of free labor movement or amending the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) for Turkey. If and when Turkey becomes a full member, the issues of free movement of labor and CAP will emerge as problem areas, and some solutions to these problems need eventually be negotiated. However, Turkey currently gets nothing on these issues, yet EU member countries and their companies get all the benefits from being integrated with the Turkish market. The only benefits Turkey gets out of the Customs Union are the free movement of capital, competition with the EU member corporations, and opportunities to expand Turkish exports into Europe. As far as the current Turkish-EU economic relations go, it looks as if the EU is having its cake and eating it too. The irony is that the support of the Turkish mass public for the EU emerged from two main sources: enhanced job opportunities in Europe, and improved quality in the rule of law and democracy by default through the adoption of the acquis communautaire.8 By 2006 most of those hopes were dashed in one form or another. Enhanced job opportunities attracted almost every young member of Turkish society, though democracy and rule of law seemed to have attracted intellectuals, middle-class professionals, big business, and in general people who had had some experience with Europe and have grown to appreciate and respect the European way of life. More recently, Kurdish ethnic nationalists and their sympathizers in Turkey pinned their hopes on EU membership for obtaining various cultural rights and freedoms as well. With the AKP in government since 2002, some religious conservatives who support the AKP also began to look to Turkish membership in the EU, even though they had earlier considered the EU to be a “Christian club.” Religious conservatives and even some political Islamists seemed to have assumed that in an environment of enhanced democracy and rule of law, their freedom of expression would come under the shield of the EU acquis, and so they could safely proselytize. The support for EU membership began to surge under the AKP rule from 2003 through 2005, only to lose ground from 2006 on, when credible expectations were dashed by the developments after 2005. First and foremost the very decision of the EU provided little clarity over whether Turkish labor can ever be free to roam the other EU member countries. Either a long freeze over free labor movement or a permanent freeze on the movement of Turkish labor was what the EU seemed to decide upon as the negotiations for full membership of Turkey began.9 Turkey has a population of about 71.5 million people with 66.5 percent of them between the ages of 15 and 64, of which around 9–10 percent has been unemployed since the AKP government came to power in 2002,10 and about 11 percent at the end of 2008. Thus, an approximate figure of six million unemployed people provides the source of worry for the German, French, Austrian, and other anti-Turkish governments in Europe. They seem to presume that when the minute free labor movement is initiated, six million Turks will invade their countries, and they vehemently
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put up a stiff fight to keep the “Turkish labor” out of their markets.11 Therefore, they would like to shut the door in the face of Turkish labor from the very start. However, this move and the style in which it was conducted gave the perception that the free labor movement was not going to be a credible expectation, on the one hand, and what awaits Turks in Europe is going to be anti-Turkish or even outright racist movements, parties, and governments influenced by such movements, on the other. Should this perception not have an impact on the support of Turks for EU membership? Second, the two major blocs of voters who have developed positive expectations of Turkish membership in the EU, the ethnic nationalist Kurds and more recently the religious conservatives, also suffered setbacks. In the case of the former, their hopes of freeing the leader of the PKK, Abdullah Öcalan, whose organization has been waging a campaign of terror against the Turkish military, people, and even the Kurdish citizens of Turkey, from incarceration was in vain. The EU member countries in the Council of Europe and its ECHR did not rule in the appeals made by the lawyers of Öcalan favorably. The EU Commission systematically argued that engaging in democratic practices was the only way forward for the Kurdish nationalists in Turkey. The PKK could not convert itself into a democratic organization, nor could it fully tolerate democratic representation of Kurdish political organizations. The Kurdish nationalists could not get the Turkish government to accept negotiations with the PKK in any way. It seemed increasingly difficult for such a goal to be realized. The EU membership goal of the Kurdish nationalists was less functional than they had anticipated. The political Islamists also suffered setbacks. It was again through the Council of Europe and the decisions of the ECHR, on who they had pinned their hopes of getting the headscarves of their political Islamist women, including the wives of the AKP dignitaries (such as the wife of the current Turkish President Abdullah Gül, who had been suing Turkey in the ECHR when he became the prime minister in 2002), to be recognized as freedom of conscience or freedom of expression, failed to live up to their expectations. The ECHR upheld the decisions of the Turkish high courts that donning the türban is not a right covered by the ECHR. Mrs. Hayrünisa Gül silently withdrew her appeal at the ECHR in 2004, shortly before the court made its decision public, and argued that due to her husband’s role as the minister of foreign affairs in Turkey, a situation of conflict of interest had arisen and she bowed out under the circumstances.12 Moreover, such EU member countries as France and Germany also brought new restrictions on türban-wearing students and teachers in the meantime, which were also upheld by the ECHR. These developments were telling. However, a decision of the ECHR which recognized the türban as an inalienable religious right would have given the political Islamists and the AKP great motivation to integrate with the EU to further buttress their legal victory with the adoption of the acquis. Hence, not only the Council of Europe but the EU would then come to their aid in promoting their brand of Islam in Turkey under the guise of freedom of conscience against the laicist parties, groups, and organizations. However, now that the ECHR helped to sever the tie between donning the türban and the freedom of conscience or freedom of expression, the EU could hardly be wielded as a shield against the enemies of political Islam in Turkey. Democracy and the rule of law that was to be erected by means of the EU acquis would not be providing opportunities for freely proselytizing the brand of Islam that the political Islamists had envisaged. It was after 2005 that the AKP government began to slow down its efforts at engaging in the accession negotiations. A very important sign was the length of time it took the government
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to appoint a chief negotiator to lead the Turkish negotiations for full accessions into the EU, and when they did appoint the first chief negotiator, Ali Babacan, then the minister of the state in charge of the economy, the AKP assumed that it would be much less than a full-time job. Eventually, Babacan became the minister of foreign affairs in 2007 and spent more time in the Middle East, Africa, and America than in Europe until the end of 2008. Finally, Egemen Bağış, an AKP member and deputy of the TBMM was named as the chief negotiator on January 9, 2009.13 In short, it took the AKP close to four years just to appoint a chief negotiator to carry out the negotiations for Turkish full membership in the EU. In the meantime, right at the beginning of accession negotiations the EU demanded that Turkey extend the Customs Union Agreement of 1995 to include all of the new members, including the Greek Cypriot government, which the EU recognizes as the government of Cyprus and which Turkey does not. The AKP government began to come under increasing criticism from the other political parties, pressure groups, and the media that they were getting ready to compromise the rights of the Turkish Cypriots to recognize the Greek Cypriot government as the legitimate government of that island. Prior to the membership of the Republic of Cyprus in the EU, a referendum was held in March 2004 on a United Nations Plan by the General Secretary Kofi Annan, who devised the plan for the settlement of the disputes and integration of the Greek and Turkish communities on the island. The Greek Cypriots, assuming that they will be an EU member country in a month’s time regardless of the result of the referendum, voted on nationalist grounds to reject the Annan Plan, while the Turkish Cypriots voted in overwhelming numbers to support it. However, since the Greek Cypriot government was recognized as “the government of Cyprus” by the EU, the section that acted nationalist and so unlike an EU member became an EU member, and the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, which is not recognized by the EU, was kept out of the EU. In fact, the EU accepted a divided nation into membership. The Turkish voters perceived this as more discrimination against their brethren, who acted to adopt the UN settlement and showed their zeal for integration. If the AKP government had moved to amend Turkish foreign policy and recognized the Greek Cypriot government, it would have been hard to explain to the Turkish voters why they made such a foreign policy change. Consequently, the AKP government balked, procrastinated, and eventually decided not to extend the Customs Union Agreement to Cyprus and continued not to recognize the Greek Cypriot government as the government of Cyprus. The EU then decided not to start accession negotiations on all issues and froze some files until Turkey changed its stance on the Cyprus issue.14 It was at that time that Angela Merkel was elected as chancellor of Germany, and a year later Nicholas Sarkozy became the president of France. In their election campaigns they had promoted the idea that Turkey is not European and therefore it should be offered not full membership but “privileged partnership,” a concept that does not appear in the acquis, and no one, including those who suggested it, has yet managed to define it. By 2007 it became clear that anti-Turkish politicians and parties have been gaining ground in the EU, and that accession negotiations will become ever more cumbersome and take even longer. The recent developments further eroded support for the EU in the eyes of even those who had been supporting the idea from the very start. As the hostility against Turkey increased in Austria, France, Germany, and elsewhere in the EU from 2005 to 2007, those who were supporting the idea of Turkish membership in the EU started to run into increased difficulty in promoting their views.
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In the meantime, the ethnic Turkish nationalists and the left, which began to adopt a nationalist posture on foreign relations as well, started to develop an anti-EU stance. The nationalists started to argue that the EU was involved in promoting Kurdish separatism and anti-Republican religious conservatism, which would eventually undermine the Republic, divide the country up between the Kurds and the rest, and help to establish a religious Republic over what was left behind. In the eyes of the new nationalist alliance headed by the CHP and MHP, the EU membership will bring nothing but the undermining of Turkish independence, national solidarity, and well-being. Indeed, the Customs Union is nothing more than a design for economic exploitation of the country, where the Turkish government plays no role in decision-making but must apply all the directives of the EU. The EU is also using the Greeks and Armenians and their organizations to undermine Turkish sovereignty, and demand to reestablish their endowments, reopen their religious seminaries, and reestablish Christian missions and promote missionary work, which had in the past undermined the Ottoman Empire. The goal of the EU is nothing less than the reestablishment of the Treaty of Sevrés (1920) that the nationalists had fought so hard to rescind with the War of Liberation. As the accession negotiation process stalls, as the French government of President Sarkozy stonewalls, and as the Austrian and Greek Cypriot governments try their best to stagnate the process, the recalcitrance of the Turkish nationalists and left increases. The popular support for EU membership continues to drop and ebbed down to the 50 percent mark in 2007. It will be small wonder if it continues its fall to new lows as pugnacious relations develop into a pattern between Turkey and the EU. However, in 2006, the overall prospects for full membership of Turkey in the EU were not very positive. Only one out of three voters believed that Turkey will ever be permitted to become a full member. Of the one-third of the Turkish adult population questioned in our survey, most expected Turkey to become a member in about ten years’ time. The most frequently mentioned date was 2010, however the average answer was 2015, yet two-thirds of the respondents mentioned that they have no expectations of full Turkish membership in the EU. However remote and impossible Turkish membership in the EU might have seemed to the Turkish voters, their overall evaluation of Turkish membership in the EU seemed to be relatively beneficial for Turkey in 2006. The plurality of about one-quarter of the Turkish voters seemed to be undecided about membership. However about 28 percent thought of membership as detrimental, while nearly 49 percent evaluated membership as beneficial. The quarrelsome politicians, argumentative Turkish media, and the conspiracy theories about the “real intentions” of the EU (all of which point to a genuine public relations disaster for Turkish-EU relations) seemed to have confused the voters and made them balk at the prospects for Turkish membership in the EU by 2006. Nevertheless, this state of mind of the voters did not seem to lead them away from supporting a political party with an EU membership perspective at the polls in 2006. About 17 percent assert that being supportive of EU membership for Turkey is not important in deciding who they vote for among the parties. However, about 71 percent think otherwise and assert that being supportive of EU membership is an important criteria for their choice of party in the next general elections. The voters seemed to be suggesting that the government continues with the EU reforms and rapprochement, and if the Turkish membership reaches a dead end, the onus for such an outcome should be clearly placed on the shoulders of the EU authorities and not on the Turkish people or their government.
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As Turkey was immersed in the general elections campaign of July 22, 2007, the voting-age population of Turkey failed to assign much importance to Turkish-EU relations. The most pressing political problems of the country consisted of unemployment, terror, which is also related to the Kurdish problem, crime, tax burden, and agricultural subsidies. Abortion is definitely not a main issue, and neither are the settling of the political accounts of the past, foreign workers in the Turkish market, and the TurkishEU relations. Nevertheless, the overall trepidation of the Turkish public about the real intentions of the EU was not diminished by 2007. Turkish public opinion seemed to have reached a state of doubt and concern over the EU, and it has come to observe the EU as a potential threat to the independence and well-being of the Turkish nation. Our findings in Turkish Election Survey-2007 indicate that one out of three voters think that the EU is a bigger threat to Turkey than Iran, and close to 60 percent of the voters believed that it is the fourth most important threat Turkey faced in 2007, closely after Iraq and Israel, right before the July 22, 2007, general elections. We can now turn to an analysis of the responses given to our above-reported findings in our surveys. Those among the voting-age population who are inclined to support Turkish membership in the EU coincide with those who have the greatest propensity to vote for the AKP and ethnic Kurds, and those who seemed to be staunchly opposed to the EU are those who have the greatest propensity to vote for the MHP, those who are pious Muslims, and those who yearn for an Islamic legal system and government. However, none of these sociopolitical factors explain the variance in orientation toward the EU. The EU support and resistance seems to cut across all types of social categories, inhabitants of rural and urban areas, and all educational levels. This indicates that the differences over the issue of Turkish membership in the EU is not a social or class issue, and it does not correlate closely with conservatism, though it definitely has a religious dimension. However, even that is not a strong determinant. The only major factor seems to be being an AKP as opposed to an MHP sympathizer, which may stand for ideological orientation toward economic liberalism and cultural conservatism versus ethnic Turkish nationalism. Kurds apparently take a pro-EU and anti-MHP position, which is hardly unexpected. Those in the voting-age population who consider Turkish membership in the EU as beneficial are similarly motivated by partisan affiliation to the AKP and tend to be of Kurdish ethnic stock. Piety and political Islam seem to be functioning as negative factors that engender one to think that the EU membership will not be beneficial. Inhabitants of urban areas are also slightly more inclined to think that EU membership of the country will be beneficial. Again political ideology, religiosity, and Kurdish identity seem to be crucial in determining one’s evaluation of the costs and benefits of Turkish-EU relations.15 For the CHP supporters, Turkish-EU relations do not emerge as important in making up their mind to support the party at the polls. The CHP voters are equally divided over the issue of Turkish-EU relations. However, for both the AKP and the MHP, Turkish-EU relations are more important in their decision to vote for either party. Those who are favorably predisposed toward the EU are inclined to vote for the AKP, and those who are unfavorable predisposed toward the EU are more inclined to vote for the MHP. Religion again is a negative factor, for both the religious conservatives and the political Islamists are inclined to not consider the EU-Turkish relations as a factor when they make up their mind to vote for a party. However, the Kurds seem
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to be inclined to weigh the EU perspective of a party the most. Women also tend to emphasize a favorable predisposition of a party toward the EU more than men. Those who are more conservative and those with relatively low scores on interpersonal trust also seem to favor considering the positive orientation of a political party toward the EU as important. Cultural and ideological factors play a more pronounced role in determining the emphasis the voters tend to assign to the EU perspective of the political parties, while partisan propensities seem to play a less important role. What is interesting in these findings is that the traditional role of the CHP as the party founded by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (who was also the charismatic founder of the Republic), which has traditionally been the party of European orientation in Turkey, seems to have veered away from that position and has began to confuse its supporters, who now seem to be split into two groups who ar equally predisposed favorably and unfavorably toward the EU. Almost equal numbers of the CHP voters consider the EU a danger and a design to unsettle, divide, and undermine the territorial integrity and national solidarity of the Turkish Republic, and as those who consider the EU membership as the ultimate goal of the country to be integrated with the “civilized western world.” Whereas the AKP leaders and their associates have come from long political careers in political Islamist parties, they seem to have taken over the task of integrating Turkey into the EU from the domain of the CHP and have also converted their supporters from believing that the “EU is a Christian Club” to the EU as a goal for a democratic Turkey that wants to erect the rule of law on its land. The position of the ethnic nationalists, the Turkish MHP, and the Kurdish DTP are quite stable, as the first is staunchly in opposition of the EU and the second has great expectations of the credibility of the goal of EU membership. Religious conservatives have not shown preferences either for or against the EU, while the political Islamists also seem to trek a road similar to that of the MHP. These findings also seem to indicate that the AKP became less of a religious force in Turkish politics and more of a mass or even a catchall party by 2006, and definitely by the 2007 general elections, the major factor for AKP voters is its economic performance rather than anything else.16 Turkish-EU relations seemed to have reached a difficult stage, for the EU has been going through a difficult period of adjusting to major enlargements since 2004, while Turkey is having a difficult time adjusting to making room for political Islamists turned religious conservatives in government. Such an overwhelming shift to the right obviously complicates Turkish politics. The traditional pro-Europeanists in Turkey are playing a nationalist and therefore “Europe is imperialist” tune, while some of the traditionally anti-European religious conservatives, who had argued that the “EU is a Christian Club” in which Turkish Muslims can have no room, are now greatest champions of Turkish integration into the EU. The voters who had been supporting the latter at the polls are in a state of cognitive dissonance. Their ideologies and political preferences at the polls are irreconcilable with the position of their party on the EU-Turkish relations, which is also reflected in our above presented findings. However, since 2005, the AKP leaders seem to be taking it very slowly in the accession negotiations, which further dampen the interest of their followers, and thus the support for the EU has begun to ebb. What can stir up interest in the EU integration of Turkey among the Turkish public can only be increased perceptions of the credibility of such a goal. Short of that, we should not be surprised to observe support for Turkish full membership in the EU take a nose dive, just like the Turkish-U.S. relations have done so in the recent times.
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Turkish-U.S. Relations in the Post–Cold War Era: The Saga of Anti-Americanism The Turkish-U.S. alliance started with the Truman Doctrine of 1947, when the U.S. president Harry Truman declared that the United States would engage its forces to defend the freedom in Greece and Turkey against the Soviet threats. Turkey began to receive Marshall Fund aid soon after and participated in the Korean War as part of the United Nations Force, and eventually joined NATO in 1952. Close relations based on the presumption of benevolence of the United States toward Turkey was established in the 1950s and continued until the end of the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Cyprus Crisis of 1964. A U.S. reconnaissance plane (U-2) that departed from the Incirlik base in Adana in 1960 was shot down over the Soviet Union and created friction between the two super powers over Turkey’s role in anti-Soviet espionage. In the closing stages of the Cuban Missile Crisis (1961), the nuclear warheads in Cuba and Turkey were reciprocally removed as part of the compromise reached in the negotiations between the two super powers. It took about four years for Turkey to realize that the United States had included Turkey into the negotiations, apparently without the knowledge of the Turkish government. However, it was the letter of the U.S. president Lyndon B. Johnson in the Cyprus Crisis of 1964, when Turkey threatened to use military force against the Greek Cypriot government, which started to force the Cypriot Turks out of their settlements and eventually off the island. President Johnson, in not so diplomatically proper language, reminded Turkey that the weapons at its disposal were assigned to NATO and required U.S. approval to be wielded against any other country. This was the last straw that fully tarnished the benevolent alliance image in the minds of the Turkish authorities, military establishment, and the people. Until then, Turkey had followed a one-track diplomacy built around NATO ties and the bipolarism of the Cold War era. As of 1965, Turkey began to search for multiple alliances and multi-level networks which extended over economic and cultural relations with a large number of Middle Eastern, Balkan, Asian, and even African countries. What had been unthinkable a few years earlier happened, and the pro-American AP leader, Prime Minister Süleyman Demirel, visited Moscow in 1965. The thawing of relations between the two super powers, which were moving into an era of détente and coexistence, should also have helped Turkey react to the ingratitude of the United States for the blind loyalty Turkey had shown to the NATO alliance, as opposed to France or later Greece, who have often challenged the U.S. lead in NATO. However, worse was still to come. Another Cyprus crisis erupted in 1974 that was much more severe for the Greek colonels ruling Greece who at the time had acted to unseat Archbishop Makarios, the President of Cyprus. Makarios was becoming increasingly popular in mainland Greece and was emerging as a rival to the military junta. It seemed as if the Greek military junta had also calculated that a victory in Cyprus could rejuvenate their government, which was losing steam by 1974. However, they were neither able to capture the archbishop, nor could they have a victory in Cyprus. Instead, Turkey, as one of the three guarantors of the status quo on the island, militarily intervened in July 1974 to reestablish the status quo ante. Initially, a Turkish move was considered as legitimate by the UN, and Turkey, Greece, and Britain started to negotiate in August on how to go back to the earlier status of Cyprus in Geneva, Switzerland. However, when the diplomatic negotiations stalled, the Turkish government decided to enlarge the area controlled by the military in the north and provide a safe haven for the Turkish community on the
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island, to safeguard the Turkish community in the long haul of diplomatic give and take. That military move, which occurred in August 1974, was deemed illegal by the UN. The U.S. Congress jumped into the fray and to force the Turkish government to the diplomatic table imposed an arms embargo in February 1975, which lasted until October 1978, and almost severed all security ties between Turkey and the U.S. However, the security establishments of the two countries mended their ties in a hurry when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan and the shah of Iran was toppled by a coalition of the Shi’ite clergy, small merchants (bazaris), university students, liberals, and the Marxist-Leninists in the uprisings of 1978 and 1979. Turkey began to emerge as an asset for the U.S. global interests once more. In the 1980s, the coup that occurred in Turkey provided impeccable circumstances for the two security establishments to work together again, this time in the “Green Crescent” containment of the Soviet Union, which paved the way for religious resurgence in Turkey, as well as a host of other countries, such as Pakistan and Afghanistan. The 1980s were calm and functional for the Turkish-U.S. alliance. Since the 1960s, a vocal anti-Americanism movement, mainly adhered to by the left had mushroomed in Turkey. In the 1980s, the military government was able to suppress the left, its anti-Americanism, and provided fertile conditions for the development of religious revivalism in Turkey. Turkish religious revivalism was nothing like that of the Shi’ites of Iran, but on the contrary was very fond and supportive of the United States. Nevertheless, with the resurgence of political Islam in Turkey, Iran was also able to find grounds for propaganda in Turkey and was able to proselytize anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism among the devout Muslims. In the long run, such propaganda seems to have also contributed to a resurgence of antiAmericanism in the country. The real shift in the public opinion toward the Unites States began to occur with the end of the Cold War. Turkish Muslim conservatives suddenly found themselves engulfed with the massacres and pogroms of their Muslim brethren in the Balkans, Middle East, and the Caucasus. The callous attitude of the EU member countries and of the United States to these developments, and, worse, the U.S. recalcitrance in getting involved in the Bosnian tragedy, while being eager to stop the extremism of Saddam Hussein of Iraq in the Middle East was not difficult to present as a double standard precipitated by a Jewish-American plot against the Muslims. The RP, which incorporated in its campaign propaganda the proposition that the United States is ruled by Jews on Wall Street and in Washington D.C., the latter of which flexes its muscle to collect funds the Jews nested in New York, which is then siphoned off to Jerusalem, had a huge vote hike in 1991, another major jump in 1995, and became the party with the plurality of the seats in the TBMM. In the meantime, the U.S. administrations welcomed the developments in Turkey as an example of compatibility of Islam with democracy—a form of moderate Islam! Turkish politics in the aftermath of the military coup of 1980 developed into a system of increased religious conservatism with occasional bursts of radical political Islamism, married with parochialism, xenophobia, and chauvinism. In this environment, anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism also found fertile grounds to blossom. The First Gulf War of 1991 left behind a host of bad memories, such as the Turkish embargo imposed on Iraq that hit the Turkish southeast more than it hurt the Iraqi government, and ignited popular support for the PKK, which had begun to wage a major terror campaign against the Turkish security forces in the 1980s and eventually anybody who was Turkish. The onslaught of the Iraqi Kurds who took refuge in Turkey
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in the aftermath of the Gulf War of 1990 was a human tragedy, but it was converted into a public relations disaster. Turkey had not only lost its image, but had also lost valuable funds in fighting against terror, which also corrupted the Turkish political system. Managing the no-flight zones of northern Iraq through the Provide Comfort operations in cooperation with the United States and United Kingdom turned out to be considerably problematic. Therefore, when the U.S. government decided to stage another Gulf War in 2003, Turkey had no taste for being involved in another Iraqi mess, which could potentially carry a heavy tab for Turkey to eventually pick up. In the First Gulf War there were no major troop movements of the Turkish armed forces into Iraqi territory, and the United States had not requested any safe passage rights for its land forces through Turkey. However, in 2003, the U.S. government proposed to pass its land troops through Turkish territory and open up a military front to the north of Iraq. Under the leadership of long-time political Islamists, the AKP had just come to power in November 2002.17 Its founding leader Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was still legally banned from politics until March 2003 by an earlier court order for violating the Political Parties Act in 1997. Erdoğan had not been elected as a deputy of the TBMM and was not the prime minister (PM). Instead, his long-time colleague Abdullah Gül, President of Turkey since August 2007, was serving as the prime minister of the AKP government. Most of the AKP members were new to politics and as a congregation of freshmen politicians in the National Assembly, with their true leader out of that legislature they were not yet acting as a disciplined party. When the time to vote for placing Turkish troops on Iraqi soil and providing passage rights to the U.S. armed forces came, the AKP party group acted with disunity. Some of the AKP cabinet ministers also joined ranks with the dissenters, who were mostly Kurdish deputies, who seemed to be motivated to vote to keep the Turkish army away from the Kurdish areas of the north of Iraq. Some deputies also aired the view that the Turkish army could not be used against other Muslims. The parliamentary vote on March 1, 2003, was less supportive than legally required for the adoption of the government bill. Moreover, Prime Minister Gül’s AKP government had earlier given the impression that Turkey would go along with Secretary Rumsfeld’s proposal and permit the U.S. troops to station in Turkey and start a northern military campaign in Iraq. Indeed, prior to the parliamentary vote, the Turkish and the U.S. press were replete with stories of negotiations concerning the financial aspects of the Turkish participation in the coalition of the willing in Iraq. For a while it looked as if the Turkish government was giving the impression that there was a certain price tag for their decision, and if the price was right they would be willing to go along. So what seemed to be at stake for Prime Minister Gül’s government was not any principle, but getting a certain financial deal. In the meantime, the greatest worry of the Turkish security planners was the emergence of an Iraq that will be embroiled in a civil war between the Kurds and the Sunni Arabs where the Turkomen of Iraq would be sandwiched. Similarly, a failed state of Iraq with a seceding Kurdish north was as unwelcome for Turkey. In the meantime, Turkish newspapers also reported that the Turkish army had several qualms about the U.S. military campaign involving Turkish territory. They seemed to object to keeping a large troop build-up by the U.S. army on Turkish territory. The Turkish military also seemed to have the impression that they were not trusted enough by their American counterparts and were kept in the dark about the operation. Interestingly, there is little evidence that the Pentagon was aware of the trepidation of their Turkish counterparts. Secretary Rumsfeld and Undersecretary
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Wolfowitz seemed to be of the opinion that the Turkish military were ready to go along with their initiative and would be most willing to pressure the TBMM during the vote. However, no such picture was perceptible in the Turkish public opinion or press at the time. The Turkish military signaled that the onus of the decision fell on the shoulders of the TBMM, and they were not taking any side on this issue. When the parliamentary vote failed to commit Turkey to the coalition of the willing and the negotiations fell apart between Turkey and the United States, those who had operated with the opposite assumption were greatly disappointed.18 In preparation of troop movements through Turkey several steps had been taken by the United States. A total of about 65,000 troops were kept at sea for a few weeks, which was very bad for the morale of the marines on board the military vessels. It was a costly operation, and the U.S. commanders still seem to allude to that fact in their interactions with their Turkish opposite numbers. Turkish-U.S. relations cooled off once again. The Hood Incident In July 2003, the Turkish press was replete with stories of U.S. soldiers who raided a Turkish army post in Sulaymaniyah, north of Iraq, and arraigned soldiers of the Turkish Special Forces, covered their heads with hoods, and took them south to interrogate them for alleged preparations to assassinate the mayor of Sulaymaniyah. After sixty hours of interrogation, the Turkish soldiers were released. However, the Turkish government and the masses suspected that the U.S. troops in Iraq were motivated by what had transpired earlier on March 1, 2003. Most people in Turkey began to believe that this was U.S. retaliation to the March 1, 2003 vote in the TBMM.19 The Turkish military and the public noted the “hood incident” as an affront to the pride of the Turkish army and nation by the U.S. military establishment. Therefore the “hood incident” was a major milestone in the development of anti-Americanism in Turkey because people from all walks of life and covering the entire gamut political ideologies, except perhaps for Kurdish nationalists, became united in condemning the U.S. military for what they considered to be humiliating treatment of the Turkish soldiers in Iraq, which was totally unacceptable coming from a “strategic ally.” This incident also further provided credibility to various conspiracy theories that the United States was operating with a hidden agenda in the Middle East that involved Turkey and considers Turkey as an adversary but not an ally. Turkey in the meantime provided safe passage through its air space for the U.S. Air Force throughout the Iraqi military campaign. Turkey also continued to provide logistical support to the U.S. personnel in Iraq after 2003. The U.S. base at Incirlik, Adana has played a crucial role in the U.S. efforts in Iraq, and Turkey has been supportive of the operations via Incirlik.20 A new Kurdish regional government emerged in the north of Iraq, which seemed to view any Turkish incursion into Iraq with great worry. Turkey developed a similar sensitivity over the political activities and ambitions of the Kurdish authorities of north Iraq. A new wave of PKK attacks began to gain momentum in 2004 and reached their zenith right after the July 22, 2007, general elections. When the PKK began to show renewed capability and zeal in attacking Turkish security forces operating from basis north of Iraq, Turkish trepidations concerning the Kurdish regional government increased even further. It looked as if the PKK was allowed to operate against Turkey from north of Iraq, which is under the jurisdiction of the Kurdish regional government. Turkish political
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authorities, operating with the presumption that the north of Iraq was under the authority of the U.S. Command in Iraq, put the responsibility for the free movement of the PKK from the north of Iraq on U.S. tolerance or approval. That was the main reason why the Turkish government demanded more cooperation from the U.S. government in retaliating to the armed attacks of the PKK in kind.21 Finally, in September 2006, a mechanism for Turkish-U.S. military coordination was established, each side represented by a retired general.22 These generals met several times and exchanged opinions and ideas, however no concrete steps or policies emerged from these contacts. In mid 2007, the Turkish representative hinted that he wanted to resign and was sacked by the Council of Ministers soon after. In the meantime, the armed attacks of the PKK continued in several parts of Turkey. Indeed, the July 22, 2007 general elections seemed to mark a milestone in the status of the AKP in the east of the country. The AKP emerged as the political party that received the most votes in the eastern parts of Turkey, and from the very Kurds that the PKK had received support from in the past. In fact, the Kurdish ethnic nationalists had acted within the ranks of the DTP during the elections. They had calculated that if they participated as a party they would risk getting less than 10 percent of the vote, which is the mandatory threshold to gain representation in the TBMM. Instead, the potential DTP candidates ran on separate tickets as independent candidates in the July 22, 2007, elections. Therefore, the DTP bowed out of the elections as a political party. The Kurdish nationalist independent candidates were able obtain twenty seats in the TBMM, which is enough to form a parliamentary party group. Soon after the elections, the independent Kurdish nationalist deputies of the DTP formed a group and thus began the representation of the DTP in the TBMM in 2007. In the meantime, the AKP obtained more than fifty seats from the same provinces as the DTP, which clearly indicated that many more Kurds supported the AKP than the DTP or the independent candidates that the latter fielded. By default the AKP became the most popular party among the Kurds in Turkey. This was also a clear indication that most Kurds participated in the democratic process and gave support to democratic representation over armed struggle. However, just a few weeks after the July 2007 election, the optimism surrounding the Kurdish debate disappeared following the resurfacing of intense attacks by the PKK. By October 2007 about fortyfive people, more than half of them soldiers were killed within two weeks by PKK bombs and bullets. Civilians as well as security personnel were the target of the PKK. Turkish newspapers reported that most of these attacks were somehow related to the PKK camps in the north of Iraq. It was under these circumstances that the demands of the Turkish government for greater cooperation with the U.S. government in routing out the PKK from Iraq began to increase in intensity and strength. In November 2007, PM Erdoğan paid a visit to the White House and some kind of mutual understanding on the PKK threat toward Turkey was reached between the two governments. A new working relationship and coordination between the Turkish and U.S. Armed Forces seemed to have been established by late 2007 and early 2008. The Turkish military began to launch operations into the north of Iraq and the number of PKK attacks and casualties diminished rapidly. The arrival of severe weather conditions with the harsh winter of 2008 in the mountain zones of Turkey and Iraq should have also played a role in cutting back the number and severity of the PKK attacks. Nevertheless, there is little counterevidence to depreciate the value of the Turkish Air Force and ground attacks to the PKK camps in the north of Iraq so far.
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Turkish-U.S. relations have been deeply influenced by the shape and nature of the international system and the several crises that developed in the Middle East, the Balkans, and the Caucasus. Cyprus had been a crisis-ridden island throughout the Cold War, and Iraq, Bosnia, Kosovo, Georgia, and the Nagorno Karabagh issues between Azerbaijan and Armenia have emerged as trouble spots that do not always produce the same responses from the U.S. and Turkish governments. Especially Cyprus lingers on as a protracted trouble spot with no end to the ethnic conflict that simmers on that island. It has produced the first series of frictions and sourness in Turkish-U.S. relations, and now Iraq, with its northern Iraqi Kurdish government and the PKK camps it hosts, either by design or by default, have become the most important source of friction between the U.S. and Turkish governments. The Bush administration, with its neo-con hubris, has been quite callous to the sensitivities of the region and failed to unfold any plans to overcome these issues through action. The Turkish public has been adversely influenced by the developments in its neighborhood, which was interpreted by the Turkish media and pundits of international politics as a new design of the U.S. government in the Middle East that included Turkey among the pawns of the Bush administration. The United States was perceived as the new threat for the territorial integrity of the Turkish nation-state. It was assumed that the Middle East would have new borders and what Turkey had thought was buried in history, the Treaty of Sevrés imposed on the Ottoman Empire by the victorious powers of World War I, would be reimposed upon Turkey by force. It is Iraq today, Turkey tomorrow. When we asked about threats to Turkey in our pre-election survey in June-July 2007, we found that the new threat to Turkey in the post–Cold War era is the United States. The perception of the U.S. threat is second to none and it exists in a category in and of itself. About 80 percent of the Turkish people believe that the United States somehow and to some extent threatens Turkey, and more than 50 percent, that is, one out of every two Turkish citizens above the age of eighteen, believes that the U.S. threat to Turkey is very serious. What is amazing here is that all sorts of people from different walks of life and almost from all ideological backgrounds now seem to fear the United States and consider it not as an ally but as a hostile force that seeks to undermine the territorial integrity of the Turkish nation-state. The traditional divide of leftist anti-Americanism and the rightist pro-Americanism does not reflect the Turkish polity any longer. On the contrary, the religious conservatives are more concerned about the hidden agenda of the United States, and express great concern in connection with the U.S. actions against the Muslims all around the Middle East. The pious Muslims and political Islamists in Turkey have come increasingly under the propaganda of similar sources from the Middle East and believe that the United States has declared a crusade against Islam, and that the Turkish population being Muslim is now among the targets of the United States and its ally in the Middle East, Israel. The seriousness of the Israeli threat is only second to the more significant U.S. threat in the minds of a little over 40 percent of Turks. Anti-Americanism: Some Correlates Several cultural, demographic, economic, social, and political factors can determine attitudes toward a foreign or super power. Age, gender, formal education, rural or urban residence, economic well-being, expectations from the economy, religiosity, ethnicity,
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associability, and the party preferences of the voters all could potentially explain why such a huge proportion of the voting-age population in Turkey demonstrates so much anti-Americanism. It is also interesting to unearth who among the Turkish population are more inclined to consider the United States—a NATO ally of Turkey that is often referred to as the “strategic partner” of Turkey by the Turkish prime minister, minister of foreign affairs and other members of the political elite and vice versa—as a major threat to Turkey.23 Anti-Americanism seems to be influenced by those voters whose economic status has eroded in the recent years, yet all voters who have supported the three political parties that went over the 10 percent national threshold in the 2007 elections seems to have been inclined toward anti-Americanism. Among the political party supporters, the conservative (Islamist) AKP is the least anti-American and the ethnic ultranationalist (Turkish nationalist) MHP are the most anti-American, while the left-of-center, nationalist CHP voters are in between. No other variable included in the data analysis seems to have any impact in differentiating between those who have anti-American feelings as opposed to those who do not. With such a small variance, where more than 80 percent of the population reflects anti-Americanism, there is not that much to explain either. Political parties have been among those sources that have contributed to the United States as a threat to Turkey, and their supporters at the polls seem to have been influenced by their propaganda. It is also possible to speculate that anti-Americanism is a political machination in Turkey that may change with the changing ties between the governments. Now that the Turkish-U.S. relations have improved since the visit of the Turkish prime minister and president to Washington D.C. in November 2007 and January 2008, the perceptions of the Turkish public may also swing away from a fear of America to a more neutral image of it. We should hasten to add that anti-Americanism in Turkey has coincided with the events of the post–Cold War era, and although we have no evidence to extend any credibility to the argument that increased conservatism and religiosity have played a major role in fomenting anti-Americanism, it is a matter of fact that not only more people reported themselves as conservative right before the elections (see our discussion in Chapter 5), but it is also true that the most conservative have become the most anti-American in their attitudes. What is also interesting to note is that even those who are undecided about being conservative report that they feel deeply threatened by the United States. It seems as if unless the Iraqi and the Middle Eastern politics of the U.S. government and of the neo-conservative establishment change in the United States, there is likely to be little chance of any shift in the threat perception of the Turkish population in general, and hence not much improvement in antiAmericanism either. Opportunities for improved relations between Turkey and the United States may even become more salient after the end of the neo-con power in Washington D.C., with the start of the new Democratic administration of President Barack H. Obama in 2009. However, we would like to add a caveat for our interpretation of our findings that anti-Americanism seems to be more of a political phenomenon than social or cultural in nature. Unobtrusive observations or measures of attitudes toward the United States indicate that American paraphernalia are still quite popular in Turkey. McDonald’s burgers, Kentucky Fried Chicken, hot dogs, cola drinks, blue jeans and related casual attire, and the American way of life are still very popular in Turkey. In fact, cola drinks
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have become the “party drink” of the Turkish conservative Muslims, just as wine or scotch is in the United States or Europe. Large shopping malls were also introduced by the ANAP leader and prime minister Turgut Özal as another American lifestyle product in Turkey in the late 1980s. They have become enormously popular throughout the country. Finally, green card applications of the Turkish citizens have continued to be in quite robust demand, unperturbed by the stellar rise in anti-Americanism in the country.24 There is little if any impact of rampant anti-Americanism on the foreign policies of the AKP government. First, research on voting behavior has not unearthed any foreign policy variable pertaining to the Turkish-U.S. relations to have any impact on the decision of the voters.25 Second, the AKP is clearly the choice of the conservative Sunni Muslims in Turkey, who also think that the United States has declared a crusade against the Muslims in the world, that they should show solidarity to their Arab brethren, and that they being Muslims are among the targets of the U.S. government. Third, the conservative Sunni Muslims support the AKP for they seem to believe that it is the AKP that will serve the Turkish economy and them well. There seems no evidence that the conservative Muslims are concerned about the AKP’s strong desire and drive to render the relationship between the AKP government and the Bush administration as a “strategic partnership,” which the AKP government and the current president, and former deputy prime minister and foreign affairs minister, Abdullah Gül, try their best to promote and stress at every occasion they get. Under the circumstances, a state of cognitive dissonance seems to continue as the U.S.hating conservative Muslim masses flock to the ranks of the great U.S.-loving party, the AKP, in the elections. This lack of correlation between public feelings toward the United States and the AKP government’s foreign relations with the U.S. government leads us to conclude that anti-Americanism in Turkey is without any major foreign policy consequences. Turkish-U.S. relations are determined primarily by the interests of the governments and the Turkish public will play little role in it. We would also like to point to the fact that there are no grounds to assume that the political parties in opposition can hope to gain any electoral victories by exploiting anti-Americanism. There are also no grounds to assume that once these parties come to rule Turkey, they would see their relations with the United States any different than how the AKP sees it today. Turkish-U.S. relations cover a wide range of realms, which include the security, economy, culture, and politics of the country. It is highly unlikely that any party in government can hope to follow any policy of anti-Americanism without endangering relations in those realms. It should not be surprising to observe a political metamorphosis of political parties when they take over the responsibility of running the government. When the chances of becoming the next government are relatively remote, opposition parties tend to act more ideological and uncompromising. However, when the prospect of becoming the next government becomes credible, they often accommodate their ideological predispositions to the responsibilities of the task of running the government. The change of discourse and policy under the AKP government, which is run by leaders who have been immersed in the political Islamist movement, has been quite telling. In conclusion, we believe there are going to be several mood changes among the Turkish public on Turkish-U.S. relations, though few policy consequences are likely to follow such shifts in public attitudes toward the United States.
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Conclusion Turkish-EU and Turkish-U.S. relations will continue to dominate Turkish foreign policy issues, and both have also come to intersect with Turkey’s Middle Eastern, Balkan and Caucasian relations. The anti-Turkish initiatives of the Kurdish nationalists or of the Armenian diaspora in Europe and the United States as well as in the regions surrounding Turkey will continue to influence the images of the EU and the United States in the eyes of the Turkish mass public and the political elites. The Turkish public will be immersed in heated debate over the real intentions of the Europeans and the Americans toward Turkey. Various political and democratic reforms in Turkey will further heat up this debate. In the meantime, Turkish governments will push on with EU membership and close relations with the United States. The political mindset of religious conservatives, political Islamists, ethnic nationalist Kurds, and Turks will continue to clash over the role that Turkey should play in the affairs of the Middle East, the Balkans, the Caucasus, and Europe and in relations with NATO and the United States. For the foreseeable future, Turkish voters will be divided into several voting blocs mainly along the lines of sectarian differences and sociocultural divides that divide the secular against Sunni conservatives and ethnic nationalist Kurds against ethnic nationalist Turks. These have produced several cultural divisions and even kulturkampfs in Turkey and not only do they often approach political issues in irreconcilable and different ways, but they occasionally clash with each other. Domestic politics will tend to suffer from such tense relations across the cultural divisions, and bridging them is for the time being almost impossible. However, Turkey has been able to avoid any severance of socioeconomic interactions that may precipitate a warlike situation in the country. What Turkey needs to preserve in its democracy is a solid understanding and political style of pluralism and governance in policy-making. However, the current government has become increasingly tempted to declare itself as the sole representative of the will of the nation, neglecting consultations with the main opposition and pushing legislation through the TBMM with the aid of its huge majority produced by non-representative electoral laws of the country and veered sharply away from governance, which had been a goal that it had declared in its program. The increasing impact of conservative Sunnism in Turkish politics will do little to promote governance and bridge the rift between the culturally divided groups and communities of Turkey. Instead, it seems to deepen some of the rifts and increases friction, tension and stress in the system. Therefore, it is not going to be surprising to observe tense and stressful relations in and outside of politics in Turkey for the foreseeable future. Many who feel threatened by the increased weight of conservative Sunni voters in Turkish politics will continue to show their distaste in the overt display of religiosity in public life. As the issue of preferences of the conservative Sunni masses emerge to impact the political agenda of the country, the secular citizens, Alevis, and middle-class women will continue to display hypersensitivity to the encroachments on their lifestyles and the Turkish media will be replete with debates over laicism, the role of religious groups, Middle Eastern petro-dollars, the real EU, and the U.S. intentions to convert Turkey into another Malaysia, Pakistan, or even Iran will continue to be discussed in length. We should be cognizant of the fact that Turkey did not arrive at this point all of a sudden. It was a long process, where billions of dollars were spent by the political Islamists, who established private schools, dormitories, hostels, and special courses and socialized many girls into acting with modesty, as they described it.
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Unless, the laicists are willing and able to field a similar organization and have the financial means to socialize the majority of the girls, there will be little solution in a democratic style of government. Turkey has been experiencing a long and protracted struggle between the images of a good society built around science and human rationale as the core value of society versus tradition and religion. There is again little reason to assume that there will be any major changes in this struggle in the years to come, though in terms of numbers of voters, the conservative Sunnis now seem to have the upper hand, and it will stay that way in the foreseeable future as well.
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Conclusion There is little doubt that conservatism in Turkey is on the rise. Among many other facets of Turkish society that have been under rapid mutation, the nature and dynamics of rising conservatism attract the most attention domestically as well as internationally. Instead of focusing on this proper conceptual framework, much of the debate within and outside of the country focuses on just one peculiar facet of Turkish conservatism: political Islam. Clearly, Islamism is not only the ideological source of newly rising political elite within the ranks of the AKP, but it is also a source of controversy and conflict in Turkish society. However, as our preceding analyses suggest, there are many other facets to conservatism in the Turkish context and developments and each and every one of these facets has been underway for decades and are not a recent social inflammation that could potentially endanger the peaceful democratic progression of Turkish society. Despite continuing interest on this topic, however, there exists little in terms of individual-level reflections that use systematically collected empirical data on the rising Islamism and almost nothing on conservatism.1 Our objective here was only to provide a look at some systematically collected survey data on the nature of the rising conservatism in Turkey, in which religiosity seems to play a major role. In doing so, we also aimed at tracing the implications Turkey’s experience with conservative Islamist politics in its government and what that meant for the way democratic reforms in the country proceeded. We argued mainly over the intellectual spread of the seven preceding chapters that rising conservatism in Turkey is a consequence of long-term sociopolitical modernization, industrialization, the more recent increased pace of social mobilization, and contemporary regional turbulences caused by the changes that have been taking place in the international system since the end of the Cold War. An increasingly faster pace of change occurred during the post-1980 era, when Turkish society not only became increasingly more urban and relatively more affluent but also highly sensitized to the uncertainties of socioeconomic and sociopolitical changes occurring in and around the country. These changes ignited uncontrollably complex transformations in the private and public spheres of life for especially the massive numbers of rural migrants to the urban centers of Turkey. The rural migrants increasingly find comfort in predominantly old-fashioned and authoritarian frames of mind with expectations of
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state interventionism to guard them against their socioeconomic vulnerability in coping with the rising market forces, on the one hand, and also in corroborating their religious world views in fast-changing and morally alien lifestyles of the urban settlements, on the other. Not only do authoritarianism, demands for increasing state interventionism to help the downtrodden, and religiosity underlie this new mind-set but there is also a serious problem with coping with the rules and regulations of their new settlements, which have paved the way to what may best be referred to as a state of anomie. Given this rising mind-set over the past several decades, one puzzling phenomenon is our discovery of an appeal for a conservative reform agenda in the country. Almost an oxymoron by definition, conservatives in Turkey seem to be least attracted to maintaining the status quo but, rather, prefer to return to the good old days, to a myth of a comfortable setting of customs and traditions that Turkish society once had, with their current affluence intact. This is a phenomenon with potentially far-reaching implications that needs further study. Below, we provide a historical and conceptual summary for the rising conservatism in Turkey. We also summarize our main findings and comment on their implications for social developments, public policy, and further scientific study of Turkish society. The Historical and Conceptual Context of Rising Conservatism in Turkey Placing the rise of conservatism within the larger historical context of the Turkish democratization process and also considering it as an integral part of the long-term struggle between the “center” and “periphery” in Turkish politics enhanced our conceptual grasp of the phenomenon at hand.2 Development of democratic traditions in the Turkish polity and its repeated crises are all a function of this continuing undercurrent that shapes the two sides, and their kulturkampfs3 in the political system. The continuing and seemingly unbridgeable differences in worldviews and culture between these two social and ideational communities thus form a formidable challenge to Turkish democracy. Only insofar as Turkey is successful in resolving this debate can it use this success as a stepping stone in world politics to become an integral and consolidated part of the EU and the club of democracies. However, as we underlined in the preceding chapters, many facets of the still-developing conservative movement in the country are not only a consequence of the long-term struggles in Turkey for modernization but also form a formidable potential threat that can easily overturn the very foundations of democracy in the country, leading to an authoritarian, closed, and oppressive regime that may even enjoy strong popular support, especially if it can define its legitimacy on the grounds of Sunni Muslim religiosity. The almost single-minded focus on Islam in Turkey effectively pushes other aspects of the Turkish experience that are potentially relevant in comparative politics into the background. Economic changes, for example, that took place in the last few decades, moved the country from a predominantly rural agricultural economy into an urban service- and industrial-sector dominant economy. Such a mutation is unmatched in its level of competitiveness within the region of the world in which Turkey is embedded. However, the complexity of social dynamics rooted in a multiethnic, multiconfessional, and inevitably multicultural postimperial nation-state seems to have convinced the scholars of Turkish society and politics that the critical tension of relevance from a larger conceptual as well as policy relevant perspective lies within the unstable relationship between the secular elites (the “center”) and predominantly
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Sunni Muslim masses (the “periphery”) that increasingly use Islamic references in their daily public encounters. From a world politics perspective, the strategic standing of Turkey in between the East, which is rich in natural resources but lacks human resources and technology, and the West, which is rich in technology and knowhow but lacks energy resources—between the Middle East and Europe, Islam and Christianity—has attracted the attention of many strategic thinkers from Kissinger to Fukuyama and Huntington. The destabilizing impact of the 9/11 attacks on the United States and the developments thereafter obviously raised the intensity of attention upon developments in Turkey. For Turkey, the end of the Cold War was, more than anything else, a regression into chaos in international affairs rather than a prospect for a peaceful, democratic, and prosperous new international order. Within a short span of years, Turkey found itself circled by revisionist, rogue, or failed states in its immediate neighborhood, which have been toying with the idea of changing their borders with Turkey and thus testing the limits of the newly emerging international system. Iraq invaded Kuwait, Afghanistan came under the influence of warlords and later the Taliban, Yugoslavia and Georgia slid into bloody civil wars, Armenia and Azerbaijan began to fight over their sovereign rights in Nagorno-Karabagh, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict kept flaring up since the early 1990s. As the Helsinki Accord of 1975 fell into disrepute with the downfall of the Soviet Union, once an untouchable principle, the borders in Europe began to look not so inviolable anymore. Old and new conflicts fueled the debates and challenges over the territorial rights of nation-states all over the world. It looked as if new and old conflicts began to stir with new zest around Turkey in a vast geography that extended from the Balkans through the Middle East to the Transcaucasus and Central Asia, all of which somehow intricately absorbed Turkey and demanded the attention of the Turkish governments and various ethnic communities in Turkey alike. A new debate slowly emerged over the raison d’étre of the nation-states. In this process, the status and role of citizenship, cultural rights of ethnic and religious minorities, and their relations with the dominant national identity bearers (staatsvolk) came to dominate the political agenda of Turkey. As a result the rising uncertainty and confusion instigating debates over the constitution of nation-states engendered a series of concerns over the nature of the new international order, which seemed to be correlated with increasing globalization of communication, markets, and jobs. Such a perception helped foster doubts about the new international system that failed to foil international conflict, while an exercise of redrawing of national borders looked imminent in the Balkans, Middle East, and the Transcaucasus, that is, all of the regions that surround Turkey. To complicate the already chaotic picture, international terrorist networks launched attacks on September 11, 2001, against their targets in the United States, the only super power that remained in the world system, and its allies, including Turkey began to experience similar aggression in the years that followed. Strangely, the comfort that the Cold War provided for Turkey’s international neighbors abruptly ended and Turkey found itself in the midst of potentially explosive wars and terror attacks from ethnic and religious fanatics that increasingly challenged even its own domestic balances. To what extent these changes in the neighboring international context of the country affected the mind-set of the Turkish people is hard to evaluate. To our knowledge, only a few sociopolitical national surveys exist on Turkish foreign relations.4 A number of their findings complement the conservative worldview picture of the Turkish population as depicted above. First among these findings is a clear mistrust
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of everything and everybody that is foreign. Hardly a new phenomenon, this lack of trust in foreigners is embedded within the Republican education system, which treats foreign powers and their citizens as threats to the security and equally importantly to the unity of the Turkish nation. Following the dismantling of the Ottoman Empire at the end of the World War I in the Sevrés Treaty (1920), the developments that mark the process of dissolution of the Ottoman Empire is carved into the memory of the young Turks by repeated use of these historical legends about the last few years of the Ottoman empire and the Turkish War of Liberation as a way of socializing the young minds into the sociopolitics of the Republic. The image of the foreigners portrayed in the formal socialization of the student is one of cunning and sly conspirators, who are bent upon exploiting the Turkish population at each opportunity they get. This mistrust continues but it was also noted that over the past few years since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, the previously favorable evaluations concerning the American government in the eyes of the conservative masses in Turkey have also significantly changed for the worse. A certain degree of fear and suspicion toward the United States and the West seems to have gained ground. However, as Ali Çarkoğlu and Kemal Kirişci5 note, this concept of foreigners does not seem to include Muslim minority groups, such as the Kurds, despite long-running militarized disputes with Kurdish separatists and ethnic nationalist groups that sympathize with them, but conveniently include nonMuslim minority citizens in Turkey, despite long-running peaceful coexistence during the Republican era. In other words, as Turkey’s foreign relations became more and more complicated and hard to predict at the end of the Cold War and as Turkey’s surrounding neighborhood delved into a series of international conflicts and even wars, Turkish elites and the masses increasingly began to view Turkey’s long-running relations with the United States and the West from the prism of the new regional and international developments of the post–Cold War era. No previous international relations and organizational ties of Turkey went unscathed in this development; by the early 2000s, the Turkish public’s view of nearly half a century of NATO membership began to look dismally skeptical with regard to its use for Turkey’s security. Similarly, despite long-term alliances with European powers and the United States, public trust in these relationships took a nosedive to a new dismal level. In short, the uncertainty-reducing impact of membership in alliances failed to work their magic in the new international order of the post–Cold War era. As the international arena became even more chaotic and insecure in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, the Turkish elites and masses perceived no comforting alliance and friendly relations in the new international system. As these changes were taking place, Turkey’s inner dynamics were also taking radical new turns. From a long-term perspective, Şerif Mardin’s center-periphery framework helps better contextualize these developments. Traditionally, the main reactionary strategy of the “center” towards the “periphery” was guided primarily by its self-confident cultural superiority, which provided the moral basis for its deep-rooted suspicion about the lethargic, conservative, and even decadent peripheral forces. The center not only controlled the imperial house and its various coalitions during the Ottoman period but also remained more or less unchanged in its nature during the Republican period, especially with regard to the various ways in which it related to the periphery and dominated the political scene. This subtle continuity is underlined by a deep suspicion on both sides of the divide and was clearly reflected in the way electoral traditions were shaped during the multiparty era.6
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The ruling “center” has always possessed self-ascribed cultural superiority over the “peripheral” masses. During the Ottoman era, the representatives of the center effectively spoke a different language and listened to and performed different music that remained foreign to the masses. More importantly, perhaps, the center never allowed an alternative economic social class to emerge as a challenger to its power. It effectively “owned” the state and its political apparatus. In more recent decades, the culture of that former “center” can be found in the quasi-autonomous bureaucracy of especially the security establishment, in different layers of mostly state-dependent businesses, and among the various branches of the intellectual community and the academia. These groups originally supported and effectively carried out the reforms in the early decades of the Republic. However, in the 1990s they slowly became skeptical of the democratization reforms, especially those that were carried out within the Copenhagen adjustment packages at the start of negotiations for EU membership. In recent years, the much-eroded and diminished “center” often felt threatened by the democratic demands from the periphery. The paradoxical nature of this relatively new phenomenon is most dramatically observed in the debates on the ban on women wearing the türban when participating in higher education programs, and on the ethnic and cultural rights of citizens of Kurdish origin. Given the historical role it played during the founding years of the Republic and its closed and hierarchical structure and many heterogeneous interests, the military constitutes a crucial element in the coalition that constitutes the “center”. The centrist circles see the military as a protector from the threats posed by the seemingly democratic participation of the peripheral forces in politics and especially the consequences that it entails for the secular lifestyles of those who share the values of the former center. Frequently, the “centrist” rhetoric posits the military as the natural and legitimate guardian of the secular Republic. Again, paradoxically, in contrast to its modernizing role in the history of the Republic, the undemocratic tone in the military’s rhetoric and actions are often overlooked and a certain moral basis of justification for military involvement in Turkish politics is created in the eyes of the pro-centrist groups in Turkish society.7 The “periphery” is historically ingrained in an often uncontrollable and effervescent mass of heterogeneous communities and networks. This heterogeneity includes a myriad of sectarian groups of Sunni or much smaller Shi’ite and Alevi Muslims, Turkish as well as non-Muslim and non-Turkish ethnic groups, which are often mindful of the political status quo and practices of the Republican state. Historically, these groups with their ethnic as well as religious overtones were the source of disobedient opposition to the new regime and its modernization reforms in the early decades of the Republic. As such, they form the root causes of Republican fears and sensitivities concerning the regime’s legitimacy as well as sheer survival. Despite their political and ideological connections, the “centrist” parties have always remained on the smaller side in electoral competition with the parties of the “periphery.” In fact, with the exception of short-lived coalition governments, the representatives of the “centrist” coalition have not come to power as a single party in government during the multiparty era of 1950–2008. Such electoral weakness would expectedly lead to ideological weakening and erosion of centrist political power. Surprisingly however, the centrist establishment was able to keep its privileged status intact until recently. The elite establishment of centrist cultural and ideological convictions has been preserved, even when the peripheral representatives came and stayed in power for
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a decade or more. Both ideologically as well as functionally, the “center” was able to keep its privileged status mostly autonomous, untouched, and unchallenged throughout the multiparty era. In other words, the ideological dominance of the center over the political representatives of the periphery was such that it gave the comforting assurance that its core principles would never be challenged, while also guaranteeing that its social and economic status remained aloof from the rapid development of Turkish society. With the introduction of the market-driven economic policy in 1980, the status quo of the “centrist” coalitions slowly began to lose its upper hand. As the liberalization program took root, the newly rising middle class began to search for a new political establishment that could better represent its interests. By abandoning the import substitution policies of the 1970s, comfort zones in the economic sphere were lost to cutthroat market competition. As a result, masses were pushed from the rural areas into the cities in increasing numbers. A second consequence of these new policies was the rise of informal markets in which no registered official record-keeping or welfare networks exist. An obvious security network found in the cities was family or other primordial and parochial ties in the newly sprouting shantytown areas. Eventually, however, the non existence of a significant merit-based welfare system left the shantytown masses vulnerable. The small bit of help from the family was slowly replaced by different charity networks, usually with links to conservative right-wing or Islamist networks and parties. The parties of the old centrist establishment, even those with peripheral roots, simply failed to meet this challenge and respond effectively to growing mass demands and priorities. This long-term failure of the old players in the party system first resulted in a highly fragmented and volatile electoral scene. The parties associated with the center suffered continual electoral frustration for nearly two decades after the 1980 military coup. As the pro-Islamists rose on the electoral scene at the expense of the centrist, liberal, and ethnic nationalist parties in the 2002 general elections, the “centrist” establishment became increasingly uneasy about their political prospects. It seems that the market reforms uprooting rural masses and relocating them into informal urban markets without a comprehensive welfare-state security network based on merit, pushed these masses into functional charity links with political entrepreneurs of the Islamist movement and comforting ideological cover with old-fashioned, authoritarian, and religious leanings. The ideological tendencies were all supported by functional links of patronage that also provided some social and economic comfort for these masses. The shifting of electoral bases away from the old centrist establishment came with the first post-coup election of 1983 when the ANAP came to power with the claim of joining all four major party constituencies at the time. ANAP’s coming to power was a clear defeat of the military’s design of a new center for the country by vetoing representatives of the older generation to take part in elections and leading to the closure of their parties. Despite clear signals from the military that the ANAP was not their favored candidate in the elections, and perhaps because of their signals and declarations, the ANAP won the largest share of the votes in the 1983 general elections and a large majority of the seats in the TBMM. Four years after the 1983 election, all of the former parties of the pre-1980s coup were re-established under their old or new leaderships. However, within a decade, it became clear that the electoral balance of the 1970s had shifted in favor of the once marginal parties of the Islamist tradition, resulting in the decline of the moderate or liberal right in the Turkish party system.
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The left managed to hold on to about one-third of the vote. However, eventually, the distinctly leftist ideological flavor in their rhetoric as well as policy preferences evaporated from the electoral scene. Instead, the left seems to have increasingly imitated and even adopted policy positions that were once solely advocated by the right-wing representatives. In 1995, the pro-Islamist RP won the largest share of the general vote. In 1996, the RP formed a coalition with the moderate right-wing DYP but its older generation leadership, who remained almost unchanged from the 1970s, failed to successfully handle the subtle and fragile relations with the secularist circles. The rising tensions gave rise to what is called the “post-modern coup” of February 28, when the RP buckled under the pressure of the secular forces led by the military, which made various demands from the civilian government to implement an earlier adopted educational reform package in a meeting of the National Security Council on February 28, 1997. Eventually, both the RP and its follower the FP, which was established in RP’s place by more or less the same cadre of politicians, were closed down by the Constitutional Court on the grounds that they functioned as the focal points of antisecular activities. Subsequently, a new generation of Islamists, who split from the ranks of the FP, founded the AKP in 2001, parting ways with the older generation of leadership of the RP and the FP, which continued as the Felicity Party (Saadet Partisi—SP). The 1999 general elections followed a series of devastating crises that required immediate response from the executive office. Such expectations were never effectively met by the ruling coalition governments. First, in 1999, two earthquakes hit the country’s most developed provinces, Istanbul and Kocaeli. Despite their wealth and economic development, these provinces were unable to respond to the urgent needs of the suffering masses. Then the economic crisis of 2001 came, which resulted in a financial meltdown of the markets, and it precipitated an unprecedented high level of unemployment amongst the urban white-collar communities. The resulting deep alienation of the masses from the parties of the ruling coalition emerged with ruinous impact in the 2002 elections. This experience of continual conflicts and eventual party closures left its mark on the new cadres of the AKP. They adopted a more flexible, cautious, and cooperative political style, allowing them to interact in an admittedly limited fashion with the secularist establishment, the military, and business circles when they came to power in 2002. The ability to govern was what distinguished the AKP from its predecessors until 2007, when the AKP seemed to also veer toward a clash with the secular center, which has increased risks to the survival of the party. If the AKP failed to project the image of an effective government party, it would risk sending the message to its large constituency that it was reverting to the experience of its predecessors, depreciating its credentials at governance, and was destined for failure.8 In 2002, the AKP was challenged and had to face the electorate to prove convincingly that they could perform better than their mostly “centrist” and other peripheral competitors. The AKP met this challenge and captured about one-third of the popular vote and a clear majority of parliamentary seats. This success was partially due to the electoral system which required a 10 percent nation-wide vote share before a party could gain the right to representation in the TBMM. Only one other party, the CHP, was able to pass the extremely steep national threshold of 10 percent at the polls and gained parliamentary representation. Thus, for the first time since the early 1980s, one party controlled a comfortable majority in the TBMM. Such a firm grasp over the executive
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power led to the center’s increased fears that the Islamist periphery was about to take over the Republican regime perhaps by slowly changing the nature of the regime and turning it against its founding secularist principles and building a new regime that would not pay homage to Kemalist principles. We could trace the underlying sources of such fears back to the self-isolationist ideological roots of the center. The rising peripheral challenges of the Islamists as well as those of Kurdish ethnicity have increasingly cornered the centrist status quo in all fields of political competition. In response, the center seems to have retreated from the electoral scene and effectively isolated itself within bureaucratic circles while the Islamist periphery adopted new strategies and expanded its sphere of influence. The militarized Kurdish ethnic resistance seems to have altered its strategy after the capture of its leader, Abdullah Öcalan, in 1999. This is also partially due to the changing international climate, especially following the invasion of Iraq. In the 2007 general elections, the Kurdish ethnic nationalists ran independent candidates for the first time and gained representation in the TBMM. However, more votes seem to have gone to the ruling AKP in the eastern province of the country in 2007 compared to the independent candidates. Thus, from 2002 to 2007, the effective pressure upon the center of the Turkish polity has drastically increased. Not only was the Islamist periphery in power but also the rebellious Kurdish ethnicity had gained representation in the TBMM. This short period of five years may mark a turning point in Turkish politics. From an optimistic perspective, this is a turn toward more democracy, since it clearly reflects increasing representation of a larger than ever electoral constituency in the Republican institutions via competitive elections. For pessimists, this is the beginning of the end for the Republican institutions, which continue to remain under an increasingly more potent threat from the insubordinate peripheral forces of Islamist and Kurdish origin. The latter, in particular, are seen as exploiting the changes in the international arena and acting with greater boldness after the establishment of the Kurdish political entity in northern Iraq following the U.S.-led invasion of 2003. Similarly, the democratic reforms for EU adjustment are all viewed skeptically for allowing the Kurdish ethnicity to press their ethnic separatist agenda with more audacity. In short, we tend to see the rise of conservative Islamism mostly as a consequence of long-term domestic dynamics in Turkey that were helped at critical junctures by increasingly chaotic developments in the international arena. The political basis and potency of the Turkish “center” has been eroding over the years as a result of economic crises, sterile and corrupt leadership, and challenging socioeconomic development. The repeated and often stellar electoral victories of the parties of the periphery since 1950 also helped to erode the might of the center. The increasingly insecure and chaotic international environment obviously helps the density of uncertainty and fueled the debates over the origins of national identity that engulfed Turkish politics in the 1990s. However, the rising Kurdish ethnic separatists together with the rising salience of the pro-Islamist parties are all part of a longer-term struggle between the center and the periphery in Turkish politics. Both the center as well as the periphery have been affected by rising conservatism. The peripheral masses turned to conservatism with an Islamist twist while the secularist centrists became dogmatic religious liberals and perceived the threat of Islamism as a source of mobilization that channeled the rising tide of peripheral conservatism toward conventional institutions of political participation. In the meantime, the peripheral
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conservatives seem to have come more under the influence of old-fashioned values concerning youth and gender-related matters, which also relate to authoritarian tendencies with high doses of Sunni religiosity. From an optimistic perspective, the nature of political debate in Turkey has radically changed mostly toward more sophistication and openness as a result of this struggle. Despite its institutional shortcomings and historically rooted problems, Turkish democracy today is more liberal and intellectually more vibrant. Turkish politics has become more inclusive of various groups and their different points of view more than ever before, making the mass attitudes, values, and preferences more relevant to political decision-making than in the past. Clearly, it would be too naïve to claim that democracy is without problems in Turkey. Every now and then we do observe agitated remarks by institutional representatives of the security bureaucracy, military, or even the judiciary, which often increase the risks of undermining the process of democratic deliberation in the country. Reflections of such attitudes in the form of attacks against various minority groups or intellectual circles are also observed. However, despite even assassinations of intellectuals and representatives of minorities, there is little evidence that suggests a mass basis of reactions in the country against the very basis of democracy. Richard Rose provides plenty of evidence from the Turkish Election Study (TES) of 2007 in this respect that suggests clearly that democracy is the “only game in town,” though with a center of gravity that is occupied by Sunni conservatives, who in turn deeply influence the political agenda, political interactions, and conflict in the country.9 Conservatism, with a Sunni Islamic core, which coheres with authoritarianism, dogmatism, and anomie, will be a part of Turkish society and politics in the near and foreseeable future. There is no way of telling whether Turkish democracy will be able to cope with such a slant toward conservatism that contributes to the tensions and clashes between the forces of the center and periphery in the country. The real test of maturity for Turkish democracy will emerge with its resilience to such tension, stress, and conflict, which in the past have often led to breakdowns of democracy. Richard Rose’s findings provide some hope, and we would also like to hope that they indicate a major change in the cultural climate for Turkish democracy as well.
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Notes
Introduction 1. For a comprehensive analysis of the mind-set of the military coup leaders of Turkey in the early 1980s, see Kenan Evren, Kenan Evren’in Anıları 1 [Kenan Evren’s Memoires I] (Istanbul: Milliyet Publications, 1990), 1, 237–255 passim. 2. For details of the Turkish electoral history, see Ali Çarkoğlu and Ersin Kalaycıoğlu, Turkish Democracy Today: Elections, Protest and Stability in an Islamic Society (London: I. B. Tauris, 2007), pp. 1–56. For a wider historical contextualization, see Ersin Kalaycıoğlu, Turkish Dynamics: Bridge Across Troubled Lands (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), pp. 91–128. 3. See Çarkoğlu and Kalaycıoğlu, Turkish Democracy Today, p. 115. 4. For the analysis and a geographic perspective of the pre-1980 Turkish voting patterns, see ibid., pp. 57–82; Üstün Ergüder, “Changing Patterns of Electoral Behavior in Turkey,” Boğaziçi University Journal 8–9 (1980–81): 45–81; Ergun Özbudun, Social Change and Political Participation in Turkey (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976), pp. 60–96; Ilkay Sunar, State and Society in the Politics of Turkey’s Development (Ankara: Ankara Üniversitesi Siyasal Bilgiler Fakültesi Yayını, 1975), pp. 114–121; Ergun Özbudun, “Turkish Party System: Institutionalization, Polarization, and Fragmentation,” Middle Eastern Studies 17, no. 2 (1981): pp. 228–238; Frank Tachau, Turkey: The Politics of Authority, Democracy, and Development (New York: Praeger, 1984), 45ff. 5. See the voting analyses in Ali Çarkoğlu and Ersin Kalaycıoğlu, Turkish Democracy Today, pp. 161–213. On the return of economic pragmatism see Ali Çarkoğlu “Ideology or Economic Pragmatism: Profiling Turkish Voters in 2007,” Turkish Studies 9, no. 2 (June 2008b): 317–344. 6. Ersin Kalaycıoğlu, “Elections and Party Preferences in Turkey: Changes and Continuities in the 1990s,” Comparative Political Studies 27, no. 3, (October 1994): 402–424; and also Ersin Kalaycıoğlu, “The Shaping of Party Preferences in Turkey: Coping with the Post–Cold War Era,” New Perspectives on Turkey, no. 20 (Spring 1999): 47–76. For an analysis of the conventional left-right ideology self-placement, see Ali Çarkoğlu, “The Nature of the LeftRight Ideological Self-Placement in the Turkish Context,” Turkish Studies 8, no. 2 (June 2007): pp. 253–271. For a multidimensional treatment of ideological space in Turkey, see Ali Çarkoğlu and Melvin J. Hinich, “A Spatial Analysis of Turkish Party Preferences,” Electoral Studies 25 (2006): 369–392. 7. The Berlin Wall was torn down in November 1989, and the Soviet flag was lowered from its mast on the Kremlin for the last time on December 31, 1991. It is possible to refer to either event as marking the end of the Cold War. However, the Cold War seems to have ended due to a process that started out in the late 1980s and finished at the end of 1991. The Turkish Values Survey of 1990 occurred about a year after the collapse of the Berlin Wall and one
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year before the lowering of the Soviet flag from the Kremlin. Therefore, it is plausible to assume that the ideological spectrum of Turkey was still shaped under the influence of the Cold War in 1990.
Chapter 1 1. Indeed both the CHP and the MSP had declared that Turkey hosted a corrupt political order. The CHP argued that Turkey had a Rotten Political Order (Bozuk Düzen) and asked the voters for their support to establish a Fair Order (Hakça Düzen). The CHP suggested a redistribution of property rights in relation to land and other real estate, wealth, and income. They also argued that they had adopted a social democratic program that stressed equality, political liberty, and rights. We should also stress the fact that, since the 1920s, the CHP was the party that played a unique and critical role in establishing the republican system in the country and alongside it the laicist and nationalist principles of the republic. On the contrary, the MSP was a brand new party created by a Muslim movement called National Outlook (Milli Görüş), which seemed to be closely tied to the Nakshibendi, a Muslim brotherhood and was led by Prof. Dr. Necmettin Erbakan, and thus had a political Islamist character. It stood for a return to the Islamic grandeur of the Ottoman past and often portrayed antirepublican propaganda. It could make no clear reference to Shari’a (Şeriat), for any such claim would be illegal and the Constitutional Court could ban the party. However, through insinuations and innuendos of various sorts, it made clear that it palpably represented the agenda of those who desired the termination of the laicist practices and principles of the republic and the reestablishment of Şeriat as the law of the land. In consequence, what the MSP criticized in the established political order was diametrically opposite to what the CHP perceived as faulty and corrupt. What the MSP promoted as a just political order (Adil Düzen) also diverged sharply and irreconcilably from what the CHP understood from the fair political order (Hakça Düzen). Therefore, the CHP and MSP were united in opposing the political establishment, but for totally irreconcilable reasons, and the coalition government they established had no shared vision of the future. The CHP-MSP coalition lasted about a year and failed to accomplish much for the welfare of the average citizen in Turkey. However, the CHP had thus managed to extend the seal of legitimacy to an antirepublican party, which the conservative right-of-center AP could effectively use to establish an alternative coalition in 1975. Turkey came under a conservative– Islamist revivalist-ultranationalist coalition, popularly called the National Front coalition government, which contributed to the deepening of the left-right divide in Turkish politics, which in turn increased tension and conflict in the country. After the 1977 elections, shortlived coalitions continued to rule the country. See Ali Yaşar Sarıbay, Türkiye’de Modernleşme, Din ve Parti Politikası: Milli Selamet Partisi Örnekolayı (Istanbul: Alan Yayıncılık, 1984), pp. 187–205; David Shankland, Islam and Society in Turkey (Huntingdon, England: Eothen Press, 1999), pp. 67–90; and Feroz Ahmad, Turkey: The Quest for Identity (Oxford: One World, 2003), pp. 138–145. 2. Kenan Evren, Kenan Evren’in Anıları, 3 (Istanbul: Milliyet Yayınları, 1991): 274–299. 3. The term belongs to Frederick W. Frey and he used it to describe the relations between the government and opposition of the 1950s in Turkey (Frederick W. Frey, “Patterns of Elite Politics in Turkey,” in Political Elites in the Middle East, ed. George Lenczowski (Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, 1975), pp. 65–67. 4. Neo-Hamidianism refers to the design of the regime of the 1982 constitution, which seems to borrow lavishly from the practice of the governance style of Abdulhamid II (1877–1909). Abdulhamid II ascended the throne soon after the introduction of the constitution of 1876. He was the first monarch of the Ottoman Empire who came to rule under a constitutional monarchy. Ironically, his rule turned out to be the last example of absolute monarchy, even though there was a written constitution in effect. He was able to suspend the ill-designed
Notes
5. 6. 7.
8.
9. 10.
11. 12.
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constitution of 1876 for more than three decades and ruled as the last patrimonial ruler of the Ottoman realm. In the meantime, the Ottoman political regime looked as if it was designed to host modern democratic institutions such as a parliament, judiciary, public bureaucracy, political parties, and other interest groups. However, in practice, the Ottoman Empire was ruled from the Yildiz Palace where Sultan Abdulhamid II resided. He used the services of those confidants who were attached to him in proximal ties of fealty. The sultan had established committees of his loyal servants and used them as the locus of advice and deliberation in his decision-making and bypassed the entire bureaucracy of the Sublime Porte (the Ottoman government). The 1982 constitution seemed to serve a similar purpose, as armies of advisers, who were attached to the prime minister or to the president through bonds of fealty, began to serve side by side with the career bureaucrats and often became more effective in political decision-making than the established bureaus and agencies of the state. The modern veneer of the Turkish political system seemed to hide the patrimonial styles of decision-makers, and thus produced a form of neopatrimonialism at work. For a more thorough analysis of the Turkish political regime of the 1982 constitution, see Ersin Kalaycıoğlu, Turkish Dynamics: Bridge Across Troubled Lands (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), pp. 129–137. Çetin Yetkin, 12 Eylül’de İrtica Niçin ve Nasıl Gelişti? (Ankara: Ümit Yayıncılık, 1994), pp. 85–89. Ruşen Çakır, Ayet ve Slogan. Türkiye’de Islami Oluşumlar (Istanbul: Metis Yayınları, 1990), pp. 276–277. Akbar Ahmed, Journey into Islam: The Crisis of Globalization (Washington, D. C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2007), 91–96; Ahmed Rashid, The Resurgence of Central Asia: Islam or Nationalism? (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 245–246. For an analysis of the role of the Turkish-Islamic Synthesis in Turkish politics and its role in Turkish conservatism and nationalism, see Yüksel Taşkın, “Muhafazakarlığın Uslanmaz Çocuğu: Reaksiyonerlik,” in Modern Türkiye’de Siyasi Düşünce: Muhafazakarlık, ed. Anonymous, vol. 5 (Istanbul: Iletişim Yayınları, 2003), pp. 187–216; and also “Muhafazakar bir proje Olarak Türk-İslam Sentezi,” Modern Türkiye’de Siyasi Düşünce, pp. 381–401. Yusuf Akçura, Üç Tarz-ı Siyaset (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi, 1976), pp. 19–35. This argument is most clear in the version of Turkish nationalism formulated by Yusuf Akçura, whose ideas come close to a contemporary ideology of his time, racism, which he believed was the way of the future (see Ibid., pp. 34–35). Barbara Jelavich, History of the Balkans: Twentieth Century, vol. 2 (Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 79–105, 212–213. Ersin Kalaycıoğlu, Turkish Dynamics, pp. 145–146.
Chapter 2 1. Demirtaş Ceyhun, Ah Şu Biz “Kara Bıyıklı” Türkler (Istanbul: E Yayınları, 1992), pp. 169–170, 173–174, depicts the rural migration into the cities of Turkey as a replay of the pattern of nomadic invasion of the Anatolian and Thracian realms of the Byzantine Empire by the Turkish tribes. Ceyhun goes on to argue that in 1453 Mehmet II, “the Conqueror,” led an Ottoman army to conquer Istanbul, but did not plunder it. However since the 1950s, a wave of migration from Anatolia was triggered with the fateful decision of the DP government of Prime Minister Adnan Menderes to settle the Balkan migrants in such locations of Istanbul as Taşlıtarla, Yeni Bosna, and Sefaköy. Nomads and peasants of Anatolia inundated Istanbul in wave after wave of migration, which turned into attacks on the city as they established their gecekondu (shanty town) settlements around the city (p. 182). Dramatic as the descriptions of Ceyhun may be, the surge of population out of Anatolia that poured into the cities of Turkey in an unplanned, unorganized, and anomic phenomenon is evident even from a precursory look at urban migration statistics. The trend of urbanization has always been sharply positive, but it especially picked up between 1980 and 2000, and
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3. 4. 5. 6.
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began to level off by the 2000s. In 1950 only about 15 percent of the population lived in urban areas. In 1980 the urban share was still below 40 percent, and only in 1990 did it reach about 50 percent. By 2007 the urban population in the country was about 70 percent (See State Institute of Statistics and State Planning Organization [of the Turkish Republic], at http://www.tuik.gov.tr/PreTablo.do?tb_id=39&ust_id=11.) The municipalities and the central government failed to cope with this deluge of migrants. The overall social consequence of this internal migration was urban decay throughout the country, with the former culture of the cities rapidly fading into the background and urban economies changing to accommodate unregistered transactions, parallel markets, and even black-market operations. The politics of the cities also gave way to the demands of the newcomers, who took over the city administrations, as political breaches of laws and regulations began to look as if they were routine operations. Laws of the land began to look like unnecessary impediments to the demands and desires of the new settlers, who showed little respect for the laws, which did not necessarily favor their economic interests, as they plundered and controlled land owned by the state and municipality. As the rule of law began to erode, political corruption took off in all major cities of the country. Those who were able to ride this tide and manage the political change of the cities began to rise as the new leaders of Turkey. They were able to do so as they had distanced themselves from the establishment and delegitimized the laws and regulations of the city and the country and provided alternative sources and means of legitimacy. The most successful attempt at presenting an alternative source and means of legitimacy was the introduction of Islamic law (Shari’a). The political Islamist organizations and the political parties that depended upon their call and input argued effectively, as had the left-of-center parties in the 1970s, that the political establishment in the cities and at the center were corrupt (Bozuk Düzen) and suggested the establishment of a multicultural practice of including several legal systems. The pious would opt for their choice of legal system, while the nonpious would continue with their secular regime. Since religion has been the most important source of sociopolitical phenomena in Turkey, and with the destruction of the left-of-center parties by the 1990s, political Islamists were able to control the hearts and minds of critical minorities and, on some issues, the majorities in Turkey. General Kenan Evren, the leader of the military government of 1980–1983 in a recent interview declared that it was wrong of them to ban “Kurdish,” which only helped to further alienate the citizens of Kurdish origin in Turkey. The ban could not be effectively implemented, and was lifted in late 1991, though the damage was done. Even to this day, the PKK and its sympathizers argue that Kurds are banned from using their mother tongue in Turkey. Forcing and torturing Kurdish nationalists to accept Turkism in prisons such as Diyarbakir in the early 1980s also further sowed the seeds of hatred in the hearts of not only the inmates but their families, tribes, and the larger community of Kurds in Turkey. In a famous interview, General Evren admits to the mistreatment of the Kurds in Diyarbakir prison, but denies that it was the policy of the military government that the prison administration enforced (See Milliyet [Istanbul Daily], November 7, 2007 [also available at http://www.milliyet.com/ 2007/11/07/siyaset/siy01.html], and Fikret Bila, “Komutanlar Cephesi ile İlgili Tartışmalar,” Milliyet, November 15, 2007 [also available at http://www. milliyet.com/2007/11/15/yazar/bila.html.]) See endnote 1 in Chapter 3 of this book for the sampling procedure and the data used. See also our discussion in Chapter 6. Kemal Karpat; cf. Sinan Yıldırmaz, “Muhafazakarlık: Türk Muhafazakarlığı ve Peyami Safa Üzerine,” Journal of Historical Studies 1 (2003): p. 10. The Turkish press reported a debate caused by the brandishing of some verses from the Holy Qur’an at the gate of an Istanbul mosque. The verses in question stated that anyone who befriended Jews and Christians was one of them. It seemed as if the imam of the mosque in question wanted to stress that the Holy Qur’an clearly stipulated avoidance of contact with Jews and Christians. Taken literally, Islam seems to propagate no contact with the members
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8. 9. 10.
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of the other monotheistic religions. It is a small step from such an attitude to anti-Semitism and xenophobia (for more information, see http://www.aktifhaber.com/news-detail. php?id=14204). In Turkey, conservatism connotes “parochialism, reactionary isolationism, which often slides into xenophobia, introvert, small town mentality, that is ignorant about other cultures and peoples, and often ignores and shuns contact with alien cultures and foreign peoples in the Turkish culture” (İlber Ortaylı, “Milliyetçiler Türkiye’yi Tanımıyor,” www.turkdirlik. com; http://www.aksam.com.tr/arsiv/aksam/2005/01/31/ozel/ozel1.html. Also see Ersin Kalaycıoğlu, “Politics of Conservatism in Turkey,” Turkish Studies 8, no. 2 (June, 2007): pp. 235–236.) Yıldırmaz, “Muhafazakarlık,” yıl 22, sayı 292, Nisan 2003, available at www.İktibas.info; cf. Ersin Kalaycıoğlu, “Politics of Conservatism in Turkey,” pp. 235–236. Bülent Aras, “Muhafazakar Demokrat Kimlik ve Dış Politika,” Zaman, January 17, 2004; cf. Ersin Kalaycıoğlu, “Politics of Conservatism in Turkey,” pp. 236. Erik J. Zürcher, Turkey: A Modern History (London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2004), pp. 93–103, narrates how the party system of the Ottoman Empire was born out of a struggle between the centralist, statist, secularist, pro-change and pro-modernity forces that united under the umbrella organization of the Union and Progress Party (Ittihat ve Terakki Fırkası—ITF) and the decentralist, libertarian, traditionalist, religious forces organized within the Ottoman Liberal Party (Osmanlı Ahrar Fırkası) first, and which later joined ranks within the Enténte Liberal (Hürriyet ve Itilaf Fırkası) between 1909 and 1911. This divide kept reemerging in Turkish politics as well. The CHP continued along the lines of the Union and Progress Party and became the party of centralism, étatism, secularism, nationalism, populism, and revolutionary change, while the opposition DP, which was later substituted by the AP, represented economic liberalism, decentralization, anti-étatistism, religion (Islamist), and sociocultural traditionalism. The same divide continued into the 1980s with the SHP representing the CHP legacy and the ANAP representing the same conservative agenda of economic liberalism, sociocultural traditionalism, and Islamism as that of the DP. In the 2000s, this divide in Turkish politics continued with some alterations with the CHP representing étatism, centralism, secularism, etc., and the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi—AKP) representing the conservative agenda along with an EUoriented political reform agenda. Mustafa Taşar, “Muhafazakarlık: Türkiye’nin Düşünce Gündemi,” http://www.mustafatasar. gen.tr/yayinlar/dusunce_g/icindekiler.htm; cf. Kalaycıoğlu, “Politics of Conservatism in Turkey,” p. 236.
Chapter 3 1. For a comprehensive overview of the issues on Alevis and Alevi involvement in Turkish politics, see Paul J. White and Joost Jongerden, eds., Turkey’s Alevi Enigma: A Comprehensive Overview (Leiden: Brill, 2003); and David Shankland, The Alevis in Turkey: The Emergence of a Secular Islamic Tradition (London: Routledge, 2007). 2. The field surveys of sociopolitical attitudes and political choices were conducted during late March, April, and early May of 2006 in twenty-three out of the eighty-one provinces of Turkey. Face-to-face interviews were conducted with 1846 respondents aged eighteen and above. The sample of respondents was determined through a multistage stratified cluster sampling technique, which provided equal probability of selection per the voting age population (eighteen years and older in Turkey). The primary sampling units were the provinces of Turkey, which were grouped according to the regions of the Turkish Statistics Institute (TUIK). Accordingly, Istanbul is a region on its own and all other provinces are grouped under eleven additional regions. Sample interviews were distributed to the regions according to the urban-rural population shares for each region. Then two representative
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7. 8.
9.
10. 11.
12.
13.
14.
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provinces from each region were selected according to the Probability Proportionate to Size (PPS) principle. Ten interviews were targeted from each village and urban block, so a total of 200 villages and blocks were selected in the sample. In accordance with the urban and rural population shares, sixty-eight villages and 132 urban blocks were randomly selected from the village and block lists obtained from TUIK. Then ten households were randomly selected per census track or block. The interviewers then randomly selected one respondent per household. Our margin of error for the sample was ⫾ 2.2 percent with a 95 percent level of confidence. The others included in our list were Caliphs Omer, Ebubekir, and Osman. Said Nursi was also included in the list. Charles Y. Glock and Rodney Stark, Religion and Society in Tension (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1965). Riaz Hassan, Faithliness: Muslim Conceptions of Islam and Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). Ali Çarkoğlu and B. Toprak, Türkiye’de Din Toplum ve Siyaset [Religion, Society and Politics in Turkey] (Istanbul: Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation Publications, 2000). Ali Çarkoğlu and Riaz Hassan, “Giving and Gaining: Philanthropy and Social Justice in Muslim Societies” (working paper, 2005). Note here that the word “Allah” is not used in the this question but rather a non-Islamic word such as “God” or the Turkish word “Tanrı” was used instead. David Shankland in his book The Alevis in Turkey, p. 157, refers to the use of “Tanrı” as typical of the Alevis, reflecting their effort to be Turkish rather than Arabic. In a survey setting, though, we believe the connotation of the use of Allah makes refusal more difficult and Tanrı gives a more neutral tone to the question. Of course, we should caution that for all of our statements it is possible to find counter examples. A religiously devout person who prays regularly, fasts and abides by religious rules and rituals, and who disagrees with our statement in which agreement is interpreted as being more religious than disagreement is not unthinkable. Fred N. Kerlinger, Liberalism and Conservatism: The Nature and Structure of Social Attitudes (London: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1984). Kathleen Knight, “Liberalism and Conservatism,” in Measures of Political Attitudes, ed. John P. Robinson, Philip R. Shaver and Lawrence S. Wrightsman (San Diego, CA: Academic Press, 1998), pp. 59–158. Ali Çarkoğlu and Binnaz Toprak, Türkiye’de Din Toplum ve Siyaset, and also Ali Çarkoğlu and B. Toprak, Religion, Society and Politics in a Changing Turkey, (Istanbul: Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation, 2007). This political party is the beacon of laicism (secularism) in Turkish politics and was originally established in 1922 by none other than Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founding leader and statesman of the Turkish Republic. Typically, we will join two demographic groups together with a line if they are exhaustive of our whole sample. Thus such a line should always pass from the total overall mean across these two dimensions also shown on the graph. Since party preferences are not exhaustive and contain more than two groups, we will never join them. However, our sample is split symmetrically between the two gender groups, men and women. In this figure men appear more religiously liberal and less conservative than the overall average. Women, however, appear more religiously conservative and less liberal than the overall average. Thus, a line on this graph that joins these two demographic groups has no information other than that pointing out where these two averages happen to be. We also show the regular regression line when the y axis is the dependent variable and the x axis is the independent variable. These lines are estimated on the basis of the whole data set of values for the two dimensions that we depict.
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15. This party is the most popular and thus formed the government both in 2006 and after the 2007 general elections. It claims to be a “conservative democrat” party, and its leader and elites have experienced long careers in the political Milli Görüş movement and its parties. 16. This party is an anticommunist, ethnic Turkish nationalist, and conservative organization that stands for Turkish nationalism and, in recent decades, for Islam as well. 17. See Richard Christie, 1991, “Authoritarianism and related constructs”, Measures of Personality and Social Psychological Attitudes, in John P. Robinson, Philip R. Shaver and Lawrence S. Wrightsman (eds.), New York: Academic Pres, pp.501-572. 18. Max Horkheimer, ed., Studien über Autoritat und Familie [Studies on Authority and Family] (Paris: Felix Alcan, 1936). 19. Theodore W. Adorno, Else Frenkel-Brunswik, Daniel J. Levinson, and R. N. Sanford, The Authoritarian Personality (New York: Harper, 1950). 20. See Robert A. Altemeyer, Right-Wing Authoritarianism (Winnipeg, MB: University of Manitoba Press, 1981); R. Brown, Social Psychology (New York: Free Press, 1965); R. Christie and M. Jahoda, Studies in the Scope and Methods of “The Authoritarian Personality” (Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1954); D. W. McKinney, The Authoritarian Personality Studies (The Hague: Mouton, 1973); J. J. Ray, “Do Authoritarians Hold Authoritarian Attitudes?” Human Relations 29, (1976): 307–325; Milton Rokeach, The Open and Closed Mind (New York: Basic Books, 1960); and Edwin H. Titus and Edwin P. Hollander, “The California F Scale in Psychological Research: 1950–1954,” Psychological Bulletin 54 (1957): 47–64. 21. R. Brown, Social Psychology, 2nd ed., (New York: Free Press, 1986). See also H. Tajfel and C. Fraser, Introducing Social Psychology (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1978). 22. Edwin H. Titus and Edwin P. Hollander, “The California F Scale in Psychological Research”; Edwin H.Titus, “F Scale Validity Considered against Peer Nomination Criteria,” Psychological Record 18 (1968): 395–403; Robert A. Altemeyer, Right-Wing Authoritarianism, pp. 47–91; J. J. Ray and F. H. Lovejoy, “The Behavioral Validity of Some Recent Measures of Authoritarianism,” Journal of Social Psychology 120 (1983): 91–99. 23. David J. Hanson, “Authoritarianism as a Variable in Political Research,” Il Politico 40 (1975): 700–705; John J. Ray, “Conservatism, Authoritarianism, and Related Variables: A Review and Empirical Study,” in The Psychology of Conservatism, ed. G. D. Wilson (New York: Academic Press, 1973); J. J. Ray, “Half of All Racists Are Left-Wing: A Reply to Eyesenck and Stone,” Political Psychology 4 (1984): 139–144; J. J. Ray, “The Psychopathology of the Political Left,” Highschool Journal 68 (1985): 415–423. 24. Jose A. Cobas, “Puerto-Rican Reactions to Cuban Migrants: Insights from Trading Minority Interpretations,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 9 (1986): 529–536; Marilynn B. Brewer and Roderick M. Kramer, “The Psychology of Intergroup Attitudes and Behavior,” Annual Review of Psychology 36 (1985): 417–452; Paul M. Sniderman and Philip E. Tetlock, “Symbolic Racism: Problems of Motive Attribution in Political Analysis,” Journal of Social Issues 42 (1986): 129–150; and David M. Messick and Diane M. Mackie, “Intergroup Relations,” Annual Review of Psychology 40 (1989): 45–81. 25. John J. Ray, “The Old Fashioned Personality,” Human Relations 43 (1990): 997–1015. 26. Howard Gabennesch, “Authoritarianism as World View,” American Journal of Sociology 77 (1972): 857–875. 27. John J. Ray, “The Workers Are Not Authoritarian: Attitude and Personality Data from Six Countries,” Sociology and Social Research 67, no. 2 (1983): 166–189. 28. Ray, “The Old Fashioned Personality.” 29. J. Pflaum, “Development and Evaluation of Equivalent Forms of the F Scale,” Psychology Reports 15 (1964): 663–669. 30. Paul Hartmann, “A Perspective on the Study of Social Attitudes,” European Journal of Social Psychology 7 (1977): 85–96. 31. Ray, “The Old Fashioned Personality.” Also see Jos Meloen, Louk Hagendoorn, Quinten Raaijmakers, and Lieuwe Visser, “Authoritarianism and the Revival of Political
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32. 33. 34.
35. 36.
37. 38. 39.
40. 41.
42. 43. 44. 45.
46. 47. 48.
49. 50. 51.
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Racism; Reassessment in the Netherlands of the Reliability and Validity of the Concept of Authoritarianism by Adorno et al.,” Political Psychology 9 (1988): 413–429. Ray, “The Old Fashioned Personality,” p. 999. Abraham H. Maslow, “The Authoritarian Character Structure,” The Journal of Social Psychology, S.P.S.S.I. Bulletin, 18 (1943): 401–411. See Richard Christie and Marie Jahoda, Studies in the Scope and Methods of “The Authoritarian Personality,” (Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1954) for a rare first attempt to uncover similarities in cognitive belief systems among those with left- and right-wing leanings. Milton Rokeach,. “The Nature and Meaning of Dogmatism,” Psychological Review 61, (1954): 195. See Benjamin Fruchter, Milton Rokeach, and Edwin G. Novak, “A Factorial Study of Dogmatism, Opinionation and Related Scales,” Psychological Reports 4 (1958): 19–22; Walter T. Plant, “Rokeach’s Dogmatism Scale as a Measure of General Authoritarianism,” Psychological Reports 6 (1960): 164; Rokeach, The Open and Closed Mind; and Milton Rokeach and Benjamin Fruchter, “A Factorial Study of Dogmatism and Related Concepts,” Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 53 (1956): 356–360. Ralph B. Vacchiano, Paul S. Strauss, and Leonard Hochman, “The Open and Closed Mind: A Review of Dogmatism,” Psychological Bulletin 71, no. 4 (1969): 261. Fred N. Kerlinger and Milton Rokeach, “The Factorial Nature of the F and D Scales,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 4 (1966): 391–399. The additive scale we formed uses the maximum scores obtainable from all items included in the scaling exercise and takes individual scores as a percentage of that maximum. Cronbach’s alpha for the authoritarianism scale and dogmatism scale is 0.55/1.00 and 0.76/1.00, respectively. The Pearson Correlation coefficient between these two scales is significantly different from zero at 0.24. For these groups, the predicted yearning for the past on the basis of their youth-related conservatism is higher than what is on average observed for these groups. See Melvin Seeman, “Alienation and Anomie,” in Measures of Personality and Social Psychological Attitudes, ed. John P. Robinson, Philip R. Shaver, and Lawrence S. Wrightsman (New York: Academic Press, 1990), pp. 291–372, for a comprehensive review of relevant literature on anomie. Cronbach’s Alpha for this scale is 0.82. Cronbach’s Alpha for this scale is 0.76. Letitia Anne Peplau and Daniel Perlman, Loneliness: A Current Source Book of Theory, Research and Therapy (New York: Wiley,1982). Philip R. Shaver and Kelly A. Brennan, “Measures of Depression and Loneliness,” in Measures of Personality and Social Psychological Attitudes, ed. John P. Robinson, Philip R. Shaver, and Lawrence S. Wrightsman (New York: Academic Press, 1990), pp. 195–290. Mark R. Leary, Understanding Social Anxiety: Social, Personality and Clinical Perspectives (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage 1983). Frank Johnson, “Alienation: Concept, Term and Word,” in Alienation: Concept, Term and Meanings, ed. Frank Johnson (New York: Seminar Press, 1973), pp. 27–51. Jim Blascovich and Joseph Tomka, “Measures of Self-Esteem,” in Measures of Personality and Social Psychological Attitudes, ed. John P. Robinson, Philip R. Shaver, and Lawrence S. Wrightsman (New York: Academic Press, 1991), pp. 115. Ibid. Morris Rosenberg, Society and the Adolescent Self-Image (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1965). See Robert A. Altemeyer, “The Other ‘Authoritarian personality,’” ed. Mark P. Zanna, Advances in Experimental Social Psychology 30 (1998): 47–91; John Duckitt, “A Dual Process Cognitive-Motivational Theory of Ideology and Prejudice,” Advances in Experimental Social Psychology 33 (2001): 41–113; and Silvan S. Tomkins, “Ideology and Affect,” in Exploring
Notes
52. 53. 54.
55. 56.
57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65.
66.
67. 68. 69. 70.
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Affect: The Selected Writings of Silvan S. Tomkins, ed. Virginia E. Demos, (New York: University of Cambridge Press, 1995), pp. 109–167. Altemeyer, “The Other ‘Authoritarian personality,’” p. 52. Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba, The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and Democracy in Five Nations (Boston: Little, Brown, 1963). See Ronald Ingelhart, “The Renaissence of Political Culture,” American Political Science Review 82 (1988): 1203–1230; Robert Putnam, Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993); and Eric M. Uslaner, “Democracy and Social Capital,” in Democracy and Trust, ed. M. Warren (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 121–150. Eric M. Uslaner, “Democracy and Social Capital,” pp. 140–144. Morris Rosenberg, “Misanthropy and Political Ideology,” American Sociological Review 21, no. 6 (Dec. 1956): 690–695; and Eric M. Uslaner, “Trends in Comity over Time” (unpublished paper presented at the Wequassett Workshop on Social Capital and Democracy, Chatham MA: July 1994). Eric M. Uslaner, “Democracy and Social Capital,” p. 141. Italics added. Ibid. Jerry Z. Muller, Conservatism: An Anthology of Social and Political Thought from David Hume to the Present (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997), p. 261. Ibid., p. 13. Samuel Stouffer, Communism, Conformity, and Civil Liberties: A Cross-Section of the Nation Speaks Its Mind (New York: Doubleday, 1955). James W. Prothro and Charles W. Grigg, “Fundamental Principles of Democracy: Bases of Agreement and Disagreement,” Journal of Politics 22 (1960): 276–294. Herbert McClosky, “Consensus and Ideology in American Politics,” American Political Science Review 58 (1964): 361–382. James A. Davis, “Communism, Conformity, Cohorts, and Categories: American Tolerance in 1954 and 1972–1973,” American Journal of Sociology 81 (November, 1975): 491–513. Clyde Z. Nunn, Harry J. Crockett, and J. Allen Williams, Tolerance for Nonconformity: A National Survey of Americans’ Changing Commitment to Civil Liberties (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 1978). John L. Sullivan, James Piereson, and George E. Marcus, “Ideological Constraint in the Mass Public: A Methodological Critique and Some New Findings,” American Journal of Political Science 22 (1978): 233–249; John L. Sullivan, James Piereson, and George E. Marcus, “An Alternative Conceptualization of Political Tolerance: Illusory Increases, 1950s–1970s,” American Political Science Review 73 (September 1979): 781–794; and John L. Sullivan, James Piereson, and George E. Marcus, Political Tolerance and American Democracy (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1982). Sullivan, Piereson, and Marcus, “An Alternative Conceptualization of Political Tolerance”: 781–794. James L. Gibson and Richard Bingham, “On the Conceptualization and Measurement of Political Tolerance,” The American Political Science Review 76 (1982): 603–620. Ibid. What is also interesting in this picture concerns the relative standing of different demographic groups with respect to the overall regression line. We see that the relatively more tolerant, higher-educated, and left-leaning urban groups tend to remain below the regression line while the right-wing, lower-educated rural groups tend to be above the regression line. In other words, we observe a level of social intolerance for the relatively less tolerant group that is above that warranted by the overall prediction, while for the opposing group with a relatively lower level of political and social intolerance we observe just the opposite tendency of them remaining below the expected level of social intolerance warranted by their given political intolerance.
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71. We agree with Eric M. Uslaner (The Moral Foundations of Trust [Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002], pp. 68–74) that joining the three questions into a unidimensional scale is problematic. However, for the sake of brevity and simplicity of presentation we will mostly but not exclusively use this single additive scale on trust. 72. Muller, Conservatism, pp 15–17. 73. It should be emphasized here that, in contrast to the Sunni tradition, the Anatolian Shiite tradition of the Alevis is much more liberal in its approach toward women and their role in society. See especially Shankland, The Alevis in Turkey and Paul J. White and Joost Jongerden, eds., Turkey’s Alevi Enigma and Ali Çarkoğlu, “Political Preferences of the Turkish Electorate: Reflections of an Alevi-Sunni Cleavage,” Turkish Studies 6, no. 2 (2005): pp. 273–292, on the Alevi tradition in Turkish society and politics. 74. We follow the steps of both the Michigan as well as the spatial voting school. See also Philip Converse, “The Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Publics,” in Ideology and Discontent, ed. David Apter (New York: Free Press, 1963), pp. 219–241; John Zaller, The Nature and Origins of Public Opinion (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992); and Melvin J. Hinich and Michael Munger, Ideology and the Theory of Political Choice (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994). 75. For a more thorough analysis of the role religious and traditional attire, such as the türban, play as political symbols in Turkish society and politics, see Chapter 6 of this book. 76. Türban has been a major issue for Turkish universities and high schools where a relatively long history of litigation, which also involves the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), exists. For a study of the saga of the türban and its political relevance in Turkey, see Ersin Kalaycıoğlu, “The Mystery of the Türban: Participation or Revolt?” Turkish Studies 6, no. 2 (June 2005): 233–251. Two comparative assessment of türban-wearing trends in Turkey are to be found in Çarkoğlu and Toprak, Türkiye’de Din Toplum ve Siyaset, and also Ali Çarkoğlu and B. Toprak, Religion, Society and Politics in a Changing Turkey (Istanbul: Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation Publications, 2007). 77. Support for Şeriat rule in Turkey remains a low 10 percent but was diagnosed to be sensitive to contextual factors over the years. However, it remains ambiguous as to what people understand from Şeriat and to what degree they support its various reflections in their daily lives. See Ali Çarkoğlu, “Religiosity, Support for Şeriat and Evaluations of Secularist Public Policies in Turkey,” Middle Eastern Studies 40, no. 2 (2004): 111–136.
Chapter 4 1. Adam Przeworski, Democracy and the Market, Political Economic Reforms in Eastern Europe and Latin America (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1991). 2. Ibid., p.12. 3. Ibid. 4. Ibid., p.13. 5. John T. Jost, Jack Glaser, Arie W. Kruglanski, and Frank J. Sulloway, “Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition,” Psychological Bulletin 129, no. 3 (2003): 339–375. 6. Theodor W. Adorno, Else Frenkel-Brunswik, Daniel Levinson, and Nevitt Sanford, The Authoritarian Personality (New York: Harper, 1950). 7. Milton Rokeach, The Open and Closed Mind (New York: Basic Books, 1960). 8. Else Frenkel-Brunswick, “Intolerance of Ambiguity as an Emotional Perceptual Personality Variable,” Journal of Personality 18 (1949): 108–143. 9. Patricia O’Connor, “Ethnocentrism, ‘Intolerance of Ambiguity’ and Abstract Reasoning Ability,” Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 47 (1952): 526–530. 10. Douglas T. Kenny and Rose Ginsberg, “The Specificity of Intolerance of Ambiguity Measures,” Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 56 (1958): 300–304; and Robert Pawlicki and Carol Almquist, “Authoritarianism, Locus of Control and Tolerance of
Notes
11. 12. 13. 14.
15.
16. 17. 18.
19.
20.
21.
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Ambiguity as Reflected in Membership and Non-Membership in a Women’s Liberation Group,” Psychological Reports 32 (1973): 1331–1337. Glenn D. Wilson, James Ausman, and T. R. Matthews, “Conservatism and Art Preferences,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 25 (1973): 286–288. Ibid., p. 288. Philip E. Tetlock, “Cognitive Style and Political Ideology,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 45 (1983): 118. Philip E. Tetlock, Jane Bernzweig, and Jack L. Gallant, “Supreme Court Decision Making: Cognitive Style as a Predictor of Ideological Consistency of Voting,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 48 (1985): 1227–1239. Mark Schaller, Carrie Boyd, Jonathan Yohannes, and Meredith O’Brian, “The Prejudiced Personality Revisited: Personal Need for Structure and Formation of Erroneous Group Stereotypes,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 68 (1995): 544–555. See Robert A. Altemeyer, “The Other ‘Authoritarian Personality,’” ed. Mark P. Zanna Advances in Experimental Social Psychology 30 (1998): 47–91. See Wilson, Ausman, and Matthews, “Conservatism and Art Preferences,”: 286–288. Philip. E. Tetlock, Jane Bernzweig, and Jack L. Gallant, “Supreme Court Decision Making: Cognitive Style as a Predictor of Ideological Consistency of Voting,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 48 (1985): pp. 1227–1239. See Ergun Özbudun, Contemporary Turkish Politics: Challenges to Democratic Consolidation (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2000); Ersin Kalaycıoğlu, Turkish Dynamics: A Bridge Across Troubled Lands (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005); Senem Aydın and Fuat E. Keyman, European Integration and the Transformation of Turkish Democracy (EU-Turkey Working Paper Series No. 2, Brussels: Centre for European Policy Studies, 2004); and Senem Aydın Düzgit and Ali. Çarkoğlu, “Turkey: Reforms for a consolidated democracy”, in International Actors, Democratization and the Rule of Law: Anchoring democracy? Leonardo Morlino and Amichai Magen (eds.), Routledge, (November 2008) among others for historical reviews. See Tamer Aker, Ayşe B. Çelik, Dilek Kurban, Turgay Ünalan, and H. Deniz Yükseker, Türkiye’de Ülke İçinde Yerinden Edilme Sorunu: Tespitler ve Çözüm Önerileri (Internal Displacement Problem in Turkey) Istanbul: Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation Publications, 2005)—a report sponsored by the Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation (Türkiye Ekonomik ve Sosyal Etüdler Vakfı—TESEV) on the purges of east and southeastern Anatolian villages and the consequent social problems. David Shankland, Islam and Society in Turkey (Huntingdon, UK: Eothen, 1999).
Chapter 5 1. Our sample of respondents who are identified as Kurds on language-use criteria appear to be less likely to support the view that women’s punishment according to customs and traditions should be easier. It appears that what this question captures is more the treatment of women according to old customs and habits rather than “honor killings” as we had hoped. 2. We adopted an oblique rotation with a delta value set at 0.35. 3. Andy Field, Discovering Statistics Using SPSS, 2nd ed. (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 2005), p. 640. 4. Ibid., p. 650. 5. Fred N. Kerlinger, Liberalism and Conservatism: The Nature and Structure of Social Attitudes (London: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1984). 6. We refer to ordinary least squares regression (OLS) analysis that helps explore the relationship between continuous variables in which each case, or sample respondents in our case, can be assigned a precise score on a scale. Our factor analyses use ordinal scale evaluations, producing factor scores that conform to OLS assumptions of continuous variables. OLS estimates a linear regression line that best fits a distribution of scatter points, plotting in our
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bivariate case the dependent variable on the vertical axis against an independent variable on the horizontal axis. See Damodar Gujarati Econometrics, (New York, NY: McGraw Hill, Inc., 1995) for an accessible exposition of the OLS technique. 7. We dare not claim expertise in the translation of songs from Turkish to English. But an attempt to translate a popular song by the Turkish singer Ferdi Tayfur song is given below and we are grateful that he gave us permission to use his song here for our purposes: Hadi Gel Köyümüze Geri Dönelim (Let’s go back to our village), by Ferdi Tayfur Ne umutla geldik koca şehire (With so many hopes did we come to the big city) Allah sonumuzu hayır getire (Let God bring us beneficence in the end) Alacaklı haciz koymuş Bekir’e (Creditors of Bekir came down with a confiscation order) Hadi gel köyümüze geri dönelim (Let’s go back to our village) Fadime’nin düğününde halay çekelim (and dance at Fadime’s wedding party) Buralarda ağaçları kesmişler (They cut down the trees here) Yerlerine taş duvarlar dikmişler (and have build stone walls in their places) Sevdiğimi başkasına vermişler (and have wed my loved one with someone else) Hadi gel köyümüze geri dönelim (Let’s go back to our village) Fadime’nin düğününde halay çekelim (and dance at Fadime’s wedding party) Bir başkadır Toroslar’ın yağmuru (Rain in Toros mountains is nothing like anywhere else) Anam evde hazırlamış hamuru (Mother has prepared the dough at home) Çok özledim havasını suyunu (I so much miss the water and air of my village) Hadi gel köyümüze geri dönelim (Let’s go back to our village) Fadime’nin düğününde halay çekelim (and dance at Fadime’s wedding party) 8. See Eric M. Uslaner, The Moral Foundations of Trust (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
Chapter 6 1. We employ the term “secular realignment” of the voters in the sense that V. O. Key, Jr., used in his classical article “A Theory of Critical Elections,” Journal of Politics 17 (1955): 3–18. 2. See Ali Çarkoğlu and Ersin Kalaycıoğlu, Turkish Democracy Today : Elections, Protest and Stability in an Islamic Society (London: I. B. Tauris, 2007), pp.113–120, for an earlier and longer discussion of developments along the conventional left-right spectrum in Turkey. 3. A lady, who seemed to have possessed a message of revelation and religious awakening, began to tour Anatolia in the mid-1960s and proselytized her version of Islam among the Anatolian women. In her lectures she introduced a style of donning the headscarf that covered the hair, ears, neck, and shoulders as well. For a brief period those who donned this style of headgear were referred to as “şulebaş,” which literally meant “head of Şule” or “headgear style of Şule” after the lady who introduced it. For more details, see Demet Tezcan, Bir Çığır Öyküsü/Şule Yüksel Şenler (Istanbul: Timaş Yayınları, 2007). 4. http://www.iusozluk.net/universitede+ilk+turban+olayi.iu. 5. Ibid. 6. The dean of the Faculty of Theology of Ankara University, Prof. Dr. Hüseyin Yurdaydın, explained that one of their female students began to cover her head at all times, which was against the regulations. When she was reminded by her instructors that her behavior was inadmissible, she reacted by insulting them. Some male students also demonstrated support for her and got involved in the same behavior. The dean was of the opinion that the barrage of news items that appeared on some newspapers and the declarations made by some politicians indicated that the university was a target of a politically organized
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and motivated action. The students were disciplined and eventually dismissed from the university. The news item that refers to the explication of the dean of the incident in Turkish is as follows: “Başını açmayan Hatice Babacan, fakülte sınavlarına vaktiyle başı açık olarak girdi. Sonradan başını örtmeye başladı. Bunun yasalara aykırı olduğunu söyleyen öğretmenlere hakarette bulundu. Bazı gerici gazetecilere demeçler vererek “bu baş gövdeden ayrılmadıkça, bu baş açılmayacak” şeklinde konuşan bu kız öğrenci ile öğretmenine ağır sözler söyleyen ve harf devrimine de karşı olan erkek öğrencinin durumu, bazı gerici basın çevrelerince istismar konusu yapılmaktadır. Bu öğrencilerin saygısızlıkta gösterdikleri ısrar da onların dışardan idare edildiklerini ve her defasında kendilerine arka çıkmış olan bazı çevrelerle, politikacıların işbirliği yaptıkları açıkça görülmektedir” (Ibid.) We present two stylized conceptualizations of the türban phenomenon in Turkey. Neither one has a strict one-to-one reflection in the literature. However, works cited below contain some parts of the stylization presented here for heuristic simplicity. See Nilüfer Göle, The Forbidden Modern: Civilisation and Veiling (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997); Nilüfer Göle, “Authoritarian Secularism and Islamist Politics: The Case of Turkey,” in Civil Society in the Middle East, ed. Augustus R. Norton (Leiden and New York: E. J. Brill, 1996), pp. 38–39; Jenny B. White, Islamist Mobilization in Turkey: A Study in Vernacular Politics (Seattle: University of Washington Press); Yeşim Arat, “Group-Differentiated Rights and the Liberal Democratic State: Rethinking the Headscarf Controversy in Turkey,” New Perspectives on Turkey 25 (Fall 2001): 31–46. See also the findings from two field surveys in Ali Çarkoğlu and Binnaz Toprak, Türkiye’de Din, Toplum ve Siyaset (Istanbul: TESEV, 2000); and Ali Çarkoğlu and Binnaz Toprak, Değişen Türkiye’de Din, Toplum ve Siyaset (Istanbul: TESEV Publications, 2006). Nazih Ayubi, Political Islam: Religion and Politics in the Arab World (London: Routledge, 1991); Elisabeth Özdalga, “Civil Society and Its Enemies,” in Civil Society, Democracy, and the Muslim World, ed. Elisabeth Özdalga and Sune Persson (Istanbul: Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul, 1997), pp. 73–84; and Barbara Pusch, “Stepping into the Public Sphere: The Rise of Islamist and Religious-Conservative Women’s Non-Governmental Organizations,” in Civil Society in the Grip of Nationalism: Studies on Political Culture in Contemporary Turkey, ed. Stefanos Yerasimos, Gunter Seufert, and Karin Vorhoff (Istanbul: Ergon, 2000), pp. 475–505. This claim in particular is highly debatable on empirical grounds. As Çarkoğlu and Toprak, Türkiye’de Din; Ali Çarkoğlu, “Religiosity, Support for Şeriat and Evaluations of Secularist Public Policies in Turkey,” Middle Eastern Studies 40 (2004): 111–136; and Çarkoğlu and Toprak, Değişen Türkiye’de Din show, however, the approval of şeriat is highly questionable and has been in decline between 2002 and 2006. Learning about the türban-wearing practice is a more complicated task than it may first appear. Besides the peculiarly urban türban, there are two alternative ways of covering the head in Turkey. One is the traditional headcover, başörtüsü or yemeni, which mostly leaves the hair, shoulders, and the neck partly but not strictly covered. The other is the çarşaf, which is dark brown or black in color and leaves only the face and in some instances only the eyes uncovered. The distinction between these three different headcovers is further complicated by the fact that covered women wearing a türban call their attire başörtüsü instead of türban. So, leaving the respondent to choose between türban and başörtüsü would not reflect the true attire choice. One has to clearly define what is meant by each term and only then leave the respondents to choose what their attire in public space is. See Çarkoglu and Toprak, Türkiye’de Din. There are laws promulgated by the TBMM regulating the attire of men in Turkish society called the Act on Attire (Kılık Kıyafet Kanunu, October 11, 1926, Act no: 2965), and Act on Wearing of Hat (Şapka Giyilmesi Hakkında Kanun November 28, 1925, Act no: 671). However, such laws did not legislate the attire of women until recently. The recent debate about women in tesettür became subject to litigation in the 1980s and the Turkish Administrative Courts and the Constitutional Court have started to decide on the propriety and legality of the dresses women wear. The high courts of the late-1980s onwards
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eventually decided that the attire of women should also be interpreted by reference to the above-mentioned laws and specifically in the context of state employees and students functioning in the educational institutions. Hence, the initial legislation on the attire of men was comprehensive, while the latter decisions of the courts on the attire of women are specific to the public space of the educational institutions and of the state offices. Hence, it is not legally permissible, for example, for women to register and attend educational institutions with tesettür nor even to appear in graduation ceremonies of educational institutions in türban, and they are not to appear in the military barracks and ceremonies in tesettür or türban either. Similarly, women in tesettür are not permitted to be service providers in central state institutions. All of the statistical tests of association show that both men and women seemed to be equally inclined to support the same points of view, which is one indication that women do not seem to differ from men in their attitudes toward the issue of the türban. For both opposition group analyses, we obtain respectable explanatory power with about 75 percent of the responses correctly predicted by the estimated models. The Nagelkerke R-square values for the case of the türban ban in public employment and in universities are 30 percent and 27 percent, respectively. Most of our sample (about 70 percent) indicates that they were either born in a village or a small town though about 47 percent of them now live in one of the sixteen metropolitan cities of the country. As the size of the settlement that the respondents lived in during the interviews decreases, the level of conservatism of the individual respondent increases. Nilüfer Göle, “Authoritarian Secularism and Islamist Politics,” pp. 17–43; Binnaz Toprak, “Civil Society in Turkey,” in Civil Society in the Middle East, ed. Augustus R. Norton (Leiden, New York: Köln, E. J. Brill, 1996), pp. 87–118; and Ersin Kalaycıoğlu, “Civil Society in Turkey: Continuity or Change?” in Turkish Transformation: New Century—New Challenges, ed. Brian Beeley (Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, UK: The Eothen Press, 2002), pp. 59–78. A comparison of the Turkish protest potential with consolidated democracies reveals that Turkey does not seem to have as much protest potential as most of those countries. See Ersin Kalaycıoğlu, “Religiosity and Protest Behavior: The Case of Turkey in Comparative Perspective,” Journal of Southern Europe and the Balkans 9, no. 3 (December 2007): pp. 275–291; and Ali Çarkoğlu and Ersin Kalaycıoğlu, Turkish Democracy Today: Elections, Participation and Stability in an Islamic Society (London: I. B. Tauris, 2007), chap. 4. The relationships between conservatism and religiosity, on the one hand, and protest and repression potentials, on the other, have negative correlations. Çarkoğlu and Kalaycıoğlu, Turkish Democracy Today, chap. 5. However, this proclivity to utilize the conventional channels of participation in politics does not necessarily inhibit all members of the political Islamist movement (Islamcılık Cereyanı) from resorting to unconventional means and methods of participation. There have been four al-Qaeda–linked bombings in Istanbul in 2003. In a massive attack, the Islamist Hizbullah (which is not related to the Shiite Hizbullah of Iran or Lebanon) assassinated the police chief of Diyarbakır on January 24, 2001, and also systematically executed many of its own members and those they considered to have opposed them in the early 2000s. A group of lawyers was involved in throwing hand grenades on the grounds of the Istanbul daily Cumhuriyet, and one such lawyer also raided the Higher Administrative Court (Danıştay) on May 17, 2006, and fired his pistol at the entire bench of judges who had earlier ruled against a teacher on the türban issue, injuring most of them and killing one. Nevertheless, such acts have been relatively sporadic and incited mostly the hatred of the masses and did not seem to increase the mass appeal of the radical Islamist movements. The majority of the political Islamists favored promoting their political goals through their connections with the governments controlled by political parties that approached them with sympathy. However, since such spectacular acts of violence grabbed the headlines of the press and the media, they created the impression that there was a close association with radical movements in
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political Islam and unconventional political participation. Such a perception is quite deceiving, for now political Islam has many inroads into the TBMM and the government and can effectively articulate its interests through legal and legitimate channels of conventional participation. The literature on social capital is vast and growing. Refer to John Field, Social Capital (London: Routledge, 2003); Eric M. Uslaner, The Moral Foundations of Trust (Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Capetown: Cambridge University Press, 2002); and Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone (New York: Simon and Shuster, 2000) for comprehensive reviews of the literature. See Ali Çarkoğlu and Fikret Adaman, “Social Capital and Corruption during Times of Crises: A Look at Turkish Firms in Economic Crisis of 2001,” Turkish Studies 4, no. 2 (Summer 2003): 120145; and Ersin Kalaycıoğlu, “State and Civil Society in Turkey: Democracy, Development and Protest,” in Civil Society in the Muslim World: Contemporary Perspectives, ed. Amyn B. Sajoo (London, New York: I. B. Tauris, 2002), 251–253 for discussions of social capital and civil society in the Turkish context. The reliability of the three-item scale presented in the table is relatively high with a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.78. For the details of the latter protest movement, see Gürel Tüzün and Sibel Sezer, eds., Turkish National Report 2002 (Ankara: Turkish Republic Ministry of Environment and United Nations Development Program, 2002), pp. 111–114. For a comprehensive analysis of military religious interest groups in the early 1980s under military rule in Turkey, see Uğur Mumcu, Rabıta (İstanbul: Uğur Mumcu Araştırmacı Gazeteci Vakfı, 2004), pp. 81–157, 271–433. For an analysis of the paradox of democratic rule of law in Turkey, see Ersin Kalaycıoğlu, “Turkish Democracy: Patronage versus Governance,” Turkish Studies 2, no. 1 (Spring 2001): 54–70.
Chapter 7 1. For a more comprehensive analysis of Turkish foreign policy and political geography, see William Hale, Turkish Foreign Policy, 1774–2000 (London: Frank Cass, 2000); and Philip Robins, Suits and Uniforms: Turkish Foreign Policy since the Cold War (Seattle: The University of Washington Press, 2003). For a similar exposition, see also Ersin Kalaycıoğlu, Turkish Dynamics: A Bridge across Troubled Lands (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), pp. 1–43. 2. For earlier analyses of public opinion support for the EU in Turkey, see Ali Çarkoğlu, “Societal Perceptions of Turkey’s EU Membership: Causes and Consequences of Support for EU Membership?” in Turkey and European Integration, Accession Prospects and Issues, ed. Nergis Canefe and Mehmet Uğur (London: Routledge, 2004), pp. 19–45; and Ali Çarkoğlu, “Who Wants Full Membership? Characteristics of Turkish Public Support for EU Membership,” Special Issue on Turkey and the European Union, Turkish Studies 4, no.1 (2003): 171–194. 3. The two surveys by Necat Erder and associates in 1996 and later in 1998 asked the respondents whether they “would like Turkey to be a member of the EU.” See Necat Erder, Türkiye’de Siyasi Parti Seçmenlerinin Nitelikleri, Kimlikleri ve Eğilimleri (Characteristics of Political Party Constituencies, their identities and tendencies in Turkey) (Istanbul: TÜSES Publications, Boyut Matbaacılık A.Ş., 1996); and Necat Erder, Türkiye’de Siyasi Parti Seçmenleri ve Toplum Düzeni (Political Party Constituencies and Social Order in Turkey), (Istanbul: TÜSES Publications, Boyut Matbaacılık A.Ş., 1999). Starting with November 2001, the same wording was used and asked whether the respondent “would vote in favour of EU membership if a referendum were to take place in Turkey.” The November 2001 observation comes from Ali Çarkoğlu and Kemal Kirişci, “Two-Level Diplomatic Games: The Role of Public Opinion in Greek-Turkish Relations” (unpublished manuscript, May-June 2002). Observations are from Ali Çarkoğlu, Refik Erzan, Kemal Kirişci, and Hakan Yılmaz, Türk Halkının Avrupa Birliği Üyeliğine Bakışı (Türkish Public Opinion and EU Membership) (Istanbul: Turkish Economic and Sociel Studies Foundation, October 2002); and the January-February 2003 observation
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is from a pre- and post-election survey conducted by Ali Çarkoğlu, Ersin Kalaycıoğlu, and Üstün Ergüder. For an extensive exposition, see Ali Çarkoğlu and Ersin Kalaycıoğlu, Turkish Democracy Today: Elections, Protest and Stability in an Islamic Society (London: I. B. Tauris, February, 2007). The May 2003 observation is from Candidate Countries Eurbarometer. The March 2004 observation is from Ali Çarkoğlu and Murat Çizakça, “Philanthropy in Turkey,” part of the project entitled Philanthrophy and Social Justice in Muslim Societies, funded by the Ford Foundation, codirected by Murat Çizakça, Department of Economics, Bahçeşehir University and Rana Zincir, Turkish Third Sector Foundation (TUSEV). The June and December 2005 observations are from private communication with Emre Erdoğan who has led research conducted by the Infacto Research Workshop for Arı Movement. Observations from April–May 2006 are from our own survey on conservatism that forms the basis of this manuscript and those from June–July 2007 are from the preelection survey conducted by Ali Çarkoğlu and Ersin Kalaycıoğlu. We should caution the reader that we do not mean that the economic incentives of the Customs Union Agreement were anything more than murky, and therefore created a big impetus for the business community and the government to move forward in the TurkishEU relations. (On this point, see also E. Fuat Keyman and Ziya Öniş, Turkish Politics in a Changing World: Global Dynamics and Domestic Transformations [(Istanbul: Istanbul Bilgi University Press, 2007)], pp. 35, 62.) Douglas Hamilton, “Tension over Turkey at EU Summit Talks” (13 December 1997), in
[email protected]. See also Turkish Daily News, 14 and 15 December, 1997. Ersin Kalaycıoğlu, “The Copenhagen Criteria and the Challenge of Democratization in Turkey” (2004) (www.sant.ox.ac.uk/esc/esc-lectures/Ersin.doc ): 6. Keyman and Öniş, Turkish Politics in a Changing World, pp. 126–127. Acquis communautaire stands for the body of treaties, laws, and regulations adopted by the EU institutions and EU member countries that participate in these institutions and thus come under the jurisdiction of the EU. In a recent paper this concept was discussed at length: “Acquis communautaire is a phrase that defies easy translation into English. At times it has been rendered simply as ‘Community patrimony.’ Academics have tended to leave it untranslated, but to describe it in greater detail. For example, Philippe Schmitter defined acquis communautaire as ‘the sum total of obligations that have accumulated since the founding of the [European Coal and Steel Community] and are embedded in innumerable treaties and protocols.’ Roger Goebel is perhaps best at capturing the ‘settled’ quality of the acquis, if one may borrow that term from jurisprudence. He states that the ‘acquis communautaire essentially conveys the idea that the institutional structure, scope, policies and rules of the Community (now Union) are to be treated as “given” (“acquis”), not to be called into question or substantially modified by new states at the time they enter.’” (Citations from Stephen J. Silvia and Aaron Beers Sampson, “Acquis Communautaire and European Exceptionalism: A Genealogy,” [ACES WORKING PAPER 2003.1, American Consortium on European Union Studies EU Center, Washington, DC, July 2003], p. 1.) Such a state of relationships between a member country and the rest of the EU seemed to be in clear violation of the acquis and the very idea of Union and Common Market on which its foundations rested. The very idea of the Common Market rested on the free movement of capital, labor, and goods, unhindered by customs duties, tariffs, and other financial restrictions. If one of the economic factors is not free, how could there be any full participation of Turkey in the EU? The reciprocal economic benefits that are to accrue from such integration would not materialize and the very essence of regional integration would be impaired. However, the French, Austrian, German, and other anti-Turkish governments of the EU could only stomach that much at the time. http://www.tuik.gov.tr/PreHaberBultenleri.do?id=3894 and TUIK, Işgücü, Istihdam ve Işsizlik Istatistikleri (Labor Force, Employment and Unemployment Statistics) (Sorularla Resmi Istatistikler Serisi–1) (Ankara, T.C. Başbakanlık Türkiye Istatistik Kurumu, November 2007): 37, and http://www.tuik.gov.tr/PreTablo.do?tb_id=398ust_id=11.
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11. The reality is probably more complicated than that. First of all, although most Turks would love to have an opportunity to work in other countries of Europe, they also know that such a move is not easy. Turks have not done much to learn any language other than their mother tongue. Most Turkish labor is unskilled. Their chances of finding jobs in other European countries are very slim. Second, many Turks have legally or illegally tried their luck in seeking employment and working in Germany and have dismally failed. Today, when you travel across the country you can find at least one person who speaks some German in almost any village in Turkey, which is one unobstrusive measure of labor movement from Turkey into Germany. If you talk to them, the chances are that they will tell you that they have seen Germany and did not fully like the conditions of work there. Therefore, many potential Turkish migrant workers are not so keen on trying their luck once again. Third, quite a few Turks have come from the Balkans, because of many campaigns of massacres and pogroms the Turkish speaking Muslims were subjected to in the Balkans since the nineteenth century. The chances are that most would like to go back to their ancestral lands and perhaps even settle there. Most still speak Bulgarian, Greek, Serbo-Croat, and know the culture there. Some even have living relatives in those Balkan countries and have kept in touch with them. What may indeed be at stake is not the markets or jobs in Germany, France, and Austria, but Greece, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Romania, and in the future Bosnia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Albania, and Serbia. Potentially speaking, the question is how are those countries to react to Turks coming back to work, buying property and settling there? Will that precipitate another anti-Turkish reprisal in the Balkans? We would finally like to add that it may not even matter to the Turkish laborers whether the EU accepts free movement of labor or not, so long as they perceive enhanced chances of going back to their ancestral lands. If they have the will, they will find a way. 12. If the Turkish press is read carefully, one notices that when her husband functioned as the prime minister earlier in 2002 and 2003 Mrs. Gül had not observed any conflict of interest and that she had not acted swiftly after her husband became the minister of foreign affairs in 2003 and waited until 2004 to withdraw her appeal. (See Radikal (Istanbul daily) http://www.radikal.com.tr/haber.php?haberno=219423&tarih=25/04/2007. Nazlı Ilıcak, “Hayrünnisa Gül’ün jesti ve TESEV toplantısı” (http://www.mervekavakci.net/icsayfa/ basdetay.asp?id=8). Emre Aköz, “Hayrünnisa Gül’ün Davası” (http://www.iyibilgi.com/ artikel.php?artikel_id=22294). 13. http://www.turkishweekly.net/news/63015/egemen-bagis-named-chief-eu-negotiator-ofturkey.html. 14. In 2008 the Greek Cypriot presidency changed hands and Mr. Demetris Christophias, the candidate of the left-wing AKEL party became the president of the Greek Cypriot “internationally recognized” government of Cyprus. Formerly, the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus had elected a new president, Mr. Talat, in the aftermath of the 2004 referendum. The two new presidents had worked together in the trade-union movement earlier, and they were both left-of-center politicians. Thus with the nationalist Papadopoulos and Denktaş out of the way, the new presidents seemed to be testing the waters for a new compromise for a binational unity government in Cyprus, although their understanding of the new union may not have been exactly the same. It seems as if a new chance of establishing some form of accord and creating a working union between the Greek and Turkish parts of the island is possible and even probable. If such a new deal could be worked out, one of the major stumbling blocs hindering Turkish membership in the EU will be removed, and the Customs Union can then be extended to the new Cypriots government of Greeks and Turks. 15. See Ali Çarkoğlu, “Changing Mindset of Turkish Public: Should Turkey be a Member of the EU,” Annals of Japan Association for Middle East Studies 22, no. 2 (December 2006): 151–159 for similar arguments. 16. See Ali Çarkoğlu, “Ideology or Economic Pragmatism: Determinants of Party Choice in Turkey for the July 2007 Elections,” Studies in Public Policy, no. 439, (Scotland: Centre for Study of Public Policy, University of Aberdeen, 2008); and Ersin Kalaycıoğlu,
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“Party Affiliations of Turkish Voters Today,” Studies in Public Policy, no. 435 (Scotland: Centre for Study of Public Policy, University of Aberdeen, 2007): 20–23. The AKP itself was freshly established on August 14, 2001, when the former Virtue Party (FP) was banned for its activities violating the principle of laicism of the Turkish Constitution and the Political Parties Act according to the Constitutional Court of the country. A group of “young Turks” had veered away from the old guard of the FP, which had swiftly moved to establish the Felicity Party (SP) and established the AKP instead. For an analysis of the vote on March 1, 2003, in the TBMM, see also Ian O. Lesser, Beyond Suspicion: Re-Thinking US-Turkish Relations (Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson International Center, no date), pp. 22–25. For comprehensive coverage of the story in the Turkish press see the interview with Major General (ret.) Köksal Karabay published by Hürriyet (daily) on Dec. 16, 2006 (http://www. hurriyet.com.tr/gundem/ 5632219.asp?m=1). In October 2003, when the United States turned to Muslim countries to help rebuild Iraq, the same TBMM, under the hegemony of the AKP majority voted with the overwhelming majority of the AKP deputies to send 10,000 troops to Iraq, only this time as peace-keepers to be stationed in the Erbil-Mosul-Kirkuk region, which the Kurdish regional government and other authorities in Iraq objected to and the Turkish troops stayed home (see Erzsébet N. Rosza, “The War in Iraq and the Broader Middle East,” Hungarian Institute of International Affairs: Foreign Policy Papers, no. 1 [October 2007]: 50–51). The developments in October 2003 and the AKP votes in the TBMM in Turkey were a good indication of how the AKP did not lack cooperation with the United States in Iraq, as the neoconservatives in the U.S. government seemed to have believed for a while. On the contrary, the AKP was more than willing to be considered as a “friend” of the U.S. government, for the AKP leadership believed that short of a staunch support for the U.S. Government, they may not remain in power too long. One should also take into consideration the fact that Turkish political authorities started to pressure the Bush administration for cooperation in the north of Iraq against the PKK at a time when a retired Turkish chief of military staff, General Doğan Güreş, declared in an interview with Fikret Bila of Milliyet that the United States and EU were drawing up plans to divide up Turkey. He referred to Vice President Cheney’s comment that the sole friend of the United States were the Kurds in the region. He insisted in the interview that Cheney alluded to a plan and showed a map to establish a “ Greater Kurdistan” over some of the territory of the Turkish Republic “ ABD-AB, Türkiye’nin bölünmesini istiyor” (USA and the EU Desire to Break up Turkey) (Milliyet, Istanbul daily, November 4, 2007). The daily Sabah reported on 9/9/2006 that the retired general Edip Başer was appointed as the Turkish representative to run the Turkish side of the coordination mechanism (see http://arsiv.sabah.com.tr/2006/09/09/gnd96.html). A binary logistic regression analysis of the potential explanatory social, demographic, economic, and political factors of anti-Americanism in Turkey forms the basis of our discussion below. The statistical details are not reported for the sake of brevity. Those respondents who strongly or somewhat agreed with the statement that the United States threatens Turkey were marked as 1 and those who strongly or somewhat disagreed with the statement were 0. The green card application page of the U.S. Embassy in Turkey at http://www.usa-turkey. com/?syf=sss provides information on how many green cards are issued per year. For example, for the year 2007, there were 2500 possible slots for green card issues and 2343 people were granted green cards in that year. The applications are many times that amount. On the web it is announced on a separate web portal called BT Insan at http://www.btinsan. com/118/42.asp that 18640 applications were made for the 2500 slots during that same period in Turkey. See Çarkoğlu, “Ideology or Economic Pragmatism,” and Kalaycıoğlu, “Party Affiliations of Turkish Voters Today.”
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Conclusion 1. Empirical analyses of conservatism in Turkey are almost non-existent. More conceptual and largely descriptive analyses of the conservative movement within Turkey can be found in its most up-to-date form in Turkish in Ahmet Çiğdem (ed.) Muhafazakarlık (Conservatism) (İstanbul: İletişim, 2003). 2. Such a depiction has a long history in Turkish social thinking starting with Şerif Mardin’s “Center Periphery Relations: A Key to Turkish Politics?” Daedalus, 2 (1) (1973): 169–190, that describes the treatment of center and periphery in Turkish society. Mardin’s framework is a subtle and long-term sociohistorical depiction of Turkish society, based firmly on cultural divisions in Turkish society rooted in the imperial period under the Ottomans. A deeply entrenched cultural division between the antagonistic, parochial, and traditionalist “peripheral” forces and the ruling elites of the center and its societal coalition partners who remained dominant in the Turco-Ottoman polity forms the basis of Mardin’s argument, which remains relevant well into the post-1923 Republican era. 3. It was Harvard anthropologist Nur Yalman, in his “Some Observations on Secularism in Islam: The Cultural Revolution in Turkey,” Daedalus 102 (1973): 139–167, who coined the term kulturkampfs for the clashes between culturally divided communities that confront each other in the battles over the role of religion and secularism, and positivist progressivism versus conservatism in Turkey. 4. See Ali Çarkoğlu and Kemal Kirişçi, “The View from Turkey: Perceptions of Greeks and Greek-Turkish Rapprochement by the Turkish Public,” Special Issue on Greek-Turkish Relations, Turkish Studies, 5, no. 1 (Spring 2004): 117–154, and the German Marshall Fund’s Transatlantic Trends periodic surveys, http://www.transatlantictrends.org/trends/. 5. Ibid. 6. One has to admit that in actual democratic political competition, neither the center nor the periphery has its pure and monolithic representatives. Both sides carry traits of peripheral as well as centrist elements and their character constantly changes over the years. 7. The military had a long history, during the Ottoman and Republican era, of intervening in civilian governments, either directly as in 1960 and 1980, or indirectly as in 1971 and 1997, via decrees and pressure group tactics. See William Hale, Turkish Politics and the Military (London: Routledge, 1994), for a detailed account of the military and politics in Turkey. 8. See Ali Çarkoğlu, “Religiosity, Support for Şeriat and Evaluations of Secularist Public Policies in Turkey,” Middle Eastern Studies 40, no. 2 (2004): 111–136; and Ali Çarkoğlu “Ideology or Economic Pragmatism: Determinants of Party Choice in Turkey for the July 2007 Elections,” Studies in Public Policy Number 439 (Scotland: Centre for the Study of Public Policy, University of Aberdeen, 2008), for evaluations of the 2002 and 2007 general elections. 9. See Richard Rose, “Turkish Voters and Losers’ Consent,” Studies in Public Policy, No: 440 (Aberdeen, Scotland: Centre for the Study of Public Policy, University of Aberdeen, 2008a); and also Richard Rose, “Applying EU Standards to Turkish Governance: A Bottom-up Approach,” Studies in Public Policy, No: 436, (Aberdeen, Scotland: Centre for the Study of Public Policy, University of Aberdeen, 2008b).
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Index abortion, 76–78, 80, 81, 128 Adorno, Theodore, 36–37, 38, 47, 72 aggression, 47, 143 Alevis, 11, 28–30, 33–35, 51, 74, 76, 85, 86, 89, 92, 138 alienation, 36, 46, 147 Almond, Gabriel, 48 Altemeyer, Robert, 47 anomie, 5, 43–46, 58, 61, 73, 88, 92, 94, 95, 96, 142, 149 anti-Americanism, 130, 131, 133, 135, 136, 137 Armenian diaspora, 138 Atatürk, Mustafa Kemal, 129 authoritarian personality, 36, 37 authoritarianism, 5, 35–40, 42, 43, 59, 72, 82, 84, 85, 96, 103, 105, 107, 109, 110, 113, 114, 142, 149 Babacan, Ali, 126 Balkanization, 12 Bektashi (Bektas¸i), 29 birth control, 76–78, 80, 81 Britain, 13, 19, 36, 130 Caliph Ali, 29 Calp, Necdet, 55 “center,” 142, 144–146, 148, 149 center-periphery, 144 changes in Turkish media, 73–74 Christian Club, 124, 129 closed-mindedness, 38 Customs Union Agreement, 122, 123, 126 Cyprus, 6, 12, 98, 126, 130, 135 Demirel, Süleyman, 2, 20, 98, 130 Democrat Party (DP), 3
Democratic Labor Party (Demokratik Emek Partisi—DEP), 22 Democratic Left Party (Demokratik Sol Parti—DSP), 2 Directorate of Religious Affairs, 28 divorce, 76–78, 80, 81 dogmatism, 5, 35, 37–40, 42, 43, 55, 59, 72, 82, 83, 84, 90, 96 DSP-ANAP-MHP government, 23 DTP, 129, 134 Durkheim, Emile, 43–44 earthquakes of August and November 1999, 23 Ecevit, Bülent, 2, 16, 97 economic crisis of 2001, 147 evaluations, 88, 92–94 recession, 14, 19 embargo on Iraq, 13 Erbakan, Necmettin, 2, 11, 22, 97 Erdog˘ an, Recep Tayip, 123, 132, 134 étatism (devletçilik), 17 ethnocentrism, 37 European Commission of Human Rights (ECHR), 100 European Union (EU), 6 F scale, 37, 38 faith, 4, 20, 28, 30–31, 33, 56, 82–84, 93, 94, 103, 110, 112–114 Felicity Party (Saadet Partisi—SP), 147 Frankfurt School, 36 Freud, Sigmund, 36 Fukuyama, Francis, 143 German Nazism, 35 Glock, Charles Y., 30
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“good life,” 19–21, 24 “Green Crescent,” 131 Gül, Abdullah, 123, 125, 132, 137 Gül, Hayrünisa, 125 Gulf War, 1991, 13, 15, 16, 21, 131, 132
mosque attendance, 31 Motherland Party (Anavatan Partisi— ANAP), 1, 10, 11, 14, 19, 22, 23, 55, 137, 146 Muller, Jerry, 49, 54
Hacı Bektas¸ Veli, 29 happiness, 67, 68, 88, 94, 96 Hassan, Riaz, 30 Hatay, Sanjak (province) of Alexandretta, 13 Hearth of Intellectuals ( Aydınlar Ocag˘ ı), 9, 15 Helsinki Accord of 1975, 11, 15, 143 Helsinki Summit of 1999, 123 hems¸ehri, 56, 116 honor killings, 41, 60, 76, 77 “hood incident,” 133 Huntington, 143
National Outlook ( Milli Görüs¸), 23 National Salvation Party (Milli Selamet Partisi–MSP), 2, 3, 7, 8, 22, 97, 98 National Security Council, 73, 147 Nationalist Action Party (Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi—MHP), 2, 3, 10, 23, 34, 40, 42, 43, 46–48, 52, 53, 55, 67, 70, 71, 76, 85, 87, 88, 92, 93, 98, 99, 127–129, 136 Nationalist Toil Party (Milliyetçi Çalıs¸ma Partisi—MÇP), 2, 12, 14, 22, 98 neo-Hamidianism, 8
image of a good society, 57, 139 Imam Hatip Schools, 33 Incirlik, Adana, 130, 133 . Inönü, Erdal, 2 Iraq, 6, 13, 15, 21, 22, 123, 128, 131–135, 143, 144, 148 Islamist Movement (Islamcılık Cereyanı), 10, 23, 137, 146 Israel, 128, 135 Israeli-Palestinian conflict, 143 January 24, 1980, 19, 20 “Just Order” ( Adil Düzen), 14, 23, 24 Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi—AKP), 34, 35, 40, 42, 43, 45, 47, 48, 52, 53, 55, 57, 67, 70, 71, 76, 85, 87, 88, 92, 99, 123–126, 128, 129, 132, 134, 136, 137, 141, 147, 148 Justice Party (Adalet Partisi—AP), 2 Kemalism, 9, 10 Kerlinger, Fred, 32, 38, 82 kulturkampfs, 138, 142 Kuwait, 13, 143 laik (anticlerical), 4, 28 liberalism, 19, 24, 25, 32–35, 82–85, 90, 93, 94, 103, 105, 108, 110, 112, 114, 115, 128 economic, 19, 24, 25, 128 Makarios, Archbishop, 130 Mardin, S¸erif, 144 military coup, 1980, 7, 146
Öcalan, Abdullah, 21, 125, 148 old-fashioned, 5, 36–43, 59, 60, 83, 85, 90, 92, 103–105, 107, 109, 110, 113, 114, 141, 146, 149 open-mindedness, 38 Özal, Turgut, 2, 10, 19, 20, 54, 55, 137 Partiye Karkeren Kurdistan (PKK), 3–15, 21, 22, 74, 125, 131, 133–135 party preferences, 85, 91–93, 136 periphery, 142–146, 148, 149 political inefficacy, 43–46, 61, 88, 94, 96 Populist Party (HP), 2 post-modern coup, 98, 147 prayer, 31 primordialism, 27, 56 progressive policy position, 80, 81 pro-Islamist, 97, 146–148 definition of, 28 Qur’an courses, 77–81, 107 racism, 10, 37, 123 Ramadan fast, 33 reactionary conservative policy position, 80 regional differences, 89–90 religiosity, 5, 6, 28, 30, 32, 34, 35, 49, 68, 82–86, 88–96, 101–108, 110, 111, 112, 114–116, 118, 120, 128, 135, 136, 138, 141, 142, 149 dimensions of, 28, 30, 34, 35, 83, 107, 112 self-evaluated, 35, 82, 84, 93, 102, 103, 107, 108, 110, 112, 114, 115
Index religious attitudes, 28, 32–35 marriages, 33 practice, 25, 31, 82, 83, 84, 93, 103, 106, 112, 113 rituals, 28, 31 religious activism, 9, 27, 107 religiously liberal, 33, 83, 84, 86, 88, 89, 94, 95, 112 Republican, 2, 4, 14, 17, 23, 28, 34, 54, 58, 91, 99, 119, 127, 144, 145, 148 Republican People’s Party (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi—CHP), 2, 7, 34, 35, 40, 42, 45, 48, 53, 55, 67, 70, 71, 76, 84, 85, 87, 88, 92, 97, 99, 127–129, 136, 147 revivalism (Islamic), 10, 11, 28, 131 right-wing authoritarianism, 35, 36, 38, 72 Rokeach, Milton, 38, 72 rulelessness, 45, 61 Rumsfeld, Donald, 132 self-esteem, 46–48, 61, 94, 96 semiparliamentary regime, 1, 7, 8 September 11, 2001 (9/11), 143, 144 Sevrés, Treaty of (1920), 16, 22, 127, 135, 144 Sivas incident, 74 social anxiety, 46 social capital, 48, 49, 118, 119 social change, 5, 35, 44, 65–66, 75, 90, 93, 113 Social Democratic Populist Party (Sosyal Demokrat Halkçı Parti—SHP), 2, 12, 14, 22 social setting, 27, 49, 68, 89, 115 staatsvolk, 143 Stark, Rodney, 30 state interventionism, 54–55, 57, 63, 72, 79, 82, 83, 84, 94, 95, 96 status quo(ist), 77, 79, 87, 90, 91, 113, 115 Stouffer, Samuel, 50 Sulaymaniyah, Iraq, 133 support for status quo, 79 Syria, 13, 15, 16, 21 Taliban, 143 Tayfur, Ferdi, 91
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tolerance, 5, 9, 15, 27, 36–40, 48–56, 62, 72, 82–85, 94, 96, 103, 107, 109, 110, 112, 114, 116, 118, 134 Toprak, Binnaz, xiii, 30, 33 Transcaucasus, 143 True Path Party (Dog˘ ru Yol Partisi—DYP), 2, 11, 12, 14, 98, 147 trust, 44, 48–49, 54, 59, 67, 68, 88, 94, 95, 96, 118, 129, 132, 143, 144 türban ban, 76, 107–112 Turkish Grand National Assembly (TBMM), 2, 3, 7, 8, 11, 20, 22, 58, 73, 117, 126, 131–134, 138, 146–148 Turkish-Islamic Synthesis (Türk-Islam Sentezi ), 9–11, 15 “Two-and-a-half wars,” 16 uncertainty, 5, 6, 23, 25, 26, 43, 44, 47, 65–74, 79, 87, 88, 90, 95, 96, 143, 144, 148 attitudes toward, 65, 66, 69, 70, 90–91, 95 and Turkish democracy, 72–74 undesirable neighbors, 51 unisex education, 33 United States, 6, 9, 13, 15, 18, 50, 52, 66, 98, 121–123, 130–133, 135–138, 143, 144 Uslaner, Eric, 48 Verba, Sidney, 48 voter realignment, 3, 11, 97, 99 Weber, Max, 36 Welfare Party (Refah Partisi—RP), 2 westernization, 60, 91 Wolfowitz, Paul, 133 World Bank, 55 World Values Survey, 50, 90 worship, 31, 32, 35, 103, 107, 108, 110, 113, 114 Yearning-for-the-past, 41, 43, 91, 113 Yesevi, Ahmet, 29 youth-related conservatism, 40–42, 95, 103–105, 109, 114 Yugoslavia, 12, 13, 143
