Turks, Arabs and Jews: The Middle East in Crisis
Does Turkey really want to join the EU? Does the EU really want Turkey in the fold?
Turkey is still struggling with her identity. Recep Erdogan leads an Islamist government with a somewhat liberal tolerance for self expression and tolerance. Still, the Turkey of Attaturk is changing. Secularism, once a hallmark of Turkey (Islam and modernity as the ‘Turkish Way’) while given lip service, is receding into history.
What will the Turkey of the 21st century look like? She is neither Arab or European and her relationship with Tehran is no more than pragmatic.
Erdogan no longer presents himself as a statesman or peacemaker. Now, we hear the faint echoes of calls for the next Ottoman Empire, at least in the figurative sense. Erdogan is seeking regional leadership, competing with Iran and Egypt. He has been asserting his Islamist bona fides with the inevitable anti Israel rhetoric and not so subtle challenge to western powers and policies.
Turks, Arabs and Jews: The Middle East in Crisis « Sigmund, Carl and Alfred
Standing outside Istanbul’s Blue Mosque on a Friday morning as the muezzincalls the faithful to prayer, curious tourists furtively peek through the windows in the hope of catching a glimpse of the beautiful ceramics that decorate the majestic shrine a stone’s throw from the Topkapi palace. An hour before noon, the mosque closes its doors to non-Muslims.
A devout few are washing their feet outside or rushing in through the doors but the tourists vastly outnumber the faithful. Istanbul, on the Friday morning when Hamas and Israel are squaring off once again, is a reminder that larger forces are still clashing in this region, in a conflict longer than our short memories. Religion is on the rise but Friday, the Muslim day of rest, is a working day in a Turkey that is formally still secular.
Everywhere, though, one sees evidence that Kemal Atatürk’s secularism is under pressure—the extraordinary number of veiled women on the street is but a superficial sign of this country’s deep undercurrents, which show that the past is never really a foreign country. Eighty years of secularism, like 70 years of Communism in nearby Russia, did not obliterate the past. A millennium of Islam in Anatolia has not withered.
What may not meet the eye but leaves a more enduring mark is the number of imprisoned journalists in Turkey who dared criticise the ruling party. Beyond the increasing harassment of critics, the telltale signs of a retreating secularism are alarming: a gradual but inexorable takeover by the ruling Islamic forces of schools and universities, the judiciary and the army is under way.
Under Islamist control for more than a decade, Turkey is confident today under its assertive prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Since September 11, 2001, every Western leader of note has touted Turkey as the model to follow for an Islam at odds with liberal Western values. But while Turkey was paraded as the model road to freedom, the real Turkey was intent on becoming more Islamic and less liberal. Today, its leaders feel vindicated by history. The region is turning, and the tide of Islamic piety is sweeping to power. Everywhere, Islamist parties who emerge victorious from the Arab Spring look to Turkey with envy, for its combination of Western military prowess, economic success and gradual and bloodless return to the once-derided faith.