[Marxism] How Turkey's Islamic party serves US imperialism

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

New Left Review 44, March-April 2007

Analysing the current hegemony of Erdogan?s AKP 
in Turkey, Cihan Tug(al argues that the party has 
been the agent of a classic passive revolution, 
effectively shoring up the Kemalist state. 
Paradoxes of ?Americanization with Muslim 
characteristics?, against the backdrop of Western 
military intervention in the Middle East.

CIHAN TUGAL
NATO?S ISLAMISTS
Hegemony and Americanization in Turkey

This changing balance of forces was a crucial 
determinant in the Islamists? shift towards a 
thorough-going Americanization. The term is used 
here to mean not only political support for 
Washington and the global capitalist order, but a 
much broader allegiance to American economic, 
social and religious models. If the first two of 
these have always been dear to the establishment 
elite in Turkey, the Islamists? breakthrough 
would lie in naturalizing a new version of all 
three of them among much broader layers.

After the crisis of 1997, when it became clear 
that larger concessions were necessary to win the 
toleration of the ruling elite, a new generation 
of Islamists began to challenge Erbakan?s 
leadership. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, 
this generational conflict had been expressed as 
a clash between ardent young radicals and a more 
conservative mainstream. After 1997, the former 
radicals were quick to adopt a free-market, 
?moderate Muslim? position. Prominent among them 
were R. Tayyip Erdogan, Abdullah Gül and Bülent 
Arinç, all of them differentiated from the old 
guard by their professionalism, media savvy and 
attentiveness to the pro-business agenda. 
Erdog(an, though his family was from the city of 
Rize in the Black Sea region, was born in 
Istanbul in 1957 and raised in the run-down 
neighbourhood of Kasimpasa, where he attended an 
Imam-Hatip school. A university graduate and 
soccer player, he has honed his charisma during 
years of grass-roots work as an activist and 
organizer. Gül is from Kayseri, a Central 
Anatolian city closely integrated with global 
markets. Born in 1950, he received a PhD from an 
Istanbul university in 1983, and studied in 
England. He was an economist at the Islamic 
Development Bank until 1991, when he became a 
full-time politician. Arinç, a lawyer, was born 
in 1948 in Bursa, a conservative city in the 
industrial Marmara region, and has been 
politically active since his youth. Arinç still 
retains links with his old Islamist party, while 
Gül serves as a bridge between the Islamists and 
international business, Turkey?s ruling elite and 
the liberal intelligentsia. This new generation 
of political entrepreneurs was far more receptive to cooperation with the West.

Thus a new alignment emerged from the seeming 
impasse of 1997. It had become clear that the 
ideological and class differences among the 
Islamists were too sharp to be contained within a 
single party. There were insoluble tensions 
between the liberalizing business wing and the 
more conservative and working-class sectors. The 
authoritarian structure of the party did not 
allow aspiring young activists to have a say in 
decision-making. In 2001 the rebels established 
their own organization, the Justice and 
Development Party (akp), having failed to take 
over the existing structures at a major party 
congress. Erdog(an and the other akp leaders 
moved quickly to reassure the military and media 
establishments that religion would not be used 
for political purposes and that the akp would not 
challenge the headscarf ban. They were also 
vociferously pro-European. They made frequent 
trips to the United States, holding meetings 
whose agendas have remained private. Gül 
helpfully explained to an American audience that 
the akp were ?the wasps of Turkey?. It was clear 
that the new leadership was trying to reclaim the 
territory of the centre-right in Turkish 
politics?in effect, to reconstitute an updated 
version of that alliance of provincial 
businessmen, religious intellectuals and state 
elite at which the subordinate fraction of the 
ruling power bloc had traditionally aimed, but 
which had become impossible with the rise of a 
radical Islamism. Now, this alliance could also 
offer to strengthen the hand of the neo-liberal 
and export-oriented sectors of Turkish capital. 
Large numbers of centre-right politicians, 
intellectuals and supporters soon swelled its ranks.

full: http://newleftreview.org/?page=article&view=2657


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