ISTANBUL -- The effort to forge new forms of non-Western modernity in the Muslim world has pushed Iran into bloody civil strife while Turkey swirls with persistent rumors of military plots against the Islamist-rooted government. The great historical question is whether, at the end of the day, Iran will look more like Turkey, or Turkey like Iran?
As the legendary MI6 agent Alastair Crooke argues in his new book, Resistance: The Essence of the Islamist Revolution, the Iranian revolution was a direct consequence a half century later of the forced secularization of the Ottoman Caliphate by Kemal Ataturk. With the superstructure of the Muslim ummah dismantled and replaced with the Turkish nation-state, insurgent religious movements, from the (Sunni) Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt to the Shiite imams of Qum and Najaf, moved into the vacuum to reclaim Islam from the shadow of Western modernization.
Paradoxically, Ataturk's whole modernization project is today being recalibrated by the ruling Islamist-rooted (Justice and Development) AK party, which is seeking to reintroduce piety into public life while projecting Turkey as a neo-Ottoman regional power in the Muslim Middle East instead of a mere NATO appendage or European supplicant. At the same time, Iran, the other regional power, is moving in the opposite direction: the Twittering partisans of popular sovereignty are locked in a battle with their theocratic guardians over the legitimacy of power in the Islamic Republic.
What goes around comes around, it seems. The reaction to the Great Transformation of early 20th century modernization may have given rise to what Crooke calls the "Great Refusal" of the Islamist resistance. But now the legacy of the Great Transformation in Turkey as well as the Great Refusal in Iran are facing the reverse challenges of bringing faith back into the public realm on the one hand, and democratizing a religious state on the other.
The historical cross currents are complex. In Turkey, one AK Party leader told me, by way of allaying suspicions about an Islamist takeover, that "without its Western orientation, Turkey would be just another Muslim country." Yet, a publisher friend worries that "without the military guarding Turkey's secular institutions, the Islamists would take over tomorrow." And yet again his 20-something daughter, despite the ever more prevalent sight of headscarves on the street, shrugs her bare shoulders doubtfully at the idea of Turkey ever becoming a repressive religious society like Iran.
In Iran, the very idea of an Islamic Republic, borne out of the 1979 revolution, is coming apart. What we are witnessing is a contest between the Shiite idea of an imamate, where, essentially, God is the head of state, versus the Republic, in which the people rule. What happens to the legitimacy of the state when the people, through their democratic institutions, disagree with God? How can this contradiction at the very heart of the constitutional arrangement of the Islamic Republic ever be resolved?
For all its grumblings and even rumblings, the military that stands behind secularism in Turkey has not so far frustrated the democratic aspirations of the religious resurgence there. In Iran, the Revolutionary Guards that are protecting theocracy have done just that: they have sought to crush the assertion of popular sovereignty.
The clerical establishment aligned with the Revolutionary Guard in Iran won't be easily dislodged from power. Yet, once they've felt their power in the streets, as in 1979, neither will the people accept the suppression of their rights. By reasserting his authority after the election through brutal repression, Ayatollah Khameini has undermined the legitimacy of his rule. It may be a long, slow erosion, but the repression of legitimate aspirations is always the beginning of the end for any system of governance.
For now, the Turkish experiment in creating a non-Western, post-secular order seems more sustainable because it respects the will of the people. That is now the challenge for Iran.
I sincerely hope that Turkey does not regress to women in veils, etc.
cooking, cleaning, washing, shopping, sewing, gardening, planting, harvesting are done by women, even if they have jobs outside the home. women still have no rights. unless they are in the top 1% of the economy.
less than 1% of the national budget went to education: unheated classrooms with 50 to a hundred students per class. whole regions have no education in local languages, arab, laz, hemshin, zazazi, romany, cerkez, azeri, gurcu speaking children get no instruction in their native tongue. teachers have no training in teaching turkish to non-turkish children, who make up a 1/4 of the country.
religion: strictly controlled by the ministry of religion. religious minorities suppressed. religious sodalities banned. the state religion is the Ataturk cult.
education strictly controlled by the military through YOK. the minister of education in Cumhurriet, the Kemalist newspaper explained: in Turkey, the purpose of education is not to train anyone to think but to train obedient citizens. direct quote. It is the policy to suppress minority education, education of the poor, and modern science. The issue of Nature the world's premier science publication containing the bicentennial celebration of Darwin was banned.
First, though, I would emphasize context. Ataturk's Turkey evolved against the backdrop of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire due to ever more successful revolts on the periphery, the willingness of the West (Britain) to go after the Turks, a disastrous alliance with Germany and Austria in World War I and the Armenian Holocaust. When did Iran face anything similar?
It was not an empire - not since the first millenium. Iran did not face the loss of "colonial" possessions. Rather, it had to withstand the "invasion" of Russia and Britain.
But, so what? Different backgrounds can lead to similar results. The process of modernization may simply smooth out such great variations. Still, we might ask what processes are underway in both Turkey and Iran, questions the author posed above. Historically, Turkey has had to reconcile Ataturk's westernization versus the reality of a starkly conservative and religious Anatolian hinterland. Iran, if I might assert, posed a different question in the 1920s: the establishment of parliamentary government. The two are not unrelated, but they are also not the same.
Western Empires ever since Britain and other League of Empires have constantly been dividing these people into "Strategic Tension" modules of borders and divided-sect's in attempt to set up Democracies of Elite rulers over serf's. The Middle East peoples are not secularist's that enjoy letting everything hang out, as exaple Anglo-Oil that may then rake in 90% profits of whatever.
It appears this region of the world will not heal and perhaps become again a Cradle of Civilization, until Super-Empires pull butt out of these peoples lives.
It's the economy stupid-to quote the Clinton campaign slogan. But Americans are very uncomfortable with this concept in my experience.
When does the boy who cried wolf turn into the powerhungry manipulator sending impressionable youth to their beatings/death?
I know many of the protestors are demanding a recount. I'm suggesting an accurate counting of ballots for the very first time under UN auspices or better yet under Indonesian eyes, Indonesia being one of the few democratically elected governments in a predominantly Islamic society.
Please don't slime my profession with pseudo-intellectual rubbish that can't be independently confirmed. Mathematicians could perhaps do as you wish, if we had access to all of the ballot boxes and a reasonable assurance that none of the boxes had been stuffed in the intervening 10 days.
Or, we could ask these "mathematicians" to form an international company available worldwide at a moment's notice to help beleaguered voting officials count ballots in the Ukraine, Florida, Kenya and even Ohio! By golly, if it can be done in Iran, it can be done anywhere!
I was struck by a Tehran street sign. Under a picture of Khameini was written: “Islam is Freedom.”
I am waiting for the Shia Martin Luther. Coalitions lilke Khameini/Ahamedinijad that base their authoritarian power upon great books of wisdom like the Koran are sitting on a ticking time bomb.Once the people become literate enough to read the books themselves, as they are now in Iran, they will see the message is not to be cowed by evil and to abandon your personal view of God and Ultimate reality, but to see it through. They also see that the Koran speaks little to politics, if at all. It is about justice and the sacredness of God.
And all these poor wretches need do is learn to read and write - how condescending.
People who want to dive in and change the Middle East should pack their bags and head over there and fight.
The US was not meant to be the police of the world. Bring our troops home and respect sovereign borders, How hard can that be?
Here's something most people caught up in Iran's DEMOCRATIC ELECTION are missing, MEXICO is on fire! 5700 dead in 2008 - Beheading, kidnappings, children forced to drink acid and the violence is leaking into our borders - Hey folks check #yourownbackyard first.
http://jischinger.wordpress.com
Turkey should be admitted to full membership of the EU . . . I really think you are just stirring the kettle to make yourself look like a well informed intellectual . . visit Turkey and the rest of the Middle East . . .
Secularism is not a religion, it is a response to religious killers like those seen in Iran and in redneckville, USA. People already kill each other for money, jealousy, and stupidity, without religion turning it into mass slaughter. Look at the shiites vs the sunnis, the christians vs the jews, the romans vs the christians. It just goes on and on and on. It is true, however, that the nazis and communists were not religious organizations, so it proves you dont need religion for mass murder. You just need dictatorship, and religion is one of a long list of possible fairytales to justify murder.
Democracy, with its many flaws, is the only answer. BTW, porn sells fine in Turkey, have no doubt. Modern technology and trade destroys communities, not secularism.
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Superlat appears to have an overactive imagination concerning seperation of church and state. This comes from many denigrating the Christian principles during the age of the founders settig up the Constitution that established the framework of this nation.
Some apparently confused believe these men were safeguarding the nation from religion, but instead what the founders did was to 'protect' this religion. After all sho knowing the ways of man who would want someone like Bush speaking for the Church, saying he talked to god, and god told him to lie, steal, deceive so that we could run off pre-emptively and murder innocent people.
No, it was enough that Judean/Christian values down through the ages be the backbone and letter of our Constitution and nations framework. Hopefully men like Cheney and others would be fought by citizens that held and fought for this nation and it's value. It may look today as the My Way or No Way" crowd has taken completely over, but don't count out the decent people in America just yet.
In Iran the majority is now religious, which wasn't true prior to 1979. They pretty much turned religious at gun point. If the secular middle class is joined by the poor we may see a real revolution IF the public is armed. Otherwise, the US media will have blood on its hands for egging them on all the way to the slaughter house.
This is the true indicator of a superior society. May other men contribute to the improvement of my society, with plenty of help from KY.
Which is why we must get our Troops out of Iraq A-Sap..!
I'm not sure if that helps your conspiracy theory or not.
The current government of Turkey, irrespective of its root, had done a lot better than any previous government since Ataturk wanted Turks to be white men walking.
It is an interesting fact that it took a Muslim empire to form a Muslim, Jewish, and Christian unity called the Cradle of Civilization. A time in history when all these together working and contributing together produced many of the greatest discoverages still in use today.
It reminds me in a way of when this nation America was formed, becoming the melting-pot of many ethnic, religious, and races of man who could eventually overlook many differences and become an envy of the world.
I worry about people that have a weak and usless god, someone that apparently is better off on welfare and needs the protection of secular governments. I am enthused when finding strong people that do not have to worry about their God, and are more concerned if their contribution will make a nation and people perhaps the envy of the world.
Personally, today with perhaps more than 80% of our consumables coming from Third World people within what we consider near slavery by our value-standards, what this nation has become from leadership we call representative leaves me wondering what direction we will take in the future.