Is Turkey trying to act like the leader of the Middle East?
- KurdishMedia.com - By Aland Mizell
- 20/01/2009 00:00:00
KurdishMedia.com, 20 January 2009: Heroes rise up where they fall. Erdogan and Gülen believe they govern a heroic nation. For centuries the Turks ruled the world and were the leader of the Muslim world. Based on this view of history, Prime Minister Erdogan and Fethullah Gülen expect Turkey to play that role again, the role of older brother to Muslim countries and a leader in the Middle East and the Muslim world. If Turkey manages to assume this leadership, will democracy come to the Middle East? Was the Ottoman Empire a righteous empire? What was the role of the haves and the have nots during the Ottoman Empire? What was the status of non-Muslims? Were they treated as second class citizens; in other words, were Muslims treated as superior because the Quran declares that if you are a believer, then you are superior? Was the Ottoman Empire democratic? Were sultans tolerant towards those who did not agree with them? If Turkey once again becomes a superpower, will democracy come to the Middle East? If any one has any doubt, the inquirer can just look at Erdogan’s dictatorial system of government since he came to power and evaluate it. Erdogan and his mentor, Gülen, believe that if you are not with them, then you are against them; the only way to salvation is to be a believer in Gülen and to follow Gulen’s dictatorial and clandestine movement. If not, then you are doomed to go to hell. While his followers will take issue with his declaration, when they consider it, will know what they have been taught these exact principles.
Recent developments have shown that this ideology underlies notions about the future role of Turkey in the Middle East and in the Islamic world. One of those developments is that Turkey is trying to take sides with Palestine to win the Arab world’s sympathy and to be the peace broker between Palestine and Israel. The government also sees the possibility of putting Turkish soldiers in the region as peace keepers between Israel and Palestine. Another development is that Turkey played a role in bringing the leaders of Pakistan and Afghanistan to Turkey for peace talks. Erdogan and his party are trying to show that Turkey has done what the West could not do. Especially Erdogan’s calling Israel a terror state and secretly talking to Hamas show that the whole Arab Muslim world looks at Turkey with love and applause for Erdogan but call other Arab leader traitors. Many Muslims believe that Islamic countries or Arab countries have been undergoing moral corruption, but in America and Western countries Arab leaders are seen as pious. As a consequence of the Muslims’ view of their leaders, it does not matter what current Arab leaders do; they will not have long-term sustainable peace agreements. However, although Erdogan’s Islamic ties with his Fundamentalist past have supposedly been severed, his earlier anti-secular remark that gave him jail time is being considered a very heroic act in Muslim countries and in the Middle East, because, like many Muslims, Hamas believes that a secular Muslim is not a true Muslim. There are the rules, the holy book, and the hadids, and if a Muslim does not live his life accordingly, then he is not a true believer.
For a long time many Arab countries did not consider Turkey a Muslim country. Rather they called it part of a devil’s triangle because of Turkey’s close relations with the U.S. and Israel; however, Erdogan brought Islam back to Turkey and destroyed the secular system of government. Whoever still believes that Turkey is a secular country must be dreaming. Secularism in Turkey is dead, and the prominent secular leaders are being put in jail one by one by Gülen and Erdogan’s collaboration. Can Turkey become a super power in the region and take its place on the world’s stage as a great state that will distribute justice, maintain balance, and provide security for all, not just for Muslims but for all? The problem with the Fundamentalists is that they do not have mercy toward people having their own views. If you do not believe in one God-Allah, and his messenger, you burn in hell according to their belief. Islam claims for itself the exclusive truth and one that is superior to all other faiths. Islam believes that there is only one truth, and it was revealed to Mohammed, so it is the duty of the every Muslim to bring the entire world to his way of thinking. If you are a Muslim, then you are superior, but in a democratic society everybody is equal and must be treated equally, leaving no room for intolerance and injustice. Can a person who believes this kind of ideology of superiority be democratically-minded and treat every human being as his equal?
So what are Erdogan and Gülen trying to do? Islam requires that Muslims act together, as brothers, and gather around a single leader. These two contemporary leaders see that Muslims are not doing that. According to Erdogan’s spiritual leader, Gülen, when Mohammed passed away, Muslims lost their leader. In his view, not being united under one leader opened all kinds of suffering and backwardness among the Muslim world; therefore, to remedy this condition, the Muslim world should abide by the obligation and be united under one leadership. Gülen believes that leadership is given to the Turkish people by God. He believes that Turkey always behaves honestly, and it seeks to do the most correct and virtuous thing.
Erdogan and Gulen’s dictatorial style of leadership leaves no room for criticism and no room for oppositional views; currently, they act tyrannically as iron men, but appear ironically as a paragon of virtue and a role model for the Middle East. For his own advantage, Erdogan picks people who will carry out his corrupt agenda rather than attend to the interests of the Turkish people. For instance, when the Doğan Media revealed his corruption and charged him with being involved in a fraud case surrounding Deniz Feneri, a Turkish charity in Germany, Erdogan declared war on them and even told his followers to boycott Dogan’s newspapers. Is this a virtuous and tolerant leader? Today many secularists sleep in fear at night, because they do not know when the police will raid their house. Turkey eventually will become a police state with hidden information about the charges against and punishment of the opposition, something you would expect in a police state, but not in a democratic society. The code of conduct is “What happens here stays here.” Unfortunately, power does corrupt people. A leader may have power over people as long as he does not corrupt it by taking the individuals’ power away from them. When that leader, however, has robbed a society of everything, society will no longer be in his power. Force without justice is tyrannical.
Erdogan and Gülen are taking revenge on the secular government because when the secularists were in power, they went after Gülen and Erdogan, put both of them in jail, and made life hell for both of them. Now it is Gülen and Erdogan’s turn to make life hell for the secularists. It is not about justice; it is all about power. Every man can stand adversity, but if an inquirer wants to see the character of men, give them power. Gülen wants to have total control, and whoever does not agree with him, he excommunicates or puts them in jail. Look at the names of the most prominent and the most outspoken critics who spoke against Gülen and Erdogan, such as Dogu Perincek, the leader of the Istanbul Workers’ Party (IP); the editor of the Cumhuriyet, Ilhan Selcuk; Kemal Alemdaroglu, the former president of Istanbul University; Sener Eruygur and Hursit Tolon retired four-star generals; and president of the Ataturk thought Society.Now that Turkey is becoming a police state, none dare to criticize Erdogan and Gülen. As part of this movement toward tyranny, the Islamists’ party and Gülen created an Ergenekon scam trying to ascribe all the conflict to the secularists, showing that everything that happened was the secularists’ fault. The Justice and Development Party’s (AKP) media outlet, the Zaman, argued that the murders of a catholic priest, Hrant Dink, and Christian missionaries were also Ergenekon corollaries despite no credible evidence to connect the events to the secularists.
Erdogan himself is a corrupt politician because the ruling party is more interested in headlines than in actually going after corruption and bringing about justice. As a case in point, Erdogan greatly compromised the independence of the media when he let the country’s second largest media group, ATV- Sabah, be sold to a holding company managed by his son-in-law and helped him fund the exorbitant price, unattainable for other businessmen, with the state’s bank and the emir of Qatar providing the funds for financing it. Erdogan listened to his spiritual advisor, Gülen, with his Machiavellian principle of the end justifies the means; if they consider their goals purposeful, and they do, then telling lies as their means to those goals is justifiable. That is how Gülen came to power---by not telling his true goals and agendas but instead by using the clandestine movement of his schools as his means. Yet, the first sign of corruption in a society is the use of the principle that the end justifies the means. This Machiavellian principle is further seen in the liaison between these two entities. Erdogan gives many government contracts to Gulen’s community or cemaat. Even now Gulen’s school is being recognized publicly by the government and is becoming part of the government. Whenever the Turkish government goes to visit another country, the first destination they visit is Gulen‘s school, although before Erdogan’s ascension it was impossible. This alliance should be alrming to all observers in the education of his students all over the world peddles his ideology of the Turkish Islam and pairs itself with the Turkey’s growing influence in the world at the level at of policy making in international affairs. The idea of a just society means the society is committed to the concepts of equality, individual freedom, and the rule of law. According to the rule of law, the accused is innocent until proven guilty. But today many secularists are being held even without evidence of their guilt, and as they are charged, they are already considered guilty. In the last few years Turkey has been taken over by the Islamist regime of Erdogan and Gülen, whose record on human rights is abysmal and who have a very shaky notion of what constitutes democracy, freedom of thought, and religion. Today those who see their future economic and political interests as being best served by allying themselves with Gülen and Erdogan become Erdogan’s supporters. Since no one can object to his policies without severe consequences, the media, government officials, and even some military leaders take his side as he ratchets up the number of arrests of his opponents. True democracy means rule of law, equality before the law, the right of minorities, and separations of powers. Check and balances, freedom of assembly, and limits on the central government protect the rights of individuals against arbitrary arrest and protect the right to due process. Free elections in Turkey ushered in an Islamic theocracy, yet the Islamists like Gülen and Erdogan are using the democracies process to destroy secularism. History tells us that Hitler became the chancellor of Germany by free election. Sometimes free election does not abolish the masters or the slaves.
Turkey has become a police state because the followers of Fethullah Gülen have infiltrated the police. The police often target secular opponents of the AKP on both the national and local level. Erdogan congratulated the police for their success and expanded their authority. Many Westerners believe that Turkey is one of the only democratic countries in the Middle East. In the aftermath of colonialism, the leaders and their parties who moved into the power vacuum still remain in control. Coming mostly from the military or the security forces, the ruling elite have become deeply hierarchical and authoritarian. Because leaders of Arab countries have distanced themselves from the majority of the local people, many Muslims are weary of being promised a better life only to find theirs more hopeless. Consequently those rulers have invested more resources in the military and security in order to maintain control over the population with the effect that the people are isolated and detached from their leaders. Muslims in the Middle East struggle to free themselves from the shackles of political authoritarianism without much success, but the West support the rulers and makes them more powerful. The people consider the leaders as weak and illegitimate, but bolstered by the Americans or Westerners. For instance, Egypt’s president Mubarak is considered a traitor by many Arabs because they believe he has collaborated with Israel, and also he announced the peace initiative. Many Arabs see the decision as coming from Mubarak but not from the people who live in the region, and, therefore, the peace negotiation does not last long. Regarding Turkey, many Arab and Muslim countries sympathize with the country and with the current Islamic party in Turkey because they know Erdogan’s past and that President Gul is working and having a long-time relationship with the Arabs. Also, some of the Arabs and Muslims do not like the Turkish secularists and the army because of their strong ties with Israel but things have changed since Erdogan took power. Think about it: this is not the first time Israel has gone to war with Palestine. They have engaged in conflicts many times in the past, so how many times has the secular government or military in Turkey called Israel a terrorist state? But Erdogan has called the Israelis terrorists, and that is why Hamas is willing for Turkey, more than any other country, to take the role in the peace negotiations. Therefore, no leaders in the Middle East have the courage to take a stand on the issue, and they cannot vociferously politicize the Palestinian issue because most of them are not democratically elected and are afraid of losing their power, Egypt is afraid that fundamental Muslims will take over and overthrows Mubarak. If they take the Palestine issue seriously, they are afraid that they may not remain in power.
Is Turkey is ready for the Middle Eastern countries to look to them as a role model whom they can imitate and who are capable of rousing their enthusiasm and drawing them to a deeper kind of life? More importantly, is Turkey ready for the kind of leadership that will guide them on the path of justice for all, equality for all, and reconciliation with its past rather than denial of it? The best way to teach someone to demonstrate just qualities for all is to be a model of those qualities.
Aland Mizell is a regular KurdishMedia.com writer and is with the MCI and can be contacted at aland_mizell1@hotmail.com
- KurdishMedia.com - By Aland Mizell
- 20/01/2009 00:00:00