Ayaan Hirsi Ali Too Pessimistic About Turkey
Ayaan Hirsi Ali (whom I greatly admire) has a column today in the Wall Street Journal revisiting Samuel Huntington's Clash of Civilizations thesis. She notes that Huntington seems to have been more right in his predictions than Francis Fukuyama.
It isn't hard to have been more right than Fukuyama; you'd think they would have taken his pundit license away by now, but strangely, no one seems to hold having been completely wrong about everything against him. I guess the lesson is that you can predict pretty much anything and so long as a few years pass before you're comprehensively disproven, no one will much remember.
Some of Hirsi Ali's points are very, very right:
We need to recognize the extent to which the advance of radical Islam is the result of an active propaganda campaign. According to a CIA report written in 2003, the Saudis invested at least $2 billion a year over a 30-year period to spread their brand of fundamentalist Islam. The Western response in promoting our own civilization was negligible.
But when she talks about Turkey, she's making the same mistake I see most people making--assuming that support for Erdoğan and the AKP is much broader than it actually is.
Here are a few points everyone thinking about Turkey needs to keep firmly in mind:
1) There will be a general election in 2011.
2) The polls by no means show the AKP holding on to power. One recent survey suggests that if the election were held today, the AKP would take 31.1 percent of the vote and the CHP 33.5 percent. The MHP--secular nationalists, not necessarily the nicest people in the world, but definitely not Islamists--would take 15.5 percent. This election, in other words, is completely up for grabs.
If you look at the polling data, you'll also see that support for the CHP has soared since last January. That's because fossilized CHP party leader Deniz Baykal met with a misfortune (sex scandal!) and has been, thank God, replaced by someone for whom people can conceive of pulling the lever. People here have been dying for a credible secular alternative to the AKP; now they have one.
It's more or less within the margin of error, but note also that support for the SP is going down. They're the "we're not even trying to hide it" Islamists. If the country were radicalizing as completely as often suggested, their numbers would be going up. Have a look:
What party would you support in the next parliamentary election?
Jul. 2010 May 2010 Jan. 2010 Republican People’s Party (CHP) 33.5% 32.5% 27.1% Justice and Development Party (AKP) 31.1% 31.1% 29.5% National Action Party (MHP) 15.5% 18.6% 20.4% Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) 5.1% 4.3% 6.3% Felicity Party (SP) 3.3% 3.7% 5.5% Democratic Left Party (DSP) 3.1% 3.5% 4.1% Turkish Democratic Party (DP) 3.0% 2.4% 3.0% Source: Sonar Arastirma
Methodology: Interviews with 3,000 Turk adults, conducted from Jul. 3 to Jul. 10, 2010. Margin of error is 2.0 per cent.
I'm going to make a Turkish election prediction here, confident in the knowledge that if I'm wrong, everyone will have forgotten it by 2011. The AKP will either be forced into a coalition with its enemies or forced out entirely. My sense is that basically, people are sick of them.
The demise of the AKP won't make everything better, though. They're only one aspect of the problem in Turkey. The biggest problem is the fragility and weakness of Turkey's institutions--a systemic problem, in other words--and a coalition will be a nightmare of its own special kind. But I do think it may be a step in the right direction.
Perhaps the world is headed for a clash of civilizations, but Turkey is not quite the example of this it might seem at first blush.
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Comments :
Jul '10
Re: Ayaan Hirsi Ali Too Pessimistic About Turkey
The AKP IS LIKELY TO BE forced out entirely, EVEN IF THEY COME OUT ON TOP. As long as CHP and MHP together add up to a higher percentage than AKP as they seem to be doing right now, AKP will be left out unless other parties, which can go into a coalition with them, make it into the parliament, which is impossible because the AKP will not lower the 10% threshold.
Re: Ayaan Hirsi Ali Too Pessimistic About Turkey
We abjure the use of all-caps here, Okan (see the Code of Conduct), but if we didn't, I'd all-cap the same message. The details of Turkish electoral politics are hard to follow, but follow them one ought before declaring Turkey a lost cause.
May '10
Re: Ayaan Hirsi Ali Too Pessimistic About Turkey
What are the chances that AKP will find a way of imposing some kind of state of emergency or find another pretext to postpone or cancel the elections? Or, alternatively, somehow to manipulate the elections in their favor?
No, I am not paranoid - but that doesn't mean that these people are not out to get all of us somehow.
One question is: how much the laws and the institutions of the republic have been re-molded to adhere to the preferences of AKP and how easy or difficult it would be for the putative new government coalition to backtrack on those developments.
Re: Ayaan Hirsi Ali Too Pessimistic About Turkey
All excellent questions. State of emergency, postponed elections--not remotely likely, I'd say. District gerrymandering, tinkering with voter rolls, maybe a few dead people voting-? Likely, since it's happened in the past. (Not exactly an AKP innovation, any of these tactics.) Sufficient manipulation to swing the election? Doubt it, but it's possible.
Your last question is important. I'd guess (really a guess) that it would take about as long as they've been in power. By the way, I should note that they've achieved some things that shouldn't be undone at all. They've passed good legislation on a number of issues (even if it often doesn't get enforced). I should also stress that they're a party, not a single person, and among them are very decent, well-intentioned people. I worry that the anti-AKP backlash could be immensely ugly. (Imagine Ergenekon in reverse. Or worse.) And coalition governments have not, historically, been happy experiences for Turkey.
But let's not be pessimistic. It's not Iran and it won't be. And things could also really brighten up.
Jun '10
Re: Ayaan Hirsi Ali Too Pessimistic About Turkey
So should we be happy that the Republicans are ahead?
Nov '10
Re: Ayaan Hirsi Ali Too Pessimistic About Turkey
In response to Sergei, who is it that you are referring to when you say "these people are out to all of us ?" If you are referring to Turks, I find the suggestion preposterous. But if you are referring to the AKP, I am a Turkish citizen living in Turkey and for the past 7 years since they have been in power, I have not been forced to change my lifestyle in any way. Perhaps my lifestyle doesn't mesh with theirs. But I find the idea that Turkey will be turned into an Islamic republic ridiculous.And I do want to ask you which institutions of the Republic are being remodeled
As for the comment made by Ayaan Hirsi Ali...I don't quite someone like herself talk about freedom of speech, expression and democracy while at the same time suggesting that military intervention would solve all the ills of a society. Presumably overthrowing a government elected by the people would do just that on the basis that they are Muslims. I guess oppressing people is acceptable if they adhere to a religion she thinks of as evil. So much for human rights.