November
4, 2002, 9:00 a.m.
The
Secret of Turkish Democracy
A lone model.
By Barbara
Lerner
hy
is Turkey the only Muslim democracy in the Mideast? In a region where
"democracy" means one-man-one-vote-one-time, how has Turkey's
republic managed to survive for 79 years? That's not just a record for
the Mideast. It's longer than any comparably democratic regime in France,
Belgium or Germany, three countries currently beset by doubt about whether
Turkey is a fit candidate for the European Union — able to meet their
own allegedly high moral and political standards. That will be decided
in Copenhagen in December, but European pretensions aside, it is remarkable
that the republican form of government Kemal Attaturk imposed on the Turkish
people in 1923 is still functioning. Fellow Muslims, in all the Arab and
Persian lands that surround them, are ruled by despots, and in all of
them, fanaticism and terror run rampant. Only the Turks keep holding hotly
contested elections, then turning over power to the winners without firing
a shot, as they are set to do after yesterday's election. What makes the
Turks so different from their Arab and Persian neighbors, and indeed,
their European ones? What is the secret of Turkish democracy?
For answers, look
first to the indispensable Bernard Lewis. He gives us four excellent,
non-obvious reasons; my purpose, in this article, is to suggest a fifth.
Here, first, are Lewis's four. In his quiet scholarly way, he tells us
to start by discarding ubiquitous old stereotypes about the absolute power
of Oriental potentates. Stalin may have had unlimited power; Turkish Sultans
did not. Their powers were vast — in the 16th century, they ruled
much of Europe as well as the Mideast — but, as Lewis shows in intricate
detail, Ottoman rulers had obligations too, widely recognized and respected
obligations to a complex web of groups and institutions, many organized
along lines that transcended family, clan, and tribe. Thus, Lewis tells
us, Turkey had two of the basic prerequisites for a democratic society
long before she became one. First, the idea that there are limits on the
power of even the most exalted rulers was firmly embedded in Turkish minds;
second, Turks had a long-established and quite elaborate array of intermediate
institutions — in short, a civil society. Lewis points to two other
democracy-friendly differences between Turks and their neighbors. In essence,
he argues that Turks knew and understood the West better, and feared and
hated us less. Arabs and Persians, after all, were largely isolated from
the West for centuries. Then, in the last two, Arabs were conquered, colonized,
and set free again by a who's-who of European nations. The Turkish experience
is nothing like that. Turks had more intimate contact with the West over
a longer period of time but, in Lewis's apt phrase, they "were always
masters in their own house," never having been conquered or colonized
by any foreign power.
They almost were,
at the end of World War I, when the Ottoman Empire was in the final stage
of its long slide into corruption and ineptitude. After much vacillation,
the last sultan backed the losing side in the war, and the victors, after
stripping Turkey of its empire, were about to carve up Anatolia itself:
to conquer and colonize her at last. It didn't happen because rebel Turkish
forces led by Kemal Attaturk won a dramatic, come-from-behind victory
over the British at Gallipoli. And it was this same victorious Turkish
officer and his young-Turk, military-intellectual followers who deposed
the last Sultan, declared Turkey a republic, and imposed a sweeping program
of modernization, Westernization and reform on their countrymen. They
created a constitution too, to enshrine the two bedrock principles of
their republic: 1) Turkey is one nation, indivisible, embracing all its
citizens equally, no matter their ancestry or religion; 2) Turkey is a
secular republic in which religion and the state occupy separate spheres.
So far, so good, to Western minds, but the Turks did something more, something
that strikes most Westerners as utterly incongruous: they created an elected,
civilian government, but they made the Turkish military the guardian of
their constitution, giving it the power to depose civilian rulers who
violate its basic tenets, a power the military has exercised three times
since 1950. All these military takeovers were brief and bloodless, and
each time, the military voluntarily returned power to an elected civilian
government. But, to most Western observers, that doesn't change the fact
that these were serious lapses from democratic governance, lapses into
despotism. Benevolent despotism, perhaps, but despotism nonetheless.
I disagree. I think
the Turkish military is the great secret of Turkish democracy — a
fifth reason for its remarkable longevity. It keeps Turkey democratic
by acting as a necessary limit on the potential excesses of popular majorities
and the sometimes demagogic elected leaders who represent them, a role
not unlike the one the Supreme Court plays in our own republic. And like
our own justices, Turkish military officers profess loyalty only to the
constitution, not to any politician or party. At first glance, it may
seem crazy to com-pare military officers to justices, but to understand
the Turkish military and its role in Turkish life, you have to start,
once again, by discarding old stereotypes — this time, about the
military and the sort of men who become its leaders, especially in the
Mideast. We all know only too well about ignorant, greedy, megalomaniacal
military thugs like Gamal Abdel Nasser and Saddam Hussein, but Turkish
military officers are nothing like that.
For starters, they are very well-educated, not just in methods of warfare,
but in the sciences generally, and the liberal arts too, and they are
fluent in Western languages. They have to be. The required military school
curriculum is anything but narrow or provincial. Some Turkish politicians
are provincial; no Turkish military officers are. These are sophisticated,
disciplined men, and no wonder. The Turkish military has a long tradition
of eschewing nepotism and all the other forms of favoritism that are endemic
in the region, selecting and promoting officers on a strictly meritocratic
basis. The Turkish military is tough on graft and corruption too. Corruption
in Turkish politics is about as bad as in France and Belgium, and all
Turks know it. But Turks are as surprised to find a military officer on
the take as we are to find a federal judge who can be bought. Not unheard
of, but rare enough to retain a power to shock. Megalomania gets short
shrift in the Turkish military too. To guard against power-hungry men
in their own ranks, Turkish officers have developed a system of military
rotation and succession with firm limits on the time any officer can serve
in top leadership positions. Above all, Turkish officers have great pride
in their role as guardians of the constitution, and a deep awareness that
to retain it, they must be willing to observe limits themselves, not just
to enforce them on others. This gives them an esprit des corps that is
impressive and moving, even to those who, like Stephen Kinzer, formerly
the New York Times man in Istanbul, are sure that Turkey has outgrown
any need for military limits.
Will Europe say yes
to Turkey in December? Francis Fukuyama thinks they should but won't,
and he may be right. But with or without continental Europe's condescending
blessing, Turkey is the best model the Muslim world has, and in trying
to help other Muslim states follow her lead, it would make sense to look
past the lofty constitutional rhetoric so many despotic states adopt and
ignore, and take a harder look at the role and training of their military
officers.
—
Barbara Lerner is a freelance writer in Chicago.
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hy
is Turkey the only Muslim democracy in the Mideast? In a region where
"democracy" means one-man-one-vote-one-time, how has Turkey's
republic managed to survive for 79 years? That's not just a record for
the Mideast. It's longer than any comparably democratic regime in France,
Belgium or Germany, three countries currently beset by doubt about whether
Turkey is a fit candidate for the European Union — able to meet their
own allegedly high moral and political standards. That will be decided
in Copenhagen in December, but European pretensions aside, it is remarkable
that the republican form of government Kemal Attaturk imposed on the Turkish
people in 1923 is still functioning. Fellow Muslims, in all the Arab and
Persian lands that surround them, are ruled by despots, and in all of
them, fanaticism and terror run rampant. Only the Turks keep holding hotly
contested elections, then turning over power to the winners without firing
a shot, as they are set to do after yesterday's election. What makes the
Turks so different from their Arab and Persian neighbors, and indeed,
their European ones? What is the secret of Turkish democracy?
