Did the Turkish liberal intellectuals act as the Islamists’ “useful idiots”?

04.01.2014 • Turkey •

Ten years ago, they looked favorably upon Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s AKP’s arrival to power, as it was supposed to transform the political system and bring Turkey closer to the European Union. Investigation on this bizarre configuration that was buried under the news of last spring’s protests and of the recent corruption scandals.

It was like mixing oil and water. The “liberal” (both left-wing and right-wing) Turkish intellectuals, who are agnostic if not atheist, westernized and pro-European, and the Islamo-conservative party were opposites culturally and socially in every way. However, the informal alliance that united them for nearly ten years proved to be vital and decisive for Prime minister Tayyip Erdogan, who has been in power since 2003, and for his party, the justice and development party (AKP).

These liberal intellectuals played a much more important role than one would expect from their small number and electoral weight. It was through them that the AKP built their image of a post-Islamist, liberal, democratic and reformist party. They legitimized the Islamo-conservatives by reassuring the westernized upper middle class, as well as European and American businessmen, politicians, diplomats and journalists.

The violent repression of the protests in May and June 2013, as well as the recent corruption cases and the willingness of the highest ranks of the State to cover them up, have certainly buried the relationship, which was already disintegrating, but the last handful of diehards had persisted until then.

Why did it take these liberals so long to denounce the Islamo-conservative authority’s excesses? And, in the end, weren’t they, as were some left-wing intellectuals in the 1950s and 1960s in the Soviet Union, the “useful idiots” of the AKP and Erdogan?

Guilt toward the “country bumpkins”

When the AKP came to power at the end of 2002, the atmosphere was one of openness. In the past several years, unstable government coalitions came one after the other. The AKP, whose absolute majority at Parliament (despite a score of only 34% of the vote) made it hegemonic, is itself a coalition, which ranges from the center-right to the ultra-nationalist right.

In order to get out of the 2001 economic crisis, the previous minister of the Economy, Kemal Dervis, launched drastic financial and banking reforms. The AKP government continued these reforms, and Recep Tayyip Erdogan convinced the people when he proclaimed that he wanted Turkey to enter the European Union, which reassured the main employer association, the Tusiad, which thus also supported him. Therefore, many liberals then believed that there was maybe hope that the AKP would come to an agreement with the Kurds.

« What many, myself included hoped, was that Erdogan and the AKP would evolve into a genuinely democratic force – a conservative, somewhat Islamic-tinged force, but still a force for openness and democracy” says Harvard Professor Dani Rodrik.

The westernized left-wing elite felt a little guilty toward these “country bumpkins,” the nickname given by Istanbul’s affluent population to the Anatolians who were coming to power. It had a guilty conscience concerning the class of conservatives from which the Prime minister comes, who were pious and modest, whose veiled daughters they made fun of and who were deprived of many religious liberties under the iron fist of the secular military establishment.

“The AKP represented the majority of the population who had been excluded from modernization and despised. People thought they needed to give them a chance. I come from a privileged and westernized background, but as a Sartrean, I thought it was legitimate to betray my class. I therefore supported them,” says political scientist and ex-Unesco Senior Official Ali Kazancigil.

“These intellectuals also tend to think that the AKP’s arrival to power is the “true” people’s revenge and that transformation can only come from the true people,” summarizes Alican Tayla, a professor of International Relations at the university of Paris-XIII.

This is a view that did not come to mind for the very francophone Francophile Erol Özkoray, the publisher who faced many court cases against him, filed by Turkish military since 2000. As early as December 11, 2002, only one month after the elections, he compared the AKP’s electoral victory to a “counter-revolution” in the Libėration (newspaper)’s columns. He remembers today that “Colleagues and most of my friends were extremely angry at me. One of my friends from university cried: ‘How dare you write that, couldn’t you at least give them a small chance?’ She hasn’t spoken to me since.”

The army, a common enemy

Above all, these liberal intellectuals share a common enemy with the Islamists: the army. Like the Islamists, some students and left-wing militants were arrested, tortured and incarcerated during the 1980 military coup d’état.

In 2007, the Military, which was still all-powerful, tried to destabilize Recep Tayyip Erdogan with the secular and security-based establishment. But the AKP stood strong: with a second term won with a qualified majority (nearly 47% of the votes in 2007) and with the European Union’s support, the government launched the “Ergenekon” offensive against military involvement in politics.

From then on, the liberal intellectuals acted as one in supporting the arrests of and lawsuits against dozens of officers. And they did not pay much attention to what was happening during the procedure. Even though Samim Akgönül, lecturer at the University of Strasbourg, wrote in the center-left magazine Radikal in 2009 that despite the real attempts to overthrow the government, Ergenekon was an operation designed to purge the government’s opponents, articles about the numerous irregularities and evidence tampering were then extremely rare.

At the time, I talked about these police manipulations to one of these intellectuals. He ended the conversation abruptly with a resounding “Bullshit!” (even though the information I had received has since then been proven). Later, journalist Mehmet Altan responded to my doubts by saying, “I assure you that there is no doubt; there was an attempted coup d’état and that’s what’s important.”

Dani Rodrik said that he contacted a number of these intellectuals at the start of the Balyoz case, one of the purges led as part of Ergenekon, which targeted his father-in-law, General Cetin Dogan, among others:

«I wasn’t asking for sympathy for Cetin Dogan or the other defendants. I wanted them to see what was really going on in these trials. They were not interested at all. It was as if I was talking to them about another country, not Turkey. No matter how massive the undermining of due process, no matter how monumental the evidence fabrication, it would not shake their faith that these men are guilty and the trials are a good thing”  

The end justified the means. Hundreds of officers were then put under lock and key, the military hierarchy was decapitated and the army was sent back to the barracks.

Shouldn’t the liberal intellectuals have given the lawsuits’ progress as much importance as their verdicts? Didn’t they underestimate the political consequences of these flawed procedures?

The fact that Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his entourage hamper investigations brought against them for corruption so easily today may be because the justice system has always been manipulated by the political power in Turkey, long before the AKP’s arrival to power, but also because the liberal intellectuals were not critical enough of the lawsuits against the servicemen. South Africa, with its Truth and Reconciliation Commission, has shown the importance of a fair justice system when in a political transition.

The bridge: the Gülen neo-brotherhood

But the liberals’ silence was rooted somewhere else. During these lawsuits, the people who were in full operation in the police force and the justice system were actually, in part, men close to the Gülen neo-brotherhood, the powerful social and religious movement that has recently been called into question by Erdogan, in agreement with the Prime Minister.

However, a large portion of these liberal intellectuals was in close contact with this movement, whether through writing in its press, or appearing on its television channels. They also sometimes participated in debates or in organized trips, in Turkey as well as abroad, through the Abant platform, which is affiliated to the neo-brotherhood, even though it is somewhat autonomous.

As “Travel Companions” of the Gülen movement, these liberal intellectuals found a forum, a space where they could debate numerous taboo subjects (secularity, the Armenian genocide, religious liberty, etc) in the hopes of “advancing the Turkish democracy.” Without being members of the neo-brotherhood, they were pushed forward by it, and acquired recognition abroad through it, or in Turkey in more popular publics, which could until then escape their reach. Although the neo-brotherhood is not the only organization that organized forums and meetings, it had more financial means, an international network and a devoted following.

Thanks to the Gülen movement, these intellectuals could hope to establish at least early contact with Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s tight circle. Economist Eser Karakas explained, “It is mutually beneficial; the Cemaat (the community, another name for the Gülen movement) used me and I used it. Us liberals have taken advantage of the Abant platform to democratize Turkey.” And the liberals sometimes helped, at least in the beginning, the Turkish Islamist galaxy express its ideas, concepts and programs in order for the western world, of which they knew the codes and languages, to adopt them.

Some intellectuals refused to work with the neo-brotherhood, but a large portion of them accepted. They were therefore torn between their participation in the Gülen movement’s activities and numerous rather progressive initiatives and accusations that it was the object of, by, for example, journalists Ahmet Sik and Nedim Sever, who were arrested and incarcerated only because they denounced activities that were supposed to be the movement’s most secret ones.

Lastly, a number of these intellectuals are economists (Eser Karakas, Cengiz Aktar, Ahmet Insel, etc), who are favorable to the economic growth and the multiple foreign investments brought by the AKP. And to the rapid growth of a new Muslim, conservative and entrepreneurial bourgeoisie, which represents a decisive chance for the country to democratize.

Rifts of the 2010 referendum

In the end, the liberal intellectuals started tearing each other apart with the 2010 constitutional referendum. Voters had to make a decision on several amendments. Some were positive, such as the judiciary pursuit of the authors of the 1980 military coup d’état or the independence of the justice system from the bureaucracy and the establishment, but others were more questionable, since the political majority obtained a trusteeship of some judiciary nominations.

Two camps clashed. The first advocated for abstinence because they found these constitutional amendments insufficient and did not want to let the Prime Minister win again, as his autocratic excesses were more and more apparent. The other, which included Murat Belge, Baskin Oran and Ahmet Insel, called for voting “Yetmez ama, evet” (“Yes, but it is not enough”). The conversations sometimes ended in fistfights. Some friends do not speak anymore.

Alican Tayla even accused some liberal intellectuals of “intellectual dishonesty” for “being outraged, only one month after having called for people to vote “yes,” when the government proceeded to reorganize the High Council of Judges and Prosecutors. But everyone knew that Erdogan initiated this referendum only to obtain free reign.

“We have been excessively criticized, especially by the ‘leftists,’ explains sociologist Ferhat Kentel. We were accused of being puppets and of being bribed by the AKP. I voted “yes” because I think it is always good to move forward.”

The “yes” vote won by 58%, with more than 77% of voter participation. “In the end this poll was not of much use: we are still waiting for a truly new constitution,” concluded Ozgur Mumcu, a corporate lawyer at the Galatasaray University.

Not all of them supported the protesters

In May and June 2013, more than 2 million protesters took to the streets against the government’s intrusion in the private lives of citizens, especially those of women and youth, and its authoritarian excesses. The repression was violent, killing several and injuring thousands.

A great number, but not all, of these liberal intellectuals stood by the protests and appeared in the “Gezi Park Commune,” such as Samim Akgönül, Cengiz Aktar, Ahmet Insel and editor Ragip Zarakolu… others were more silent.

Today, Ferhat Kentel still supports the AKP: “To me, it represents social powers that revolutionize the country, and I am no longer scared of being assassinated in the street for speaking about the headscarf, the Armenian genocide or the Kurds,” he told me in October 2013 his office in Sehir University, founded by Foreign Affairs Minister Ahmet Davutoglu. “It doesn’t stop me from thinking that Erdogan’s attitudes and behaviors are harmful to democracy, even though they are also electoral positions.”

And, when referring to the killing of the Robespierrians during the French Revolution in comparison, he clarified:

“The AKP revolution is over; the Islamists of the AKP are living their Thermidor now.”

None of the thirty-something liberal intellectuals I interviewed seems to regret having given the AKP a chance. They in no way want to join the other camp, that of the “secular Kemalists,” they say, who, since the start, accuse the AKP of having the hidden agenda of Islamization of the country.

“The AKP and Erdogan changed, not me,” says Ragip Zarakolu in defense. He was sentenced to a fine in 2008 for having supported the recognition of the Armenian genocide, and was then incarcerated from 2011 to 2012 for pushing for more decentralization and autonomy for the Kurds. Samim Akgönül showed his regret: “We thought that the AKP was going to change the system, but it appropriated the same system’s tools; it monopolized the ideological apparatus.”

Political scientist Halil Karaveli does not agree. According to him, the liberals do not take responsibility for their actions when they appeal to the “system,” which is the durability of the State apparatus: “It is not completely inconceivable that the AKP could have continued to follow a reformist and moderate line if the liberal intelligentsia had played an ideologically moderating role rather than encouraging the party’s intransigent attitude toward the secular opposition,” he wrote in 2008.

Either dismissed from pro-AKP newspapers as soon as they publish one too many critiques or self-censured, the liberals have realized that their time has passed in Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s eyes. The Turkish Prime minister seems to no longer want to be burdened with these intellectuals from Istanbul who belong to neither camp and sometimes annoy his partisans.

“The years to come do not correspond to what the liberals […] who followed us until now want. They will be our opponents’ partners because the Turkey that we are going to build does not represent a future that they can accept,” Aziz Babusçu, the AKP representative in Istanbul, declared calmly in April 2013.

This polarization logic embitters the liberals, because they do not position themselves in the Kemalist camp, the AKP’s opposition, either. And this is probably why none of them says that his or her support of Erdogan’s party was a mistake, and especially not that he or she has been a “useful idiot.” Most of them told me, “It was a necessary evil. The AKP was an obligatory passage for Turkey to liberate itself from military rule.”

Ariane Bonzon
Translation: Lea Cavat
Photo: DR

Original French version:

En Turquie, les intellectuels libéraux ont-ils joué les «idiots utiles» des islamistes?