Turkey: A Primer on 20th Century Political Evolution
Perhaps the
biggest disappointment to come out of eight years of American intervention in
Afghanistan is the apparent inability of the Afghans themselves to decide what
they want to be when they grow up. Sure,
that sounds like an average dose of lip service in this climate unless you
consider the UN definition of “a failed state.” Afghanistan currently ranks
seventh on the Failed State Index (FSI), a sort of Unfortunate 500 for
dysfunctional nations.[1] Somalia and its happy band of pirates is
number one. For the purpose of perspective – out of a total of 177 UN
recognized countries.
The US has spent more time in Afghanistan than
was invested in all of World War II and Korea combined. To date, the Afghan
government has made little progress toward establishing anything close to a
stable government. The country continues
along the same path of sectional violence, the US led coalition now morphed
into the role of neighborhood cop. A
great unifying tactic if it wasn’t for the body count. The State Department meanwhile, pushes the
importance of elections and parliamentary process, which totally ignores the
traditional power structures of Afghan society; those that encompass family
ties, community obligation and whichever interpretation of Islam that gets
practiced in the neighborhood. All eyes
are told to look to the West. Perhaps a
better answer lies much closer to home:
“Today the
Turkish nation is called to defend its capacity for civilization, its right to
life and independence – its entire future.”
Kemal (Ataturk
was added later – something like ‘Father of the Turks’) had just made a pretty
remarkable set of announcements. They
included:
¨The
end of the Ottoman Empire. Well, it was
almost dead before World War I anyway.
¨The
abolishment of the Caliphate. (Political
authority under Islam.)
¨The
formation of the secular Republic of Turkey.
¨The
unacceptable state surrounding British occupation.
¨And
the need for the Armenians in the east and the Greeks in the west to relocate
elsewhere. There was no place for Orthodox Christianity in the new Republic.
About the man: Mustafa Kemal was born in Salonika (now part
of Greece) in 1881. Most of his early
history has been revised so often that most versions lack credibility. Raised
in the Moslem faith, a product of military schools, he later served with great
distinction as a Lt. Colonel and division commander at the battle of Gallipoli,
orchestrating one of the greater defeats the allied forces suffered in the
First World War. A great fan of the west
and particularly The Enlightenment (having been assigned to Paris and the
Balkans at varying points), he also fully embraced the potential power of the
media, using newspapers (often his own creations) extensively in his
nationalist pursuits. Above all, he
believed that the only way to save Turkey from complete partition by the allied
powers was to establish a modern, secular republic. In his words, “Islam and civilization are a
contradiction in terms.”[3]
The background: Things were going badly on the western front for the British and French in World War I. Russia was taken out by both the Nationalist and Bolshevik revolutions. Britain’s attack at Gallipoli, (Australian and New Zealand forces, ANZAC) was aimed at knocking the Ottoman Empire out of the war. Instead it turned into a rout. Britain then tried to turn the Arabs (with T.E. Lawrence’s deft assistance) against the Turks, promising them an Arab state for their trouble. Naturally that was a lie, the one apparent constant in British colonial policy. The Allies won the war, the Ottoman Empire was partitioned by the Treaty of Sevres creating what today are known as Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and of course, Iraq. The Sultan was left in Istanbul as a British puppet and Kemal fled to Ankara with plans to turn Anatolia into his new republic. He was able to deceive the British and the Arab world just long enough to consolidate his forces in Anatolia, a process pushed along by his creation of opposing media outlets. The Arab world believed he was fighting to preserve the Sultan and the Caliphate, the British assumed that his services were already on the colonial payroll. By the time the British realized his intentions, they were already outgunned, out-manned and out maneuvered. In 1923, they signed the Treaty of Lausanne ending hostilities. The Republic of Turkey was born.
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| The geo-political ramifications are immense if political instability continues in Turkey. |
Constantinople
(Istanbul) had been the official seat of the Caliphate since about 1514. The last recognized Caliph was Abd al Majid
II who with his family was exiled to Paris following the establishment of the
Republic of Turkey. Kemal found this
action necessary in order to create an Islamic republic based on civil law, not
theology. This was naturally viewed as
an extreme form of heresy, particularly in the Sunni Arab world, complicated
further by the establishment of language laws that reverted Arabic to second
class status in both government and religious proceedings, though some laws were
moderated later. In itself, this was an
offshoot of his policies on nationalization, but it also played into his desire
to create a literate, inclusive society.
Again, in opposition to fundamentalism which he saw as “a way of
promoting intellectual stagnation” by authorizing religion to define social
progress, including the very function of government itself. Oddly, the Caliphate seemed to end
there. Saudi Arabia did not attempt to
re-establish it at Mecca, undoubtedly since it would threaten their position as
an absolute monarchy, and it was only briefly claimed by the Taliban following
the Soviet departure from Afghanistan.[6]
Kemal was
brilliant in many ways, but he was no saint.
His orchestration of the Armenian exodus was as brutal as any forced
deportation. He stacked the military
with believers in his own cause and seemed more than willing to arbitrate
disputes at the gallows. Within Turkey
he was seen as both savior and despot; in the fundamentalist world, a Doenmeh
(a closet Jew), an alcoholic, a homosexual, a womanizer and a heretic – personal attacks that continue long after his
death. The real truth is as clouded as
the newspapers Kemal himself used to create.
Yet today, Turkey remains a somewhat stable republic in the middle of one
of the most volatile regions on earth.
Not perfect, but functional.
The opportunity
for a more progressive society in Afghanistan was probably lost shortly after
the Soviet withdrawal in 1989. In the vacuum that followed, the same Mujahedeen
we once funded became the Taliban we now hunt.
Instead of rebuilding schools and infrastructure, promoting education
and a sense of inclusion, we simply walked away, leaving the task largely to
under funded NGO’s and a lot of wishful thinking.[7]
The Taliban, falsely claiming the right to the Caliphate sought to force an
Islamic state on the people of Afghanistan as an alternative to both communist
autocracy and western indifference – two models of what they saw as a similar
dysfunction. We supplied much of the fodder for the Taliban position by
reinforcing beliefs that Islam alone that would see to the needs of the Afghan
people, faith having been the sole unifying factor over ten years of Soviet
occupation. Education should have been
the tool of choice to defeat a return to fundamentalism, not merely the
establishment of a western leaning central government, manufactured primarily
as a base for US influence in the region. No one seemed interested in the
greater investment in literacy, the real slayer of despotism, secular or
political, and the one indispensable ingredient in democracy. Afghanistan
claims a 28% literacy rate among men, women an even more dismal 12%; Turkey,
87% overall. The Taliban know this and
they fear a literate populous far more than anything our armories can ever
produce. But we can’t export a system if
nobody can understand the instructions.
Turkey’s example
may be a harsh one by American standards, but it allowed the time necessary to
go from a shooting war to the process of nation building in a realistic time
frame. That element of time is probably what has always hampered American
foreign policy, the impatience inherent in the very system we seek to
sell. Any parent will tell you that it takes
twenty years or so to educate and develop a child into an adult. Americans tire of foreign intrigue as quickly
as they tire of presidents. This lack of
continuity is not only a result of the fickle nature of American politics in
general, but the bad decisions orchestrated by a system in constant flux. We don’t even bother to apologize since the
person that set the policy is never around to finish it anyway. When Kemal died in 1938 from chronic liver
disease, he left behind a far more literate society than he inherited. Right or wrong in his methodology, he did
bequeath them the tools necessary for choice, the one thing the fundamentalist
camp can never accept.
The question for
Americans is whether we can endure a long-haul assignment, one that begins with
security and ends with an informed society, one that just might decide that our
model isn’t their model. That’s the risk
of intervention. If US policy is
confined to simply destroying the Taliban, then we’ve already lost this
one. If something else is on the table,
this would be a pretty good time for a new President and a revamped State
Department to explain just what that might be.
[1] See
Foreign Policy, Fund for Peace or CIA World Factbook.
[2] See
Ataturk.com. or lamppostproductions.com (The former is highly biased.)
[3] ibid, or
Islamicity.com
[4]
Khlafah.com., or Ahmadiyya Muslim Caliphs. Also, alIslam.org.
[5] Believe
it or not: Interview with Johnny Carson,
circa 1976.
[6]
Lamppostproductions.com
[7]
Non-government agencies.
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