Turkey in the long struggle between secularism and Islamophilia: the lesson of the Menderes case
Adnan Bey is the main protagonist of Jeremy Seal's beautiful book, “A coup in Turkey. A tale of democracy, despotism & vengeance in a divided land ” , recently published and dedicated to the military coup that ousted the Turkish Democratic Party from power on May 27, 1960.
Mr. ( Bey ) Adnan, is Adnan Menderes, the Turkish prime minister who won the first elections with the multi-party system in 1950 and founder of the Demokrat Parti , born from an offshoot of the then Republican-Kemalist single party (CHP). Idol of the masses, especially the most conservative and traditionalists, Menderes becomes the point of reference for all those who dream of a democratic Turkey in which freedom of expression triumphs and in which the press is free. With his presence in the government, secularism, the bastion on which the Kemalists founded the new independent Turkey, suffers a setback: the author tells in an exemplary way the return of Menderes from England after a long convalescence following a plane crash that could cost him his life near Gatwick airport, amidst the hosannas of a crowd strictly observing the precepts of Islam and the sacrifice of some animals made in his honor. Yet even the pro-Islamic Menderes, as well as his successor of the AKP, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, carried out in his decade at the head of the country (1950-1960) an ambitious modernization program that saw him refound an Istanbul abandoned by the Kemalists, create a vast infrastructural network even in the deepest Anatolia (its favorite electoral basin), and preside over Turkey's entry into NATO in 1952.
The opposition between the pro-American aided by Washington, Menderes, and his Kemalist opponents, represented by Atatürk's heir to the Presidency of the Republic, General Ismet Inonü, has always been very marked. From foreign to economic policy, passing through the role of the army and the privileges granted to the military, Menderes inaugurates a new democratic-populist course where the Anatolian masses are the protagonists of the new Turkey, in spite of an establishment that does not forgive them alignment with the US and religious settlements. Adnan Bey in fact restores prayer in Arabic – ezan – in Turkish mosques and gives new life to Said Nursi, a famous Islamic preacher set aside by the Kemalists.
The contrast between the founder's Turkey and the democratic one could not be more evident on the surface: in reality, the authoritarianism that marked Atatürk's seizure of power is also found in the democrats and in Menderes, at first a supporter of the press and of associative freedom and then, subsequently, a ferocious censor of newspapers and free thinkers, so much so as to get to imprison Hazim Hikmet, the famous Turkish communist poet, after having brought him back to his homeland to underline his difference with the previous regime. But if on the one hand the exasperated secularism of the Kemalists stifled freedoms and religious manifestations, on the other hand also the consolidation of Menderes' power had created a despotic regime, based on the factions closest to the premier and the electoral interests of the democrats.
The serious economic crisis and the repression of demonstrations by young university students – always exalted by the Kemalists as their constituency of reference – led to the military coup of May 27, 1960, led by Cemal Gürsel, the new Pasha . Even if Atatürk had foreseen for republican Turkey a limited role of the military in the presence of the civil progress of the nation, the army decides to act after having considered the work of Menderes " unconstitutional " and " contrary to republican values ". The prime minister and his main collaborators are arrested and confined to Yassiada, "The Island of Princes", where they are summarily tried and then hanged.
Thus begins the active role of the army in the events of modern Turkey, which will see the Armed Forces take to the streets with lots of tanks and rifles to overthrow the governments democratically elected by the Turkish people in 1970, 1980, 1997, and, in last, in 2016 (with little luck). On every occasion, the military leaders have justified their irruption into public life with the promise of restoring democracy and freedom, and on every occasion they have disregarded this commitment by resorting to arrests, violence, farce trials and repression.
In the book, Seal's Menderes appears as an ordinary man, cordial and a lover of his country, whose power after so many years has made him lose sight of the reality, which was presenting him with a very hard bill through the coup, the end of his political career and the end of his life. In the first elections after his hanging, the Kemalists were defeated by the new Justice Party, which was inspired by the work of Adnan Bey . The history of Turkish political Islam begins in its modern phase precisely from that dramatic experience. It is no coincidence that after Menderes there have been other attempts to revive conservative and traditionalist parties, such as that of Necmettin Erbakan, and that today the current Turkish president considers Menderes his mentor, completely rehabilitating his figure. The path that will lead Turkey to a real democracy still seems long and passes from the very narrow ridge between the protection of the values of the Republic and the protection of individual freedoms, including, not least in a country where 90 per cent of the inhabitants are Muslims, the religious one.
The post Turkey in the long struggle between secularism and Islamophilia: the lesson of the Menderes case appeared first on Atlantico Quotidiano .
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Atlantico Quotidiano at the URL http://www.atlanticoquotidiano.it/recensioni/la-turchia-nella-lunga-lotta-tra-laicismo-e-islamofilia-la-lezione-del-caso-menderes/ on Tue, 30 Mar 2021 03:53:00 +0000.