Michael Rubin: The Case Against the AKP
Although Europe ignores it, the Turkey’s PM Erdogan is turning into the Turkish version of Vlad. Putin, writes Kemal.
Michael Rubin, editor of the Middle East Quarterly and resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, recently published an article partially outlining the case against Turkey’s ruling AK Party, or AKP. It cites some interesting facts overlooked by the media outside of Turkey that are worth noting.
Although the prime minister, Foreign Minister Ali Babacan, and influential AKP advisers have tried to depict [the closure case] as the unjust outgrowth of a dispute over headscarves in public universities—and perhaps even a “judicial coup”—the case is legitimate. Although the prime minister, Foreign Minister Ali Babacan, and influential AKP advisers have tried to depict this as the unjust outgrowth of a dispute over headscarves in public universities—and perhaps even a “judicial coup”—the case is legitimate.
The closure case is legitimate, not only due to concerns related to Turkey’s secularism, but due to corruption, economic crimes and oppression of the press committed by AKP politicians, who, as long as they are in office, are immune from prosecution. If the Turkish judiciary decides against the AKP and the 70 or so named officials are removed from office, they will lose immunity from prosecution. Contrary to popular media reports, it is more likely the prospect of criminal prosecutions for crimes committed while in office raises the highly charged responses from Erdogan and his AKP against the closure case.
Rubin explains how the AKP has used the so-called “democratic reforms” imposed by the EU accession process to actually eviscerate Turkey’s democracy and increase the AKP’s power over state instutions.
Europe’s encouragement of Turkish reforms has been important. In a mature democracy, the military should remain aloof from politics. Brussels should be applauded for pressuring Turkey to reform its National Security Council to give the powerful body a civilian majority with a civilian head. By failing to encourage the creation of an alternate check-and-balance mechanism to replace the military’s traditional role as guardian of the constitution, however, the EU committed diplomatic malpractice. Erdoğan seized the opportunity to run roughshod over Turkish secularism and democracy.
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As he consolidates power, Erdoğan has become the Turkish Vladimir Putin. Upon taking office, Erdoğan sought to lower the mandatory retirement age for public servants from 65 to 61, which effectively allowed his party to appoint almost half of the nation’s prosecutors and judges. With patronage appointments, the prime minister transformed technocratic bodies such as the Savings Deposit Insurance Fund (TMSF), an entity empowered to seize private businesses and media outlets, into virtual party wings. The TMSF today is staffed almost entirely by appointees transferred from Saudi-based financial institutions.
Placement in key ministries and government departments used to depend on success in civil service exams. Erdoğan imposed a subjective interview process that enabled him to choose political loyalists. The practice spread to state-owned industries; Turkish Airlines, for example, began quizzing employees on the Koran. Women have suffered the most. As analyst Soner Çağaptay observes in Newsweek, “under the AKP, women are largely excluded from decision-making positions in government and the workforce, relegated to the confines of their homes.”
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The AKP has also sought to diminish the power of Turkey’s independent judiciary. In May 2005, AKP co-founder and parliamentary speaker Bülent Arınç said that if the Constitutional Court continued to declare AKP legislation unconstitutional, the AKP might simply dissolve it. When the Danıştay, the country’s supreme administrative court, ruled against the previous government’s seizure of a bank and Erdoğan’s transfer of its European subsidiary to a political ally, the prime minister ignored the ruling.
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When Erdoğan leaves parliament, he will face a multitude of corruption charges. While compiling his immense wealth, he has refused to give a full financial disclosure. As the clock runs out on his premiership, Erdoğan has dispensed with even the appearance of legality. He has used the AKP’s parliamentary majority to suppress investigation of a recent TMSF deal in which an opposition newspaper and television station were sold to an Erdoğan ally after the prime minister interceded illegally.
On June 18, Habertürk’s Fatih Altaylı reported that the Austrian energy firm OMV has submitted an affidavit swearing that Erdoğan told OMV the way to unfreeze a $3 billion energy project would be to dump its longtime Turkish partner and work instead with his son-in-law. Perhaps it should not be a surprise, then, that Erdoğan has used what could be his last weeks as prime minister to appoint political loyalists to the Sayıştay, Turkey’s supreme court of accounts and audits, which will soon investigate his conduct.
The most disturbing development is the suppression of media outlets that oppose the AKP. The AKP has engaged in the unabashed consolidation of ownership of media outlets in Turkey by AKP sympathizers. Journalists who oppose the AKP have formed a significant number of those arrested for plotting to overthrow the government via the mysterious “Ergenekon.” And while state authorities have actively pursued those “against” them, three of the most effectively vocal opponents of radical Islam in politics, investigative reporters Uğur Mumcu, Ahmet Taner, and Necip Hablemitoğlu, were assasinated and their murderers never found.
There can be no democracy where there is no independent free press that is allowed to engage in robust debate and challenge the status quo without fear of arrest, reprisals or bodily harm. While the AKP is lauded for its “democratic reforms” by the west, it has slowly been dismantling this crucial and vital arm necessary to all democracies. That should have sounded warning sirens throughout the EU and the U.S., but curiously, has not.
I have been watching this as well. Tyrants use all the imagery of freedom and democracy…. and seek to crush it by abusing and rigging the system to crush dissent. It is no different than most college campuses in that regard. Great column Michael, you really said all that needs to be said on this one.
It is quite glaringly obvious that Michael Rubin has absolutely no respect for the ethos of democracy whatsoever.
The AKP is a democratically elected party which came to power after winning two elections with a large majority. This gives it the right to govern and the majority of Turks obviously support it.
The AKP has presided over rapid economic growth, dramatically improved economic indicators including drastically reduced inflation and booming international trade. The AKP has reformed Turkey’s political system and reduced human rights violations to the extent the EU has given the chance to the Turks to start membership negotiations, something that would have been unthinkable a few years back.
Turkey has improved its relations with its eastern neighbours and has managed to maintain close relations with the US despite the madness of the Bush administration in Iraq. This is in itself no mean accomplishment.
The charges against the AKP accusing it of undermining the secular state rest on the notion that the decision to lift the headscarf ban undermined secularism, but this is nothing if not a slur to the Turkish state’s self proclaimed laicite more than anything. The idea that secularism needs to defend itself by depriving women the right to education simply on account of the way they choose to dress suggests that secularism is a fickle, intolerant ideology that represses rather than emancipates.
The idea that the AKP is anti-woman can easily be refuted by the attempts by the party to allow headscarved women to attend university, as well as the important role Turkish women continue to play in society six years after the AKP’s takeover.
As regards corruption, the fact remains that Turkey, like most emerging economies has wrestled with this problem in years. Previous Turkish governments with far poorer economic records than the AKP have had major corruption scandals on their heads. Likewise, that the corruption under the AKP may not be anythere are spectacular as under previous governments may be inferred from their strong economic record.
Michael Rubin is affiliated with the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute, which is one of the architects of the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Its other figures include Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a former Dutch politician who fabricated and concocted her life story in order to obtain asylum in the Netherlands and subsequently turned into an ally of the Dutch far right. So policymaking on the basis of lies is second nature to such people.
The Turks have a right to participate in the political system of their democracy without interference from neocon idealogues like Rubin whose open contempt for the tenets of democracy are plain. Even more disturbing, given Washington’s sordid record of overthrowing governments the world over, ( Iran, Venezuela, Guatemala, Ghana etc etc ), the unholy alliance between such ideologies and the government in power in the US should be recognized for the pernicious influence that it is.
AKP is a fascist party which is planning to take Turkey to dark ages. They treat woman as a sexual commodity, they are the enemy of the civilized world. Turban does not liberate woman, it is an oppressive tool. It places women to a state which is inferior to men. The women have to cover themselves in order not to trigger lust in men. Ultimately, it is an insult not only to women also to men as this concept treats men as animals. We left the animal kingdom a few centuries ago. Michael Rubin is right on his assessment of this party. AKP with it human rights volations, economic corruptions and its criminal background, is a religious fascist party. We have to remember that Hitler was elected by the majority but his fascism left a dark stain on civilization.
The AKP is the Turkish Humenyni and their concept of Islam is the Taliban version. This party is dangerous not only for Turks but for the entire world. Since they came power, the hate crimes against Jews and Christians started and escalated at an alarming rate.
AKP is a fascist party which is planning to take Turkey to dark ages. They treat woman as a sexual commodity, they are the enemy of the civilized world. Turban does not liberate woman, it is an oppressive tool. It places women to a state which is inferior to men. The women have to cover themselves in order not to trigger lust in men. Ultimately, it is an insult not only to women also to men as this concept treats men as animals. We left the animal kingdom a few centuries ago. Michael Rubin is right on his assessment of this party. AKP with it human rights volations, economic corruptions and its criminal background, is a religious fascist party. We have to remember that Hitler was elected by the majority but his fascism left a dark stain on civilization.
The AKP is the Turkish Humenyni and their concept of Islam is the Taliban version. This party is dangerous not only for Turks but for the entire world. Since they came power, the hate crimes against Jews and Christians started and escalated at an alarming rate.
If a party that wants to allıe it’s self wıth democracy, then they need to respect the rule of law and freedom of speach. Many thinkers in Turkey are quite awaire of the fact that AKP does not posses neither of the qualities. Many times, AKP shut down U-Tube, attacked dissenting voices, put tremendous pressure on journalists and unfairly tried to and still tries to prosecute secularist who reject their ideology and political agenda. Now if anyone tries to argue that this type of rule is “democracy”, then either they are deluding themselves or have a secretive agenda to demolist the selucirist system that has taken many years to build. If girls in the street are screaming for their “freedom” to cover themselves or in another words, be oppressed by the system then there is something wrong with this picture. Thanks Michael for bringing this to your readers attention!
SAS,
The AKP did not win a "large majority" in either of the last two elections. It won a plurality. The majority in the last election, 53% of the voting public, voted for parties other than the AKP. In addition, many secularists voted for the AKP in the last election based upon its promises of moderation–a platform it threw out the window upon taking office.
No democracy allows those elected into office to run rough-shod over the minority, or in this case, the majority. Nor does democracy or the rule of law allow or turn a blind eye to the corruption or crimes committed by elected officials-they are not above the law. And, the argument that "others before were just as bad" does not save the day, nor justify the AKP’s actions.
While the AKP has embraced the EU accession process, it has done so merely to use the "reforms" imposed by the EU to consolidate and abuse its power. It has also used the "reforms" to stifle opposition and promote an Islamic agenda that the vast majority of the public vehemently opposes.
As for the economic progress you reference, much of it is illusory and based upon the sale of the Republic’s assets to foreign interests, which leaves the country at the economic mercy of outsiders whose interests do not necessarily coincide with what is in the best interest of Turkey’s citizens. While an open market and free trade is desirable, steps should have been taken to ensure the country could not be held hostage economically by third parties whose objectives do not take into account the country’s best interests.
As for the position of women, women play a vital role in every aspect of Turkish society, culture, politics and economic life, and they have done so since the war of independence in which they carried ammunition to the front lines. Women are not prohibited from attending university for wearing simple scarves tied under their chin, which is traditionally how Turkish women who wanted to wear scarves wore them in Turkey.
The hijab, however, is a recent import from the Arab world and, make no mistake about it, it is a political symbol designed to display openly the political affiliation of the woman’s family. Such religious political symbols have no place in government institutions. Tuition at public universities are fully paid by the government. Women who must display their political affiliations can do whatever they want in private universities, but not in public universities. Aside from that, this opinion piece is not about headscarves or religion. This piece is about oppression of the media and crimes committed by elected AKP officials, but thank you for trying to explain how oppressing women is really “liberating” them.
As for your atacks on Michael Rubin, they do nothing to refute the facts he relates.
The following statement you make illustrates that there is much about this subject that you don’t know:
"the government in power in the US should be recognized for the pernicious influence that it is"
Do you know that the U.S. and EU are 100% behind and fully support the AKP–because of course, the AKP serves their interests.
Don’t let your religious beliefs cloud your view on this issue. The headscarf dispute is a red herring. It is not what the opposition to the AKP stems from.
The real issue is that the AKP has undermined Turkey’s independence, which is what the EU and the U.S. want because that promotes their so-called greater Middle East Initiative/Project. It is the erosion of Turkey’s independence, which cost us millions of lives and was won largely as a result of Ataturk’s leadership, vision and insight, that people oppose.
Kemal; I think you’re putting it rather bluntly - to me, they simply want European and American business to invest in Turkey and to take over Turkish businesses and companies. It’s not, I think, about a greater Middle East Initiative; it’s about money.
Agreed Michael, for the investors, open trade is about definitely about money.
However, economic power can be used to achieve political purposes. Open trade and foreign ownership of vital natural resources can serve a political purpose by placing economic power in the hands of third parties, which can definitely affect the balance of power between the parties involved. A large part of Turkey’s economy and income is tied to the transport of oil and gas from the Middle East and increasingly the former Soviet republics–which is what the Middle East Initiative is about.
In any event, all countries take some measures to protect their economy and natural resources from undue influence and control by outside sources for a good reason.
I am delighted to read this article… finally someone in the USA stops supporting the AK Party and acknowledges how this very party–under the disguise of democracy–tried all it could to bring Turkey back to the dark ages… The Foreign Minister, the former Minister of Economy, is known to have uttered the remark last year: "the economy is going well, the women do not need to work." The country is led with people like him, the friends of Erdogan, who are all brought back to top positions with no understanding the tasks at hand… I was recently in Ankara and was schocked by the lack of capacity in government offices… If the US government (Bush and his entourage) abandons its desire of creating and maintaining "moderate Islam" in Turkey to serve its own geopolitical interests, Turkey can get rid off AK Party and resume its democratic and secular identity… This very party stayed too long in power. If the economy improved int the last few years, it is only thanks to the transition program designed by Kemal Dervis of the Ecevit Government in 2001. AK Party does not deserve any of the credit. Now that the transitioon program has ended, there is no one in this very government to manage the economy. It is time for them to go and US should keep its hands off and to mingle. Moreover, it should no longer hide people like Fetullah or Merve Kavakci or all those Islamists who use Islam for their own political agenda. They are dangerous and continue to be dangerous to remain in the USA… They should leave not for Turkey but may be for Siberia…
Dear Concerned,
Thank you for your kind comment.
The AKP is waiging a very well-financed, well-connected campaign to promote its image as "the" democratic party, and it is doing it in English. If Turks want the truth to come out, they must, as you have, speak up. I encourage you to keep speaking up and to say what’s on your mind and express your opinions.After all, to extradite you to Turkey for being a member of Ergenekon for daring to express your opposition to the AKP would take so long, that the AKP will be long out of office before it could ever happen … hehehe
Some Turks on the forum complain about the AKP. My advice to them is simple - wait until the next election and throw them out. Turkey went to the polls only last year and the people there handed a resounding victory to the AKP. If people have reservations about the AKP’s policies, they should behave with the maturity that people in other democracies show and should not abuse their legal system to close down the AKP. Myself, I am confident that the AKP will not be closed by these silly frivolous accusations.
I stand by my attacks on Michael Rubin as he and the American Enterprise Institute are tools of the neoconservative establishment. The same establishment that engineered the travesty of the invasion of Iraq, the oppression of Palestinians, the overthrow of the democratically elected governments of Iran in the 1950s, Chile in the 1970s and in Venezuela as recently as 200o. Washington’s power brokers need to respect democracy and the will of the people and stop interfering with the policies of other countries. As for the Turks. they should reject outside interference in their domestic politics.