Erdoğan’s Electoral Victory in the 2018 elections and the New “Eastern Question”.

Erdoğan’s Electoral Victory in the 2018 elections and the New “Eastern Question”. Διονύσης Παντής

The following article was published in July 2018 by Dionysios Pantis. At a time when many regarded #Erdoğan’s dominance as merely another electoral victory, the author argued that it represented the definitive political and ideological triumph of a plan with much deeper historical roots. Today, several years later, many of the observations and concerns expressed at that time have become tangible geopolitical realities. For this reason, the text retains not only historical but also significant contemporary political value. The article is republished in its original form: Erdoğan’s Electoral Victory and the New “Eastern Question”, On Sunday, 24 June 2018. The following 2018 article, which was written to outline the significance of this electoral victory of the AKP and Erdoğan for Greece and the world, could also be considered an introduction to my own study and theory on Turkish Islamism and the REAL Turkish Islamist agenda — both in its domestic and foreign policy dimensions.It is, of course, a fact that no one was concerned about this preemptively. So now we are called upon to manage it as a very concrete and specific REALITY.The second important date that unleashed this specific political agenda was the failed military coup of 2016.I quote it verbatim: "Erdoğan’s Electoral Victory and the New “Eastern Question”. On Sunday, 24 June 2018, the most critical elections since the founding of the Republic were held in Turkey. The most critical elections since the founding of the Republic were held in #Turkey. Turkish #Islamism had already irreversibly transformed the political landscape and the political system of the neighboring country. President Erdoğan’s comfortable victory, with over 50% of the vote and without the need for a second round, together with the achievement of a parliamentary majority by the #AKP and the Nationalists, is the result of this profound transformation. The origins of the Islamic movement (initially as an intellectual current) date back to the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the period of the #Ottoman Empire’s deep decline. During this era, amid an environment of state and social decay, national humiliation and degradation at the hands of the great powers of the time, four main currents of ideological ferment emerged within the dominant Ottoman #Muslim class, as well as among educated and privileged non-Muslims (zimmi)—that is, #Christians (#Orthodox, #Catholic, #Armenian, etc.) and #Jews (the “Peoples of the Book,” who, according to Islamic law, enjoyed a degree of protection not extended to others). These intellectual currents sought to provide the ideal response to the Ottoman Empire’s failure to keep pace with the technological and economic progress of the #West—a failure that was clearly leading to the perpetuation of its dependence and was openly threatening its very existence (the Eastern Question). The first current—which was the most obvious—proposed the complete #Westernization of society (and therefore of state structures: army, administration, justice, etc.), especially of the economy. This tendency, whose principles were the first to be implemented, accepted Western superiority and hegemony. In doing so, however, it ignored the Turkish and Islamic “soul,” which reacted strongly… As a response from this “soul,” the movements of Turkism, Ottomanism, and Islamism emerged, each putting forward respectively Turkish national/racial origin, Ottoman tradition, or the Islamic religion.Turkism ran into the “problem” that subjects of Turkish descent constituted a minority within the Empire. Moreover, 1) the cultural deficits that had led to the decline continued to exist, and 2) fraternal ethnic groups could only be found in Asia, while the “interest” was directed toward prosperous Europe. #Ottomanism was also an ineffective answer to the identity problem, since the problem itself (Ottoman decline) was presented as the solution (a return to the “pure” Asian Ottoman tribal values).

Islamism, however, has not only endured to the present day, but a hundred years after the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire and the founding of the modern Turkish state, it constitutes the dominant political current in Turkey today—aggressively revisionist both domestically and geopolitically, reintroducing to the West, in different terms, the “New Eastern Question.” These currents never appear in pure form. They always contain, in varying doses, elements of the other three (e.g., the #Islamism of the AKP, while foregrounding #ISLAM, also incorporates Ottomanism and Turkism, as well as the Westernization it appears to oppose.

Thus we speak of a Turkish/Ottoman/“Protestant” ISLAM—a consumerist Islam, traditionally aggressive abroad, emphasizing work, production and technology, seeking primacy in the Islamic world and differentiating itself from Arab/#Sunni/Saudi Islam, as well as from #Iranian/#Shia Islam and other Islamic traditions). From the time of the Ottoman Empire, and from even older traditions that the Turks brought with them from their historic homeland, Oriental statism (Oriental submission to the tribal group) constituted a basic ideological complement and constant. This peculiar statism, which combined harmoniously and without difficulty with Muslim customs and religious rules, runs through all the above political movements and ideological currents, creating the necessary “resilience” in the search for identity and, at least until today, defining the intensity of political confrontation in Turkey. During both the peak and the final years before the collapse of the Empire, everything was expected from the Ottoman State: it provided everything, even food. The “ability” of the Ottoman State to meet the Oriental expectations of the #Turks (whether of Turkish racial origin or Islamized converts) was owed mainly to the “surplus value” extracted from the labor of the “rayah” (non-Muslims). The State is the absolute fetish: Father-State – Master, State – Punisher, and Sacred State. The Western modernization attempted in the final years of the Ottoman Empire (with the #Tanzimat Fermani of 1839 and other imperial firmans before and after) was simultaneously forced and hopeless. The overwhelming Western superiority in every field (production, technology, economy, ideology) and the deep social and cultural causes of the Ottoman “weakness” (the “Sick Man”), in a profoundly conservative society of Eastern type—and despite the asphyxiating external pressures for the adoption of these reforms, especially from Britain as the main bearer of economic liberalism of the era (perhaps partly because of these pressures)—left no room for the violently attempted “modernization” (Westernization in this case) to succeed and ensure the survival of the ailing Empire. In contrast, Islamism attributes the cause of the long-term crisis to the departure from the rules of Islam and proposes as a solution Political Islam—i.e., the affirmation that “we can confront the ever-insatiable West with Islam.” Islamism in the Ottoman Empire, as it developed especially within Islamic orders, was based on the belief that the concepts of Islam on the one hand and economic and technological progress on the other are not incompatible. On the contrary: Islam creates the internal preconditions and discipline that are absolutely necessary for organized economic progress, the cultivation of a culture of work and entrepreneurship, Islamic production, Islamic consumption and entrepreneurship—which simultaneously promotes Islam or, with more advanced thinking, is the only way to promote, preserve, and ultimately achieve the dominance of Islam in the modern world.The indirect Western influence is evident. It is now a “Protestant” (work ethic and entrepreneurship) and at the same time Ottoman/Turkish Islam.This political movement (Turkish/Ottoman/Protestant Islamism), with its “peculiar” economic views, found expression within the framework of the “modern” Turkish state already from the First Turkish Grand National Assembly of 23 April 1920, as a first form of “opposition” to Mustafa Kemal (later #Atatürk). This is also why it was established thereafter as the “Second Group”—with the First Group naturally being that of Kemal and his supporters—although at the time it did not present itself as an organized viewpoint in the form of a political bloc. Indeed, the Second Group did not present a unified expression, yet it voiced a set of positions—often with individual nuances—such as: support for economic #liberalism, human rights (especially religious freedom and freedom of conscience, perhaps because they felt that religious expression was going to be “restricted” in the new Kemalist Turkey), democracy (which in their thinking included the concepts of religion and faith), and the need for Turkey to find the place it “deserves” in the global economy. At the same time, it opposed Kemalist ideas, among other things by advocating the preservation of the institution of the #Caliphate. Within the principle of “secularism” (a basic principle or… one of the arrows… of #Kemalism), religion was marginalized and excluded from basic state functions, e.g., from education and justice. The Islamic orders that operated within the Ottoman Empire had no place in the new Turkish state: at best they were marginalized (if not persecuted); many of their members were forced to move to the Balkans. The People’s Party was accused of being an “atheist” party. "The Second Group" did not have the “luck” to find expression in subsequent assemblies. The triumph of Kemalism was absolute there, and the immediately following assemblies were essentially one-party.Nevertheless, the Islamist political view remained alive, to return cautiously in the 1950s with the introduction of multi-party politics. And not only did it remain alive, but 90 years after the first assembly, it managed to dominate through its ideological descendant: the AKP (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi – Justice and Development Party). The first “breath” for Political Islam came with the adoption of multi-party politics in Turkey in 1946.Initially, the political influence of the Islamic orders (which in many ways had previously been persecuted) was tested through the Democratic Party of #Menderes, which was seeking votes (including… Islamic ones). The need for Islamic votes led to the dilution of the “atheist wine” for the sake of the Islamic orders, both hidden and overt.Subsequently, with the founding of purely Islamic conservative parties, within the framework of the “Religious View” formed within some of the orders, which shaped the first “democratic” identity of Islamism, complementary to economic liberalism (in the future, under the pressure of continuous judicial and other persecutions or… voluntarily, the Islamist identity would also be supplemented by pro-Europeanism). The Islamist political identity (Islam – democracy – Islamic economic liberalism – “Europeanism” – religious freedom) was formed through the National/Religious Outlook (Milli Görüş) movement. Its main exponent was #Erbakan. According to the National Outlook movement, the imitation of foreign—Western but not only—models inevitably leads to collapse.The only way out, its supporters declared, is the establishment of a “law-abiding state”—implicitly an Islamic one. However, when referring to the founding of a new “law-abiding state,” the supporters of the Religious View did not turn directly and confrontationally against Kemalist Turkey or the Kemalist state—which, as we saw, they considered a sacred Turkish Father-State—but meant the methodical, patient political dominance and the creation of a definitively new Islamic state through the “peaceful” but decisive transformation of the Kemalist state into an Islamic one. It should be noted that the constitutional reforms proposed and largely implemented by Erdoğan and the AKP had already been decided upon during Erbakan’s time and that of the National Outlook (chief among them the introduction of the Presidential system, whose significance for the Islamic political project is great…, followed by the transformation of the multi-party system—so useful for the development of the Islamic movement—into a two-party system, following American models as well). From this Islamic (Islamist) movement until Erdoğan’s dominance in the new revised Presidency, various Islamic parties emerged: the National Order Party (Milli Nizam Partisi) founded by Erbakan in 1970 in… Manzikert (!) and one of the many Islamic parties closed by decision of the Constitutional Court just one year after its founding. The National Salvation Party (Milli Selamet Partisi – MSP), founded in 1972, which became a partner in the so-called Nationalist Front that took power until it was succeeded by the junta of 12 September 1980…. The Welfare Party (Refah Partisi), whose leadership Erbakan assumed in 1987 and which rose to government in 1996 only to be banned again by the Constitutional Court and succeeded by President Erdoğan’s AKP." Dionysios Pantis, Lawyer at the Supreme Court – Geopolitical Analyst Διονύσης Παντής: Το νέο Ανατολικό Ζήτημα και η Τουρκία του Ερντογάν https://ikoinonia.gr/dionysis-pantis-to-neo-anatoliko-zitima-kai-i-tourkia-tou-erntogan/ μέσω @Ikoinonia