The Republic of Turkey is currently passing through one of the most acute and bizarre political crises in its 85-year history. In broad terms, the powerful bureaucratic establishment is trying to overthrow a popularly elected government. More specifically, Turkey’s Constitutional Court may shut down the incumbent Justice and Development Party (AKP) and ban from politics its top 71 members, including Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, at the behest of the country’s chief prosecutor, who has filed an indictment against the AKP. If the Court takes these measures, a “judiciary coup” will have occurred, in line with the four “hard” or “soft” coups Turkey has experienced since 1960.

A verdict is expected later in the year; but another ruling that the same court delivered this month gave a strong signal that the AKP might indeed be closed down. This decision concerned constitutional amendments that the AKP, with the support of two other parties in the Turkish Parliament (the Nationalist Action Party and the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party), passed in order to allow headscarves in Turkish universities. These amendments sought to reverse Turkey’s longstanding headscarf ban, which was based, not on any law, but on a 1989 decision by the Constitutional Court. Polls show that 80 percent of Turks believe university students should be able to wear an Islamic headscarf if they want to. (Incidentally, the same polls show that only 7 percent Turks want to live in an “Islamic state.”)

No wonder that 411 of Turkey’s 550 parliamentarians voted for the amendments, which included the insertion of two clauses into two constitutional articles. The first one said: “In all their actions, state institutions and administrative bodies shall observe the principle of equality before the law.” The second one said: “No one shall be deprived of the right to an education because of their apparel.”

However, the Court’s decision itself could be considered a violation of the Turkish constitution. As many Turkish commentators have noted, Article 148 of the constitution makes it clear that the Court has the right to examine “both form and substance of laws.” But constitutional amendments “shall be examined and verified only with regard to their form.” (“Form” refers to technicalities, such as the number of parliamentarians who were present during the voting.) With its headscarf ruling, the Court effectively changed the substance of the constitution; in other words, it usurped a power that belongs solely to the Turkish Parliament. 

It is not fair to portray Erdoğan and his party as wild-eyed Islamists trying to destroy Turkish secularism.

Today, most Turkish commentators accept that the Court at least “extended” its powers, but some defend this by arguing that such extraordinary measures might be necessary in order to save “secularism.” The same commentators also argue that the AKP government has become a threat to the secular republic, and therefore democratic processes can be sidelined in order to deal with this danger. Indeed, “secularism is above everything, even democracy” has become a household slogan among Turkish secularists and their few Western supporters. 

Now, this logic could have some merit, if the secularism in question were something like the secularism of the United States, and if the “anti-secular force” in question were something like Hamas. But this is not the case. 

Turkish secularism can be seen as a much harsher version of the France’s laïcité. It is an illiberal model that has little respect for religious freedom. In its 2008 Annual Report, the U.S. Commission for International Religious Freedom notes that the Turkish system entails “significant restrictions on religious freedom for Muslims as well as for religious minority communities.” The report also states: 

“Turkey’s constitution establishes the country as a ‘secular state,’ according to the policy defined by the country’s founder and first president, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. Because Atatürk believed that religion was the primary cause for the Ottoman Empire’s lag in modernization vis à vis Europe, he and most of Turkey’s subsequent political leaders were determined to remove the influence of religion, including even expressions of personal belief, from public life in Turkey and to subject religion to state control. As such, the Turkish government’s concept of secularism differs from the American version of separation of religion and state, as it reflects state control over—and even hostility toward—religious expression in the public sphere. Many contend that the Turkish state’s interpretation of secularism has resulted in religious freedom violations for many of Turkey’s citizens, including the majority and minority religious communities.” 

No wonder most of the things that the Turkish state establishment considers “anti-secular activities” are simply demands for religious freedom. The indictment against the AKP lists “anti-secular” remarks made by Prime Minister Erdoğan. These include comments such as “We Turks prefer the Anglo-Saxon interpretation of secularism to the French one,” and “My dream is a Turkey in which veiled and unveiled girls will go to the campus hand in hand.” Nobody in the AKP has ever expressed support for abolishing secularism and establishing a religious state. They have merely asked for a “redefinition” of secularism. 

Of course, the secularists assume that members of the AKP have a “hidden agenda” and ultimately want to impose sharia law. The evidence of this agenda consists of a few statements and legislative actions that (as I have explained elsewhere) have been taken out of context and misunderstood. 

The AKP symbolizes a powerful idea: that Muslims can maintain their beliefs and traditions while also adopting Western-style democracy.

There are many other criticisms brought against Erdoğan and the AKP, including legitimate charges of nepotism, opportunism, corruption, intolerance of dissent (especially from political cartoonists), and more. But these problems are widespread in Turkish politics, and similar allegations could be brought against all the other major political parties. In fact, the AKP compares favorably to its chief rivals. 

Some commentators in Washington argue that the AKP has made Turkish society much more anti-American; they note the spike in such sentiment since the party gained power in 2002. The truth is that the Iraq war—whatever one thinks of it—boosted anti-Americanism in most parts of the world. In Turkey, the war was even more unpopular due to the deep-seated Kurdophobia in Turkish society. 

It is dishonest to blame the AKP for rising anti-Americanism. Indeed, the AKP is, in relative terms, the most pro-American party in Turkey, and its secular rivals never fail to point this out. A popular secularist conspiracy—which is mentioned in the indictment against the AKP—holds that the United States is trying to dominate the Middle East by creating “moderate Islamic regimes” such as the AKP government. 

It is not fair to portray Erdoğan and his party as wild-eyed Islamists trying to destroy Turkish secularism. They are Muslim democrats—with many flaws, to be sure—whereas most of their political enemies are secular autocrats. The European Union’s enlargement commissioner, Olli Rehn, put this most objectively recently when he spoke about the “cleavage [in Turkey] between the secularists—especially the extreme, rather than liberal, secularists—on the one hand, and the Muslim democrats, many of whom are reformed post-Islamists, on the other.” 

The AKP indeed symbolizes a powerful idea: that Muslims can maintain their beliefs and traditions while also adopting Western-style democracy. If the AKP government is effectively overthrown, many Muslims inside and outside Turkey will sour on the democratic process. That would be a horrible outcome. Let’s hope the extreme secularists don’t succeed. 

Mustafa Akyol is the deputy editor of the Turkish Daily News.

Image by Corbis.