The Fall of the Turkish Model: How the Arab Uprisings Brought Down Islamic Liberalism

274 Pages·2016·1.93 MB·English

by  Cihan Tugal

The Fall of the Turkish Model
The Fall of the Turkish Model
How the Arab Uprisings Brought
Down Islamic Liberalism
BY
CIHAN TU AL
Ğ
First published by Verso 2016
© Cihan Tuğal 2016
All rights reserved
The moral rights of the author have been asserted 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
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Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction: The Charm of the Turkish Model
1. Regime Crises: No (Secular) Way Out
2. The Liberalization of Islam
3. Paths of Economic Liberalization
4. The Revolt against Authoritarian Liberalism
5. The Attempt at Passive Revolution
6. Gezi: The End of the Turkish Model or the Beginning of the Left?
Conclusion: The Counterpoint to Capital
Index
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This book was the result of a collective effort, even if all of its faults belong to
the author. Michael Burawoy’s feedback on the first part of the book, Peter
Evans’ help with issues of development, and the comments of both over the
years on political and social theory, as well as the Egypt–Turkey–Iran
comparison, were central to the maturation of my arguments. Kevan Harris and
Charles Kurzman read the entire manuscript and offered detailed reviews. Salwa
Ismail weighed in with instructive criticism of the Egyptian parts of the book. I
also benefited from their suggestions starting with the earlier stages of this
comparative project.
Joel Beinin, Vicky Bonnell, Beshara Doumani, Marion Fourcade, Samuel
Lucas, Raka Ray, Dylan Riley, Nezar AlSayyad, Berna Turam, Kim Voss, Susan
Watkins, Margaret Weir and Tony Wood have all helped sharpen the
comparative analysis as my study evolved. Especially helpful in fine-tuning the
comparison were Asef Bayat’s, Ann Swidler’s, Loïc Wacquant’s, and Erik
Wright’s advice. I spent a semester at UCSD, where Richard Biernacki, John H.
Evans, David Fitzgerald, Kwai Ng, Akos Rona-Tas, Gershon Shafir and Carlos
Waisman contributed to my study of Iran, Egypt and Turkey. The audience’s
responses at two UCLA presentations (especially remarks by Perry Anderson,
Robert Brenner, Rogers Brubaker, Hazem Kandil and Michael Mann) aided
some of the conceptualization and comparison. As we worked on a comparative
volume together, Cedric de Leon’s and Manali Desai’s interventions led to the
further calibration of my Egypt–Turkey comparison.
Finding my way in Egypt’s political and religious mazes wouldn’t be
possible without Momen el-Husseiny’s research assistance. Ghaleb Attrache
provided last-minute assistance as I revised the manuscript. Funding from the
Hellman Family Faculty Fund (University of California, Berkeley) facilitated
some of the research in Egypt.
I wouldn’t know how to interpret the ‘maelstrom of change’ in Turkey if it
were not for my daily debates with Aynur Sadet and Özgur Sadet. My
discussions of Turkish political economy with Ça lar Keyder and Ay e Bu ra
ğ ş ğ
were also immensely stimulating, and thanks to Zafer Yenal I could situate that
economy within global capitalist dynamics.
INTRODUCTION
The Charm of the Turkish Model
If American neoconservatives and liberals disagreed on a range of burning
issues, they united in their embrace of what they called the ‘Turkish model’.
Around the turn of the millennium, the celebration of the Turkish model also
brought together divided American and European elites: investment in the
Turkish model could perhaps suture the wounds of a disintegrating global order.
When US President George W. Bush gave a public speech at the end of the 2004
NATO summit in Istanbul, he stood on the grounds of a public university,
further buttressing this rare concurrence. The TV cameras captured the
magnificent Bosporus Bridge linking Europe and Asia and a beautiful Turkish
mosque behind him. Thirty American and Turkish experts had worked on the
choice of location and the specific setup.1 The bridge, as metaphor, informed his
speech:
Your country, with 150 years of democratic and social reform, stands as
a model to others, and as Europe’s bridge to the wider world. Your
success is vital to a future of progress and peace in Europe and in the
broader Middle East … America believes that as a European power,
Turkey belongs in the European Union. Your membership would also
be a crucial advance in relations between the Muslim world and the
West, because you are part of both. Including Turkey in the EU would
prove that Europe is not the exclusive club of a single religion; it would
expose the ‘clash of civilizations’ as a passing myth of history …
Democratic societies should welcome, not fear, the participation of the
faithful.2
This inclusive message embraced Tayyip Erdo an’s pious regime, established in
ğ
2002. It took dozens of experts to combine these messages and images, but
ordinary Turkish citizens had, in their own ways, already become virtuosos of
such bricolage. When veiled women first started to drive SUVs in the 1990s,
old-style secularists reacted furiously: how could the marvels of technology be
polluted by signs of backwardness? By the 2000s, the practice had become so
widespread that the reaction lost its meaning. Indeed, businesses capitalized on
this articulation of dissimilar signs. In 2014, a booming conservative clothes
company decorated the billboards of Istanbul with the image of two young
women, fashionably clothed but veiled, driving a chic red convertible and
looking around with coy smiles (rather than watching the road). Ultimately, even
the anti-Islamists came to understand that pious people were wholeheartedly
embracing many aspects of Western modernity, though they were still disturbed
by the political implications of this convergence: Would the Islamists do away
with democracy and personal freedoms once fully entrenched in power? Such
doubts were sidelined in global public discourse, enchanted as it was by the
bridge metaphor.
In the summer of 2013, however, new images started to populate the media:
the tear gas used against peaceful Turkish protesters, gas masks that became
everyday accessories and the prime minister’s frequent posturing with the Rabia
sign (a four-fingered salute). Erdo an’s government mercilessly repressed the
ğ
protests in Istanbul’s Gezi Park; the police even killed protestors elsewhere in
June. Soon afterwards, Erdo an and his followers adopted the Rabia sign in
ğ
solidarity with the uprising against the recent coup in Egypt, during which
Islamists were massacred in Rabia Square (to which the four-fingered sign
refers).3 While aggressively undermining liberties at home, Erdo an thus
ğ
fashioned himself as supporting the slain Egyptian protestors, suggesting that his
party defended civil liberties only for practising Muslims.
Since the violent suppression of the protests during the summer of 2013,
global circles have been perturbed by the following questions: what happened to
Erdo an’s liberalizing political party, which had brought so many freedoms to
ğ
the country? Are liberal Muslims becoming more conservative? Will Erdo an
ğ
become the leader of a regional, Islamic uprising, as presaged by his flashing the
Rabia sign? These worries are perhaps justified, but the questions are not asked
in the right way. This book advances the argument that the successful
liberalization in Turkey during the last three decades itself paved the way for
Islam’s later authoritarian and conservative incarnations. Moreover, the proper
answer has to integrate an analysis of not only Turkey’s own trajectory, but of
the rise of authoritarianism and conservatism on a global scale, as captured by
the spread of police state techniques and the ‘smell of tear gas’ across much of
the globe.4 Although not a comprehensive account of that global scene, this book
puts the liberalization of Islam within the context of Middle Eastern (and
secondarily global) developments, to which revolts are central.
The last thirty-five years of the Middle East are full of revolutionary and
pseudo-revolutionary dramas. Counter-revolts follow revolts. Inept leaders and
organizations claim the pedestal of revolution only to carry out restoration. Their
attempts at containment are clumsy and sooner or later give rise to new revolts.
The first major manoeuvre to absorb the Middle Eastern revolution came
with the Islamic Republic of Iran, which erected a highly contradictory and
explosive Islamic state (initially and temporarily) based on clerical-merchant
containment of the urban revolts of 1978–79. In the decades that followed, the
surrounding regimes scrambled for bits and pieces of ‘Islam’, democratization
and populism to absorb the wave of revolution spreading from Iran – all under
diverse pressures from Washington and the IMF.
The death throes of the old order ultimately gave way to the Turkish model:
an Islamic Americanism with a revolutionary rhetoric, backed by liberals and
some leftists in its half-hearted fight against the remnants of authoritarian
secularism. Islamic neoliberalism in Turkey brought about an uneven (but still
real) cultural, political and economic inclusion of disadvantaged strata into
established institutions without the need for revolutionary mobilization. It
seemed, for a while, that the Turkish Islamists had found a formula that could
absorb the shock of the Iranian revolution.
The Arab revolts of 2011–13, however, pulled the rug from under the feet of
the Turkish regime. Mainstream hopes that Egypt would follow the Turkish
model with a much more Arab and Islamic (and therefore regionally acceptable)
face crumbled with the July 2013 coup. With the region enmeshed in sustained
‘revolt without revolution’, neither Turkey (with its increasingly authoritarian
liberalism) nor Iran (which has itself turned away from revolutionary promises
to occasional liberalization) can show the way forward.
Under these circumstances, it is no surprise that the Sunni Gulf states are
flexing their muscles and spreading the seeds of not only restoration but outright
reaction. This might well lead to years of counterrevolution in the region. This
book will explore the multiple dynamics that have thrown the region into such
turmoil and prepared the ground for a refurbished conservatism. It will, however,
also emphasize that the recent wave of revolt introduced new dynamics and fired
new hopes that are likely to sink in roots across the region.
The Rise of the Turkish Model
What was the Turkish model? In two words, it was ‘Islamic liberalism’:
marriage of formal democracy, free market capitalism and (a toned down)