Turkey's Great Divide Thursday

Jul. 12, 2007 By ANDREW PURVIS/ISTANBUL
A DIFFERENT OUTLOOK
KATHRYN COOK FOR TIME


Only a few months ago, Utku Koseoglu would spend his evenings playing football or maybe downing an Efes beer or two with friends at a waterside nightclub in one of the trendier parts of Istanbul. His reading ran to thrillers like The Da Vinci Code. But these days, the 27-year-old lawyer is more likely to be found hunched over a conference table in a cramped and sweaty office in Istanbul's hectic Kadikoy district, toiling late into the summer night writing blogs, collecting Web clippings and organizing marches. When he finds time for a book, it's the writings of Turkey's revered founder Kemal Ataturk, not Dan Brown. "I could have been starting my career," he says with a wry smile. "Instead, I am doing this."

The reason for his conversion to political activism, he says, is that his country is facing the gravest threat to its secularist identity in more than 50 years. The ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), led by Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has links, he believes, to Islamic sects that are intent on undermining democracy and Turkey's treasured secularist principles. For the the sake of the nation, says Koseoglu, they must be defeated at the polls. "We want to expose the true face of the AKP and make sure no vote is wasted." The little outfit to which he belongs, formed a year ago under the title the Kemalist Politics Group, is one of scores that have emerged in in the run-up to parliamentary elections on July 22. In a rare expression of political will from a middle class that has traditionally seen scant need to get involved, these groups have organized dozens of marches that have brought millions onto the streets in cities across the nation. "Our strategies are long-term," says a friend of Koseoglu's, Demir Buyukozkan, 28, at a recent late-night session in Istanbul. "In the next generation, our goal is to be leaders of this country."

Unfortunately for these emboldened secularists, a great many young conservatives have precisely the same goal. Indeed, supporters of the AKP, which has dominated the Turkish parliament for the past five years, have been invigorated by the secularists' opposition. After the Turkish army, a stalwart (if frequently undemocratic) defender of the country's secular heritage, intervened in April to block the party's choice for President, the AKP vowed to leave the decision to the people by calling for early elections. (If the party wins a majority in the parliament, it aims to change the constitution to allow a direct presidential vote.) Hundreds of thousands of volunteers for the AKP are, like their secularist counterparts, pounding the pavement in 81 provinces to rally support.

In an interview with TIME, Turkey's Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul, whose efforts to become President were opposed by the military because his wife wears a head scarf, said he plans to stand for the job again if the party is returned to power. "What we have done in the last five years speaks for itself," he says, noting, for example, his party's move for Turkey to adopt the European Union's body of law. "Is this an Eastern country's legal system? Is this Shari'a? No, it is the European laws! We are upgrading this country. We are the real reformers."

These elections promise to be the most hotly contested in memory, and turnout may reach historic highs. Seaside cottages are renting for half price on the balloting weekend as Turks plan to flock back to the cities to vote. Conspiracy theories are rife as parties accuse each other of undermining Turkish democracy. At stake are policies vitally important in Turkey and beyond, including the question of whether or not to send Turkish forces into Iraq, Turkey's stalled membership talks with the E.U., and economic and democratic policies at home. On most of these issues, Turks are deeply divided.

And nowhere do the fault lines run deeper than among young Turks. A generation not previously known for its activism is rallying around secularist, pro-Islamic or nationalist flags in unprecedented numbers — a political awakening attributed by some to the ideological currents of the present campaign. Their convictions and involvement are key in a nation where nearly 70% of the population is now under 35, the highest proportion among industrialized economies. And political parties are making tremendous efforts to woo the young. An attempt by the AKP to lower the age of eligibility for a seat in parliament from 30 to 25 just narrowly missed being implemented. "We are forcing them to get involved," Gul told TIME. "They are the future of this country." Mark Parris, a former U.S. ambassador to Turkey now at the Brookings Institution in Washington, says 2007 is pivotal: "This could define the kind of country that Turkey is for a generation."

For years, young secularists like Utku Koseoglu took their power for granted. They saw themselves as the rightful heirs to Ataturk, the West-leaning founder of modern Turkey in 1923 who decreed a secular state and exhorted subsequent generations to defend it. Ataturk's "secular establishment," rooted in the military and judiciary, became a kind of ruling class. When political parties strayed too far from secularist principles, the army stepped in — for example, to force an Islamist-led government from power in 1997. Few young Turks felt compelled to vote, the more so after the military banned political parties from campuses following a 1980 coup.

Against that backdrop, the rise of Erdogan's AKP did not at first seem a serious threat. Its landslide victory in 2002 caught many by surprise, but even that victory was chalked up to a protest vote against the incompetence of established political parties, notably the secularist Republican People's Party (CHP). But unlike previous parties with Islamist roots, the AKP has so far steered clear of the kind of overt Islamist doctrine that got its predecessors in trouble. Instead, it has built a record based on reforming Turkish democratic and economic institutions to fit E.U. standards. The ostensible aim has been to boost Turkish prosperity and to bring the nation into Europe. A side effect has been to weaken the role of the military in Turkey's political life and to strengthen religious and minority rights. The result: a de facto challenge to the secular establishment that has dominated Turkish society since the country's foundation.

Secularists are now rising to meet that challenge. The almost visceral response they have to the AKP focuses less on what the party has done than on who its leaders are. Even staunch opponents of the government concede that Erdogan has done some things right. A buoyant economy growing at a 7% clip, lower inflation and joblessness, and the opening of E.U. membership talks after 40 years of waiting would be a credit to any government. Instead, critics stress the alleged long-term Islamist agenda of the party's leaders. The current e-mail and blogging campaign by the young Istanbul Kemalists, for example, is focusing on claims that leaders like Erdogan and Gul are conservative Muslims who have in the past flirted with political Islam.

Both leaders were members of the Welfare Party that was banned in 1997 for undermining Turkey's secular regime. Erdogan was imprisoned a few months later for reading, while mayor of Istanbul, a poem that likened minarets to bayonets. "Democracy is like a street car," Erdogan is alleged to have said in one mailing. "You only ride it to get to your destination." The Kemalists' blogs remind skeptics of the Islamic notion of takiye, according to which it is permissible for devout Muslims to dissimulate in order to achieve their goal. The fact that the party has not yet pursued an Islamist agenda on a national scale is, secularists argue, not proof that it never will. To bolster their argument, the secularists' newspapers zealously publish stories about municipal officials who have imposed Islam on public life by, for example, segregating the sexes at public pools.

Young secularist women say they are particularly worried. Pinar Ozkan, 23, an events organizer who is a member of the Kemalist Politics Group, says her company recently organized a gathering for several junior AKP officials in Istanbul. When she offered them a tray of tea, she claims, they refused to be served by a woman whose hair was uncovered. "I felt like a second-class citizen," says Ozkan, dressed in gold lamé heels, a miniskirt and white tank top. "As a woman in Turkey, my freedom is very important. We owe that freedom to Ataturk. I will never give that up to anyone." Later that night, she gets ready for an antigovernment rally in Istanbul, donning a Halloween-style mask of the mustachioed Turkish founder. "I want to see the world through his eyes," she says. Ozkan, like most secularists, is backing the CHP, which was founded by Ataturk; others support the Nationalist Movement Party, or MHP, though neither has a chance of winning on its own.

AKP officials acknowledge their roots in Islamist parties. But they insist that they have changed, and that they respect Ataturk's separation of mosque and state. Secularist charges of creeping fundamentalism are just a way to scare voters, they say. "It's a witch hunt," says Ali Kemal Eksioglu, 30, an AKP youth leader who has been working to get out the vote in Kadikoy, Istanbul's largest, wealthiest and most traditionally secularist voting district. "I mean, it's 2007, and they are still asking, 'Why is that woman wearing a head scarf?' It's too much." As he sees it, what his party is really about is "tolerance of different lifestyles and economic stability."

Swiftly moving from underdog to favorite in just six years, the AKP has become the party to beat. But its rise, supporters say, has bred misunderstanding. The party appeared on the scene in 2001 as a grassroots movement, going door to door to introduce itself to people individually. But Eksioglu's small army of volunteers in Kadikoy has stopped canvassing like this, he says, because the atmosphere has become too tense. That doesn't mean they're no longer active in the neighborhood, however. Indeed, the party recently opened a branch office in Kadikoy — its bright orange-and-blue party flags fluttering conspicuously over the local Starbucks and its well-heeled clientele. The office is not far from where the Kemalist group meets to plot the AKP's downfall. Eksioglu says he likes to go there to listen to the catcalls from the street: "I don't care about them. I believe in what I am doing."

Eksioglu himself is an example of how the AKP is drawing from an ever wider pool of supporters. Traditionally, AKP supporters hailed from central Anatolia or the sprawling, working-class suburbs of big cities like Istanbul. But Eksioglu is conspicuously uptown. His family's property-development firm has flourished under AKP rule (it has put up four buildings since 2002, vs. none in the previous political term), thanks to a stable economy and lower interest rates that have made buying homes easier for ordinary residents of Istanbul. He now owns an apartment on Baghdad Avenue, the smartest address in the city, lined with designer shops and sushi bars. And while secularists once made fun of AKP officials for their brown, poorly tailored suits, Eksioglu adopts a cooler style with a fashionably unshaven jaw, shorts and a Led Zeppelin T shirt or, while campaigning, a sharp suit. To the consternation of local secularists, plenty of young, prosperous Turks, who also happen to be religious, are rallying to the AKP. One of the best known cafés in the area, in a former Pasha's palace overlooking the Bosporus, a place once reserved for wine-sipping secularists, now serves no alcohol; its female patrons, wealthy as ever, are as likely to cover their hair as not.

To understand why Turks are voting for the AKP in such numbers, visit Pursaklar, a hillside town just outside Ankara in the brown hills of central Anatolia. Ten years ago, the place was an afterthought, its small population made up mostly of poor migrants from rural parts of central and eastern Turkey. Today it is a booming residential center of 120,000, with 10,000 more arriving each year, according to its AKP mayor. The town boasts two new parks, a town square redesigned around an imposing new mosque, and a factory-sized cultural center (with separate facilities for men and women). There are no fewer than 14 supermarkets in the town, up from two in 2000.

Locals credit their town's rebirth to AKP policies and, in particular, the party's economic management. After a financial crisis in 2001 caused Turkey's currency to lose half its value, the country introduced IMF-inspired reforms that the AKP has doggedly maintained. As a result, Turkey has not only experienced impressive gdp growth, but has rid itself of the hyperinflation that plagued it for most of the 1990s. For real estate agent Abdullah Cam, 23, who says his family firm has tripled revenues in the past five years, the AKP has been "great for business." Down the road, Mehmet Goktas, 41, agrees. Sales at the supermarket he owns have more than doubled in the same period. "We've moved from an inflation-based economy to a normal one," he says. Both Cam and Goktas consider themselves "very religious" and both come from conservative families who were drawn to the AKP for its "Islamic values," but it's the party's economic record that has sustained their support.

Secularists may fear for their Western lifestyles, but very devout youngsters, for their part, see in the AKP potential relief from Turkey's remorselessly secularist laws. Mine Karakas, 27, has worn a head scarf since the age of 10 and as a result was prevented from attending university. (Head scarves are banned in public buildings.) She protested the law, picketing the university gates for two years, but eventually gave up. She headed to the U.S. to study instead, but returned after 9/11. She now works for a private foundation that operates Muslim orphanages around the world. For her, the religious values of Erdogan and Gul are reassuring: "We feel more comfortable with them." How such sentiments will play out at the polls remains unclear. Public opinion surveys put support for the AKP at 35-42% vs. 18-25% for the CHP and 15-25% for the MHP, an overtly nationalist party that has benefited from Turkish anger over the Iraq war, fears of Kurdish separatism, and frustration over resistance to Turkish membership of the E.U. The two opposition parties have not ruled out forming a coalition in order to replace the AKP — if they get the votes.

One irony is that the policies of the Islamic AKP are significantly more pro-Western than those promised by its secularist and nationalist rivals. A coalition of the MHP and the CHP may keep head scarves out of the presidential mansion, but it might also put the brakes on European-inspired democratic and economic policies, jeopardize talks to join the E.U., and lead to a clampdown on Turkey's Kurdish minorities. The AKP, if elected, vows to press ahead with additional requirements of E.U. accession, whether or not the Europeans are willing to let Turkey join. The party also promises to nearly double personal annual incomes to $10,000, and raise national gdp from $400 billion to $800 billion by the end of its next five-year term. "Then," says Gul, "I don't think France or Austria or anyone else will be able to ignore Turkey."

In the meantime, the nation can take heart from the fact that young Turks are so deeply engaged in determining their country's future. In Kadikoy, Utku Koseoglu says he has no regrets about his decision to stop partying and focus on the less frivolous pleasures of getting out the vote. "Rallies are fun," he says. "It's as if we've all known each other forever. We can thank the AKP for one thing: they got us out in the streets."