The Future Of Turkey

Since I started this blog in January 2017, I have repeatedly made two points about politics in the second decade of the twenty-first century. The first point is that, broadly speaking, all religions are the same and, like the late, great Christopher Hitchens, I believe that religion “poisons everything” it touches. This is especially true of the three Abrahamic monotheisms which have far more in common that their most demented sectarians would acknowledge. They all worship an aggressively male deity who watches and judges your behaviour and who will sentence you to an eternity of pain and suffering if you dare to break one of his petty rules.

 

The second point I have made is my distaste for the racist and divisive cult of identity politics that has been embraced by people across the West who loudly proclaim themselves to be ‘progressives.’ Politicians, journalists and campaigners who are vociferous in their condemnation of racism, homophobia and sexism have often found themselves supporting people who are deeply racist, disgustingly anti-gay and disturbingly misogynistic. Practices and attitudes that would be roundly condemned if they took place in the UK, the United States or elsewhere in the West are excused as ‘cultural’ and opposition to them as ‘colonialism’ or ‘imperialism.’ If female genital mutilation, forced marriage or ‘honour’ killings were being carried out by Westerners I’m pretty sure the usual ‘progressives’ would be up in arms. But as both perpetrators and victims tend to be non-white and non-Western, there is little outcry. One might be tempted to label this as ‘the racism of low expectations,’ if one were of the Everything Is Racist type that rules at Jimmy Saville House. Whatever it is, and I am reluctant to use accusations of racism with the scattergun abandon some commentators do, it betrays an extraordinarily patronising attitude towards non-white non-Westerners.

 

And then there is Turkey.

 

Turkey has been a secular republic since the abolition of the sultanate in 1922 and of the caliphate in 1924. Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the Turkish Republic, was contemptuous of the backwardness of much of Ottoman society and the Islamic religion; I shared a quote from him here. The fact that Ataturk died of cirrhosis of the liver aged 57 suggests he did not take much notice of the rules spouted by “lazy and good-for-nothing priests.” His republic was based on Turkish nationalism rather than grandiose claims of leadership of all the faithful. Interestingly, Turkey was the first majority Muslim country to recognise Israel in March 1949.

 

The current leader of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been in power as prime minister or president since 2003. He leads the avowedly Islamist Justice and Development Party and has spoken of his wish to raise a ‘pious generation’ in secular Turkey. Controversially, his wife wears a headscarf – a garment that used to be banned in all government buildings in Turkey. Erdogan has accumulated immense power since taking over the (formerly figurehead) presidency, especially since the comic events surrounding the so-called ‘coup’ of 2016.

 

Where to begin with Erdogan’s crimes and misdemeanours? He has allegedly engaged in illegal oil trading with ISIS; he has waged a campaign of ethnic cleansing against Turkey’s Kurdish minority; he has denied the Armenian Genocide and used the vague crime of ‘insulting Turkishness’ against anyone who dares to air uncomfortable historical facts; and he has fired and/or locked up state employees who ‘insult’ him. He has also (allegedly) exhorted billions of Euros from the European Union by threatening to allow refugees to pass through his country to Greece. This is also a man who, at a time of unprecedented climate change and overpopulation, demands Turkish women have five children!

 

Call me naive but I have travelled to about thirty countries and as far as I am concerned, human beings are the same wherever you go. They have the same strengths and weaknesses and the same broad desires; people are most interested in their own family and friends and want what is best for those closest to them. So what of Erdogan’s hope for a ‘pious generation’ in secular Turkey?

 

I was astonished to read an article on the Islamophile BBC’s website entitled The young Turks rejecting Islam. The article begins with a young woman who says her headscarf is the “only thing left that connects me to Islam.” She goes on to say that…

 

“…I do not know whether there is a God or not, and I really do not care.”

 

She is not alone. The article discusses a professor who has been quoted as saying that more than a dozen headscarf wearing students have come up to him to declare that they are atheists. In another part of the article, there are claims that students at religious high schools are moving towards deism because of the “inconsistencies within Islam.”

 

One of the fondest of hopes throughout human history of real progressives and liberals has been to free people from the shackles of religious dogma. I have found the resurgence of aggressive and intolerant religion over the past thirty years profoundly depressing. I find it even more depressing when the racist apostles of identity politics label people with a certain religion because of their ethnicity. Reading this article gives me hope that the loud and unpleasant voices emanating from Turkey and other ‘Muslim’ countries do not represent the true opinions of the vast majority of their population. Perhaps one day, Allah will join Zeus, Odin and Quetzalcoatl in the dustbin of failed ideologies.

 

I’d like to end with a quote from a Turkish college student called Leyla. Her simple statement of the obvious is more powerful than all the prayers and sermons of the religious bigots who claim to speak on the name of the ‘Muslim’ people of Turkey…

 

“One day, as I was going down the road to the market, I took my headscarf off and never put it back again. My father does not know I am a deist. If he knew, I fear he might prevent my little sister from having a graduate degree. ‘Your sister went to university, and this is what happened to her,’ he might say. I didn’t ask God to create me, so God cannot ask anything from me in return. I have a right to live as free as a bird.”