Yesterday, Sunday, Turkey elected a new president, and it looks like his name will be Recep Tayyip Erdoğan again. While that election wasn't quite as a foregone conclusion as Erdoğan might have wished, now fifteen years in power, he is clearly the most influential politician Turkey has had in a long time. One could even say that Erdoğan is the most influential Turkish politician since Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the Turkish Republic himself. He is following in the footsteps of his predecessor.
Erdoğan is often portrayed in the media as the blatant counterpart of Atatürk. With his pro-Islamic and sometimes neo-Ottoman airs, Erdoğan seems to be breaking with large parts of the secularism prescribed by Atatürk. At the latest since his attacks on the army leadership as a result of the attempted coup in 2016, the Turkish army under Erdoğan is no longer the guardian of Kemalism that it used to be. Nevertheless, Erdoğan is more of a political successor to Atatürk than his counterpart. The "father of the Turks" is also his political father and predecessor.
Turkey as a pioneer of populism
In the West in particular, Erdoğan is given all sorts of unflattering titles. Dictator, autocrat, autocrat, but lately very often as a populist. He is in a row with people like Donald Trump or Viktor Orbán. Although this comparison is not only flawed at first glance, it still has a certain justification in relation to Turkey. Because populism has been known there for a long time. Yes, it is even part of Turkey's official state ideology, as originally outlined by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.
Turkey has been an exceptional state since its creation in 1923. At the time, two main types of government were common in Europe. Either you were a Western democracy, like Great Britain or France, or you were pursuing some form of authoritarian rule, mostly infused with right-wing ideas. This political expression was particularly widespread in Central and Eastern Europe. Later, of course, many of these autocratic regimes were replaced by fascism. In the Soviet Union there was also the left counterpart of the authoritarian state in the form of socialism and communism. However, the young Republic of Turkey opted for none of these forms of government. Instead, Atatürk developed his own ideology. Today we know it as Kemalism.
The six arrows of Kemalism
With the invention of Kemalism began Turkey's lifelong love affair with populism, which continues to shape it to this day under Erdoğan. Populism was even one of the six pillars of the Turkish system under Ataturk. Overall, his system consists of six pillars, the so-called six arrows of Kemalism. These are:
- republicanism
- laicism
- populism
- revolutionism
- nationalism
- and statism
Let's take a closer look at these partly hollow buzzwords. In this context, republicanism means that sovereignty in Turkey emanates from the people. Laicism means the separation of church and state, revolutionism is a vague commitment to ongoing political reform and statism means that the state can intervene in the economy from time to time. Among the six pillars, nationalism and populism are particularly interesting.
Nationalism has already caused numerous problems for Turkey over the past hundred years, since the principle only recognizes one state-supporting people, the Turks. You can imagine how well that goes down with Kurds and Alevis. I'm not even talking about Armenians. Populism then says that all politics has to happen in the interests of the people. We have just heard how this people is defined. Together, the two ideas result in a somewhat explosive mixture.
The fine line to dictatorship
Kemalism and its six arrows did not become the state ideology of the new Turkish state that was founded in 1923 overnight. In 1935, Atatürk's party, the CHP, first adopted his six arrows in their party program. That was not entirely insignificant now, because apart from the CHP there were no parties at the time. It's hard to blame Atatürk for that. He had never claimed that democracy was one of the six arrows... Two years later, in 1937, Kemalism was included in the Turkish constitution and thus officially became the state ideology. By and large it has remained so to this day.
Of course, what Kemalism brought with it, even before Erdoğan, was a certain inclination towards dictatorship. For many years after Atatürk's death, the CHP was the only real party in the country. And this position even resulted from the six arrows of Kemalism! It was the principles of nationalism and populism that were allowed to serve for the supremacy of the CHP. The national community was represented in its entirety by the CHP. She was by nature the representative of the people. So why would you need more than one party when it fully represents the people anyway? Great logic!
Over the decades, the ideology of Kemalism, the Turkish unitary state with one ethnic group and one people, has been defended by the CHP and – should that not work out – by the Turkish army. Whenever the generals felt that the political leaders were deviating from these principles, there was simply a coup. As a result, Turkey periodically transitioned from semi-authoritarian leaders to military dictatorship and back. It wasn't just politicians from the CHP who were in power at the time. Because the military staged a coup every ten years anyway, it didn't really matter in the end. It was only Recep Tayyip Erdoğan who was able to permanently break this cycle.
Erdogan. A proud son of Atatürk
But how does Erdoğan now fit into the picture of Turkey, which is shaped by Kemalism? Is he really the wrecking ball of the Kemalist state because he attacks the cornerstone of secularism and keeps longing for Ottoman conditions? I would say quite the opposite! Erdoğan's logic is closer to Atatürk's than was the case with many of his predecessors. Strict secularism aside, Erdoğan is sticking to the political playbook written by his great founder of the state in almost every respect.
Republicanism in the sense of popular sovereignty is one of Erdoğan's favorite topics anyway. Whenever he or his government is attacked, he simply refers to the attackers as enemies of the people. The putschists of summer 2016? enemies of the people! The West? enemies of the people! protesters on the streets? Of course, enemies of the people! For him the state is the same as the people. After yesterday's election victory, Erdoğan repeated it again:The winners of the election are "democracy, the will of the people and the people themselves" , he said. This has little to do with our understanding of democracy. When it comes to nationalism, too, Erdoğan can hardly be accused of straying too far from Turkish tradition. In recent years he has been even more aggressive towards the Kurds than many of his predecessors.
Even Erdoğan's quest for new imperial greatness and his dreams of pan-Turkish expansion towards Central Asia is, to some extent, a reflection of Atatürk. Even if he, as the founder of the republic, will probably not go down in history as the greatest supporter of the Ottoman Empire, Atatürk also harbored pan-Turkish ideas. He supposedly even believed that the Turks were descended from Genghis Khan or even Attila and were the oldest people in the world. Even Erdoğan can learn something from this madness...
We will probably be able to experience the learning process live over the next five years. And then Turkey's centenary celebrations are coming up. Until then, Erdoğan should officially present himself as the son of Atatürk.
It's all well and good if you can draw historical parallels for today's world, and it's even nicer if Erdoğan can learn something from his country's father. But you're probably wondering if we can't learn something from history, too? You're in luck! This is exactly what I talked about in detail in an article of this blog. Hopefully we'll see each other again next week on the podcast. Until then, take care!