The struggle against and for the center-right

After Ankara and Istanbul (see my post on April 29^th), a major demonstration in favor of the secular establishment in Turkey, is now also being held in the Aegean city of Izmir, Turkey's third largest city. As one can see on the pictures, the demonstration is quite similar to the one in Istanbul; beside the usual banners, the main instruments of demonstration are again Turkish flags, portraits of founder Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and war veterans in late Ottoman/early Republican military uniforms. Today, however, I'm not going to complain about nationalism.


Fatih Saribas / Reuters


Hürriyet


Hürriyet

According to news reports, the demonstration is attended by hundreds of thousands of people. An unnamed military officer in Izmir even mentioned a number of 1.5 million. Similar numbers were also mentioned for the demonstrations in Ankara and Istanbul earlier.¹ It should be clear that these demonstrations are not 'just demonstrations'; they are quite significant, they mean something.

Supporters of the current AKP² government have usually claimed that the current resistance to change in Turkey, is simply because the secular elite doesn't want to loose the favorable position that it has had in the past 84 years. This argument would imply that the issue is strictly bound to the elite and that there is a difference between what the elite wants and what the people want.

The huge number of participants in the last three demonstrations indicate that this is not simply a matter of 'an elite resisting change' at all. A considerable part of the population does favor the secular establishment and does believe that its way of life might be in danger - perhaps not immediately, but in the longer term. Even though the AKP has often expressed its attachment to democracy and the secular establishment in Turkey and has claimed to be a center-rightist or moderate conservative party, the secularists have never really trusted the party. ³

On the other hand, another considerable part of the population has indeed considered the AKP as a party of the center-right. It is this fact that complicates the Turkish political landscape.

Since the beginning of the multi-party system in Turkey in 1946, the Turkish political scene has been characterized by a struggle between the center-right and the center-left. The center-right has usually been the dominant political wing in Turkey. Its main opponent, the center-left, won elections only a couple of times.
The center-right was in the fifties represented by the Demokrat Parti, in the sixties and seventies by Adalet Partisi (Justice Party), in the eighties by Anavatan Partisi (Motherland Party) and in the nineties by Doğru Yol Partisi (True Path Party) and again Anavatan Partisi. Now it seems that this task is being carried out by the AKP.

So, in a way, the traditional political struggle between the center-right and the center-left is being continued as before. The situation is just more complicated now, because the current party claiming to represent the center-right has itself actually no origins in the center-right, but rather in the religious right.

The center-left has reacted to this situation by adjusting its political rhetoric to attract not only leftist voters (who are already secularist) but also the secularist rightist voters. On the other hand, the traditional center-right, being pushed out of the political scene by AKP in the first half of this decade, now wants to return and to regain its position. In its campaign the traditional center-right too uses the secularist rethoric, as they want to create the impression that it is exactly this point that distinguishes the traditional center-right from AKP.

And there they are, hundreds of thousands demonstrating against the AKP government and in favor of secularism! Among them is the center-left, struggling against the center-right... And among them is also the traditional center-right, struggling for the center-right.⁴

1. "Turks stage rally against Islamic-rooted government", in International Herald Tribune, 13 May 2007; available at http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/05/13/europe/EU-GEN-Turkey-Secular-Rally.php (accessed on 05/13/07)
"Turks rally in Izmir despite blast", in Al Jazeera, 13 May 2007; available at http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/476B952C-8237-4629-9369-77DF4E1A7BC0.htm (accessed on 05/13/07)
2. Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, Justice and Development Party.
3. The reason for this is that the AKP was founded by former members of the Fazilet Partisi (Virtue Party) and the Refah Partisi (Welfare Party) , the former being the successor of the latter. Both parties were suspected of anti-secular tendencies and were subsequently closed down by court decision. The AKP was founded in 2001 as a center-rightist or moderate conservative party, but with the previous political affiliations of its founders still fresh in the memory, the six years since its foundation just haven't been enough to convince secularists of this change in political orientation.
4. These demonstrations are not organized by political parties, but by civil society organizations. There are those who want to depict the demonstrations as pro-center-left, but indubitably the demonstrations are also attended by rightist secularists.