ISTANBUL, 23 November 2003 — The targets so far have been British and Jewish, but the next major victim of the deadly bombings jolting this nation that straddles two continents might be the delicate political balance of its Islamic government.
Struggling to prove itself democratic and moderate — Turkey’s Islamic government suddenly finds itself compelled to battle Islamic bombers. To do that without alienating a core following, while also keeping a restive anti-Islamist Turkish Army at bay, will prove a formidable task for Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The very nature of Turkey’s evolving identity might be at stake. As NATO’s only Muslim member was pulling itself out of a long economic decline and marching steadily toward Western-style democracy, it has been hit with the deadliest violence seen here in decades.
Its embrace of the West, experts say, is part of what has made Turkey a target — its destabilization the goal of the attackers.
“Turkey’s grand experiment, where an Islamic party is trying to redefine itself as a conservative democratic one, is now under threat,’’ said Bulent Aliriza, head of the Turkey project of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Erdogan himself had defined it this way: If he and his party could show that Islam and democracy were compatible, he said in a major speech last year, the clash of civilizations was avoidable. Now Erdogan must demonstrate to a skeptical world community that he is up to the task and willing to help combat Islamic militancy. How he does that without reverting to Turkey’s past, harsh tactics in crushing dissent represents a new and perhaps even more delicate balancing act.
Inevitably, he must enlist the military with whom relations are strained and whose power he was in the process of curtailing. Yet a broad crackdown could play into the hands of the extremists who blew up two synagogues, the British Consulate and one of the world’s largest banks in attacks within five days of each other.
Failure to act decisively also poses its own set of risks for the government’s stability. Thus far, Erdogan has pledged to pursue and strike down “like a fist’’ those responsible for the attacks, which on Thursday killed at least 32 people.
“Those who bloodied this holy day and massacred innocent people will account for it in both worlds,’’ Erdogan said. “They will be damned until eternity.’’
Desperate to be accepted into the European Union, Turkey’s government for the past year has taken dramatic steps to bring its civil rights, political structures and its military into line with EU standards.
This has meant, on paper at least, a significant harnessing of military power and the granting of cultural rights to the nation’s long-repressed Kurdish minority, including permission to broadcast in the Kurdish language. Just this month, the government drafted a bill that would force openness on a top military advisory council that wields enormous influence. These reforms have not set well with the army, an omnipotent organization that sees itself as the guarantor of Turkey’s secular system and unaccustomed to having its wings clipped.
Mistrust of Erdogan’s party, elected in a landslide victory last year, runs deep among the generals and colonels, and they might be eager to find an opening to slap down the civilians in charge. But experts believe the army, which has unseated four elected governments in four decades, most recently in 1997, is still a long way away from moving to overthrow Erdogan. First of all, his Justice and Development Party holds a two-thirds majority in the Parliament; the army has always been keen to heed public opinion. Second, the military arguably could be held as accountable for failing to pick up on terrorist plans as were the civilian security services. Faruk Demir, head of the Higher Strategy Center think tank in Ankara, said the association between Islam and terrorism has put enormous pressure on the government, caught between toeing the anti-terrorist line that pleases Washington, D.C., and the West while not repelling domestic religious conservatives.
“It’s a double-edged sword,’’ he said. “The government will need to strike a balance, one that reflects Turkey’s own particular brand of moderate Islam that distinguishes it from the rest of the Islamic world.’’
