Turkey's attempted stronghold on Laïcité; ban on religion in vain?
Diana van Vugt
From the sturdy opposition of the recently elected French president Nicolas Sarkozy to Turkey's possible future EU membership, one would not guess that the two countries share one important constitutional feature that is held sacrosanct by both. That feature is laicism; the strict division between state and religion. Moreover, during recent years, in both countries, the constitutional principle of laicism has been provoking similar media attracting controversies over the wearing of Islamic headscarves in public space and government duty. The term laicism tends more towards a philosophy of state a-theism then 'just' secularism, which merely refers to the principle to treat all belief systems equally. On top of that, laicite requires the state, and preferably the rest of the public sphere, to be neutral, that is: religion-free. The principle of laicite presumes it to be the highest community interest to keep the state and public sphere detached from belief systems, other than the liberal political philosophy that grounds it.
Laicism is sturdily grounded in liberal political philosophy, which seeks the lowest common dominator, as John Rawls (1921 - 2002) puts it, as the founding principle of a political society of free and equal individuals. The lowest common dominator is held to reside in the liberal principles of freedom and equality. The rationale of the principle of the lowest common dominator is that any moral statement on top of that, possibly results in political coercion and thus an infringement of the principles of freedom and equality, which only allow for a pluralist and open public sphere. Liberal political philosophy has it grounds in the Enlightenment philosophy and sciences that emphasized objectivity, empiricism and human agency, daring worldviews based on divine laws and destiny.
As a constitutional principle laicism is imbued with a history of conflict. The religious wars in Western Europe during the 16th and 17th centuries caused Thomas Hobbes (1588 - 16769) to reflect on humans as being naturally inclined to mutual aggression. His famous pondering that man is a wolf to his fellow-men came to characterize his pessimist perception on the nature of mankind. Moreover, since most armed conflicts had religious motives, Thomas Hobbes was one of the first political philosophers to express the idea that the state should not express preference to a particular religious denomination. In Hobbesian political philosophy, a strong state should protect men against himself with dictatorial law and order. Though, the presumption that citizens would have consensually transferred their natural right to freedom to the state for this purpose became the axiom of liberal political philosophy.
The idea of state secularism further developed in liberal political theories, of which the social contract philosophers, like John Locke (1632 - 1704) and Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712 - 1778), are classic examples. The neutrality of the state becomes to relate to positive values like societal pluralism and freedom of religion. Most liberal democratic constitutional regimes have some kind of clause on the separation of state and religion, though in most cases the separation is far from absolute. For instance, the Finnish state privileges the Evangelic Lutheran church; the taxation right of the church is only a prime example. Also the specific legal status of religious associations privileges them to other civil society organizations. For example, humanist societies do not have the right to marry people legally.
This kind of privileges collide with the foundational equality axiom of liberal democracy, which should at least not discriminate amongst civil society organizations concerning world view, whether religious or secular. That is: grant equal rights or none other than to any other association, whether it concerns a cooking club or Lutheran church. It might indeed seem that the problem of discrimination and complex distribution of rights is most pragmatically and elegantly solved if there is a strict constitutional separation between state and religion. Though, the recent history of the Turkish presidential elections shows a more complex picture.
The Turkish republic, founded by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (1881 - 1938) in 1923, is one of the few examples of a strict constitutional laicism. With the contemporary fear for the Islam in Western Europe, there is much sympathy for the Turkish system, especially since the majority of the population is Muslim. While being reluctant to declare ancient Christian blasphemy laws at odds with the freedom of expression, the European Court of Human Rights has been defending Turkey's state secularism with rigor at cost of the freedoms of expression and religion of Muslim petitioners. Especially the case concerning the constitutional ban on the orthodox Islamic Refah (Welfare) party has been getting much publicity (European Court of Human Rights, Refah Partisi and others vs. Turkey, judgment of 31 July 2001, European Court of Human Rights, Refah Partisi and others vs. Turkey, judgment of 2003, Grand Chamber). The ECHR reaffirmed the ban of the Turkish constitutional court by declaring the Islamic character and goals of the Refah party a danger to the liberal secular tradition of Europe. Since the political Islam seemed on the rise in Turkey, the constitutional court had been justified in its stronghold on the secularist principle, imbued in the Turkish constitution. The ECHR reaffirmed state secularism as a protection against theocracy and religious conflict.
But what if the enforcement of state secularism collides with the democratic choice of the citizenry? By the time of its banishment, the Refah party was leading the election polls with a large margin and would thus likely have become the leading party in the new government coalition. This question rose again with the recent Turkish presidential elections. The leading AK (Justice and Development) is an Islamic party as well, though has been proven rather moderate during the last governmental term. Under prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan Turkey flourished economically and has been pushing through major legal reforms to classify for EU membership. However, once Erdogan nominated former exterior affairs minister Abdullah Gül to run for president in May, crowds hit the street protesting against the prospect of a future president being practicing Muslim.
Critics and protesters feared that it would be the first step towards theocracy, alleging that the AK party would have a 'second agenda' to turn Turkey into an Islamist regime. Güls first bid for presidency was blocked by the Constitutional Court. During the course of the constitutional conflict, the army threatened to defend the secular state with force, if necessary. The army still plays a powerful role in Turkish politics and is renown to be a bulwark of secularists. The political deadlock eventually led to early parliamentary elections on 22 July. The latter were required for a 'second reading' of a proposed constitutional reform that would, amongst others, allow the presidential candidates to be chosen directly by the people instead of indirectly through nomination by the executive.
Especially under scrutiny were Güls alleged former affiliations with fundamentalist Islamic organizations and his membership of the banished Refah party. Another issue of heated discussion concerned the Islamic headscarf of the future first lady, Güls wife Hayrünnisa Gül. Not only considered critics the wearing of a hijab or Islamic headscarf in a public function a violation the principle of laicism, they also stressed out the meaning of the hijab as a symbol of political Islam. However, Gül himself declared that he had no purpose of violating nor abolishing the principle of state secularism.
The criticism and fears of the protesters did not turn out to represent the majority opinion, since the AK party gloriously won the parliamentary elections on 22 July. Following this electoral victory for the AK party, Abdullah Gül was elected to be president on 28 August. He
was sworn in as the new Turkish president at the same day. Since then protests against the new president seemed to have largely vanished. Public attention, nationally and internationally, has meanwhile turned towards the Kurdish question again. Surges of Kurdish separatists close by the border with Iraq led the Turkish government to its controversial military operation in the bordering region with Iraq.
Meanwhile, the interesting question lingers on whether laicism, invented as principle against social oppression and conflict, could and should be enforced 'with the sword'. Isn't that the first step towards secular fundamentalism and secular dictatorship? Here the thin border between democracy and dictatorship is touched upon. Isn't this border crossed when one is forced to be free, if this freedom entails a fixed pre-conception of its content? It is no coincidence to till today political theorists debate about the question whether Jean Jacques Rousseau's statement that citizens should be forced to be free if not by their own conscience inclined to secular liberalism, indicates a trait of dictatorship in his theory. In other words, isn't it true, that with the AK election victory and installation of Gül as president, democracy won in Turkey?
