Erdogan Is Overturning the Modernity of Ataturk Rule by Changing Hagia Sophia Into A Mosque
A 19th-century illustration of the interior of the Hagia Sophia, before
it became a museum in 1935.
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By
Ayesha Siddiqa
17 July,
2020
A friend
recently complained why I had not very vocally shed tears for Recep Tayyip
Erdogan’s decision to convert the Hagia Sophia museum into a mosque. I had
cried my tears years ago on observing the inevitable – the slow rise of
Islamism in Turkey as a reaction to military authoritarianism of decades.
File
photo of Turkey President Recep Tayyip Erdogan | Simon Dawson | Bloomberg
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I had
observed in 2007, while writing the first draft of my book Military Inc.:
Inside Pakistan’s Military Economy, that the three Muslim countries with
rampant military authoritarianism — Turkey, Pakistan and Indonesia – were also
nations where religious zealotry had gradually increased. The three militaries
had built big financial empires, which was not about the armed forces making
profit but about gaining autonomy that encouraged greater authoritarianism and
led to strange reactions from the society. Religious radicalism was certainly
one of the visible impacts.
Ataturk
Laid the Foundation
At the end
of the day, the conversion, destruction, or rebuilding of places of worship all
around the world are mostly driven by petty political interests of leaders who
gain from religious radicalism. What they do with buildings that are places of
worship is just an indicator of what they have already done to the societies.
To
understand what Recep Tayyip Erdogan has done with Hagia Sophia today, we have
to have the courage to admit what Mustafa Kemal Ataturk imposed on Turkish
society nearly a century ago, which most secular-minded people don’t complain
about.
The rise of
Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party, the AKP, which is the nub of the issue
complicated by its increasing need to demonstrate its Islamism, is attributable
to Turkey’s experience with years of civil-military authoritarianism that goes
back to Ataturk himself. Notwithstanding people’s fascination with the founder
of ‘secular Turkey’, there is no denying that a new cultural construct was
forced on the country’s citizens in as crude a fashion as Erdogan’s effort is
to turn it around. Both the founder of modern Turkey and the one bringing
religious nationalism crucified people’s cultural identity in their own ways.
Ataturk
certainly saved Turkey, or whatever remained of the Ottoman empire, from being
further sliced and created a new state. It was then important for him to
abolish the Caliphate, which he did after getting rid of the Sultanate. Reading
H.C. Armstrong’s biography of Ataturk, published in 1932, one realises that
Ataturk was initially cautious against scrapping the Caliphate because of
people’s attachment with it. Later, its abolishment was justified on the ground
that it posed danger to Turkish State and its nationhood. The people went
along. It was later that Ataturk secularised the State and enforced Kemalism on
people who were not prepared for it.
Ataturk had
promised to “tear religion from Turkey as one might tear the throttling ivy
away to save a young tree”. In the process, though, he enforced a new culture
that made people abandon what had been theirs for centuries. From enforcing the
wearing of the fez with the Western hat, which men had to scramble to find only
to end up wearing women’s hats, to changing the script – he brought a shift in
the cultural values by conquering the system but without being able to ‘conquer
the people’, which was his one gripe.
A Pakistani
friend, who had visited Turkey during the 1980s, told me about the longing in
the eyes of ordinary Turks for their traditional script. As he was reading a
book in Urdu, many Turks around him requested him to write their names for them
in a script that was snatched from them. This was brute modernity imposed by an
authoritarian military, which had been entrusted with the task of protecting
Ataturk’s cultural revolution.
Power
Grab by The Military
After
Mustafa Kemal Ataturk’ death, the Turkish Armed Forces became the guardian of
both the Turkish Republic and the leader’s principles, which convoluted the
entire secularisation process. Like all powerful military bureaucracies, over
the years, the attention drifted away from the principles towards securing
institutional power. The principles, in fact, became the justification for
greater military influence.
The first
coup of 1960 resulted in the execution of Prime Minister Adnan Menderes. The
military inserted itself further into the civilian structure by establishing
the National Security Council in 1961. Interestingly, since the failed 1980
coup to assassinate then-President Zia ul-Haq, Pakistan’s armed forces have
struggled to establish a similar council to further integrate themselves into
formal State power. The Indonesian military, on the other hand, formalised its
role of protecting the State with endorsements in the constitution of 1945, the
Pancasila (the state ideology), and SaptaMarga, the code of honour of the armed
forces.
Turkey
witnessed another coup in 1971, but the military intervention in 1980 by General
Kenan Evren had a greater influence in turning the society towards its current
form. There was massive State violence and use of force against student unions
and Left groups in the country. Interestingly, Pakistan’s Zia ul-Haq had
visited Turkey during this period and inquired about the military’s ways to
deal with the campus unrest, according to Pakistani
journalist-turned-politician Mushahid Hussain. There were lessons to be learnt
by both the militaries that used brutality to their heart’s content. They
certainly learned from each other. For example, Turkish military followed
Pakistani model in setting up its military business foundation.
But more
importantly, a common measure adopted by both Zia ul-Haq and Kenan Evren was
infiltrating university campuses with Islamists. Sources with whom I discussed
this history talked about how radical religious values were encouraged in
Turkey to push back any resistance from the Left, similar to how the student
wing of the Jamaat-e-Islami, which has already entered into many educational
institutions in Pakistan, have been further encouraged.
Mix Of
Military Greed With Religious Radicalism
While
Pakistan military’s goal was never to protect secularism or Islamism, it had a
major role in creating and then protecting religious nationalism, which I call
Pak-Islamism. Similarly, the Turkish military, during the 1980s, was no longer
the guardian of secularism but its own power. Furthermore, the partnership with
the US to fight the Communist Soviet Union made it more important to encourage
religious politics in both countries. The 1980s is a critical decade in pushing
religious radicalism at a faster pace in both Pakistan and Turkey, driven by
their militaries’ ambitions rather than society’s instincts.
The intertwining
of religious radicalism with the military’s greed for power made religion the
natural space for political dialogue. Erdogan’s AKP grew out of that very
space, which it is trying to claim further by its questionable move to turn
Hagia Sophia into a mosque. In Turkey, the military and Ataturk produced an
authoritarianism that eventually devoured it. Erdogan is simply a new
replacement. In Pakistan, where the military is both the beneficiary and
producer of a different historical experience, it’s an overall radicalism that
grew instead of one particular religious party getting strengthened.
A sadder
conclusion is that while public attention is focused on the fate of one
monument, much more has been lost in Turkey. The decision on Hagia Sophia will
not change perhaps for decades. One can complain but also lament about the
tears that were never shed while Turkey was pushed in this direction by State
authoritarianism.
Ayesha
Siddiqa is research associate at SOAS, London and author of Military Inc.
Original
Headline: Erdogan’s Turkey is on Pakistan-Indonesia track. Mixing military
greed and radical Islam
Source: The Print
URL: https://newageislam.com/interfaith-dialogue/erdogan-overturning-modernity-ataturk-rule/d/122392
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