Religion and Politics

While the mullahs of the Republican Party got together tonight to chat about forcing religion into the public square, in Turkey they are actually working hard to keep it out.

Turkish lawmakers on Wednesday set national elections for July 22, four months earlier than planned, and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s party submitted a package of bills that would bring it advantages in the coming political battle.

Elections had been scheduled for Nov. 4, but on Tuesday, Turkey’s highest court annulled Parliament’s vote for president, effectively blocking Mr. Erdogan’s candidate, Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul, a close ally with a background in Islamic politics. The ruling created a standoff between Mr. Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party and the secular establishment.

The secular establishment in Parliament blocked the Islamic candidate from taking the Presidency, with the tacit support of the military behind them. Now, the establishment probably just fears the more popular AKP Party, led by Ergodan, from getting power, and are using the religion card as a means to that end. This is a good take:

Turkey's 2002 election was a shocker, with AKP winning by far the largest share of the vote, and the results produced Turkey's first single party government since 1987 and the country's first two-party parliament in 48 years. It's vital to note, however, that AKP won not because of its religious conservatism but because the secular coalition was viewed as corrupt, out of touch, and stale. AKP and it's leader, current Prime Minister Erdogan, ran on a platform of reform, economic development, and technocracy. More importantly, AKP has mostly delivered on those promises.

This has occurred repeatedly, and yet people still don't understand it: in developing areas, especially the Middle East, the establishment secular rulers are thrown out for domestic reasons -- usually economic and developmental -- and replaced by reformers who happen to be religious conservatives. These groups often build grassroot support, provide services that the government neglects, and quietly but effectively grow their networks from the bottom up. Hamas in the Palestinian territories. Ahmadinejad in Iran. Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. AKP in Turkey. Further, many of those crappy secular governments are/were being propped up by the U.S., to the detriment of the nations' people. Turkey, which is, admittedly, uniquely founded upon the principles of secularism, is now struggling with just how religious politicians can be, and the results will be very interesting.

No, these aren't the brightest days for democracy in Turkey. But it's interesting that the separation of church and state, or mosque and state, can be used to appeal to the citizens of a predominantly Muslim nation. Religious freedom is typically strongest in those countries without a state religion and without a theocratic government; take for example the fact that Iraq has been added to a religious freedom watchlist because of the hardships that come with worship there. A country that values one religion over another will always suffer from this ignominy. A country that offers both freedom of religion and freedom from religion will eventually be more religious and more free. There are forces in this country trying to dismantle that wall between church and state, and in so doing they plant the seeds of their own destruction.