Friday, May 22, 2009
Turkey's 'Post-Islamist' Ruling Party Undermines Secular System in Pursuit of 'Islamic Democracy'
By W. J. Korab-Karpowicz
EDITOR'S NOTE: The following article, by an international relations professor and former diplomat, is an abridged version of a much longer essay. Click here to read the original work, an in-depth analysis of Turkey's "post-Islamist" ruling party.
The Justice and Development Party, known by its Turkish acronym, AKP, is Turkey 's incumbent political party. The AKP portrays itself as a moderate, conservative, pro-Western party that advocates a liberal market economy and Turkish membership in the European Union. In fact, Turkey 's AKP stands within the tradition of political Islam. The party supports Turkey ’s integration with the EU, foreign investments and privatization; at the same time, the party undermines secularism, the fundamental constitutional principle of the Turkish state. The AKP uses its pro-Western rhetoric and pro-business attitude as an instrument to achieve its political goals. It attempts to replace Turkey 's secular identity with an Islamic religious identity, thus opening the gate for the country’s complete transformation, from a secular to a religious state. Without the secularism that the Kemalist establishment defends, Turkey will be neither democratic nor truly pro-European. Therefore, the AKP does not deserve the support it gets from the Western press and EU politicians.
Ideological Conflict
The ideological conflict between the AKP and the Kemalist establishment is first of all about different views of secularism. The AKP’s leadership rejects the assertive, Kemalistconcept of secularism that is written into the Turkish constitution and which they regard as “undemocratic and in contradiction to human rights and freedoms.” Instead of assertive secularism, they support liberal secularism, according to which, for example, wearing Islamic headscarf or using other forms of religious veiling does not violate the secular character of the public sphere, but is a matter of individual preference and should be allowed as a matter of free expression. Since liberal secularism is closer to today’s Western political experience than the assertive secularism, the AKP’s leaders are hailed as post-Islamist. This image is strengthened by their pragmatic, pro-business and pro-market economy attitudes, which have been adopted on purely instrumental grounds.
The AKP party leadership has realized “that having a democratic and European agenda would open a new path for transforming Turkish domestic politics.” In particular, it could restrain the political influence of the military. To weaken the position of the army, which has a constitutional obligation to defend the secular character of the Turkish state, is a logical Islamist goal. Consequently, one can argue that in spite of its pro-European image and rhetoric, the AKP cannot truly be regarded as a post-Islamist, but rather as an Islamist political party. The party’s real goal is not Westernization, but a new synthesis that can be inferred from the AKP’s concept of “conservative democracy,” as opposed to liberal democracy, in which conservative/local (Islamic) values are combined with democratic (modern) values, and the end product is an Islamic democracy.
Furthermore, it would not be without some justification to say that it shows complete political naiveté on the part of Western press and European politicians to in effect undermine the basis of secularization in Turkey by giving their support to the AKP and by repeatedly calling, as EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn has done, for limitations on the Turkish military’s political power.Thursday, May 21, 2009
Arab States More Alarmed than US by Iran Proxy
Arab countries are apparently more alarmed than the Obama administration by the regional rise of nuclear-arming Iran and its Islamist, Shiite proxy, Hezbollah--poised to take power in Lebanon.
The AP's Hamza Hendawi reports from Beirut:Arab governments are starting to see the fingerprints of Lebanon's Hezbollah all over the Middle East, adding to their growing alarm over Iran's power and a widening Sunni-Shiite rift.
The worry comes at a time when Hezbollah, a Shiite militant group and political party backed by Iran, already is expected to make strong political gains inside Lebanon in June 7 elections.
The double whammy by Hezbollah — of growing political influence at home, coupled with more outreach abroad — has put the squeeze on traditional but waning Arab powers like Egypt, alraedy rattled by President Barack Obama's outreach to their foe Iran.
Click here to continue.
China Confidential analysts say Arab leaders are deeply concerned about the ramifications of President Obama's upcoming address to "the Muslim world" from Egypt, a U.S. ally threatened by the Muslim Brotherhood (which spawned Al Qaeda). The idea of an American President addressing the world's Muslims, instead of individual states--or the Arab world, which still includes Christians and other minorities--implicitly elevates organized Islam to the level of a supranational power in line with Islamist ideology.
In other words, after nearly eight years of official U.S. denials that Washington and its allies are engaged in a so-called clash of civilizations, America's first Muslim-born President (Islam traces religion through the father) is acknowledging the clash in an apparent attempt to marginalize Islamist terrorists and their supporters.
The Arab heads of state won't show their concerns; on the contrary, they can be expected to publicly praise Obama's "outreach." But leaders like Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak--the target of a recent Hezbollah/Egyptian Islamist assassination plot--fear that Obama's speech will effectively embolden extremists in his own country and across the region.Report Understates Iran Threat and is Still Scary
Only a day after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's meeting at the White House with U.S. President Barack Obama, during which the Israeli leader urged Obama to make Iran's nuclear threat his top foreign policy priority, the EastWest Institute released a U.S.-Russia joint threat assessment on Iran’s nuclear and missile potential. Click here to download the document.
More than a year in the making, the report was produced by a team of Russian and American scientists and experts brought together by the think tank.
The report asserts that Iran could produce a simple nuclear device within one to three years, and a nuclear warhead for ballistic missiles in six to eight years. The report also asserts that Iran will not be able, for at least 10 to 15 years, to independently master the technologies necessary for advanced intermediate-range ballistic missiles or intercontinental ballistic missiles.
Those timetables could be accelerated, the report notes, if Iran were to receive substantial outside help. While stressing that they do not know Iran’s political intentions, the report’s authors call on the U.S. and Russia to explore cooperative responses if Iran should try to “break out” as a nuclear power.
The report’s participants warn that European missile defenses will not provide dependable protection against an Iranian threat if and when it emerges.
China Confidential analysts believe Iran is six to nine months away from being able to mass produce nuclear bombs and warheads, with technology and assistance from North Korea, and that the Obama administration's diplomacy is giving Iran the time it needs to achieve its goals.
China Confidential analysts also believe that both Iran and North Korea are actively developing capabilities for striking the United States--delivering nuclear warheads into coastal cities and detonating nuclear warheads high above the heartland to wipe out the electricity grid, modern electronics, and communication systems--with ballistic missiles launched from "flag-of-convenience" cargo ships.
In fact, the two partners in nuclear/missile crime could be close to deploying such ships; worse, they could already be lurking offshore with North Korean nuclear-tipped missiles concealed in specially constructed shipping containers. These things actually exist; and North Korea and Iran have successfully tested them.
Thousands of vessels approach the U.S. every day. A SCUD-B or Cruise Missile fits into a 40-foot-long container. Such missiles could deliver 270-pound weapons of mass destruction from 200 miles off the East Coast. Missile warheads could contain bio-chemical weapons as well as nuclear devices.
Missiles launched from as far away as 350 miles offshore could reach most U.S. coastal cities.
The U.S. has no defense against sea-based, ballistic missile attacks.
Friday, 22 May 2009
As CNN talk show host Larry King might ask: Who woulda thunk it?
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