Religiosity, support for Seriat and evaluations of secularist public policies in Turkey.

Over the past decade the once marginal extreme right end of the Turkish ideological spectrum has grown both in size as well as in influence and has effectively reshaped party competition in Turkey. Policy mandates and electoral bases of the rising extreme right rely on potentially explosive social cleavages in the country. One such confrontation is between the secularist and pro-Islamist forces, which has always been one of the centrepieces of Turkish electoral politics.

The rise of pro-Islamist electoral forces from a marginal to an undeniably imposing position in Turkish electoral politics has led many to worry that a deep-rooted schism has come to the forefront of Turkish politics. The front line of this secularist vs. pro-Islamist confrontation is quite wide, ranging from a debate around the ban on turbans and headscarves in universities to religious education in the country, from Islamic principles in the economy to Turkish foreign policy towards Middle Eastern countries. I aim to contribute to this debate by drawing an outline of the popular bases of support for the secular principles in Turkey reflected in debates over the civil code as opposed to shariah rule (Seriat in Turkish) and a number of recent policies followed in especially the sphere of education.

I first focus on the character of the much discussed popular support for an Islamic state or Seriat and the public evaluations of one of the pillars of secularism in Turkey, that is, of the Turkish civil code. I demonstrate that while a significant portion of the electorate is not forthcoming in rejecting Seriat as a whole, only a very small marginal group supports its implications. Secondly, I focus on several more recent public policies that were shaped during the '28 February process' that started in 1997, when tension between the secularist republican forces spearheaded by the military and the pro-Islamist Welfare Party (Refah Partisi--RP) peaked. I demonstrate that compared with overwhelming support for long-standing secularist principles of the civil code, the approval of the recent policies are much lower. Especially the amount of pressure perceived by the electorate on the religious groups remains considerably high and is attributed mainly to secularist policies in the education system. In the following, I first present the political context of the period of analysis. Next, I proceed to the analysis of the issues involved. I conclude with an evaluation of the tensions between the secularist and pro-Islamist groups among the electorate.

The strong showing of the pro-Islamist RP in the December 1995 general elections marked a turning point in Turkish politics. For the first time in Turkish electoral history, with 21.4 per cent of the vote, the pro-Islamists came to occupy a dominant position by obtaining the largest electoral support. (1) Following an unsuccessful minority coalition between the two centre-right parties, and tense coalition negotiations, the pro-Islamists managed to manoeuvre the centre-right True Path Party (Dogru Yol Partisi--DYP) into a coalition. The tenure of the RP-DYP government was one of increasing tension between both the masses at large and the republican elite of the country led by the staunchly secularist military. As a result, the problematic RP-DYP coalition was terminated by the '28 February process' that marks yet another strong hand of military influence over the Turkish policy-making apparatus. (2) At the 28 February 1997 meeting of the National Security Council (NSC) a declaration was issued stating the worries created by attempts to harm and ultimately change the secular Kemalist, nationalist and democratic character of the Turkish constitution. Most importantly, the declaration stated that several precautionary measures would be submitted to the cabinet. These precautionary measures, demanded especially by the military branch of NSC, included regulations of Koran courses, social and economic activities of various Islamic brotherhoods (tarikat), and a demand for the control of pro-Islamic appointments which aimed to build an Islamic cadre within the state bureaucracy.

The most important element of the policy package that NSC saw fit to deal with the threat of political Islam was an 8-year mandatory primary education law. The Turkish education system consisted of a three-tier system in which only five-year primary schooling was mandatory. The second tier of junior high followed by high school consisting typically of a three-year curriculum at each level was optional. Higher education only served about a quarter of the relevant age group and similar to lower levels of the system consisted primarily of public institutions. (3) The decision to extend the period of compulsory education from five to eight years simply abolished the junior high schools and required the pupils to stay in primary schools for eight instead of five years.

Considering that the average period of education in the country is about 3.3 years compared with 11 years in the European Union which Turkey aspires to join, the justification for such a policy is not hard to find. However, the same policy also meant closing the junior high sections of the religious schools for chaplains and preachers (imam Hatip Okullart-IHO). By the mid-1990s at the level immediately following five years of compulsory primary education, the number of religious schools nearly equalled the number of vocational/technical schools (excluding religious schools). There were about five times as many pupils in religious schools as there were in vocational/technical junior high schools. (4) The enactment of such legislation was thought to limit the entry of many thousands of youngsters to religious IHOs. (5) When the junior high-school sections of IHOs are closed, the impact on their pupils' ideological formation would expectably decline. Therefore, the political clout of these schools over the pro-Islamist activist groups would effectively be limited. Both symbolically, as well as from the perspective of the organization of political Islam, these regulations on IHOs were unacceptable to the RP.

Unable to legislate, encircled by popular resistance together with increasing resignations from the DYP, the coalition partners agreed to call early elections under the premiership of the DYP leader, Tansu Ciller. Accordingly, the RP leader and the then Prime Minister, Necmettin Erbakan resigned. The expectation of the coalition partners was that the president would again call on Ciller to form the next government; thus a second RP-DYP coalition could be formed. However, the president had no legal obligation to abide by this behind-the-scene deal between the RP and DYP leaderships. President Suleyman Demirel asked the centre-right Motherland Party (Anavatan Partisi--ANAP) leader, Mesut Yilmaz to form the new government. Together with the centre-left Democratic Left Party (Demokratik Sol Patti--DSP) and the centre-fight Democratic Turkey Party (Demokrat Turkiye Partisi--DTP), Yilmaz's minority government obtained a vote of confidence on 12 July 1997, with outside support from the centreleft Republican People's Party (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi--CHP). The new coalition eventually ended with a decision to call an early election to be held in conjunction with the municipality elections on 18 April, 1999.