A Guide to November 3 Elections
Recent Polling Data Belie Critics' Pre-election Turkey-bashing
Albert Nekimken, Ph.D, Special to The Turkish Times, October 25, 2002 - Much hinges on the upcoming November 3 general elections in Turkey, including the level of Turkey's support for a U.S. strike on Iraq, the future of relations with the EU and how the Cyprus issue is to be resolved. In addition, Turkey's fragile economy needs skilled hands to negotiate with the IMF successfully and maintain its current momentum. Unfortunately, as the countdown to the election continues, the Turkey-bashing season abroad is also underway in the media and it discounts impressive new survey evidence for the basic common sense of the Turkish electorate.

American Liberals Seriously Misread Turkish Realities
Journalists betray their readers' trust by forcing the realities of Turkish politics into preconceived models that were developed elsewhere. Media criticisms of the Turkish military and the country's maligned "secular elites" oversimplify complex situations in order to label superficially "good" and "bad" political movements. Similarly, journalists err in assuming that, because Turks are Muslims, they resemble Arabs and will behave like them politically. Recent public opinion surveys show Turks to be far more tolerant and have far more common sense regarding religion than Arabs.

Lastly, the media apply a hypocritical double standard when they insist that Turks should accept an erosion of the barriers between Church and State that Americans themselves would never accept. For example, while Americans are banning school prayer and the public display of the Ten Commandments along with all other religious instruction financed with public monies, journalists insist that Turks should accept all of these-including head scarves in schools, which even French courts have banned. Survey data show Turks themselves to be far more sensitive to these issues than American journalists, but they have received little recognition for it. Turks condemn their politicians for exploiting religion just as John Ashcroft has been criticized for leading prayer meetings at the Department of Justice, as a federal court banned "under God" from the U.S. Pledge of Allegiance, and as Congress is being pressured to abolish the position of chaplain.

Turkey's democracy may be imperfect, but it merits the right to sort out complex issues on its own and with the support of allies, not their misguided opprobrium. This is especially true in view of America's own voting irregularities in Florida, its campaign financing scandals, and its struggle with powerful vested interests of all kinds that threaten to subvert legislation.

Apple Pie versus Shish Kebab
A recurring feature of American attacks on Turkish politics is the assumption that the self-styled "Islamist" candidates and parties represent American-style "family values" and that they are as harmless as apple pie and motherhood along the lines of Christian parties in the U.S. and Europe. Unfortunately, this view contradicts the experience of the Turkish electorate, which has seen religion exploited repeatedly as a populist tool to subvert the democratic system that brings it to power. The military has both contributed to the strengthening of these parties as well as to their suppression. The hero of the global Islamist movement, Osama bin Laden, identified Mustapha Kemal's abolition of the caliphate and the establishment of the Turkish Republic as the primary "wrong" that the Muslim world needed to correct. The broad Turkish public has no appetite for giving his Turkish admirers any opportunity to make such a "correction."

American critics make much of polling data that put the strength of the AKP under Tayyip Erdogan at 35-30% while ignoring the obverse, e.g., that 70-75% of the electorate rejects it. Islamist parties such as AKP and SP will contest the November 3 election even though their "spiritual" leaders, Necmettin Erbakan and Tayyip Erdogan have been banned from direct participation. These parties have been successful due to excellent grassroots organization, widespread discontent with the centrist parties whose leaders are associated with scandal, corruption and mismanagement. Their success does not reflect a resurgence of religious fervor so much as a triumph for American-style populism.

Election Outlook
If election returns confirm current trends, it would mean that the parties leading the current coalition with the largest representation in parliament, MHP and DSP, could disappear, or become very minor players after the next election. As a reverse mirror image, CHP is poised to become one of the largest parties, even though it lacked sufficient support (minimum 10% threshold) to be represented in the current parliament in the last election.

Think Tank Survey Results Confirm Positive Trends
Prof. Binnaz Toprak and Doç. Dr. Ali Çarkoglu of Bosphorus University published a report under the auspices of TESEV, a prominent Turkish think tank, based on scientific public opinion survey results. It put to the test the claims of foreign commentators and domestic politicians alike. Findings included:

When voters were asked directly, "Do you prefer sharia (Islamic religious) law for Turkey," those answering "yes" dropped from 28% in 1996 to less than 10% in 2002. The figure for discrete groups, such as women, dropped to 5%. Among SP party voters, 37% preferred sharia while 44% of AKP voters were opposed. Even among nationalist MHP party voters, support for sharia dropped from 20% in 1998 to 6% in 2002.The greater the detail of questions in this area, the quicker voter enthusiasm evaporated.

TESEV report authors Toprak and Carkoglu conclude that to speak of "political Islam" as a polarization of Turkish society is misleading because the actual size of the extremist factions remains quite small. The real cleavage, as is the case elsewhere, is simply between the "haves" and the "have nots."

Whatever the outcome of the next election, Turkey deserves better from American and European media than the spate of Turkey-bashing that it has received over recent months. It has a working democracy that is demonstrating its strengths as well as its weaknesses. It does not merit comparison with Pakistan and Egypt where the multiparty system has ceased to function. Certainly Turkey deserves better from its allies in the West who profess to be in favor of the country's ultimate entry into the European Union.

The effect of continuing fault-finding, particularly regarding the influence of the military, will have the short-term result of strengthening the parties that pander to populist disaffection and use the EU as a lightening rod for the accumulated frustrations of the have-nots.

The long-term result could be to erode the public's enthusiasm for continuing Turkey's efforts to join the EU and drive a wedge between peoples that, based on history, as well as the survey results analyzed here, merit ever-closer cooperation.