We have been in Turkey during a time of rising tensions which has provided a great opportunity to discuss politics with the kids. Below is a short political diversion from our travel blog based on these discussions.
In three weeks in Turkey we were able to get only a cursory view into the lives of the people of this great and unstable land. The country amazed us with its western-ness. In Istanbul and the western coast, it is easy to forget you are outside Europe and not in Italy or Greece. But the minarets with their frequent calls to prayer, the women with their headscarves, and the constant barrage of salespeople eager to barter remind you this is not the West. If it sounds a little confusing, it is, not only for tourists but also for the Turkish people and apparently the government as well. Turkey is a Muslim nation but officially a secular state comprising Turks, Kurds, and some smaller minorities. (The Greeks and Armenians were pushed out or traded long ago.) Different groups latch onto different aspects of the society in shows of patriotism, ethnic pride, or religious devotion. It is a country on the edge and the ubiquitous military presence reminds you things are always bubbling under the surface.
During our last two days in Turkey I was able to get off the tourist track and see a little more of the everyday existence. I didn’t plan to spend time wandering around suburban Istanbul, but Anne and the kids needed more pages in their passports, a job that falls into my realm of responsibility. After searching the neighborhood where the guidebooks said it was supposed to be for over an hour, I finally discovered the consulate had recently moved to a new location almost an hour outside the city. In order to get back and forth between the tourist center of Sultanahmet and the new building, I could either pay 50 lira ($35) each way to take a taxi or 5 lira ($3.50) to take a combination of public transport–the tram to the funicular to the metro to the bus. On our budget, the latter won out. During my two trips and the hours I spent wandering the non-touristed neighborhood outside the consulate while waiting for the passports to be processed, I tried to pay attention to the different groups I passed. Devout Muslim women in Turkey wear a headscarf which covers all their hair. Others wear headscarves with hair showing as a fashion statement rather than an act of contrition or acceptance of the words in the Koran. Based on an informal count of headscarves, the number of devout Muslims was much higher than I expected. As the center of secular Turkey, I assumed most Istanbul women would be wearing jeans and sporting modern hairstyles, but this was not the case. A good 1/3 to 1/2 of the women appeared to be wearing religious scarves.
These women are just one sign of an increasingly Islamic Turkey. About 30% of the vote currently goes to religious candidates. If this group gets much bigger, it could become a majority, and the Turkey we know could change dramatically. Of course this group claims it wouldn’t change from the secular path the country is on, but most of their opponents disagree. As an outsider I do not know all the ramifications of Turkey heading in an Islamist direction, but the secularists are afraid of the changes it would bring. This is a hard area for Americans to understand. We separated religion from government early in our founding. We retained our Christian heritage, however, and it would be hard to argue that America is not a Christian country. Our particular battleground for determining just how Christian is our courts. We accept the rule of the courts, which occasionally remove what most would consider good Christian practices or icons from our society, but we also fight to protect the right of minorities to worship in their own way, free of oppression from the majority. The result is that we have created a free society where people practice religion as they see fit, for the most part harmoniously.
Turkey walks a much thinner line. There is little peace between the secularists and the Islamists. The secularists are the majority and have long oppressed the Islamists. Turkey has a founding father– think of Jefferson, Adams, and Washington all rolled up into one. They commonly refer to him as Ataturk, or Father of the Turks, a name granted him by the government during his lifetime. When he established modern Turkey in the 1920’s, he essentially banned fundamental Islam. Women today are still forbidden from wearing headscarves if they work for the government or attend government schools. In addition, the current government has outlawed political parties considered too extreme. Despite the difficulties and hurdles to being a strong Muslim, more Turks are choosing to follow an increasingly religious lifestyle. For many of them this is difficult since they almost have to choose between their country and their faith. This is not a choice people should be forced to make–not Christians in the Sudan, Buddhists in China, or Muslims in Turkey.
At least this is the way I felt before the trip. I was raised in a religion that teaches us to respect secular laws, even when those laws are flawed. I grew up in a country where we are taught to respect each other regardless of our differences and that we all have personal freedoms we protect for each other. (I recognize we are not always consistent, but that is the hope and the hope is worth repeating.) I now realize that not all countries and religions think this way, including some segments of Islam. I had hoped it was only the fringes that were incompatible with the modern world. I wouldn’t want people to think all Americans are gun toting maniacs shooting up schools and malls, even though a tiny fraction of us are. Likewise I don’t expect all Islamists to board planes and fly them into buildings, even though a tiny fraction of them have. The difference is all Americans think shooting up schools and malls is deplorable, but a small and not insignificant portion of Muslims do not think terrorism is deplorable; some even think it is laudable.
I don’t have the knowledge or the time to understand why some Muslims feel this way, but I do know their belief is not unique: India has Hindu groups just as uncompromising and intolerant and even some of America’s fundamentalist Christians fail to follow Christ’s example of tolerance and forgiveness for all. I do know that if a religion is not going to tolerate others’ beliefs and puts faith above law, there will always be problems. As far as I can gather this is why even though Turkey is a Muslim country, it is so afraid of becoming an Islamic state. Sharing borders with Iran, Iraq, and Syria and in close proximity to Afghanistan and Pakistan, the examples of what happens in a radicalized Islamic state are abundant and frightening. Even as passing travelers, we can sense the difference between the secular Islamic states like Turkey and Indonesia and the officially Islamist ones such as Egypt. The former are rapidly becoming important players on the world stage, building strong economies, improving the lives of their citizens and giving them all the modern day marvels to which we have grown accustomed over the last 50 years. This progress makes most of the people in these countries happy, and they regularly demonstrate and will perhaps even fight to keep their states secular. In contrast, those who are unhappy have been working hard, especially with the poor, to move their countries to a more radical position. If the Islamists get their way, Turkey could be in trouble. The track records of its neighbors stand as bleak reminders of the years or decades the country will fall behind and the freedom that will be lost if secularism fails. Iran is certainly the extreme, but its religious government now dictates hairstyles and enforces them through police action. This week over 1,000,000 of Turkey’s 65,000,000 people took to the streets to protest the presidential candidacy of a religious politician. Their actions show they understand the consequences of a move toward theocracy and also that there are no simple answers to their situation. We will watch from afar as this still young country fights to preserve democracy and pray it can figure out how to give freedom to some without losing freedom for all.
Technorati Tags: Ataturk, Ataturk’s Reforms, Family travel, Round the world, Round-the-world, RTW, Secularism, Turkey, Turkish Protests
