The fear of Turkey’s religious conservatives is rooted in the past

Even as Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his AKP party have taken an authoritarian turn, religious conservatives have continued to support him. The reason, writes Riada Asimovic Akyol, is based on what they believe he saved them from

Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan speaks during a conference in Istanbul. His appeal as a politician to the country’s religious conservatives shows no signs of faltering. Murat Cetinmuhurdar / PrShow more

Turkey’s powerful president Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been in power since 2002 and is now more popular than ever – despite many liberal critics who find him authoritarian, harsh and even threatening. And yet millions of Turks love him to death – literally, as they proved on the night of July 15, when 246 people gave their lives to defy an anti-Erdogan military coup attempt. Why?

The story is actually a century old. After the founding of the Turkish Republic in 1923, the Kemalist nation-state project, based on a rigid understanding of secularism and national unity, was established.

This building of a homogenous nation-state, inspired by western models – particularly that of France – resulted in the exclusion and gross violation of the rights of the conservative religious part of the population.

Pious Muslim women were especially hit by secularist authoritarianism, as they were not allowed to go to school, attend university or work in public offices while wearing their headscarves. Consequently, such an oppressive attitude resulted in the decades-long accumulation of anger within a large part of the Turkish population. Millions felt marginalised.

In the early 2000s, the emergence of the openly religious Justice and Development Party (AKP) broke the mould of a secularist elite presiding over more religious masses. For classic liberals, who hoped for the development of a truly inclusive liberal democracy, Turkey has turned into a majoritarian democracy in which only those who dominate the state changed, excluding the others.

The reasons for the authoritarian turn of AKP and its leadership over the last couple of years are many. It is not my intention here to justify the government’s authoritarian politics and its revengeful attitude towards its enemies, but to explain the roots and their implications.

One must understand the fears of the pro-Erdogan religious conservatives. They fear that the old secularist elite might return to power to rule over them again; to boycott their lifestyle and take away the rights gained thanks to AKP over the past decade. These fears are real – although they are also stoked by politicians – although it is also the more secular citizens who now feel they are being washed away.

From the very start, the AKP won the hearts, and votes, of millions of Turks, precisely through promoting and offering a sense of protection from secularist elites – elites who have often seen themselves as superior to others, particularly to the “uncivilised”, “ignorant” population that remains faithful to its religious tradition and conservative values.

These conservative people were the ones whose Islamic institutions were closed, whose “peasant” clothing was ridiculed, and whose call to prayer in Arabic was banned for decades in the mid-20th century. Those experiences helped establish a solid reputation among pious Turks that they were the ultimate victims, an idea now deeply ingrained in their minds.

Consequently, conservatives embraced what the renowned Turkish psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Vamik Volkan calls “chosen traumas”, referring to a “shared mental representation of a past historical event that has caused the ancestors of a large group to face drastic losses”.

Additionally, when some of those traumas are “dormant”, events or leaders can “reactivate” or “inflame” them.

To do exactly that, Mr Erdogan, the political maverick that he is, used his own background and experiences of injustice, which he lived through first-hand experience with his family: his daughters could not attend Turkish universities because of their headscarves.

Mr Erdogan’s powerful charisma and straight-to-the point talking style appealed to an enormous number of previously humiliated Turks who have passionately supported his politics for more than a decade now. Hence, Mr Erdogan has been both the liberator and the deliverer of millions.

Both western and Turkish analysts have been puzzled and amazed by continued support for the AKP despite its authoritarian turn, its deteriorating relations with European allies or attacks on the press and freedom of speech.

Yet, while one group refers to democracy, respect for human rights and other markers of a liberal political system, the other group – perhaps 70 per cent of the country, according to a recent survey – perceives these as superfluous and not as essential as nationalist (that is, reclaimed Ottoman) and spiritual values.

For this part of Turkey’s population, religious identity is not to be underestimated. It is in fact one of the most important markers of one’s being. No wonder that tapping into Islam as a common value against non-Muslims or non-practising ones has served as a compelling demarcating line against outsiders.

There is a class aspect to this story as well. Sociological studies of AKP supporters affirm the party’s appeal as a vehicle for the upward social mobility of its members. So to preserve the party’s power and success is seen as a guarantee of stability and thus the primary responsibility for party members. Self-victimisation based on the past and paranoia about constant threats is kept alive at all times.

Not surprisingly, the omnipresent narrative of different enemies, from the military to “interest lobbies” has dominated Turkey’s agenda for years. But the persecution of the religious conservatives is always the most powerful theme. When stories alleging attacks on women wearing headscarves and the drinking of alcohol in mosques during the 2013 Gezi protests flood the pro-government media, or the story of Mehmet Kuzgun, an imam from Izmir who was attacked on the night of the military coup attempt after leaving his mosques, old animosities and fears are triggered again as present realities.

The process of so-called “normalisation” that the AKP took upon itself after coming to power has been accompanied by a new phenomenon, a process that Volkan calls “entitlement ideologies”. In his words, “an entitlement ideology provides a shared belief system for the members of a large group in that they have a right to possess whatever they desire”.

This seems to be the case in Turkey, especially with the new “hot trauma” of the July 15 military coup attempt (orchestrated, as many believe, by the covert Gulenist network). It is Volkan who uses the word trauma, describing “traumatised individuals and their offspring who are still acutely involved in attempting to make sense of what had happened, mourning their losses, and memorialising the tragedy”. The newest trauma together with the past are together a justification for religious conservatives to cling on to power, fearing that if it were gone, the group would not survive and the dark old days would come back.

In difficult times for Turkey, when it is fighting several terrorist organisations simultaneously in a precarious geographic position, polarisation further harms the country. There will be no breakthrough unless leaders of politics and opinion in the opposition acknowledge the trauma of the conservatives, and understand the implications.

Only then can there be a chance for grand national reconciliation in Turkey rather than a continuous vicious cycle of domination and revenge.

Riada Asimovic Akyol is an independent analyst and writer. She is pursuing a doctorate related to religion and nationalism at Galatasaray University, Istanbul

On Twitter: @riadaaa