Religion in Turkey

Islamist power politics threaten clean-up of Turkish soccer

by James M. Dorsey

By James M. Dorsey

Scandal-ridden Turkish soccer is playing two parallel existential matches: one to... more By James M. Dorsey

Scandal-ridden Turkish soccer is playing two parallel existential matches: one to eradicate widespread corruption and match-fixing, another involving two Islamist teams for the hearts and minds of Turkish soccer fans.

The team of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a former soccer player and member of Istanbul’s storied Fenerbahce Spor Kulubu, has regained the lead in the battle of the Islamists with a decision by the Turkish Football Federation (TFF) to clear the Turkish leader’s club and 15 others of charges of involvement in match-fixing.

The controversial TFF’s decision came three months after the soccer body against Mr. Erdogan’s wish rejected a proposal backed by the prime minister that would have shielded clubs guilty of match fixing from being relegated. The defeat of the proposal prompted the TFF’s three top officials, including its vice chairman, Goksel Gumusdag, a brother-in-law of Mr. Erdogan, to resign.

The surprise TFF vote followed Mr. Erdogan’s success in driving through parliament against the will of President Abdullah Gul, believed to be an ally of Fethullah Gulen, a powerful, self-exiled, Pennsylvania-based cleric, who backs harsh punishment, including relegation, of those involved in the match-fixing scandal, to limit punishment of people guilty of match fixing.

For Mr. Erdogan however to decisively win his match against Mr. Gulen the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA), the governing body of European soccer will, have to endorse the TFF’s  decision. UEFA has yet to comment on the decision. 
UEFA warned earlier that it would intervene if the Turkish federation's disciplinary body failed to act before a June 1 deadline to register clubs for European competitions. It also barred Fenerbahce from this season's Champions League as a result of the investigation. It could now opt to extend
Fenerbahce’s ban as well as expand it to other prominent clubs implicated in the scandal such as Besiktas and Trabzonspor.

UEFA intervention would reflect poorly on Mr. Erdogan, further taint Turkey’s already damaged image and complicate its bid to host the 2020 European soccer championship. As a result, Trabzonspor president Sadri Sener was among the first to express concern about the potential fallout of the TFF decision.

International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge this week added fuel to the fire by warning that Istanbul would not be allowed to host both the European championship and the Olympics 2020. Mr. Rogge’s statement amounted to calling on UEFA president Michel Platini to delay awarding the soccer tournament to Turkey, the sole bidder, until after the IOC decides on the Olympic Games in September of next year.

The stakes for Messrs. Erdogan and Gulen are high: the hearts and minds of millions of Turkish soccer fans with the prime minister and Mr. Gulen focusing primarily on Fenerbahce, Turkey’s biggest and best supported club, whose imprisoned president, Aziz Yildirim, is among 93 soccer officials and players standing trial on match-fixing charges.  It was not immediately clear what impact the TFF decision would have on the proceedings of the court, which looked to the federation for guidance. Mr. Gulen is believed to want to see Mr. Yildirim convicted to pave the way for someone closer to his movement to be able to take control of the club.

The risks for Mr. Erdogan were evident as a video demanding that UEFA take action to ensure harsh penalties for those implicated in the match fixing scandal went viral on the Internet shortly after the TFF announced its decision. “Only UEFA can help us solve this problem, we can’t. If we could we wouldn’t be in this situation,” says a middle-aged soccer fan sitting in the video on the Bosporus as he signs a soccer ball alongside other from all walks of life. The ball is to be given to the European soccer body as a petition for intervention.

It is also politically sensitive because Mr. Gulen’s movement is Turkey’s foremost Islamic alliance and has supported Mr. Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP). It operates schools, businesses, media, including major Turkish media, and NGOs across the globe, and is widely seen as having significant sway over Turkey’s police force. The Gulen movement has been instrumental in the rise of Turkey’s appeal across the Middle East, North Africa and in sub-Saharan Africa with its network often paving the way for Turkish diplomacy and business.
Followers of Mr. Gulen believe that Ergenekon, an allegedly clandestine, Kemalist ultra-nationalist organization representing Turkey’s deep state, benefitted financially from the match-fixing. Hundreds of people have been arrested, including senior military figures, in recent years on terrorism-related charges for their alleged involvement in Ergenekon, which the Turkish government denounces as a terrorist organization.

Mr. Erdogan defended the TFF decision earlier this week on the grounds that punishing institutions rather than individuals would amount to penalizing “millions of fans who set their hearts on these institutions.''

In announcing its decision, the federation banned striker Ibrahim Akin of Istanbul Buyuksehir Belediyesi for three years for allegedly fixing the result of a game when his team last year lost to Fenerbahce. The TFF also banned Serdar Kulbilge of Genclerbirligi for two years for allegedly attempting to fix the result of a game that Fenerbahce won 4-2. The TFF said further that eight other people -- including Fenerbahce officials Mehmet Sekip Mosturoglu, Ilhan Yuksel Eksioglu, and Cemil Turhan – had been deprived of their rights, which means that they were barred from any administrative or sports activity, including the right to enter a stadium.

James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer, and a consultant to geopolitical consulting firm Wikistrat.

"Turkish Islam's Long Journey. Nostalgia, Passion, and Expectation", in: Guido Gambetta and Salvatore Mirabella (eds.), Turkey: A Bridge Between East and West, Bologna, Bononia University Press, 2011, 47-54.

by Adriana Destro

Die Aleviten

by Ekrem Eddy Güzeldere

inamo, Heft Nr. 67
Türkei:9 Jahre AKP
Jahrgang 17, Herbst 2011,
30. September 2011

Durch die gesellschaftspolitischen Entwicklungen treten die inneren Widersprüche der Türkei offener zu Tage. Angeregt... more Durch die gesellschaftspolitischen Entwicklungen treten die inneren Widersprüche der Türkei offener zu Tage. Angeregt von dem Kampf der Kurden nach Anerkennung und Selbstbestimmung, organisiert sich auch die größte nicht-sunnitische Gruppe, die Aleviten und stellt Forderungen nach rechtlicher Anerkennung und dem Ende der staatlichen Assimilationspolitik. Da die Aleviten eine sehr heterogene Gruppe sind, treten sie dementsprechend vielstimmig auf. Eine Strömung beteiligt sich an der sog. alevitischen Initiative der Regierung, andere Gruppen fordern ein radikales Umdenken der Beziehung von Staat und Religion. Politisch sind sie aber weitgehend machtlos.

Anti-Syrian soccer protests in Iran position Azeris as potential pawn in Syrian strife

by James M. Dorsey

By James M. Dorsey

Stadiums in the northwestern city of Tabriz, capital of Iran’s predominantly Azeri... more By James M. Dorsey

Stadiums in the northwestern city of Tabriz, capital of Iran’s predominantly Azeri minority, have emerged as a platform for protest against Iranian government policies and demands for greater rights for the country’s Turkic minority.

In the latest protest, supporters of Tabriz’s Traktorsazi Tabriz Football club, a flashpoint of East Azerbaijan Provinces’s identity politics owned by state-run Iran Tractor Manufacturing Company (ITMCO), unfurled Azeri nationalist banners and burnt images of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Sahand Stadium during a Pro League match against Mes of Sarcheshmeh.

The embattled Syrian leader is Iran’s closest ally in the Arab world and alongside Russia his most important supporter despite Iranian and Russian calls on Mr. Assad to find a negotiated solution to his country’s eight-month old crisis. Protesters have displayed remarkable perseverance with almost daily protests against Mr. Assad’s regime in the face of a brutal military crackdown that has so far killed some 5,000 people according to
United Nations estimates and wounded thousands more.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Ib8vMsd1tM&feature=youtu.be

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIIVKgeRiiI

The anti-Syrian protest followed nationalist and environmental demonstrations in recent months in Tabriz’s Bagh Shomal and Yadegar-e-Emam stadiums that have raised the spectre of ethnic strife in the Islamic republic and make the Azeris a potential pawn in any escalation of tension between Turkey, Iran and Syria.

Turkey has repeatedly hinted at intervening in Syria but has so far shown no real appetite to do so in part due to concern that a post-Assad Syria would descend into even greater chaos because of the lack of unity among the president’s opponents and fears that escalated conflict could send hundreds of thousands of refugee across its border in a replay of a decade ago, when some 500,000 Kurdish refugees from Iraq’s Saddam Hussein fled to Turkey in the aftermath of the Gulf War.
Underlying Turkish concerns is the fact that the Syrian opposition has so far also not been able to bridge the country’s multiple sectarian fault lines and that increased sectarian strife could spill over into Turkey, where Kurds constitute an estimated 20 percent and Alevis, a Shiite Muslim sect, another 20 percent of the population. Insurgents of the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK), which waged a 16-year long war against Turkey in the 1980s and 1990s have stepped up attacks on Turkish targets in recent months.

Turkish officials believe the PKK enjoys Syrian and some degree of Iranian support. They note that strident Turkish criticism of Mr. Assad and demands by Turkish leaders, including President Abdullah Gul and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, that he step down as well as tacit Turkish support for the Free Syrian Army (FSA) have prompted Syria and Iran to halt their cooperation with Turkey aimed at curbing Kurdish militants. The FSA made up of primarily low level defectors from the Syrian military have attacked Syrian targets in what they say is a campaign to protect the Syrian protesters.

The Azeris would be Turkey’s card in any escalation that would spark a tit-for-tat proxy war between Turkey, Syria and Iran. The soccer protests in Tabriz signal a rise in Azeri nationalist sentiment and suggest that Turkey could retaliate against Iranian support of the PKK by fueling that sentiment in Eastern Azerbaijan which borders on the former Soviet Turkic republic of Azerbaijan, a close Turkish ally.

Supporters of Traktorsazi wore shirts with the Turkish and Azerbaijan flags and raised the Azerbaijani flag during their club’s match in November against Fajr-e Sepasi of Shiraz, according to Iranian Azeri nationalists and various Iranian blogs.

“The main (Iranian concern) is that the idea of Turkism is strengthening in South Azerbaijan,” News.Az, a pro-Azeri news website, quoted Saftar Rahimli, a member of the board of the World Azerbaijani’s Congress, last month as saying. Mr. Rahimli was referring to Eastern Azerbaijan by its nationalist Azeri name. A conservative, pro-Iranian website, Raja News, accused the soccer fans of employing “separatist symbols,” shouting separatist slogans and of promoting “pan-Turkish” and “deviant objectives during the match.

Last month’s protests followed similar demonstrations in September and October sparked by a refusal by the Iranian parliament to fund efforts to save the environmentally endangered Lake Orumiyeh.

Anti-government protests also erupted in Tehran’s Azadi Stadium during last month’s 2014 World Cup qualifier against Bahrain and at a ceremony in May to commemorate that late Nasser Hejazi, an internationally acclaimed Iranian defender and outspoken critic of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and the author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer.

Mounting Israeli-Iranian Tension: Turkey in the Middle

by James M. Dorsey

By James M. Dorsey


Synopsis


Israeli and Iranian sabre-rattling, coupled with... more By James M. Dorsey


Synopsis


Israeli and Iranian sabre-rattling, coupled with Turkey's determination to keep relations with Israel in deep freeze as it pressures Tel Aviv to lift its blockade of the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, threaten to undermine Turkey’s influence in the Middle East and North Africa.


Commentary

THE FALLOUT from last year's killing by Israeli forces of nine Turkish nationals aboard a Turkish aid ship seeking to run Israel's blockade of the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip continues to dog Ankara’s heels as it emerges as a regional leader in the Middle East and North Africa.

Senior Turkish officials reiterated at the Istanbul Forum recently their refusal to reverse their downgrading of diplomatic relations with Israel to the level of second secretary and their suspension of all military cooperation as long as Israel fails to apologise and offer compensation for the death of the Turkish activists and maintains its blockade of Gaza. The officials said that despite Israeli assistance to Turkey's earthquake-stricken eastern region, their terms for a normalisation of relations were non-negotiable.

To drive the point home, Turkey last week allowed two Irish and Canadian-flagged aid ships to set sail for Gaza from a Turkish port for a renewed attempt to run the Israeli blockade. The two ships were intercepted by Israel and escorted to the port of Ashdod. By ensuring that the two ships were flying foreign flags and had no Turkish nationals on board, Turkey sought to avoid an armed confrontation with Israel.

Israel imposed a naval blockade on Gaza after Hamas seized control of the territory in June 2007, saying it is necessary to prevent weapons being supplied to militants in the Strip. Critics of the sea and land blockade say it is collective punishment of Gaza's 1.5 million inhabitants.

Turkey had earlier vowed to have Turkish warships accompany Gaza-bound aid ships to avoid a repetition of the May 2010 attack. The nine Turks aboard the Mavi Marmara, lead ship of last year's flotilla, were killed by Israeli forces who boarded the vessel in international waters. Israel asserts that the activists were armed and that Israeli forces had acted in self-defence.

Closing doors

Turkey's harsh response to the incident has garnered it wide support across the Arab and Muslim world at a time when the Middle East and North Africa is racked by mass anti-government protests. However it has complicated Turkey’s efforts to shield itself against being drawn into the region's multiple conflicts.

As a result, Turkey has little ability to bring Israel and Iran back from the brink of a military confrontation; and the escalating conflict could damage Turkey's projection of itself as a regional Islamic, democratic, economic and military power.

Turkish concerns that its hard line towards Israel could lead it into a corner stem from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's decision to seek approval from his cabinet for a pre-emptive strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities. Netanyahu sees Iran as the foremost existential threat to the Jewish state.

His request follows  Israel's successful test-firing of a long-range missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead as well as a series of Israeli Air Force long-range attack drills in cooperation with their Italian counterpart, including one late October at a NATO base in Italy. The Israeli military has also practised a mass evacuation of civilians in case of an attack in areas near Tel Aviv. The Israeli exercises were held in an advance of the expected release this week of an International Energy Agency (IEA) report on Iran’s nuclear capabilities.

Siding with Iran

Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Selahi responded defiantly to the test-firing of the Israeli missile as well as the military exercises, asserting that his country was prepared for a possible Israeli attack. Anticipating Turkey's dilemma in case of an Israeli attack, Salehi suggested that Turkey would have no choice but to support Iran against Israel.

While Turkish defence and military officials have little doubt that Israel would prevail in a military confrontation with Iran, even if it is unlikely to fully destroy Iran's decentralised and heavily fortified nuclear facilities, they worry about the effects of likely Iranian retaliatory attacks against Israel as well as US targets in the Gulf and Afghanistan, for that would escalate the confrontation with Iran.

Turkey would increasingly be seen in Tel Aviv and Washington as not only having turned on Israel –often a yardstick in the West for assessing Turkish foreign policy - but also having sided with the enemy. Turkish officials and analysts fear that this could result in covert support for Kurdish guerrillas who have stepped up their attacks on Turkish military targets in south-eastern Turkey. It could also endanger Turkish security cooperation with Iran in combatting Kurdish insurgents.

Turkey’s dilemma is heightened by the fact that increasingly it is being viewed  in the Middle East and North Africa as a counterweight to Iran. Turkey has dashed Iranian hopes that it would find an ally in Erdogan’s Islamist government. Instead, Turkey’s pluralist democracy constitutes a popular alternative to Iran’s harsh, repressive regime, bolstered by Turkey’s hard line towards Israel.

Turkey and Iran have further lined up on opposing sides of the Syrian divide with Turkey supporting opposition against the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Iran’s closest ally in the Arab world. In response, Iran has sought to portray Turkey as part of a US-Israeli-Saudi conspiracy to stymie the wave of popular revolts in the Middle East and North Africa in a bid to prevent them from spreading to the oil-rich Gulf.

Members of  Erdogan’s ruling party have criticised him for responding emotionally to Israeli policies and have urged him to repair relations with Israel, while remaining critical of  Tel Aviv. This is to ensure that Turkey is not painted into a corner by mounting tension in the region but can truly act as a bridge across the West-East divide as well as the region’s fault lines. They key to Turkey’s role may indeed lie partially in Israel but Turkey  has only  a  limited window of opportunity to keep  the  door open.

James M. Dorsey is a Senior Fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University.  He has been a journalist covering the Middle East for over 30 years.

Book Review: “Birol Yesilada and Barry Rubin (eds) (2010) Islamization of Turkey under the AKP Rule. Abingdon: Routledge. 128pp, £85, 978 0 415 56056 6,”

by Şakir Dinçşahin

'Political Studies Review,' 10: 2 (2012).

Islamicist or Democratic? The AKP's Search for Identity in Turkish Politics

by Hasan Turunc

A Symptomatic Analysis of the Justice and Development Party’s Populism in Turkey: The 2007 Electoral Crisis and After

by Şakir Dinçşahin

forthcoming in Government and Opposition, 2012.

In this paper, the populist politics of the Justice and Development Party is analysed through the symptomatic approach... more In this paper, the populist politics of the Justice and Development Party is analysed through the symptomatic approach to the study of populism. To this purpose, a brief historical account of Islamist parties and the Justice and Development Party is included. Then, a theoretical framework is sketched around the concept of populism. Finally, the discourse articulated by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the leader of the party during and after the crisis over the 2007 presidential elections, is analysed in line with the symptomatic approach to populism. The populist politics of the party is thereby illustrated.

“The Rhetoric of Belief and Identity Making in the Experience of Infertility,” Broadening the Boundaries of Belief, Special Issue, eds. A. Day and S. Coleman, Culture and Religion, Vol. 11, no.1: 51-67.

by A. Merve Demircioğlu Göknar

Based on research about the infertility experiences of women and demand for in vitro fertilisation treatment in... more Based on research about the infertility experiences of women and demand for in vitro fertilisation treatment in Turkey, I observe in this paper the rhetorical strategies employed by childless women to bring meaning to their infertility experience as well as to attain adult gender identity. I also briefly touch on men’s experiences of infertility. I argue that the prevalent references to the almightiness of God do not only indicate religious beliefs. Through the instrumental use of religious discourse, these references can be considered the rhetoric of religious belief.

Yilmaz, Hakan. 2011. "Euroscepticism in Turkey: Parties, Elites, and Public Opinion". South European Society and Politics, iFirst article, 2011, pp. 1–24.

by Hakan Yilmaz

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13608741003594353
Print version to be published very soon...

After reviewing the emergence of Turkish Euroscepticism in the context of the evolution of Turkey–European-Union... more After reviewing the emergence of Turkish Euroscepticism in the context of the evolution of Turkey–European-Union relations between 1963 and 1999, the paper analyses party and popular Euroscepticism after 1999. The Turkish case appears to confirm the Taggart– Sitter thesis concerning the strategic Euroscepticism of opposition parties. The exception of the Kurdish nationalists suggests that strategic Euroscepticism does not apply to ethnic minority parties. In Turkey there is both ‘soft’ Euroscepticism (centre-left parties) and ‘hard’ Euroscepticism (nationalist and Islamist parties), the latter usually based on identity. At the popular level, identity Euroscepticism revolves around four key issues: national sovereignty; morality; negative discrimination; and Europe’s alleged hidden agenda to divide and rule Turkey (the so-called ‘Sevres Syndrome’).

‘The eternal enemy of Islam’: Abdullah Cevdet and the Baha’i religion

by Necati Alkan

Midhat Pasha and ‘Abdu’l-Baha in ‘Akka

by Necati Alkan

Süleyman Nazif's 'Open Letter to Jesus': An Anti-Christian Polemic in the Early Turkish Republic

by Necati Alkan

“The Young Turks and the Baha'is in Palestine”

by Necati Alkan

Eyal Ginio/Yuval Ben Bassat (eds.), Late Ottoman Palestine: The Period of Young Turk Rule (I.B. Tauris, London 2011),

http://books.google.de/books?id=4VZ4PcOKzrAC&pg=PR5&dq=ben+bassat+late+ottoman&hl=de&sa=X&ei=LDg6T8WLKsPZsga0_IyIBw&ved=0CDYQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=ben%20bassat%20late%20ottoman&f=false

Book cover: http://mideast.haifa.ac.il/staff/yuval-ben-basat/bookcover.pdf

The Young Turk Revolution of 1908-1909 was a turning point that opened up new prospects for Ottoman society and... more The Young Turk Revolution of 1908-1909 was a turning point that opened up new prospects for Ottoman society and politics. It created a milieu in which new ideas could be shared in a relatively open manner. The case of the Baha’is in Palestine, even though they were seemingly a quantité négligeable among the religious communities, is a good example for the dissemination of reformist thoughts in that period. Based on unpublished letters of the Baha’i leader ‘Abdu’l-Baha (‘Abbas Effendi, 1844-1921) in Palestine written in Ottoman Turkish, this chapter deals with the post-Revolutionary relations between him and the Young Turk elite. The chapter discusses the significance of Palestine to the development of the Baha’i community, the contributions of ‘Abdu’l-Baha to the reform discourse in the Ottoman Empire, the tense relationship between ‘Abdu’l-Baha and Sultan Abdülhamid II, ‘Abdu’l-Baha’s previously unknown connections with some leading Young Turks, and the Baha’i leader’s attempt to infuse Baha’i thoughts into the CUP. The chapter is rounded up with an overview of the declining relationship between the CUP and ‘Abdu’l-Baha during World War I.

"Bahailik ve Jön Türk Devrimi"

by Necati Alkan

Tarih ve Toplum: Yeni Yaklaşımlar, no. 11, Güz 2010, s. 23-46

Jön Türk devrimi (1908–1909), Osmanlılar için toplumsal ve siyasi açından yeni beklentilere yol açan bir dönüm... more Jön Türk devrimi (1908–1909), Osmanlılar için toplumsal ve siyasi açından yeni beklentilere yol açan bir dönüm noktasıydı. Bu hareket, yeni fikirlerin, göreceli de olsa, serbestçe paylaşılabildiği bir ortam yaratmıştır. Dini cemaatler arasında sayısal olarak göz ardı edilebilecek bir seviyede olsalar da Filistin’deki Bahailer, bu dönemde reformist düşüncelerin nasıl yayıldığına iyi bir örnek teşkil ediyor. Bu makale Jön Türk Devrimi sürecinde Bahailerin önderi Abdülbaha (Abbas Efendi) ve önde gelen Jön Türkler arasındaki ilişkilerle ilgilidir ve içeriği büyük oranda Abdülbaha’nın daha önce yayımlanmamış olan Türkçe mektuplarına dayanmaktadır. Bu mektuplar bize Abdülbaha’nın Akka’daki elli yıllık sürgün hayatından kurtulmasına kimlerin yardımcı olduğu ve kendisinin İttihad ve Terakki Cemiyeti (İTC) ile ilgili fikirleri ve yaklaşımları hakkında bilgi edinme fırsatı vermektedir. Makalenin ilk bölümde, Bahailik’in kurucusu Bahaullah’ın ve oğlu ve halefi olan Abdülbaha’nın “dünyanın ıslahı” ve Osmanlı İmparatorluğu ve İran’daki reform tartışmalarına katkılarını ele alırken, takip eden bölümlerde Abdülbaha’nın Sultan II. Abdülhamid ve rejimi ile olan sorunlu ilişkisine ışık tutmaya çalışıyorum. Araştırmamın odak noktaları, 31 Mart Vakası’nın mimarı olarak görülen Derviş Vahdeti’nin Abdülbaha’dan nasıl bir destek aradığı; Abdülbaha’nın bazı önde gelen Jön Türkler ile ilişkilerinin bilinmeyen yönleri ve Bahai düşüncelerini İTC’ye telkin çabalarıdır. Makalenin son bölümünde ise Bahai önderinin İTC’yle Birinci Dünya Savaşı esnasında kötüye giden ilişkilerine değindim.