From ’Turkish people’ to ’people of Turkey’

The speech given last week by Chief of General Staff Gen. İlker Başbuğ was remarkable because it was intelligent, too. Although I strongly disagreed with some of the points he raised, which I will address in a minute, if you kindly keep reading, I was positively surprised by a groundbreaking remark he made. He, in a quite unconventional way, proposed the concept of "the people of Turkey," instead of "the Turkish people."

The difference between the two is greater than it may sound. The former term, (Türkiye halkı) refers to a country. Accordingly, everybody who lives in Turkey, regardless of their ethnic identity, is a member of the "people of Turkey."

'Türkiye halkı'
The latter term (Türk halkı), though, refers to an ethnic identity: our much-celebrated "Turkishness." Moreover, when nationalist speak about the "Turkish people," or its sister term, "Turkish nation" (Türk milleti), they refer to Turks or even Turkic peoples living outside of Turkey as well. This definition, as you might expect, doesn’t inspire other ethnic groups in Turkey such as the Kurds. In fact, I never heard a Kurd defining himself as a member of the "Turkish people." But quite a few them are happy to be part of the "people of Turkey."

One person who understood the importance of this nuance well was Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, modern Turkey’s founder, to whom Gen. Başbuğ referred in his speech. During the years of the War of Liberation (1919-22), when he needed the full support of all groups in the country, Mustafa Kemal generously embraced them by speaking about "the people of Turkey," which included "Turks, Kurds, Circassians, the LazÉ and all other components of Islam." But once the war was won, and the republic was established, this pluralist rhetoric rapidly waned, and the whole populace started to be defined as "the Turkish people." The goal was to assimilate all other "components" into the largest one, the Turks.

Although Gen. Başbuğ denied that assimilation has ever been the policy of the state, he seems to have inferred the necessary lesson: the right way is integration, not assimilation. He defined the former as the way to "accept the individual’s cultural identity, while uniting them under a common super-identity of citizenship." This would allow someone to say, "I am proud to be a Kurd, but also happy to be a Turkish citizen."

When Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan made a similar comment in 2005, he was bashed by the nationalists for "undermining the Turkish character of the nation." That’s why it is good to hear a similarly pluralist message from the chief of general staff. That will raise the standards of the discussion to a new level. It will be harder to depict pluralists as "separatist traitors." Who can be more patriotic, after all, than the very top general?

Yet as I said in the beginning, the top general also said things that I disagreed with. And this came when he spoke about the other headache the military has after the Kurdish issue: the role of religion in public life.

Here, Başbuğ did not sound embracive at all. He defined religious communities as social forces which "try to become economic powers, then try to shape the socio-political life, and assert their identities as a way of life based on religion." This all amounted to, according to the general, "exploitation of religion."

Well, and this whole idea amounts to illiberalism. In a liberal order, the religious communities should of course have the right to become a socio-political power with their distinct way of life. Secular circles would have the same right too. The society which is open to all these different political actors and their nonviolent ambitions is called the open society. And it is a very good thing.

'Not against religion'
The problem here is the utterly wrong conception of secularism in Turkey. It is understood not only as the secularity of the state, but also the society. Religion is allowed only in the private sphere. Hence comes the Turkish clichŽ, "we are not against religion," which Gen. Başbuğ reiterated in his speech. But religion is not only a private matter, and people have the right to organize socially according to the values and dictates of their faith. That is why you have numerous churches, religious schools, charities, communities and networks in free countries. And this is a contribution, not a threat, to democracy, as Alexis de Tocqueville observed almost two centuries ago in his magnum opus, "Democracy in America."

That is the example Turkey should follow vis-?-vis it much debated, and scapegoated, religious communities. And if the Turkish military is really willing to embrace the whole "people of Turkey," it should change its mind on not just Kurds but also the religious communities.