Three trends converge to make Turkey more volatile
June 14, 2013 01:44 AM
By Mehran Kamrava
The Daily Star
Three sets of processes, each in the making for some time, have converged to provoke the violence of the last few days in Istanbul and in other major Turkish cities. The consequences perhaps pose the most serious challenge to the once-unchallenged authority of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and to his legacy. The first development, by far the most unsettling for large swathes of Turkish society, has been a culture war of sorts being waged between secularists on the one side and an expansive and increasingly confident religious segment on the other. Ever since its founding in 1923, the Turkish Republic has adhered to the secular principles of its founding father, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. But over the last few decades, the Turkish middle class’s self-image as European and “modern” has come under sustained challenge by a growing minority of socially conservative, religiously oriented Turks. Given the traditionalists’ growing affluence and steady ascent, first economically and over the last decade politically, the country’s Ataturkists find themselves on the defensive for the first time.
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