Turkey's unending crisis

Caught in the battle between a military top brass that zealously guards its self-proclaimed role as protector of democracy, and an Islamic political group with an extremist agenda, Turkey appears set to slip deeper into crisis. Already facing its worst economic turmoil, with the currency plunging and loss of thousands of jobs since the start of the year, the country's shaky political system has just suffered a major jolt. The constitutional court, Turkey's highest whose rulings cannot be challenged, has banned the main opposition party, the religious-oriented Virtue Group, on the ground that it was a focal point for pro-Islamic and anti-secular activity. The court has ruled that Virtue violated a law that prohibits religious activities which could undermine the secular polity.

Virtue, which has now been banned, sprang from the ashes of the Welfare Party and will most certainly be born in another manifestation of political Islam. The court ruling in favor of secularists is the latest act in a long-drawn battle between the two sides. In a strange twist to the rule elsewhere, the armed forces in Turkey have taken on the mantle of protecting democracy from religious extremists. But Ataturk's country, which for most of the second half of the last century was ruled by pro-U.S. military dictatorships, finds the road to democracy strewn with many unforeseeable obstacles.

The democracy wave that swept parts of Europe as the Cold War wound down witnessed the return of the military to the barracks. And democratic elections revealed surprisingly sizable support for stridently Islamist political groups, to the acute discomfort of the military and its long-time backers in the West.

Turkey's long and in some measure unique battle will continue as long as the powerful military continues to meddle and refuses to allow politics to seek its own solution. This is clear from the experience of countries such as Algeria. In the main, of course, Turkey's problem arises from its existentialist dilemma. Two factors govern this. The first is its strategic geographic location, as the gateway from Asia to Europe, and the second is an eagerness to shed the Asian tag and join the European club.

-- The Hindu, New Delhi