[This is a continuation of Part One of this article.]
Turkey’s upcoming elections suggest wounds of the 1990s are still fresh.
With the economy worsening, Turkey’s governing Justice and Development Party (AKP) has decided to hold elections a year earlier than planned. Since the 24 June date was announced, however, the lira has fallen five percent relative to the euro and twelve percent relative to the dollar. If the trend continues, the government could conceivably lose its absolute majority in parliament. The last time this occurred, in June 2015, President Erdoğan undermined his own prime minister’s attempts to form a coalition government and forced new elections. Amid the uncertainty in the run up to those elections, Kurdish activists declared autonomous zones in southern cities and the military responded by leveling entire neighborhoods; meanwhile, ISIS-linked attackers targeted left-wing and Kurdish protesters, killing over one hundred people in Ankara.
Should the AKP again be reduced to a plurality in parliament, the stakes have been reduced: after the 2015 elections, the government held a referendum to concentrate more power in the presidency—a referendum that passed by only 51.4 percent nationwide and was rejected in the largest cities. Yet, this precaution has not solved matters for the government because it has decided to hold the presidential elections on 24 June as well.
An opposition victory depends on an alliance between deeply polarized political groups. The largest opposition party, the Republican People’s Party (CHP), hopes to secure the support of both the religious Felicity Party (SP) and the nationalist Good Party (İP). A conspicuous absence in this party coalition, however, is the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), which draws votes from Kurdish voters and other groups in Turkey that have historically been pushed to the margins of the political community. Only by excluding the HDP from their alliance have these parties been able to find common ground. In fact, among the most troubling aspects of the opposition coalition is the degree to which its constituent parties depend on exclusive rather than inclusive definitions of citizenship, be those defined by “secularism,” “religion,” or “ethnicity.” These different—and limited—conceptions of citizenship will likely come into conflict should the opposition win the presidency or a majority in the parliament.
The last time a clash of this degree manifested itself in government was during the late 1990s. It is fitting, therefore, that the factional leaders on whose support the opposition to Erdoğan depends were key figures in the 1990s—often connected with the worst aspects of those years. On the eve of the election, it is useful to consider the careers of those leaders—Good Party leader Meral Akşener and Felicity Party leader Temel Karamollaoğlu—in order to think through the problems in Turkey’s exclusionary political culture that predate the AKP and will not be solved simply by voting it out of power.
The Basic Islamist: Temel Karamollaoğlu
If Akşener’s political career is bound up with the convoluted relationship between right-wing activists, military officers, and the mafia that characterized politics in the 1990s, then Felicity Party leader Temel Karamollaoğlu represents the other political current of those years. Karamollaoğlu was a leading figure in the Islamist—that is to say conservative religious—politics of the 1990s. He was also closely connected to one of the most horrifying events of the decade.
Karamollaoğlu’s rise through politics from the 1960s to 1990s is an almost too perfect illustration of how the conservative religious movement grew in Turkey. Any thumbnail description of the process would emphasize how conservative religious politicians expressed the political-economic grievances of a new generation of pious businessmen in Anatolian cities. Sure enough, Karamollaoğlu has family in Sivas, was born in Kahramanmaraş, and studied in Kayseri—effectively a hat-trick in terms of connections with industrial “Anatolian Tiger” cities. In 1964, he won a government scholarship to study textile engineering at the University of Manchester. During his three years abroad, he became involved in politics, serving as president of the Turkish Student Union; he also married an Anglo-Turkish woman. They have been married for over fifty years.
Returning to Turkey in 1967, Karamollaoğlu began working for Sümerbank, the state firm that had provided him with his scholarship. He soon switched to working as a textile specialist in the State Planning Organization. It was also in 1967 that he first met Necmettin Erbakan. Erbakan was now living in Ankara after being recently elected president of the Union of Chambers and Commodity Exchanges. His election had been an upset for the conservative government, which had backed a different candidate. Erbakan was, therefore, already something of an important figure in the Ankara political scene. The two men met while attending a talk by the Sufi religious figure Mehmed Zaid Kotku.
Koktu was the imam of Istanbul’s İskenderpaşa mosque and head of one of the country’s most influential Sufi orders. In large part, his appeal stemmed from his ability to apply Islamic theology to the problems an emerging middle class of white-collar workers, businessmen, and engineers—people like Karamollaoğlu and Erbakan as well as future Turkish presidents Turgut Özal and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. It was, apparently, at Koktu’s urging that Erbakan was formed his first political party in 1969.[17] And Karamollaoğlu was present from the very beginning.
After a two-year stint in the private sector, Karamollaoğlu returned to government service in 1975, joining the Ministry of Industry as director of promotion and implementation. The timing was significant: for much of 1974-1977, Erbakan’s National Salvation Party (MSP) was an essential component of several coalition governments. As a reward, it was given important ministries like Industry and set about packing the civil service with loyalists.
If Akşener’s political career is bound up with the convoluted relationship between right-wing activists, military officers, and the mafia that characterized politics in the 1990s, then Felicity Party leader Temel Karamollaoğlu represents the other political current of those years. Karamollaoğlu was a leading figure in the Islamist—that is to say conservative religious—politics of the 1990s. He was also closely connected to one of the most horrifying events of the decade.
Karamollaoğlu’s rise through politics from the 1960s to 1990s is an almost too perfect illustration of how the conservative religious movement grew in Turkey. Any thumbnail description of the process would emphasize how conservative religious politicians expressed the political-economic grievances of a new generation of pious businessmen in Anatolian cities. Sure enough, Karamollaoğlu has family in Sivas, was born in Kahramanmaraş, and studied in Kayseri—effectively a hat-trick in terms of connections with industrial “Anatolian Tiger” cities. In 1964, he won a government scholarship to study textile engineering at the University of Manchester. During his three years abroad, he became involved in politics, serving as president of the Turkish Student Union; he also married an Anglo-Turkish woman. They have been married for over fifty years.
Returning to Turkey in 1967, Karamollaoğlu began working for Sümerbank, the state firm that had provided him with his scholarship. He soon switched to working as a textile specialist in the State Planning Organization. It was also in 1967 that he first met Necmettin Erbakan. Erbakan was now living in Ankara after being recently elected president of the Union of Chambers and Commodity Exchanges. His election had been an upset for the conservative government, which had backed a different candidate. Erbakan was, therefore, already something of an important figure in the Ankara political scene. The two men met while attending a talk by the Sufi religious figure Mehmed Zaid Kotku.
Koktu was the imam of Istanbul’s İskenderpaşa mosque and head of one of the country’s most influential Sufi orders. In large part, his appeal stemmed from his ability to apply Islamic theology to the problems an emerging middle class of white-collar workers, businessmen, and engineers—people like Karamollaoğlu and Erbakan as well as future Turkish presidents Turgut Özal and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. It was, apparently, at Koktu’s urging that Erbakan was formed his first political party in 1969.[17] And Karamollaoğlu was present from the very beginning.
After a two-year stint in the private sector, Karamollaoğlu returned to government service in 1975, joining the Ministry of Industry as director of promotion and implementation. The timing was significant: for much of 1974-1977, Erbakan’s National Salvation Party (MSP) was an essential component of several coalition governments. As a reward, it was given important ministries like Industry and set about packing the civil service with loyalists.
All newspaper and magazine sources were accessed online prior to June 3, 2018.
[17] M. Emin Yaşar, “Mehmed Zahid Kotku,” in Modern Türkiye’de Siyasi Düşünçe 6: İslamcılık, (İstanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 2002), 326-29.
[18] Emma Sinclair Lewis, “Sectarian Violence, the Alevi Minority and the Left: Kahramanmaraş 1978,” in Turkey’s Alevi Enigma: A Comprehensive Overview, ed. Paul White and Joost Jongerden, 215-236 (The Netherlands: Brill, 2003), 216.
[19] Süreyya Oral, "Sivas'ta durmadan körüklenen mezhep ayrılığı arife günü patlak verdi," Milliyet, 9/7/78; Elise Massicard, Türkiye’den Avrupa’ya: Alevi Hareketinin Siyasallaşması (İstanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 2007), 61-3.
[20] “Erbakan,Karamollaoğlu ve Yazgan haklarındaki iddaları reddetti,” Milliyet, 6/13/81.
[21] “Konya ve Sivas'ta sigara ve içki yasağı,” Milliyet, 5/13/89; “Abdi İpekçi Caddesinin adı değiştirildi,” Milliyet, 10/18/93.
[22] Nikki Keddie. Modern Iran: Roots and Results of Revolution (New Haven: Yale University Press: 2006), 262; Said Arjomand, After Khomeini: Iran Under His Successors (Oxford University Press: 2009), 194.
[23] Ruşen Çakır, "Sivas Konuşuyor 2," Milliyet, 7/17/93.
[24] Okan Aralan, “Temel Karamollaoğlı’nun karieşi TÜGSAŞ sanığı,” Milliyet, 12/15/97.
[25] "Emire fırtınası," Milliyet, 1/19/97.
[26] Though Yeki Akit writer Mehtap Yılmaz is very concerned about the University of Manchester’s connections with Zionist leaders, the fact that Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben Gurion, attended Istanbul University goes unmentioned.
[27] Ruşen Çakır, "Sivas Konuşuyor 3," Milliyet, 7/19/93.