Conservative Media For Turkey
by Zafer Yilmaz

After the military interfered on February 28, 1997 to push the Turkish Constitutional Court to ban the so-called Islamist Welfare Party, Recep Tayyip Erdogan and others sympathetic to Islamic goals were forced to separate themselves from Welfare and establish the Justice and Development Party (AKP) in 2001. They insisted they would never be a threat to the secular system set up by Ataturk at the beginning of the republic and the collapse of the Islamic Ottoman Empire. This declaration certainly helped them to gain significant public support in the following election, which placed AKP in the centre of Turkish politics, with Erdogan at the head.

In choosing to free themselves from the Islamist label, they defined themselves as “conservative democrats”. Everybody knew what democracy was; it was a clever word. But what was the conservatism? Could AKP, which had driven near-revolutiary democratic reforms, be a conservative party? That was the problem.

This confusion is usual. Western political concepts are mostly misunderstood or have a different meaning in Turkish politics. Turkey did not share the same historical experience with Europe and the U.S. where human freedom, civil society, free enterprise, individual rights were developed step by step through works of liberal-conservative thinkers. Therefore, in Turkey, the conception of conservatism is different than in Anglo-American politics.

In Turkey, the concept of “conservatism” was generally identified as a resistance against the change and renewal of modernism. The description of conservatism was introduced as if it was equal to promotion of backwardness, without knowing the great works of Edmund Burke, Alexis de Tocqueville, Russerl Kirk, Robert Nisbet, and other conservative thinkers. The most remarkable reason for this misunderstanding and prejudice is that there is obviously lack of knowledge about British and American conservatism as a political philosophy. It seems that the strong French impact on Turkish politicians and intellectuals, including Ataturk, is one of the most important reason that did not allow the Turkish people to be conscious of Anglo-American conservatism. The intellectual life in Turkey was dominated by French thinkers for most of its existence as a nation state. This is compounded by the suspicion that the AKP used the word “conservatism” to save themselves from being labeled as “Islamists”. Moreover nationalists used this term to appear a bit sympathetic to the Turkish people as a nation.

Over its 100 plus years of existence, Turkey has been pushed between Islamism, Nationalism and Westernization. Turkey has depended on these ideologies but the result has been a politics that has an oppressive and Jacobean character. In fact conservatism has no intellectual relationship either with Islamism or nationalism. Contrary to popular belief in Turkey, conservatism is a political philosophy, not a life conviction or a religion. It emphisezes notions of freedom, the rule of law, the importance of tradition, small government, and the importance of strong families and education.

Today some young people have come together at the Journal of Conservative Thought (Muhafazakar Dusunce Dergisi) to introduce these ideas to Turkey. They believe that Turkish politics should not be limited to three types of politics and that new diverse perspectives on political thought should be introduced to Turkish political thinking. Therefore they have attempted to promote principles of conservative philosophy through their publication, which they think is crucial in terms of promoting universal and modern thought as an alternative in Turkish politics. They consider conservatism is actually very harmonious with the political tendencies of the Turkish people. In this way, they are planning to translate the classic works of great conservative thinkers, like Edmund Burke, Russerl Kirk, Robert Nisbet, Michale Oakeshott, etc.

Turkey is taking tremendous steps on its way to membership in the European Union. If the Justice and Development Party does not turn to Islamic utopias, true conservative thought brought in to public attention through various media in Turkey may have a chance taking the best of both Western values and local Turkish values--and make peace between them.

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