Turkish secularism is a model for America

After centuries of inquisitions, witch burnings and crusades, you’d think that the West would… After centuries of inquisitions, witch burnings and crusades, you’d think that the West would realize that the separation of church and state is important to a healthy and free society.’

You’d be wrong.

Be it through the display of the Ten Commandments outside of courthouses, the recitation of a monotheistic pledge of allegiance or the absurd exercise in religious pandering that our presidential election has become, the principle of separation of church and state

is mocked in this nation daily.

So when I look for an example of vibrant secularism, I do not look at my own nation but instead to the Middle East, where Mustafa Kemal Ataturk established the secular Turkish Republic in 1923.

The founding of the Turkish Republic might seem to be an obscure and, for a U.S. college readership, pointless issue to bring up in a column, but Turkey is one of the most successful examples of secular government in the world.

Politicians in our country might get away with opposing abortion or same-sex marriage on religious grounds, but legislators in Turkey have been executed in the past for

undermining the Turkish secular tradition.

We could learn something from Ataturk’s Turkey.

When Ataturk founded the Turkish Republic, it was an international backwater. A remnant

of the Ottoman Empire, Turkish social and political structure was heavily dependent on Muslim institutions and laws.

But when Ataturk came to power, he introduced sweeping reforms. He ended the caliphate, introduced new civil and penal codes based on European models and dissolved the Islamic courts.

He even banned traditional religious styles of dress in an attempt to completely separate Turkish society from its past Islamic culture.

Ataturk’s secular reforms made Turkey a regional success story.

Unlike other Middle Eastern nations, Turkish interests have never been subordinated to the West by puppet dictators, nor has Turkey’s progress been inhibited by a suc-

cession of monarchs and their pet clerics.

The progress experienced by Turkey should serve as an example not only to the Middle East but also to Western nations who have forgotten the lessons of the Enlightenment.

The secular foundation of the Turkish Republic has only been protected by a vigilant military willing to intervene in political affairs and a class of elites who are more loyal to Ataturk’s memory than to the will of the majority.

Whereas the interests of liberty have consistently fallen prey to the ignorance of the masses in this country, the Turkish military and political elite have been successful in combating what Alexis de Tocqueville called the ‘tyranny of the majority.” I’m not saying that the U.S. military should depose governments at will — the Turkish military has

overthrown four governments since 1960 — but I am saying that, in a nation where more than 50 percent of the population believes that the world was created in six days, we should be wary of accepting the will of the majority.

The Turkish system has its flaws. It’s extremely ethnocentric and paranoid. However, the Turkish president never invaded a country because God told him to do so.

The ironic part of this whole issue is that Ataturk based his reforms on the

Enlightenment principles of men such as Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine, men who founded this nation. The United States must reconnect with our Enlightenment roots.

But regrettably, just as the United States has forgotten the teachings of men such as Jefferson and Paine, the Turks have abandoned the hard line of Ataturk’s reform.

The ruling Justice and Development Party of Turkey has actively rolled back the secular protections that have made Turkey such a success story.

Members of the Turkish military have recently been arrested for plotting a coup against the Islamist party whose very existence is a violation of separation of church and state. But a coup in defense of liberty is not a crime.

I hope that the Turks will come to their senses and, regardless of world opinion, dissolve this new party that has betrayed secularism.

The example of a secular Turkish republic is too important to progress in the region and around the world for it to be destroyed.

Indeed, as we proceed through this election year we must reflection whether we want a president who will pander to the publicly religious or one who will uphold the memory of our founding and deny religion a place in the public sphere.

Let Americans have their private faiths just as the Turks have theirs. But if the United States is to once again assume a position of ascendance in world affairs, it is reason alone that must guide our decisions.

E-mail Giles at gbh4@pitt.edu