Democracy, not terror, is the engine of political Islam
Neocon policies designed to promote liberal opinion in the Middle East have in fact played into the hands of the religious parties

William DalrympleFriday September 21, 2007The Guardian


Six years after 9/11, throughout the Muslim world political Islam is on the march; the surprise is that its rise is happening democratically - not through the bomb, but the ballot box. Democracy is not the antidote to the Islamists the neocons once fondly believed it would be. Since the US invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, there has been a consistent response from voters wherever Muslims have had the right to vote. In Lebanon, Iran, Iraq, Palestine, Pakistan, Egypt, Turkey and Algeria they have voted en masse for religious parties in a way they have never done before. Where governments have been most closely linked to the US, political Islam's rise has been most marked.
Much western journalism in the six years since 9/11 has concentrated on terrorist groups, jihadis and suicide bombers. But while the threat of violence remains very real, those commentators who have compared what they ignorantly call "Islamofascism" to the Nazis are guilty of hysteria: the differences in relative power and military capability are too great for the comparison to be valid, and the analogies that the neocons draw with the second world war are demonstrably false. As long as the west interferes in the Muslim world, bombs will go off; and as long as Britain lines up behind George Bush's illegal wars, British innocents will die in jihadi atrocities. But that does not mean we are about to be invaded, nor is Europe about to be demographically swamped, as North American commentators such as Mark Steyn claim: Muslims will make up no more than 10% of the European population by 2020.
Yet in concentrating on the violent jihadi fringe, we may have missed the main story. For if the imminent Islamist takeover of western Europe is a myth, the same cannot be said for the Islamic world. Clumsy and brutal US policies in the Middle East have generated revolutionary changes, radicalising even the most moderate opinion, with the result that the status quo in place since the 1950s has been broken.
Egypt is typical: at the last election in 2005 members of the nominally banned Muslim Brotherhood, standing as independents, saw their representation rise from 17 seats to 88 in the 444-seat people's assembly - a five-fold increase, despite reports of vote-rigging by President Mubarak's ruling National Democratic Alliance. The Brothers, who have long abjured violence, are now the main opposition.
The figures in Pakistan are strikingly similar. Traditionally, the religious parties there have won only a fraction of the vote. That began to change after the US invasion of Afghanistan. In October 2002 a rightwing alliance of religious parties - the Muttahida Majlis Amal or MMA - won 11.6% of the vote, more than doubling its share, and sweeping the polls in the two provinces bordering Afghanistan - Baluchistan and the North West Frontier Province - where it formed ultra-conservative and pro-Islamist provincial governments. If the last election turned the MMA into a serious electoral force, there are now fears that it could yet be the principle beneficiary of the current standoff in Pakistan.
The Bush administration proclaimed in 2004 that the promotion of democracy in the Middle East would be a major foreign policy theme in its second term. It has been widely perceived, not least in Washington, that this policy has failed. Yet in many ways US foreign policy has succeeded in turning Muslim opinion against the corrupt monarchies and decaying nationalist parties who have ruled the region for 50 years. The irony is that rather than turning to liberal secular parties, as the neocons assumed, Muslims have lined up behind parties most clearly seen to stand up against aggressive US intervention.
Religious parties, in other words, have come to power for reasons largely unconnected to religion. As clear and unambiguous opponents of US policy in the Middle East - in a way that, say, Musharraf, Mubarak and Mahmoud Abbas are not - religious parties have benefited from legitimate Muslim anger: anger at the thousands of lives lost in Afghanistan and Iraq; at the blind eye the US turns to Israel's nuclear arsenal and colonisation of the West Bank; at the horrors of Abu Ghraib and the incarceration of thousands of Muslims without trial in the licensed network of torture centres that the US operates across the globe; and at the Islamophobic rhetoric that still flows from Bush and his circle in Washington.
Moreover, the religious parties tend to be seen by the poor, rightly or wrongly, as representing justice, integrity and equitable distribution of resources. Hence the strong showing, for example, of Hamas against the blatantly corrupt Fatah in the 2006 elections in Palestine. Equally, the dramatic rise of Hizbullah in Lebanon has not been because of a sudden fondness for sharia law, but because of the status of Hassan Nasrallah, Hizbullah's leader, as the man who gave the Israelis a bloody nose, and who provides medical and social services for the people of South Lebanon, just as Hamas does in Gaza.
The usual US response has been to retreat from its push for democracy when the "wrong" parties win. This was the case not just with the electoral victory of Hamas, but also in Egypt: since the Brothers' strong showing in the elections, the US has stopped pressing Mubarak to make democratic reforms, and many of the Brothers' leading activists and business backers, as well as Mubarak's opponent in the presidential election, are in prison, all without a word of censure from Washington.
Yet on a recent visit to Egypt I found everywhere a strong feeling that political Islam was there to stay, and that this was something everyone was going to have to learn to live with; the US response had become almost irrelevant. Even the Copts were making overtures to the Brothers. As Youssef Sidhom, who edits the leading Coptic newspaper, put it: "They are not going away. We need to enter into dialogue, to clarify their policies, and end mutual mistrust."
The reality is that, like the Copts, we are going to have to find some modus vivendi with political Islam. Pretending that the Islamists do not exist, and that we will not talk to them, is no answer. Only by opening dialogue are we likely to find those with whom we can work, and to begin to repair the damage that self-defeating Anglo-American policies have done to the region, and to western influence there, since 9/11.
· William Dalrymple is the author of The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty, Delhi 1857.
www.williamdalrymple.com

Piyasa Devleti ve Turkiye

24.08.2007 Yigit Bulut
'Piyasa devleti' ve Türkiye'de cumhurbaşkanı seçimi
Bir ülkede devletin ana yapısını korumak ve kollamakla görevli kurumlar bile 'aman piyasa bozulur' korkusu altında görevini yapamaz hale gelmişse, orada artık tek bir hakim vardır: Yeni imparator piyasa.

Biraz karışık ve doğru anlatılamadığı zaman ciddi yanlış anlaşılmalara yol açabilecek bir başlık. Sakin bir şekilde birlikte açmayı deneyelim. Size bir soru sormak istiyorum: Fransa’nın cumhurbaşkanı kim? Dünyada tarihi olan ve genel akışa müdahale etmiş birkaç milletten biri olan Fransızların cumhurbaşkanı, geçmişi Amerikan ajanlığı ile suçlanacak kadar karışık olan Yahudi asıllı bir Macar.
Ne güzel değil mi, koca Fransa’da başka adam kalmamış! Peki Almanya’da şansölye kim? Doğu Almanya’dan “bir ev kadını”. Şaka gibi! Koca Almanya “çorabıyla ayakkabısını” ahenk içinde seçmekten aciz 1989’a kadar dünya genelindeki gelişmelere duvar arkasından bakmış Merkel’e emanet.

Seçkincilik bitiyor mu
Örnekler sadece Fransa ve Almanya ile de sınırlı değil. Peki “lider” profilinde neden böyle bir dönüşüm var? Halk kendi içinden adamları mı seçiyor? Seçkincilik bitiyor mu? Bu soruya cevap ararken yukarıdaki örneklerden tamamen bağımsız olarak yeni bir noktaya değinelim. Türkiye’de AKP’nin iktidar olması, Gül’ün cumhurbaşkanı seçilme yoluna girmesi, “halkın kendinden olanı seçmesine” örnek değil mi?
Cevaba yurtdışından başlayalım. Eğer Sarkozy, Fransız halkının içinden biriyse, eğer Amerika her Fransız vatandaşına bu kadar hakimse o zaman ciddi sorunlar var. Veya eğer Merkel ortalama bir Alman vatandaşının kalitesini yansıtıyorsa, orada da durum bayağı karışık.

Küresel güçler hakim
Bu şahısların iktidar olmalarının halktan olmalarıyla hiçbir alakaları yok. Sistemdeki değişimin yansımaları. Daha açık ifadesiyle, ulus devletlerin yerini küresel güçlere bıraktığı bir yapıda ülkeyi yönetenlerin bu kumaştan olmaları gayet doğal. Düşünsenize, küresel güçler koca Alman İmparatorluğu ile dalga geçiyorlar, Almanya’yı Merkel yönetiyor. Cevabın Türkiye’li kısmına gelince. Biraz daha karışık ve tanışmamız gereken, başlıkta da geçen bir kavram var, piyasa devleti.
Ne demek? Bu ifade bana ait değil, Jacques Attali’nin “Geleceğin Kısa Tarihi” isimli kitabından alınmış bir cümle. Devamı da var, Attali aynen şöyle diyor:“Para kendisine zarar verecek her şeyin sonunu getirecektir, buna yavaş yavaş yok edeceği devletler hatta Amerika Birleşik Devletleri de dahildir. Dünyanın biricik yasası haline gelen piyasa, ‘hiper-imparatorluk’ diye adlandıracağım yeni bir döneme girmektedir.”

Yeni imparator: Piyasa
Evet, piyasa devleti kavramının özünü bana göre çok değişik bir çalışma olan Attali’nin eserinden alıntıladığım birkaç cümle ile aktarmaya çalıştım. Bu kavram aslında özü itibarıyla çok yeni de değil. İlk versiyonlarını bütün dünya 1980 ve 1989 sonrası tanıdı. Türkiye’ye “benim memurum işini” bilir sloganıyla yansıyan “yeni imparator” piyasa, Amerika’da daha da açık ifadeler buldu.
“Piyasa, sivil toplum, herkese eşit şans” gibi kavramlar havalarda uçuşurken devlet olduğunu sandığımız birçok ülkede inanılmaz skandallar ortaya çıktı. Güzel bir örnek mi istiyorsunuz: Enron skandalı. Bush Ailesi’nin, Enron’un kurucuları ile ilgili söyledikleri cümleleri hatırlayın; “enerji piyasasının serbestleşmesine yaptıkları katkılardan dolayı onlara teşekkür borçluyuz.” İşte büyük devlet Amerika, işte serbestleşme-piyasa algılaması altında olanlar.

Türkiye değiştirildi
Bizle alakası ne? Geldiğimiz noktada “benim memurum işini bilir” kavramından daha mı ilerideyiz? Türkiye’de de süreç bütün dünya ile aynı anda başladı ve ivmelendi. 1980 askeri darbesi ile ulusal devletin, piyasa devlerine dönüştürülme süreci, toplum yeterince depolitize edildikten sonra Turgut Özal ve ekibine ihale edildi. Kavramlar hızla yıpranırken, “para en yüce değerdir” anlayışı toplumun ana algılama damarı içine yerleşti. 1980-2001 arasında kendi çapımızda piyasa devleti ile mücadele ettik.
11 Eylül saldırısı sonrası ortaya çıkan “tez-antitez” ve özellikle 2003-2007 arasında dünya piyasalarında yaşananlar, mücadele etme şansımıza ve kapasitemizi neredeyse yok etti, ulus devletin bileşenleri süratle el değiştirdi, yok edildi ve Türkiye laik, üniter bir devletten tam bir piyasa devleti haline getirildi.
Örnek mi istiyorsunuz? Bir ülkede devletin ana yapısını korumak ve kollamakla görevli kurumlar bile “aman piyasa bozulur” korkusu altında görevini yapamaz hale gelmişse, her birim “piyasa sopasıyla korkar” hale gelmişse, orada artık tek bir hakim vardır; “yeni imparator piyasa”.
Sonuç: Yukarıdaki örneklemelerde Türkiye’deki politikacılar için hiçbir tespitte bulunmadım. Yine bir tek kelime etmeyeceğim. Tek söyleyeceğim, Türkiye’de Gül cumhurbaşkanı olabiliyorsa ve buna tepki gelmiyorsa, neden-sonuç ilişkisi ve kavramlar bu yazıda anlatılıyor. Ortaya koyması benden “sentez” sizden.

Forget the Islamic Threat

From The Sunday Times
September 2, 2007
The world divides...and democracy is at bay
Forget the Islamic threat, the coming battle will be between autocratic nations like Russia and China and the rest
Robert Kagan
The world has become normal again. The years immediately after the end of the cold war offered a tantalising glimpse of a new kind of international order, the hope that nations might grow together or disappear altogether, with ideological conflicts melting away, and cultures intermingling through free commerce and communications. That, however, was a mirage – the hopeful anticipation of a liberal, democratic world that wanted to believe the end of the cold war did not end just one strategic and ideological conflict but all such conflict.
The world has not been transformed: nations remain as strong, as ambitious, as passionate and as competitive as ever. While the United States is the only superpower, international competition among great powers is back. The United States, Russia, China, Europe, Japan, India, Iran and others vie for regional predominance. It is a time not of convergence but of divergence of ideas and ideologies.
The old competition between liberalism and absolutism has reemerged, with the nations of the world increasingly lining up between them or along the fault line of tradition and modernity – Islamic fundamentalism against the West.
The Islamists’ struggle against the powerful and often impersonal forces of modernisation, capitalism and glo-balisation is a significant fact of life in the world today, but oddly this struggle between modernisation and tradi-tionalism is largely a sideshow on the international stage. The future is more likely to be dominated by the ideological struggle among the great powers than by the effort of radical Islamists to restore an imagined past of piety.
The enduring ideological conflict since the Enlightenment has been the battle between liberalism and autocracy. That was the issue that divided the United States from much of Europe in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, and divided Europe itself into the 20th.
It seemed plausible in the 1990s that the death of communism would bring an end to disagreements about the proper form of government and society, when both Russia and China were thought to be moving towards political as well as economic liberalism. Many hoped the end of the cold war might herald a genuinely new era in human development.
But those expectations proved misplaced. China has not liberalised but has shored up its autocratic government. Russia has turned away from imperfect liberalism decisively towards autocracy.
Many assume that Russian and Chinese leaders do not believe in anything and therefore cannot be said to represent an ideology. But that is mistaken. The rulers of China and Russia do have a set of beliefs that guide them in both domestic and foreign policy. They believe autocracy is better for their nations than democracy. They believe it offers order and stability and the possibility of prosperity. They believe democracy is not the answer and that they are serving the best interests of their peoples by holding and wielding power the way they do.
This is not a novel or, from a historical perspective, even a disreputable idea. The European monarchies of the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries were thoroughly convinced of the superiority of their form of government. They, too, disdained democracy as the rule of the licentious and greedy mob. Only in the past half century has liberalism gained widespread popularity around the world.
Even today some American thinkers exalt “liberal autocracy” over “illiberal democracy”. If the world’s two largest powers share a common commitment to autocratic government then autocracy is not dead as an ideology.
This has implications for international institutions and American foreign policy. It is no longer possible to speak of an “international community”. The term suggests agreement on international norms of behaviour, an international morality, even an international conscience. This idea took hold in the 1990s at a time when the general assumption was that the movement of Russia and China towards western liberalism was producing a global commonality of thinking about human affairs.
By the late 1990s it was already clear that the international community lacked a foundation of common understanding. This was exposed most blatantly in the war over Kosovo, which divided the liberal West from both Russia and China and from many other nonEuropean nations. Today it is apparent on the issue of Sudan and Darfur. In the future, incidents that expose the hollowness of the term “international community” may proliferate.
As for the United Nations security council, after a brief awakening from the cold war coma, it has fallen back to its former condition of near paralysis. The security council on most major issues is clearly divided between the autocracies and the democracies, with the latter systematically pressing for sanctions and other punitive actions against Iran, North Korea, Sudan and other autocracies, and the former just as systematically resisting and attempting to weaken the effect of such actions.
American foreign policy must be attuned to these more critical ideological distinctions. It is folly to expect China to help undermine a brutal regime in Khartoum or to be surprised if Russia rattles its sabre at pro-western democratic governments near its borders. There will be a tendency towards solidarity among the world’s autocracies as well as among the world’s democracies.
For all these reasons, the United States should pursue policies designed both to promote democracy and strengthen cooperation among the democracies. It should join with other democracies to erect new international institutions that both reflect and enhance their shared principles and goals – perhaps a new league of democratic states to hold regular meetings and consultations on the issues of the day.
Such an institution could bring together Asian nations such as Japan, Australia and India with the European nations – two sets of democracies that have comparatively little to do with each other outside the realms of trade and finance – and would complement, not replace, the United Nations, the G8 and other global forums.
In time, such a signal of commitment to the democratic idea may become a means of pooling the resources of democratic nations to address issues that cannot be addressed at the United Nations, able to bestow legitimacy on actions that liberal nations deem necessary but autocratic nations refuse to countenance – just as Nato conferred legitimacy on the conflict in Kosovo even though Russia was opposed.
Robert Kagan is a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and transatlantic fellow at the German Marshall Fund Andrew Sullivan is away