The headscarf, the Alevis and two styles of politics

Two moves made almost simultaneously last week, one from the government camp and one from the opposition, gave us the chance to see and compare the distinctive political styles of both side by side.

First of all, CHP Chairman Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu's "headscarf" announcement, which was received with some bewilderment, was, however you look at it, a thoroughly anachronistic move under present circumstances. For the AK Party has, over the last ten years and at every stage, resolved the headscarf problem despite the CHP's fierce resistance, so to talk now of solving it was entirely out of context and out of place, like a magpie on a rooftop.

Even so, we must admit that, as it stands, this was a move with the potential to muddy the waters considerably. It appears that this seemingly irrelevant announcement arose from Kılıçdaroğlu's need to defend himself against, and offer assurances in the face of, a heavy distrust hanging over him.

The CHP Chairman's remarks were a defensive answer to a serious worry that, should the CHP come to power, it would not hesitate to do again what it did in the past. But in trying to allay the concerns of the conservative segment, he caused the intentions inside his own party to be exposed, if only as a reaction.

Before the conservative segment could accuse him of insincerity, his own party members responded in ways that more than justified all of the conservative segment's worries. Once again all the idle talk and phrases of those nightmare days for headscarved women were rapidly put back into circulation from the most authoritative mouths. We once more heard those turban-versus-headscarf distinctions we had begun to forget, and, as if that were not enough, the "sıkmabaş" insults, from CHP politicians, academics and newspaper columnists alike.

It seems that CHP members have only been patiently putting up with the normalization achieved in society over the past ten years, and with the headscarf having ceased to be a problem. With an arrogant self-confidence, they think that the freedom lived through this normalization is a temporary state that will sooner or later be corrected.

All the events that have taken place, all the slaps they have received from the people, still have not brought them to their senses. They still do not see the matter as a question of fundamental rights and freedoms that cannot even be proposed for debate, indeed that cannot even be brought to mind. They have still not grasped that banning the headscarf in a Muslim country can only be regarded by the people as occupation and enmity toward Islam.

Considering what has been said, I saw it as a great act of courage that Kılıçdaroğlu actually made such a statement against his own party members. It appears that a constitutional arrangement is essential here, one that would bar the CHP from harming the country under any circumstances and protect Türkiye against the CHP's probable harmful effects, and perhaps Kılıçdaroğlu is trying to provide that guarantee.

Right after this speech came President Erdoğan's announcement concerning the Alevis, an announcement that had been foretold days earlier but which signaled that work begun long before had reached a certain point. The Alevis have demands that have been voiced more and more, particularly since the nineties. If you ask about the period before that, even for Alevis to express themselves as Alevis was forbidden. This is what the CHP offered the Alevis, whom it had regarded since the single-party years as a reservoir of votes, even as a backyard: denial of identity, complete disregard of their faith and traditions, and an entirely secularizing assimilation.

As a result of these long processes of assimilation, from the eighties onward the Alevis began again to search for their identity and their faith, to express themselves, and to form communities. In fact, this was a process running parallel to the rapid migration and urbanization taking place in the world and in Türkiye, and to the rediscovery of religious and cultural identities that developed alongside them. It was not something that could be brushed aside, in the words of a former president, by saying "they did not exist before, where did these Alevis come from, where did these Kurds come from, where did these headscarved women come from." Social dynamism always brings new problems or new demands before the politician. The task of politics is to try to understand and meet these new demands. The only parts that cannot be met are those that involve an attack on the rights of others. Yet what right of the Sunni could the Alevi's demand attack, or what right of the Turk could the Kurd's demand attack? Good political management sees all these social demands and gives them a response.

One of the most important problems is that different segments of society make their own rights claims conditional on violating the rights of others. The headscarf ban is, after all, a demand too, and it cannot be realized without violating the rights and freedoms of others. But what is far graver at this point is that those who demand the ban can see restricting that right for others as a right for themselves. A strange right: the right to restrict other people's rights. There is of course no such thing.

But in Türkiye, CHP politics has always claimed for itself the right to determine the citizen's religion, culture, belief, historical consciousness, appearance and dress. And it has used to the fullest every kind of right of exclusion against those who opposed this claim.

The Alevis, the Kurds and the headscarved women were all victims, all casualties, of this mindset for eighty years.

It was the AK Party administration that saw all three and recognized their right to express their own identities. Moreover, the politics the AK Party has followed so far in resolving this problem reveals precisely its difference: instead of ignoring those with social demands and squeezing them into the categories and definitions in its own mind, it listens to them to the end and tries to respond to the demand.

The AK Party did not speak about the Alevis and try to impose its own definitions on them; on the contrary, it spoke with them, listened to them, and tried to recognize and understand them as they define themselves. The CHP and the single-party administration, on the other hand, never agreed to define the Alevis, the Kurds or the headscarved women with their own concepts, as they present themselves. They always acted with the templates in their heads, and here is the result.

Let us not pass over how this result was reached either, but that is for later.