Ergun Ozbudun, professor of Law at Bilkent University, Turkey, has harsh words for Turkey’s current government: “Pluralism is not in the structure of the state. The state is overpowering.”
Ozbudun, a one-time chair of the academic committee to draft a new Turkish constitution and a Distinguished Scholar in Residence of the Institute for Religion, Culture, and Public Life, spoke to a group of around 40 students and other guests Monday night on his hopes for democratic change in Turkey. The event was a precursor to a two-day conference this Friday and Saturday organized by Dr. Ahmet Kuru, deputy director of the Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration, and Religion. The conference is part of Kuru’s wider lecture series entitled “Transforming Secularism, Democracy, and Nationalism in Turkey.”
“In the aftermath of Sept. 11, people generally think in black and white, evil and good,” Kuru said. “Islam is not compatible with democracy, Islam is not compatible with secularism. But we try to show that actually things are more complex, that Islam is not monolithic, that there are diverse Muslim politics, diverse interpretations of Islam.”
Ozbudun sat at the head of a table with attendees filling up the remainder of the seats. The rest of the audience filled the room, sitting in chairs surrounding the edge of the room or standing in the back. Both Kuru and Alfred Stepan, director of the Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration, and Religion and a Wallace S. Sayre Professor of Government, opened the talk by introducing Ozbudun. Ozbudun, who began by reminiscing about the year he spent as a visiting professor at Columbia 30 years ago, focused his talk on summarizing part of a larger study, “Turkey, Plural Society, and the Monolithic State.” He argued that pluralism is not in the structure of the state of Turkey and that this paradox is the key to resolving many issues involving the democratization of Turkey. “The conflict between accountable authority and nonelected state agencies is a fundamental point of conflict,” he added.
Kuru noted that a general goal of the talk was to contribute to several debates. He said that by discussing nationalism, populism, and secularism as key ideologies in the founding philosophy of the republic, Ozbudun is addressing the debate between Islam and secularism.
“The talk shows that there are not simply good guys, the secularists, and bad buys, the Islamists. There is more than that,” Kuru said. “And it shows the relationship between ideology and democracy because people are not simply following material gains. You see how ideology is important in the Turkish case.”