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Erdoğan: "Turkey Is Not a Country Where Moderate Islam Prevails"

by Daniel Pipes
Mon, 14 Jun 2004
updated Thu, 5 Jun 2008

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The Turkish media (including Zaman and Anadolu Agency) carry accounts of a fascinating exchange yesterday in Chicago, at the Academy of Achievement. The panelists included former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak, Bernard Lewis of Princeton University, Congresswoman Jane Harman (Democrat of California), and Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Chris Matthews of MSNBC moderated. The actor James Earl Jones gave a Golden Plate award to the prime minister.

Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his wife Emine.

Such a definition saddens not only the Muslims, but also those who believe in other religions. No religion permits terrorism. Therefore, it is very ugly to put the word Islam before terrorism. You may say religious terrorist but you can't say Islamic terrorist.

Reacting to the term, "moderate Islam," Erdoğan stated,

Turkey is not a country where moderate Islam prevails. This expression is wrong. The word Islam is uninflected, it is only Islam. If you say moderate Islam, then an alternative is created, and that is immoderate Islam. As a Muslim, I can't accept such a concept. Islam rejects extreme concepts. I am not an extreme Muslim. We are Muslims who have found a middle road.

When Matthews asked, "How do we define terror if we do not say terror is Islamic?" Erdoğan replied: "Terror is not a reason. However, can we endeavor to remove the reasons of terror? The U.S. entry into Baghdad does not solve the problem." Erdoğan also said that terrorism did not have any religion, language, race or country.

Comments: (1) Martin Kramer dismisses Erdoğan's comment about Islamic terrorism as "utter nonsense," which it is. And it is nonsense with a purpose; what Erdoğan said represents the standard verbal deception that Islamists routinely engage in, hiding their radical utopianism behind the integrity of the Islamic religion. (For a Western analogy, think of Communists who hid behind the label of socialist.)

(2) This performance amounts to yet another proof – if more is still needed – of Erdoğan's Islamist outlook. Only, it came out more clearly in Chicago than it usually does in Ankara. (June 14, 2004)

April 22, 2005 update: In a variant objection, this time, it was Yiğit Alpoğan, head of Turkey's influential National Security Council (MGK), which has in one form or other for over eighty years represented the Turkish military's political interests. Alpoğan restated the government's objections to the term, emphasizing instead the secular nature of the Turkish state. "Foreigners' messages that we are a moderate Islamic country and that as such we could be an example to other Muslim countries is a view that we dismiss and reject every time we hear it," Alpoğan said. The implications of Alpoğan's protest are diametrically opposite to those of Erdoğan. The Turkish Daily News note that moderate Islam is a term "detested by Turkish officials, particularly top military commanders, ever since the United States once used it to promote Turkey as a model to other Muslim countries in the Middle East."

April 26, 2005 update: Erdoğan is nothing if not consistent. Today, he corrected Australia's Prime Minister John Howard and elaborated on his Chicago rebuke. Howard commented that "Countries where moderate Islam exists, as in Turkey and Indonesia, could help end terror," to which Erdoğan protested that

Moderate Islam is a term open for discussion. I would like to correct this. There is no need to place a new term before or after Islam. Islam means peace. Therefore, Islam refuses all radicalism. Islam is against all forms of fanaticism. According to Islamic teachings, the murder of one equals the murder of all globally. We do not need the term moderate Islam to explain the true spirit of Islam,' told Erdogan. … Terms like Islamic terror and Islam's terror are wrong. Such an attitude towards other religions is also wrong and unacceptable. No religion can tolerate terror. Just as we can not talk about Christian terrorism or Jewish terrorism, we can not talk about Islamic terror. Some terrorists may come up from certain Muslim, Christian or Jewish groups. Yet, we can not hold a whole religion responsible for the acts of a few individuals. This hurts honest and devoted people and is wrong. This is what the terrorists are striving for.

In response to this assault, Howard diplomatically clarified that by moderate Islam he actually meant real Islam.

Sep. 15, 2006 update: Malaysia's former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad echoes Erdoğan in stating that "There is no such thing as a moderate Muslim. We are fundamentalists in Malaysia. We follow the true teachings of the religion and the true teachings do not teach us to bomb and kill people without reason."

Feb. 25, 2006 update: Mohamad takes another crack at the same topic, telling Muslims that they should not defend themselves as moderate or liberal Muslims. This suggests they are only partial followers of Islamic teachings while other teachings are deemed extreme. "Islam is already a moderate religion ... there is no need for us to show that were are more liberal Muslims than others. We are Muslims...period." If some Muslims are extremists, it is not because of the teachings of Islam but due to a lack of understanding or to the religion being manipulated by irresponsible followers. "There is nothing extreme about Islam if we follow its teachings as contained in the Quran," he said.

May 15, 2007 update: Erdoğan responded to massive secularist marches on the streets of Turkey by arguing that religion and secularism are not in conflict. "It would be a mistake to pit secularism against Islam. I am a secularist, in the sense that I am defending a secular state." He also observed that the demonstrators carried banners "No to a military coup, no to Sharia law," and indicated that his government fully shares those views.

Aug. 21, 2007 update: Erdoğan on the term "moderate Islam," often used in the West to describe his AK Party: "These descriptions are very ugly, it is offensive and an insult to our religion. There is no moderate or immoderate Islam. Islam is Islam and that's it."

June 5, 2008 update: Curiosly, the army chief of staff, upholder of the Atatürkist tradition, agrees with Erdoğan. Yaşar Büyükanıt rejects any reference to "moderate Islam" concerning Turkey. "How do we define the U.S.? Shall we call it Christian? This is not possible. ... There are certain circles that want to add the title of ‘moderate Islam' to the Republic of Turkey. The source of such a title does not come from within Turkey but foreign circles."

Related Topics: Moderate Muslims, Southeast Asia, Turkey

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