The most frightening aspect of modernism for the Ottoman elite was the statement that societies have been going through an unstoppable process of change, and that modernism made it inevitable.
This was really a big shock for the Ottoman edifice, which thought all human systems would be formed around norms independent of time. Since the classical understanding of management was nourished by the idea of “nizam-ı alem” (the order of the world) -- an idea that reflects a “divine” balance of positions and relations, to which change of any kind would indicate degeneration.
A lot of people would find it abhorrent to hear the argument that the current unwillingness of Kemalists to accept change comes from their sharing the Ottoman view of the order of the world. Was not Kemalism the ideology that overturned this stagnant system and introduced modernism to the nation? It is true that the founding ideology of the republic had so positivist an interpretation of modernism that the need to change society in a particular direction for a particular reason was something to be handled scientifically. This prompted the expectation that the people should be freed from religious superstitions, should adopt a secular way of life and should assimilate modernism on all levels. However the presupposition that Turkish society had resisted categorical change because of its piety and that change was urgently necessary, forced Kemalism to accept an action plan that was authoritarian, oppressive and which they attempted to carry out overnight. This ideology was made into a strategy for action by those who felt they knew what was good for the public and all efforts were made to have the public accept the supposed benefits. Their ideological definition was not going to change, as piety soon rendered Kemalism an alternative ideology to religion, and Kemalism became a dogma far more enforceable than religion because the ideology was set within an authoritarian mindset.
This appears to be critical to understanding our current politics. The secular elite circle that affiliates itself with Kemalism in Turkey tends to view “change” as occurring in a kind of public sphere. Change is not treated as if it is a social phenomenon that has its own intrinsic logic and that can find its own course at an intersection of a lot of different dynamics; rather, for the secular elite, “change” is a project of domestication that needs controlling at every level. In other words, it is a program designed to make a man out of the people. Behind the reactions against the administration of the Justice and Development Party (AK Party), as well as against the likelihood of someone from AK Party becoming president, is the secular elite circle’s unwillingness to accept the fact that it was, all this time, deceiving itself. The Kemalists say that the AK Party is making concessions because they don’t believe in the potential of religious people for authentic change. More strangely is the fact that they, just like the Ottoman elite, judge change to be “wrong and dangerous,” when they find it impossible to overlook the change that religious people are undergoing. For this reason the headscarf can be looked down upon as “retrogression,” though it extends women’s space of movement and it introduces them to the modern life.
The bureaucratic wing of the elite circle is one step ahead of democracy. They think that for someone from the AK Party to be elected president is a form of civil disobedience. From the point of view of the bureaucratic elite, democracy is a regime that reflects their own preferences -- about the certainty of which they feel no doubt -- not the preferences of the public, and the public is allowed a place in democracy as long as it abides by those preferences… It is understood that Kemalism has actually defined democracy as a private sphere of the state organization, though we are late in realizing this.
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