Turkey's Mystery Man

By Andrew Purvis/Ankara Tuesday, Nov. 12, 2002
    • BURHAN OZBILICI/AP

    Dramatic Victory: Erdogan salutes his cheering supporters at an election rally

    The Turkish politician Recep Tayyip Erdogan does not look like a man so dangerous as to have been accused of "inciting religious hatred." His comfortably furnished offices in Ankara look more like a banker's suite than a fundamentalist's den. Impressionist prints adorn the walls, along with a portrait of Turkey's fiercely secular founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. There isn't a prayer bead in sight. "I am a Muslim," the beardless Erdogan, 48, dressed in a pressed blue suit and red tie, said in a recent interview with Time. "But I believe in a secularist state."

    So he claims. But the dramatic victory last week by Erdogan's Justice and Development Party (A.K.P.)--which won nearly two-thirds of the seats in the Turkish parliament — has sharpened the focus on a sometimes inscrutable leader. In a country where mixing religion and politics can be a treasonable offense, Erdogan has tested the line dividing acceptable fervor from revolution. His background — he is a onetime Islamic youth activist who sent his own children to study in the U.S.--mirrors a broader contradiction in Turkish society. "He is about to show us," said one senior Western diplomat, "what Islamic politics means in Turkey."


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    Though Erdogan is positioned to be the focus of power in the new government, under current laws he cannot become Prime Minister. At a rally in 1997, he read a poem: "The minarets are our bayonets. The faithful are our soldiers. God is great. God is great." For that flight of fancy, which he says was meant metaphorically, he was sentenced under laws designed to keep Islamic fundamentalism at bay. He served four months in prison and was barred for life from public office. Nonetheless, his party swept to victory, partly as a protest against Turkey's Old Guard politicians, who have led the country into an economic crisis. But the election was also a vote against the kinds of laws that put Erdogan in jail. "There would be no need for a call for Shari'a," Gulden Sonmez, an Istanbul human rights lawyer said, "if you could practice religion freely."

    Born into a working-class family on Turkey's Black Sea coast, Erdogan moved at age 13 to Istanbul, where he joined the youth wing of a party founded by Necmettin Erbakan, architect of Turkey's political Islamic movement. Erbakan, who later briefly became Prime Minister, saw in the tall young soccer fanatic an ambitious orator of considerable charm.

    Elected mayor of Istanbul in 1994, Erdogan banned alcohol from city-owned cafes but also managed to resurrect a failing freshwater supply and clear the trash from the city's cobblestone streets. Rusen Cakir, Erdogan's biographer, stresses the politician's provincial upbringing and working-class values. "Unlike Erbakan, who was a spiritual father," he says, "Erdogan is more familiar, like a brother." Aslihan Dede, 21, a student journalist wearing a Muslim head scarf in Istanbul said last week, "He is one of us." He is also, says Cakir, a pragmatist: "He is Muslim, but he is looking for a new deal." Erdogan sent two daughters to Indiana University in part to evade Turkey's prohibition against wearing Muslim head scarves in public universities. But he also admires American education. "He could have sent them to Tehran," notes a Western diplomat. "That says a lot."

    Erdogan has worked hard to distance himself from the Islamist label. In his campaign, he spoke of fostering human rights and freedom of speech and supporting Turkey's bid to join the European Union. To Time, he bristled at the term Islamic party. "For us," he said "Islam is a supreme value. We see our religion as flawless, whereas the party can make mistakes." But he may find it difficult to accommodate some of his more fervent supporters. At a victory rally outside Istanbul party headquarters, several men shouted "Allahu Akbar" before party workers hushed them for sending the wrong message.

    The next day, Erdogan extended an olive branch to Turkey's military — the same generals who forced Erbakan from power in 1997 for flirting too closely with Islamic rule. "This army is our army," said Erdogan. "Nothing should come between us." It was both a promise and a prayer.