Erdogan Proves Again That He Is Not Erbakan

by Ugur Akinci, Ph.D.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan continues to widen the ideological gap between himself and the old-school pro-Islamic politicians like the former PM Necmettin Erbakan.
Erdogan has started politics under the wings of Erbakan but later on he proved that he had the flexibility, pragmatism and realism that Erbakan lacked. The transformation of Erdogan from a young firebrand Erbakan-protege to a nuanced conservative leader filling the large hole in the center of Turkish political spectrum is nothing less than fascinating to watch and chronicle.
Here is one recent case in point:
While attending the "Jeddah Economic Forum" that convened in Saudi Arabia, PM Erdogan expressed his clear opposition to the idea of an "Islamic Common Market." This was one of the pet ideas of Erbakan, born out of his unexamined penchant to create the "Islamic duplicate" of any Western formation under the sun. Did the West have European Union? Erbakan would immediately suggest creating an "Islamic Union." Did the West have NATO? Erbakan would jump at an "Islamic-NATO" idea. The lazy products of instant mirroring, such concepts did not fly anywhere in this day and age of globalization.
Erdogan, as conservative as he is when it comes to social issues, is well aware of the undeniable fact of globalization. That's why in Jeddah he told point blank to a large audience consisting of the senior representatives of Arab finance that such associations should not be based on ethnicity, religion or geography. "Such a process [i.e. Islamic Common Market] would divide the world into camps and factions," Erdogan said.
Erdogan again demonstrated the widening gap between his thinking and those of his predecessors by stating that if the Muslims today are living in backward countries, they didn't have anyone else to blame but themselves.
Now that must have come across almost as a "blasphemy" to many in the radical Islamic camp. Many Islamists in the past, Erbakan included, had climbed on the Leninist-Dependencia bandwagon (whether they were aware of it or not) and fired one angry polemic after another at the "forces of imperialism" (always an external bogyman) that supposedly held the Islamic countries down. In our day, Osama Bin Laden is one such proponent of this tired old theory which does not explain how Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore and even Malaysia developed beyond anyone's wildest dreams despite their heavy give and take with the "imperialist powers" that were not supposed to give them a breather.
Erdogan is firmly in the corner of the much maligned "classical modernization" theorists who insisted that a country's development first and foremost required "modern institutions" and "modern attitudes" without which no amount of financial help would be enough to develop a society. By calling on the participants of Jeddah Economic Forum to change their attitudes about the root cause of underdevelopment and stop looking outside for a scapegoat, PM Erdogan proved that, despite all those lingering memories of who he was so many years ago and whom he associated with and what he said where and when, he is today a leader who deserves to be taken seriously on the basis of his performance and statements since the elections of November 2002.