[MUSIC] If you remember what we discussed last week, the challenge that is faced now by the Muslim world, but also by much of the rest of the developing world, in the 18th and 19th century is primarily military. It's the growth of European power that these countries that have lived relatively stably for hundreds of years are now faced and have to deal with. And they try in different ways to adapt, as you see in this photo, you will see they're trying to adapt European forms of military organizations. They introduce military weaponry into their navies and armies. They buy weapons from Europe, as here you see the German battleship, Goeben, that is given to Turkey and becomes the flagship, Yavuz, of the Turkish Navy. And these military reforms that are now necessary, they obviously cost money. So, paying for these reforms becomes one of the main drivers of reform. And so, military reforms ensue the need for administrative, and ultimately, economic reforms. And that's what we will talk to you about today. So, the challenge is how to increase the taxable base, the productive economy, to produce the material and manpower resources needed for the security needs that the state is now faced with. On all these three fronts, military, administrative, and economic, the reforms seek to address a very objective need. But the Muslim world, in particularly now, the ultimate empire that we will talk today as a predecessor of modern Turkey, is doing great steps forward, but ultimately, these reforms remain half-hearted and insufficient. As we discussed last week, there are four response patterns that we can discern in the Muslim world. And remember, these are ideal types in the verbarian sense. So, they're deliberately stripped down, abstract mental images to make sense of a complex reality, but you rarely see them as purified in actual social reality. The four models are, just to recapitulate, emulation and secularism, religious modernism, traditionalism, and ultimately, fundamentalism in the 20th century. So, looking at emulation. In some respect, emulation should be the default pattern. Ultimately, after all, this is how we solve puzzles in real life, when we faced with a superior way of doing things, we normally look how others have approached that problem, and we copy their approach. So, faced with superior armies with a vastly more competitive industry that is more cheaper and produces higher quality, we would expect, or we could expect, that the Muslim world would simply look to Europe and copy these approaches lock, stock, and barrel. After all, this is how the Japanese approached their entrance into the modern period. But as we will see, this is not how the story happened in the Muslim world. There are two reasons why we begin this course with an examination of Turkey. One historical, the other material. The historical reason is the extremely important role that Turkey's predecessor state, namely the Ottoman Empire, played in the genesis of many modern Muslim nations. If you look at the geographical extent of the Ottoman empire, it encompasses the area currently taken by many Muslin nations, and you can easily imagine that this legacy affects their current political and social life, and a topic to which we'll return to in the course of this course. But for now, the more important reason is the material aspect. That the Turkish Republic that sprang from the ruins of the Ottoman Empire, is the one Muslim nation that has taken emulation of Western practices, including Western law, the furthest. So, while emulation might appear as the most logical response to a challenge, it is not the response taken by the majority of Muslim nations. Turkey remains an outlier in this respect, almost an exception to the rule. And the reasons for this are manifold. But perhaps the most important is the sheer operation of difficulty of transposing and receiving such a complex package of institutional arrangements, including bureaucratic law. And even Turkey, as perhaps the most successful Muslim nation in this process of reception, has had a very bumpy road in this respect. And the reception of Western practices took almost a century. And it's the process that we will explore further in this week. And part of the explanation that, for the relative success in Turkey, in this respect, is the enormous political capital at the disposal and the ideological clarity expressed by the leaders of this transformation process in the 20th century as Turkey became a republic. And this process is heavily identified with the personal personality of Mustafa Kemal, who was later then called Ataturk, The Father of the Turks, who oriented himself strongly along the French model of a strict separation of church and state, Laïcité in French, and it's perhaps the most important of the principles of Kemalism, as the political ideology came to be called, and that we will explore further down in this week. Kemalism, as this set of constitutional principles came to be known, is premised on the explicit acknowledgement of the inadequacy of the half-hearted reforms that were undertaken in Ottoman times, something that we will explore in the video 2.3 this week. And this radical, official acknowledgement of relative failure is missing in virtually all other Muslim nations, and it's perhaps one of the strongest explanations for the relative success of Turkey as opposed to the relative failure of most other Muslim nations. And it's a point, for example, that Sadekel Azam expresses very forcefully in his book, Self Criticism After the Defeat, something that we will come back to later in this course. The reason for the success of the Turkish, the approach of the Turkish Republic in the 20th century, is heavily due to the enormous political capital that it's leaders particularly, Mustafa Kimal, but also the other military leaders had, as the commanders of the successful War of Liberation, fought after the first World War. A topic to which we will come back in video 2.4 this week. I've chosen to present, alongside Turkey, another large and very diverse group of nations. Namely it's the Asian and Caucasian republics that emerged from the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. Again, the reasons are two-fold, historical and material, apart from the rather mundane reason that I need to squeeze a lot of material into my 11 weeks. The historical, and perhaps slightly contrived reason, is the ethnic and linguistic bond between many of the Turkic, people of Central Asia and the modern Turkish nation that also traces its origin to Central Asia from which they moved several centuries ago. And these linguistic and ethnic bonds remain quite strong despite the separation that communism imposed on these people. More immediately obvious however, is the material observation that the central Asian republics, like Turkey, are both in social and institutional outlook remarkably more secular then many if not most of the other Muslim nations. The historical and slightly contrived connection is the extremely important role that Turkish mercenaries and slave soldiers have played in most of Islamic history and were drawn from what is currently central Asia, the place these republics are placed. But also the strong linguistic and ethnic bonds that exist between the modern Turkish nation and the Turkic peoples of central Asia. More immediately obvious, however, is the observation, the material observation that despite a very strong and enduring in rediscovering Islam after the collapse of communism '91, the central Asian republics remain remarkable secular in both social and institutional outlook, making them much more similar to modern Turkey than to many of the other Muslim nations. And this is obviously a result of 70 years of ASIS social engineering done undertaken by the communists. And in this respect it's worth noting and it might be surprising for a western audience that in the central Asian republics, but the public and the elites look back with a very large amount of nostalgia to the communist period. Because it is generally remembered as a period of stability, relative prosperity, and social and political certainty. All things that collapsed after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. And it is worth noting that this illusion of the Soviet Union was precipitated by the revolt of the Baltic Republics in the north and the refusal of the Russian Federation to continue to subsidize the southern republics so, the connection is clear. The central Asian republics were, on the Communist period, the recipients of very considerable transfer payments, very considerable institutional support, cultural support. And they had access to a very large and functioning internal market. And the part of an integrated economy of which they serve specialists' needs. So the republics, they're ill prepared for independence after the dissolution of the union in 91. And there are at least three interrelated factors that explain why they were so ill prepared for independence. Perhaps the most important are the colonial borders that were drawn up by Russian colonialism and Communist gerrymandering that cut across viable political and ethnic communities and did not necessarily, were not aimed at creating administrative units that were self-standing. Second reason, as I just mentioned, is, on the communist periods, all of these republics were given highly specialized economic tasks as part of a larger planned economy. So, once the planned economy collapses, the cotton economy for example, of Uzbekistan was ill-prepared to stand on its own or some of the production facilities that relied on inputs that were now no longer forthcoming. And the third equally important point is the extremely shallow political culture that developed in all of these nations. These were Relatively pre -modern society's when Russian Colonialisam approached. So, they did not have time to build the institutions necessary for modern life or even for the aggregation of political interest. Which again explains their actively strong interest in religion now after 91 as a tool for social identity building and nation building, if you want. So the central Asian and Caucasian republics, most of which had very tenuous of any state tradition before the advent of Russian colonialism, they largely continued with the inheritance of communism with the institutional and legal structure that had been built in the 70 years prior. And this includes the relative absence of religion in public and constitutional law. And now faced with the need for independence, they did look to Turkey for inspiration. So if you now look a little bit at the constitutional provisions, let's begin with Turkey. Article 1 of the Turkish Constitution describes the state of Turkey is a republic. And then it continues in Article 2 to describe the characteristics of the republic. And I quote, the republic of Turkey is a democratic, secular and social state governed by rule of law. Within the notions of public peace, national solidarity and justice, respecting human rights, loyal to the nationalism of Ataturk, and based on the fundamental tenets set forth in the preamble. And then it has Article 4, the irrevocable provisions, which exempt the first three articles from being amenable to change through the politic process. So Turkey describes itself as a democratic, secular and social state. Now look how the Central Asian Republics describe themselves in their constitutions. Let's begin with the Kyrgyz Republic. It's the first article in its constitution describes the Kyrgyz Republic is a sovereign, democratic, secular, unitary and social state governed by the rule of law. Here, immediate, almost verbatim similarities to the Turkish Constitution. Article 1 of the Kazakh Constitution, states the Republic of Kazakhstan proclaims itself a democratic, secular, legal, and social state whose highest values are an individual, his life, rights, and freedoms. Likewise, the first article of the Turkmen Constitution describes it as a democratic, legal, and secular state in which the government takes the form of a presidential republic. Article 1 of the Tajik Constitution describes it as a sovereign, democratic, law-based, secular, and unitary state. Article 1 of the Uzbek Constitution describes it as a sovereign, democratic republic. And its Article 2 describes that the state shall express the will of the people and serve their interest. Article 7 of the Uzbek Republic, the Uzbec Constitution is equally important. It describes it, the people are the sole source of state power. Finally, the Caucasus Republic of Azerbaijan describes itself in the preamble, the object of the state is to build a law-based secular state to provide the command of law as an expression of the will of the nation. And its Article 1 is expresses this sentiment even stronger than the Uzbek Constitution. It says, the sole source of state power in the Azerbaijan Republic are the people of Azerbaijan. So you have not only is there no mention at all of Islam or Islamic law or its being a source or the source or any inspiration follow. There's an explicit commitment to secularism in all of these republics. This is both the inheritance of communism but also the model role of Turkey. So these are exceptions to the models that we will see in the other constitutions, in the rest of the Muslim world where Islam is generally given a much more prominent role than here. Now, for the remaining few minutes, let's turn a little bit to the economy. One of the most striking aspects of modern Turkey, and also one of the reasons of the appeal it currently enjoys, both in central Asia, in the Caucasus, but also elsewhere in the Muslim world, is extremely impressive economic performance. If you look here at the chart of GDP per capita over time in present day dollars, you see a relative stagnation from the 1960s right up to the 1990s. And then you see a certain degree of increase from the 1990s to 2000. And then from 2000 to 2002, there's a drop, and then from 2002 onwards right up to now and it continues you have an extreme rate of growth and an extreme rate of growth per capita. So people are, in the last 15 years, have roughly tripled their income per household. And this period of growth coincides roughly with the as an Islamist party itself describes it as a social conservative party. It marks the shift from the old Communist state led import substitution economic model to a now, market-oriented liberal economy based on free-enterprise and in particular, an import-led development model. You see in this map that shows GDP growth annually, it's very varied throughout history. But you can see that Turkey has managed, and particularly also in the last year, very impressive rates of growth. And the observation here is that, Turkey, with the possible exception of Malaysia, is the only Muslim nation that has managed to successfully build a globally competitive, productive industry. And the real question, also for this course now is, to what extent the ruling AK Party, the Justice and Development party, can take credit for this transformation and for the observation that we will explore further down in this week? It's ascent to power is a direct result of the consecutive dismantling of many of the strictures of the Kemalist state, that has on the particularly imposed under the aspiration for EU membership, that has opened the political space, for the Islamic oriented parties, and particularly, the AK Party to come to power and transform the economy. So the current developments we see in Turkey playing out right now, the upheavals are, to some extent, also the popular backlash to this dismantling of the Kemalist status quo, and towards a free market, liberal economic model, at the same time linked with the conservative Islamic-oriented social model. And this tension is played out right now in the streets, but we will also explore it in the rest of this week. [MUSIC]
