2015 Turkish Elections Latest: #Education Sector ‘Finds Articulate Representative’!

The #education sector in #Turkey may have a new champion in #Professor Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu, who is a candidate for the #MHP in #Istanbul

— ッ MEDIOLANA® EDU (@Mediolana) April 21, 2015

İhsanoğlu is a vastly-experienced + unique #academic who has taught at both Ludwig Maximilians #University in Munich and Cairo's Al-Azhar

— ッ MEDIOLANA® EDU (@Mediolana) April 21, 2015

The Turkish #education + #highered sectors have been under significant government pressure in recent years: #dershane #schools face closure

— ッ MEDIOLANA® EDU (@Mediolana) April 21, 2015

The urbane İhsanoğlu's main challenge will be finding a niche in the traditionally #ultranationalist MHP #edu #edtech http://t.co/tF3PfWJNA5

— ッ MEDIOLANA® EDU (@Mediolana) April 21, 2015

Turkey’s Future Options: EU, SCO, OIC or TIU?

Back in 2007, our Creative Director & CSO Asad Yawar foresaw the rise of Turkey – something not even on the global international relations agenda at the peak of the Euro-American credit bubble – as having ‘far-reaching implications…for Europe, Central Asia and the Middle East’.

Since that time, Turkey has been the only major European economy aside from Germany and oil-rich Russia to come close to transcending the global economic crisis. But its longstanding trajectory of joining the European Union – a goal which was confirmed with Turkey’s official bid to join the European Economic Community almost exactly twenty-six years ago – does not look nearly as attractive as it might have done even five years ago. A condition of Turkey’s EU accession is the eventual replacement of the Turkish lira with the much-maligned euro; given the experiences of present eurozone periphery countries, where even sacrosanct pillars of private property such as bank deposits and gold have become collateral damage in a financial armageddon, it is doubtful whether a country which could in theory gain many of the benefits of European Union membership without actually joining would choose to take the obvious risk constituted by signing up to the EU.

With an ever-growing international reach – Turkey’s foreign aid budget nearly doubled from 2011 (US$1.3bn) to 2012 (US$2.5bn) – the state that contains the former imperial capital of the Ottoman Empire clearly has options regarding its future alliances. But what, if any are the alternatives to the EU? After some contemplation, we at Mediolana came up with the following:

1. Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. This international bloc – ironically headquartered in Beijing – is fundamentally a Eurasian security alliance. While the current Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has openly stated his keenness on joining the SCO, these sentiments do not appear to be shared even by other senior figures in his own AK Party, and it is easy to see why. Totally dominated by Russia and China and offering little in terms of environmental or human rights standards, Turkey would have little leverage within this grouping and would have no additional incentives at all to improve two of its (presently) weaker areas.

2. Organisation of Islamic Cooperation. Historically one of the great sleeping giants of international relations, the OIC should in theory be an arena where Turkey, which is already a member state, can further its goals. And from 2005 to date, a period when Professor Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu has been Secretary-General of the OIC, Turkish influence within the organisation has been palpable. However, Turkey has not traditionally enjoyed a prominent position within a largely ineffectual organisation that has been characterised by the power struggle between Saudi Arabia and Iran. The forthcoming supplanting of the present Secretary-General by Saudi former journalist Iyad bin Amin Madani means that the OIC is unlikely to adopt a Turkish agenda in the medium term.

3. Turkish-Islamic Union. This is an international bloc which presently does not formally exist but which is being heavily promoted on A9, a Turkish television station established in 2011. This fact alone would not normally qualify it for serious consideration, but judging from the calibre of people from the worlds of academia, journalism, business and politics that have already been interviewed by this channel and who have expressed a desire to see Turkey take on this type of leadership role within the Islamic world, A9 seems to have an influence disproportionately large compared to its modest audience share. The main advantage of this grouping for Turkey is that it would get to design the institutional architecture from the TIU’s inception, which in theory could make it much more functional than, say, the OIC or EU; while the provisional name of the organisation is unlikely to inspire Arabs or Persians, the essential concept deserves consideration.

The Cash of Civilisations: Brazil ‘May Join’ the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation!

FM Antonio #Patriota indicates #Brazil's interest in joining the #OIC as an observer nation, joining #Russia, #Thailand http://t.co/hrRh1Voc

— ッ MEDIOLANA® EDU (@Mediolana) January 5, 2013

Laying Down the Law and its Spirit: The New Turkish Religious Paradigm Emerges?

The emergency of Turkey in recent years as a regional power – possibly one with world power pretentions – has generated rainforests worth of coverage and analysis, with many commentators adducing a ‘Turkish model’ that is purportedly at the heart of the country’s rapid ascent. As we have previously alluded to on this blog, we at Mediolana are not quite sure what this model is comprised of: the oft-repeated claim that Turkey offers supposedly unique proof of the compatibility of democracy and the Islamic religion conveniently overlooks Muslim-majority democratic states as diverse as Senegal and Indonesia, while Turkey’s outstanding economic progress of the past decade has been exacted at a fairly high ecological cost and is therefore difficult to cite as a model (though notwithstanding this, there are numerous impressive elements to it).

However, a series of intriguing developments during the past month or so has left us wondering whether the real Turkish model is located in a rather different sphere: religious authority. The start point of this hypothesis is Kuwait, where on 15th March 2012 Saudi Arabia’s Grand Mufti Abd al-‘Aziz al-Ashaikh, prompted by a question posed by a delegation from a Kuwaiti NGO by the name of the Society of the Revival of Islamic Heritage, declared that all churches on the Arabian peninsula should be levelled.

Despite resembling a scenario from the classic sixth-generation console title Destroy All Humans: One Giant Step On Mankind! rather than a considered religious injunction, the grand mufti’s statements were not essentially surprising given that the connection between Saudi Arabia and extremist ideologies is probably the worst-kept secret in the world. By contrast, what has been a genuine surprise is the sustained, detailed and public contradiction of the grand mufti’s opinion by two eminent Turks.

Firstly, Professor Dr. Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu – the current Secretary-General of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation and a man the length of whose CV shames most telephone directories – provided a comprehensive rebuttal of al-Ashaikh’s statement on the basis of sharīʿah law, pointing out that the skylines of major cities in the Islamic world such as Damascus, Istanbul, Baghdad and Cairo are studded with historic churches and synagogues as well as mosques; İhsanoğlu invited al-Ashaikh to ‘amend’ his erroneous position.

The professor’s rejection of the grand mufti’s opinion was echoed by Mehmet Görmez, the head of Diyanet, Turkey’s highest religious body. Görmez quoted one of Muḥammad’s many notable sayings on the status of other denominational groups within Muslim societies to illustrate the illogicality of the grand mufti’s sentiments: ‘Those who persecute non-Muslims living under the authority of Muslims persecute me. And who persecutes me, persecutes God.’

The significance of these occurrences will doubtless be clear to anyone who follows Middle Eastern affairs. By openly and convincingly defying the position taken by the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia, İhsanoğlu and Görmez – intentionally or otherwise – are creating a space for their country in the domain of religious leadership.

This has potentially enormous consequences. For over thirty years, Saudi Arabia and Iran have vied for regional dominance and influence over the Islamic world more generally, but both nations are hamstrung by two partially interconnected factors: neither country has Sunni Islam – followed by between 75% and 90% of the world’s Muslims – as its orthodoxy, and neither state can presently vaunt much in the way of soft power. The reverse is the case for Turkey, a largely Sunni Muslim country with soft power assets ranging from industrial might to soap operas; indeed, according to a 2011 survey published by the Arab American Institute Foundation, Turkey is evaluated ‘favourably’ or ‘very favourably’ by no less than 98% of the Saudi population. The emergence of a Turkish model of religious authority with real international potency can no longer be ruled out.

The Organisation for Islamic Cooperation: Poised for Prominence?

The late 2000s and early 2010s are an era in which the world order appears to be transmogrifying by the day, and in this context mediolana.wordpress.com has already posed the question of whether the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation is the new NATO. But amidst all the new acronyms – SCO, BRICS and BRICIS – Mediolana believe that one international institution of potentially vital significance is being overlooked: the Organisation for Islamic Cooperation (‘OIC’).

The OIC – founded as the Organisation of the Islamic Conference on 25th September 1969 at Rabat, Morocco – is an organisation presently consisting of 57 member states. Despite the population of these member states totalling an estimated 1.6bn – greater than China – the OIC has until recently experienced a negligible global profile; its credibility has been strained by many factors, including the pronounced democratic deficit and poor governance that have prevailed within most of its constituent countries during its existence.

However, there are signs that the OIC is getting ready to play a much bigger role in international affairs during the coming decades:

1. Organisational Reform. Under the leadership of its 9th Secretary-General – Prof. Dr. Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu, an academic who has held posts at the University of Exeter, Istanbul University and Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich, and who was elected to his current position in 2004 – the OIC has implemented substantial reforms under the theme of ‘modernisation and moderation’. Particularly instructive in this regard are two documents: (i) the Ten-Year Programme of Action to Face the Challenges of the Twenty-First Century, a 2005 document which contains numerous objectives relating to economic and social development; and (ii) a new OIC Charter, adopted on 14th March 2008. Additionally, the OIC took on its current, more dynamic name on 28th June 2011.

2. Reform Within Member States. The Arab Spring has led to wildly unpopular dictators being overthrown in Tunisia and Egypt with other OIC member states such as Syria, Libya and Yemen likely to follow suit. However, reformist impulses can be seen elsewhere in the OIC, including in already broadly democratic countries such as Turkey and Indonesia. These processes should have the effect of, in turn, making the OIC stronger insofar as it is the sum of its parts.

3. Energy Abundance. Nine out of the twelve members of OPEC are also in the OIC, giving the latter organisation enormous potential leverage in global affairs. Moreover, many OIC member countries – from Mediterranean nations such as Albania and Algeria to desert-dominated Sudan and Saudi Arabia – are located in warm and sunny climes seemingly made for solar power generation; the headquarters of the International Renewable Energy Agency (‘IRENA’) are located in Masdar City in the United Arab Emirates.

4. Economic Potential. While acres of coverage have been lavished on the so-called BRICS nations, comparatively little has been penned concerning another Goldman Sachs formulation, the Next Eleven (‘N-11’). These are eleven countries which, in addition to the BRICS, have the potential of becoming the world’s largest economies during this century – and seven of the eleven are OIC member states.

5. A Growing International Reputation. Russia became an OIC observer state in 2005, with the United States appointing a Special Envoy to the OIC three years later; India’s membership application is presently being blocked by Pakistan. The present UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon has called the OIC ‘a strategic and crucial partner of the United Nations‘ in recognition of its increasing salience.