AKP Watch

AKP Watch August 27th, 2007

Bassam Tibi, an influential Syrian-German scholar of Islam and modernity who coined Euro-Islam term, published second edition of his controversal book “Mit dem Kopftuch nach Europa? Die Türkei auf dem Weg in die Europäische Union” (”With the headscarf to Europe? Turkey on the way into the European Union”).

Tibi argues that the AKP is not to be trusted and that its strategy of democratization and Europeanization is only a subterfuge. AKP’s project of joining the European Union, are only diversionary tactical moves by “pseudo-democrat” Islamists to reach their real strategic goal of imposing an Islamist sharia state. The adaptation of Turkey’s constitutional and legal system to European standards, would serve the instrumental purpose of dismantling the secularist elements as guardians of the Kemalist order, which is the only thing that stands in the way of their conquest of absolute state power.

The hidden agenda which the Islamists adopted after the experience of the 1997 military coup, parallels with the Fascist democratic road to power in the 1930s, the communist strategies of the 1940s, or the Algerian FIS in the 1990s.

Tibi told to daily newspaper Cumhuriyet : “Today Turkey defined by political Islam, but only a secular Turkey belongs to Europe, not headscarfed Turkey.”

Tibi also mentioned that The importance of Kemalism and Secularism for Turkey is underestimated by Europe and European policies toward Turkey paved the way for Political Islam. Tibi said: “The headscarf is not a simple clothe, it’s a sharria law and Turkey is governed by a party which uses headscarf as a political symbol”

Tibi concludes that the AK Party’s “headscarf Islam” is not compatible with  universal values of European enlightment.

• AK Party , AKP , Bassam Tibi , European Union , Islamofascism , Secularism , Turkey
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