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A General scorned

A General scorned

T V R Shenoy
Rediff on Net
April 7, 2000
Title: A General scorned
Author: T V R Shenoy
Publication: Rediff on Net
Date: April 7, 2000

General Pervez Musharraf is a supremely tactless individual. Soon after he kicked out Nawaz Sharif, the self-appointed 'chief executive' of Pakistan compared himself to Kemal Ataturk. This annoyed the Islamic fundamentalists in his own country. Not very surprising given that the great Turkish leader was renowned for his aggressive attempts to make his nation a secular state. (So much so that he banned the use of the Arabic script in favour of the Roman alphabet, forbade women to wear veils, ordered men to take off the traditional fez and wear English bowler hats and forced every imam and mullah in sight to toe his line.) What was not noticed at the time, however, was the fact that the Turks were equally outraged at Musharraf's remarks.

Turkey's leaders want to project the image of a modern democracy, one that is eligible to join the European Union. To have a military dictator compare himself to the father of contemporary Turkey, thereby reinforcing the stereotype of a police state, was not what they desired. It did not help that Musharraf, with his usual lack of timing, made his remarks almost on the eve of the Turkish national day (October 29). And so it was always on the cards that Ankara would seize an opportunity to make its feelings clear to the Pakistanis.

As I write, Bulent Ecevit, the prime minister of Turkey, is on a four-day trip to India. (His country is in the middle of an election campaign, which indicates that either Mr Ecevit is supremely confident of victory, or holds India in high enough esteem not to cancel a previously announced visit, or both.) But, much to Islamabad's indignation, the prime minister has resolutely refused to set foot in the Pakistani capital.

Pakistan came up with a face-saving device on the lines of President Clinton's visit: 'Spend as much time as you like in India, but spare a couple of hours for Pakistan!' The Turkish prime minister turned it down flat. Off the record, Turkish representatives have been quite blunt. The rebuff is a reaction to the Talibanisation of Pakistan. (Ataturk's campaign against traditional Islamic practices is still continuing; the presiding officer of the Turkish parliament refused to let a lady legislator from Istanbul take her oath of office because she wore a veil.)

Note that this is not the first time that Turkey's leaders have snubbed Islamic fundamentalists from the Indian subcontinent. Seventy years ago, Muslims in India waged the Khilafat movement, an agitation to force the victorious Allies of World War I to respect the prerogatives of the Sultan of Turkey who was also the Caliph of Islam. (The impetus bestowed upon purely Muslim political organisations through this campaign was a major cause for the birth of Pakistan.) It ended when Ataturk went farther than the Allies had dared and booted the Sultan out altogether. The pillars of modern Turkey, he told Indian Muslims, would be secularism, democracy, and the rule of law.

In fact, Turkey has always had rather an ambivalent attitude to Pakistan. The two nations were technically allies since they were both part of CENTO (one of the many groups created by the United States during the Cold War), but the Turks always kept their distance. Now that the Cold War is history, Turkey, like the United States, has decided that India is more of a 'natural partner'. Just in case, General Musharraf did not get the point, the president of Turkey told him, 'The worst form of democracy is better than the best kind of dictatorship!'

What should worry the military rulers of Pakistan is that other Muslim states are beginning to follow Turkey's lead. To avoid the embarrassment of the Turkish cold-shoulder being made all too public, Musharraf has left for a tour of South-East Asia. But both Indonesia (the largest Muslim state in the world) and Malaysia are wary of him. Prime Minister Mahathir of Malaysia bluntly asked the general to set a time-table for the return of democracy. And of course the President of Indonesia, currently engaged on curbing his own military, is in no mood to humour another uppity dictator.

General Musharraf must have known that he would receive some flak from the western democracies, the United States, the European Union, and the like. But he probably thought that at least some of the major Islamic nations would be more muted. Instead, he finds that they are among his most eloquent critics.
 



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