Terrorism,
the worst of all ills in human history, has been defined in various ways since
the “word” first appeared during the Jacobin period in late 18th century
France. Leaving aside some extremely broad definitions which tend to accept “non-violent
terrorism” as a possibility, most analysts ranging from political theorists and
philosophers to historians and social scientists agree that terrorism is
inextricably connected with violence. In a similar vein, there is also a
considerable degree of agreement on the political characteristics of terrorism,
hence violence. Put differently, terrorism is a kind of violence with political
aims: “Neither violence nor terror is inflicted for its own sake, but rather
for the sake of a further aim such as coercion, or some more specific political
objective.”
Based on the
foregoing, it should be clear that any “ideological support” or “justification”
(legitimation) of terrorism resorts to certain political aims like the now
seemingly outdated discourse of class struggle where Jacobin equation of terror
with freedom and democracy is somewhat reiterated under the banner of
“proletarian” dictatorship and democracy, or struggles for national liberation,
or a struggle for the recognition of the rights of a social group within a
nation-state, etc. In elaborating on the ways in which the actual use of or
threat to use violence is justified, one has to bear in mind that not only
individuals and groups but also states resort to violence for certain political
purposes.
In one of
the most important classic texts of political philosophy, St. Augustine,
writing in 5th century B.C., “tells the story of a pirate captured by Alexander
the Great. ‘How dare you molest the sea?’ asked Alexander. ‘How dare you molest
the whole world?’ replied the pirate. ‘Because I do it with a little ship only,
I am called a thief, you, doing it with a great navy, are called an emperor.”
According to St. Augustine, the pirate’s “excellent” reply is a good point of
departure to think on what distinguishes “the state” from “theft”, “piracy” or
“banditry”. For St. Augustine the answer lies in that the state, unlike the
pirate, uses violence for “justice”.
It seems
quite plausible to substitute terror and terrorism with pirate and theft and
emperor with the state and justice with the concept of legitimacy. By way of
this substitution, it is not too difficult to start thinking about the
difference between the various ways of and purposes for using violence by the
state and terrorism. What I have in mind is Max Weber’s famous and oft quoted defition
of the modern state. According to Weber, the state is an entity which claims a “monopoly
on the legitimate use of violence”. The difference between St. Augustine and
Weber, between justice and legitimacy consists in the fact that for St.
Augustine justice is the ultimate characteristic of “de civitate Dei”, whereas legitimacy for Weber is derived from the
legal framework of the modern state.
Taking
Weber’s definition as a point of departure, it can be argued that the use of
violence by any individual, group or organization outside the state (and its
bureaucratic administration) is regarded to be terrorist provided that this use
of violence is aimed at and capable of threatening the people, causing fear and
creating a sense of insecurity, destroying the human capacity of thinking and
acting rationally. From this perspective, any challenge to the state monopoly
of the legitimate use of violence is, by definiton, terrorism.
The crucial
point in this perspective regards the concept of legitimacy. Bearing in mind
that contemporary terrorism has assumed the form of “propaganda by the deed”,
we need to focus on the ways in which terrorism justifies itself in challenging
the existing order of things in a certain political setup ranging from
individual “nation-states”. It is not uncommon that use of violence by
non-state actors to create public fear has been and still is justified on the
grounds that the aim of use of violence regarded as terrorism by individual
states is a revolt against a social and political system considered to be
“unjust and oppressive” i.e., illegitimate. From the standpoint of those
treated by the state as terrorists, then, the state itself is seen as “the real
terrorist” for the use of violence by the state has no legitimacy because of
its oppressive and unjust characteristic.
At this
point, I think we should have come to understand that ideological support for
terrorism increases as some individuals and groups in a society share the same
point of view with the terrorists that the existing order of things in a state
is unjust and oppressive. Hence the need for social and political reform to
erase the bases of justification of terrorism. The logic I propose here is that
the more successful the reform processes to create a just and non-oppressive
political order, the less ideological support or legitimacy for terrorism. So,
it is necessary now to focus on the guiding principles of creating a just and
non-oppressive political order with a strong legitimacy.
Pre-modern
definitions of justice, like St. Augustine’s had a transcendental reference, a
reference to “divine law” or law as God’s will, hence judging the degree of
legitimacy of “earthly power” of the rulers on the basis of divine and eternal
law. Under conditions of modernity, however, legitimacy has come to be
determined increasingly on the basis of “positive law”, that is “law posited by
a human agency”. The nation-state as one of the peaks of political modernity
has been a political construct in which the legitimacy of the state is
determined by the “sovereign will of the nation” which in turn required the formation
of rules and procedures (a constitutional order) involving fundamental rights
for individual members of the national polity for adequate “opinion-and-will
formation”. Thus, establishment of liberal-democratic political systems
(“polyarchies”, to use Robert Dahl’s term) based on rule of law within
nation-states marked an important turning point in human history where it
seemed quite reasonable to assume that monopoly of the use of violence by a
nation-state incorporated a liberal-democratic constitutional system of rule of
law has been the closest political form for the Weberian ideal type of
legal-rational legitimacy.
In the past
century and especially under conditions of Cold War, it has been accepted that
any act of or resort to violence to challenge, undermine or destroy the
fundamentals of liberal (nation-state) democracies had no base for
justification. This conviction reflected a confidence in the fact that
liberal-democracies had incorporated also peaceful or non-violent mechanisms
for piecemeal or holistic changes in the legal system, provided that the
changes do not annul the fundamental rights and freedoms of the individual.
Since the
final quarter of the 20th century, however, this rather strong self-confidence
of liberal (nation-state) democracies have been challenged by what Ronald
Inglehart labeled as “the silent revolution”. According to Inglehart, people
demanding social, economic and political rights and freedoms which resulted in
the formation of liberal-democratic systems with changing degrees of
corporatist arrangements of distributive justice have now come to put forward
claims for the recognition of their ways of life, i.e. identities. This was a
challenge to the legitimation formula of the nation-state which has been
established fundamentally on the acceptance as a marriage (Gellner) between the
nation representing a homogeneous culture and the state as its political
organization.
This
challenge making visible publicly different cultural identities defined usually
along ethnic and religious lines albeit with other identities relating to
issues of gender, class and social status, coincided with the end of the Cold War,
emergence of a new order of things across the globe rendering old and long-cherished
idea of national sovereignty less viable and gave way to the formation of new
political forms like supra- and trans-national entities. In todays world,
conventional forms of international relations (that is relations among
nation-states) have changed so drastically that there are now non-state actors
politically active across the globe and we are witnessing also the emergence of
a new (supranational) political form in the European Union.
Within this
context of what I wish to call “late modernity,” use of violence by non-state
actors for political aims have come to find new support bases usually provided
by the denial of multiculturalism by conventional political establishments of
nation-states. I am not arguing that nation-states are outdated, or that
nationqstate is on the verge of extinction. The point I wish to make is that
since the late twentieth century, we have been witnessing the emergence of new
bases of ideological support or legitimation for “terrorism”. There should be
little doubt that the insistence on the part of the nation-state establishment
that cultural differences cannot and should not have public and/or political
meaning opens up new and fertile fields in domestic and international relations
where the claim of “terrorism” to justify itself as a revolt against an unjust
and oppressive order becomes attractive to individuals and groups whose
identities or ways of life have been either non-recognized or oppressed,
regarding themselves as being subjected at least to what Zizek calls “symbolic
violence” coming from the side of the state.
If the
considerations mentioned above make sense, then it seems relatively easy to
clarify the way to counter the ideological support for terrorism. Just like the
process of democratization taken place in the formation of nation-states aided
to curb the strength of the ideological attraction of terrorism in
liberal-democratic settings, now is the time to further democracy in scope and
depth within and across nation-states to find ways to include individuals and
groups whose identities are either non-recognized or explicitly oppressed. The
guiding principle is to establish institutions and procedures which will enable
a process of public deliberation
in which everyone who will be affected directly or indirectly by the adoption
of a rule or its application is enabled to participate freely and equally with
others where no established privileges or taboos exist. This guiding principle
enables us to realize what has been missing and what went wrong in the democratic
practices of the nation-states and against this background of “learning
process” (Habermas) we will be able to extend the scope of fundamental rights
and freedoms to sub-national, or “local” and supranational levels, which means
an extension of democratic participation supported by the global institutions
of rule of law observing respect for fundamental rights and freedoms of
individuals. As the global order gets closer to establish a cosmopolitan
democracy (Held) which will include necessarily a constitutional global order
with cosmopolitan citizenship, there will be less and less basis for
justification of terrorism either on a local, national or global level.
Although
this may sound “utopian”, I want to urge you to think that in fact it may not
be so. The international legal instruments ranging from the UN Declaration of
Human Rights to the twin international conventions of 1966 on social, economic,
culural, political and civil rights, the European Convention on Human Rights,
international documents on religious freedom (not excluding certainly the IRFA
which is not an international legal instrument but has a strong potential of
becoming internationally significant) and hence the recognition of
identity/difference, etc., have contributed significantly to an optimistic view
of a global democracy in the future. What threatens or impedes the realization
of a cosmopolitan democracy that would help the process of isolation and
marginalization of violence and terrorism in the future is not only the
ewistence of terrorism and the social and ideological bases of justification it
enjoys in non-democratic, anti-democratic or “inadequately democratic” settings
but also the nation-state view of political requisites of multiculturalism as a
threat to its very existence resulting in resort to “state of emergency” that
is, suspension of democratic rule of law, providing in turn more justification
for terrorism. Formation of a supranational rule of law promises to be the most
viable and effective mechanism for breaking this vicious circle and eliminate
all kinds of ideological spport and justification for terrorism, and it should
be a good way to begin by forcing nation-states to apply without any
reservations at all the legal instruments providing fundamental rights and
liberties to individuals and groups across the globe.
Levent Köker
*Prepared for the Conference on “Exploring Dimensions
in Countering Ideological Support for Terrorism”, Sponsored by George C.
Marshall European Center for security Studies, in Cooperation with the Royal
Jordanian National defence College, 28-30 September 2009, Amman, Jordan.
** Professor of Public Law and
politics, Gazi University, Ankara.
Hiç yorum yok:
Yorum Gönder