Islamic Political Identity in Turkey

Islamic Political Identity in Turkey M. HAKAN YAVUZ OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS Islamic Political Identity in Turkey RELIGION AND GLOBAL POLITICS Series Editor John L. Esposito University Professor and Director Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding Georgetown University The Islamic Leviathan State Power and Islam in Malaysia and Pakistan Seyyed Vali Reza Nasr Rachid Ghannouchi A Democrat within Islamism Azzam S. Tamimi Balkan Idols Religion and Nationalism in Yugoslav States Vjekoslav Perica Islamic Political Identity in Turkey M. Hakan Yavuz Islamic Political Identity in Turkey M. HAKAN YAVUZ 1 2003 3 Oxford New York Auckland Bangkok Buenos Aires Cape Town Chennai Dar es Salaam Delhi Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kolkata Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Mumbai Nairobi Sao Paulo Shanghai Taipei Tokyo Toronto Copyright © 2003 by Oxford University Press, Inc. Published by Oxford University Press, Inc. 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 www.oup.com Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Yavuz, M. Hakan. Islamic political identity in Turkey / M. Hakan Yavuz. p. cm. — (Religion and global politics) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-19-516085-1 1. Islam and politics—Turkey. 2. Turkey—Politics and government—1980– I. Title. II. Series. BP173.7 .Y375 2003 320.5'5'09561—dc21 2002015380 987654321 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper To Kazim Yavuz (1938–1996) Father, friend, and teacher and Aynur Yavuz Mother and guiding light This page intentionally left blank 1 Preface Having grown up in a small town in Turkey’s Black Sea region, I have been disturbed by the negative accounts of Islam and Islamic movements frequently encountered among the Turkish Republican elite and also in some Western intellectual forums because my understanding of Islam and its role in Turkish society has been very diVerent. In rural and provincial Turkey, dominant religious organizations and ritual activity were shaped by the Nak7ibendi SuW order, although in my hometown of Bayburt they were shaped by the Nur movement. In Bayburt, the small shops around the main public square, known as Saat Kulesi Meydan1, hosted the reading circles of the devotees of the founder of the Nur movement, Said Nursi. One often would see the “red books” (k1rm1z1 kitaplar) of Nursi in the hands of shop owners or state employees who came to chat in these shops. They were not only centers of trade but also places of ideas and discussion. People would open the books of Nursi and start to read, interpret, and debate. The debate eventually would move to totally diVerent topics of discussion, but the idioms tended to be similar. I realized that this version of Islam and the eclectic teaching of Nursi often served for the towns- men as a philosophy of everyday life. My curiosity never died down, and I always wondered: Why Islam and this particular tradition? Could the Muslims of Turkey meaningfully discuss and engage in social, ethical, and political issues if they did not seem to share this common religious and cultural idiom? Could there be a social consen- sus outside Islam in modern Turkey? How did these fairly typical lower-middle-class provincial citizens reconcile their attachment to their religious traditions with their loyalty and devotion to the modern Turkish Republic and its political and military leaders, who often represented an ideological antithesis? viii preface With these questions in mind, I commenced higher education at the Politi- cal Science Faculty of the University of Ankara. Here I encountered a very diVer- ent intellectual setting and discourse. It was not a dialogue but rather a carefully structured program of indoctrination. This didactic education had very little connection with the often open and critical discussion found in Bayburt. It had its own elitist grammar, concepts, and modes of discourse that viewed the tra- ditional Turkey of Anatolia as its greatest foe and danger. The Political Science Faculty was the hotbed of oYcial Kemalist ideology, and the professors I met rarely had contact with the “other” Turkey, whether in the towns and villages or the teeming gecekondus (shantytowns) of Istanbul and Ankara. Yet they all claimed to know the “truth” of this “other Turkey” in their capacity as oYcial stewards of what ostensibly was a meticulously planned program of “Western- ization.” We, the selected mandarins of this future order, were taught to think in terms of simplistic dichotomies: progress versus backwardness, elite versus masses, secularism versus Islam, nationalists versus subversives, and state versus civil society. The “West” I encountered in my higher education in Milwaukee and Madi- son, Wisconsin, was starkly diVerent from the one presented by my teachers in Ankara. Rather than rigid obedience, absolute truths, and stark dichotomies, I encountered a contentious and open society touchingly embodying many of the contradictory stances and concerns expressed by the citizens of Bayburt. The University of Wisconsin system provided me with a liberating and sustaining intellectual and emotional home, for which I always shall be grateful. While completing my dissertation in political science, I obtained an academic position at Ankara’s new Bilkent University, which ostensibly was established on the model of Western and particularly American institutions of higher learn- ing. Having published a few academic articles in the critical mode of thinking taught by my Wisconsin professors, I quickly was informed by Bilkent admin- istrators that my nonorthodox views and criticism were unacceptable and if I continued to question oYcial dogma I would not Wnd a place in Turkish aca- deme. Once again, America came to the rescue with a tenure track position at the Department of Political Science and Center for Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Utah. While traditionally Mormon and conservative Utah is quite distinct from liberal Wisconsin, I found both the state and university to share the same values of tolerance, critical thinking, and hospitality. For this I will always be indebted to my colleagues and the students and staV of the Uni- versity of Utah. It is especially vital to emphasize that categories like “the West” and “Islam” must be disaggregated to reveal the complexity, commonalities, and dynamic contradictions that each embodies. This book is the story of the “other Turkey” and an outcome of my 10-year Weldwork and interviews with the makers of contemporary Turkish Islam. I oVer a dynamic map of actors, ideas, and actions that are shaped by a number of social, political, and economic factors. The dominant actors of the modern Turkish political landscape are the civilian and military bureaucracies, along with Islamic, Kurdish, and Alevi social and political movements. I identify Turgut Özal’s neoliberalism of 1983 as the turning point preface ix in the reconWguration of the political and intellectual landscape in Turkey. I argue that reinvigorated Turkish Islam(s) in the political and social spheres cannot be explained by the failure of Kemalism but rather is an outcome of new opportunity spaces—social and economic networks and vehicles for activism and the dissemination of meaning, identity, and cultural codes— in which the Kemalist project played an important albeit inadvertent role. This relationship has not been purely antagonistic but rather also contingent and transformative. The history of the last 80 years of the Republic shows that the Turkish authorities seldom have been consistent in counterpoising nationalism and Islam, secularism and religion. If any concept could capture this tenden- tious relationship it is that of contradiction. While focusing on contemporary Turkish Islamic social and political movements, this study will also be useful in shedding light on the vexed issue of Islam, democratization, and politics in the broader Muslim world. Turkish Islamic social and political movements have sought to consolidate civil society by re- drawing the boundaries between the state and society and attempting to form their own intellectual and moral charter, seeking not necessarily to replace the existing secularist state but rather to reconstitute everyday life. The Islamic movements of Turkey have created their own middle-class ethos and accom- modations with modernity. Thus the contemporary debate in Turkey is not about restoring Islamic government or imposing Islamic law but about carving new spaces, constituting new identities, and diversifying voices in the public sphere with an idiom that would not be alien to most Western societies. By utilizing new opportunity spaces, these Turkish Islamic movements are making new actors of intellectuals, businessmen, scholars, and artists and cre- ating new sites of sociability. One of the major impacts of these opportunity spaces has been facilitating the emergence of private identities, commitments, and lifestyles in the public sphere. These new public spaces, along with new actors, have brought Islam to the forefront of public discussion. The second impact of these opportunity spaces is on the ultimately centrifugal trajectory of Islamic sociopolitical movements in democratic and pluralistic

Load more