OPEN ACCESS Research article Islam and modernity: The case of and the Welfare party

Evren Altinkas*

Bergama, Izmir/TURKEY *Email: [email protected] INTRODUCTION The term of modernity has always been a crucial and mostly misunderstood concept of the 20th century. There is another significant misunderstanding about the “clash” of religion and modernity. The last misunderstanding is the usage of Islam as an anti-modern term and lifestyle in the lives of Islamic societies. The fundamental goal of all developmental efforts in developing countries is to modernize their societies, and the image of modernity, insofar as it relates to material goods, is that of the more developed countries in the West. Harry Eckstein advocates a universal approach to development based on “abstract theories regardless of time, place and circumstance- theory that spans the whole of history, from primal origins to modernity.” We should not forget that it is the individuals of a society who determine its shape and direction. Binding with the term of modernity, there is an important discussion about the secularization and its anti-religious characteristics. Secularization is not a necessary condition for development and modernization. It is one thing to reject the power of any religious group or “class”, but quite another to also reject what the revealed religions have to offer. Looking from the other side of the medallion, Islam is not against modernity and development. Islamic societies have been static and have not developed in the manner they should, this is essentially due to the failure in understanding and application of the Qur’anic doctrine in its totality. Claims are made in the Muslim world by the ruling elites that their societies are Islamic, but when one critically scrutinizes these societies on the basis of the Qur’an, that is, its principles and guidelines, apart from noticing some rituals and traditions, one finds it extremely difficult to take the claims seriously. When we look to the case in Turkey, we can see the Islamic elite (so called elite) and their aim to politicize Islam on the basis of anti-Westernism, which has been a significant failure. The political Islam in Turkey had been criticizing the development (progress) model of Turkey as being Western. I will examine the Islamic movement in Turkey (and specifically the current case, Welfare Party etc.) using the above terms and their approach to modernity and Islam.

MODERNıZATıON AND ISLAM http://dx.doi.org/ The concept of modernization 10.5339/connect.2014.14 Social change is key in the modernization process. For developing countries to become modern, the Submitted: 16 May 2013 rate, direction, and quality of social change is the deciding factor; in social change, multiple and Accepted: 1 April 2014 ª 2014 Altinkas, licensee interconnected factors are involved. Involved in the whole process of development is human creativity Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation and the exercise of human rationality. Journals. This is an open access In Islamic societies what appears to have happened in the last few centuries is the so-called article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons ‘religious leaders’, in an environment of autocratic rule, which shunned criticism and open debate and Attribution license CC BY 4.0, which discussion, mistook God’s statements in the Qur’an to the effect that nothing happens in the world permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any unless God wishes it, that He is all powerful and human beings are weak, to mean that humanity had medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Cite this article as: Altinkas E. Islam and modernity: The case of Turkey and the Welfare party, QScience Connect 2014:14 http://dx.doi.org/10.5339/connect.2014.14 Page 2 of 16 Altinkas. QScience Connect 2014:14

no control over its environment and that things will happen naturally or on their own.1 The point that emerges from the foregoing is that, in Islamic societies the erroneus belief grew, which is present even today, based on partial or faulty understanding of some Qur’anic verses, that God will do things for humans. So, there is a lack of enterprise in Islamic societies. In the process, human creativity and rationality have been relegated to an obscure corner. As David Apter states, “reason as applied to human affairs is the foundation of modernity.” For 19th century philosophers, the human species can be improved first, by new discoveries in the arts and sciences, and consequently the means of well-being and common prosperity, secondly by progress in the principles of conduct and moral practice and thirdly by the improvement of human faculty. According to William Connolly; “modernity has lost a great sensibility of morality, a rich tradition, environmental spaces and all these vacated places were filled by bureaucracy, hierarchy, totalitarian states, a consumer culture and probably a consumer state.” Moral questions are the bedrock on which human development stands and can prosper. The requirement of the good life and of a good society in the modern world is the idea of self-perfection. This entails psychological freedom, as well as economic and social changes that will permit the individual to become free in terms of the realization of self. This alone makes the case for an open or democratic society, which is also called political development. The civil institutions have value only when individuals can exercise their capacities of will and reason. The ultimate goal of the development process is to provide all people with the opportunity to live full lives. For this reason, normative values cannot be divorced from the pursuit of development and modernization. Tradition may be discarded, changed, stretched, or modified, but still great use can be made of the traditional elements in a society’s efforts to establish a consensual base to political authority and economic development.2 In the modernization process, an interplay occurs between differentiation (which is divisive of the existing social role of organization) and integration (which unites newly differentiated structures).3 The process of integration itself produces more differentiated structures, such as trade unions, associations, political groups and state institutions. Change in attitudes and values, at both the individual and societal level, is of crucial importance in the modernization of developing countries. For societies to become modern, the foremost requirement is to develop “attitudinal modernization”, better said, “the existence of modern individuals in a society.4” Modern individuals are those better educated, more urbanized, more engaged in industry and related non-traditional occupations, and more exposed to the newer media of mass communications. Their openness to new experiences and their willingness to change are important characteristics of the modern individuals. A modern person is highly independent and autonomous, with a high sense of personal efficacy, and is markedly independent of traditional sources of influence in personal affairs. A modern person rejects passivity, resignation and fatalism in the pursuits of life and, instead, takes control of life. The above sums up the key components of the modernity syndrome. In final analysis, the individuals who are more modern in attitudes and values are those who act “to support modern institutions and to facilitate the general modernization of society.” Thus, for societies to become modern, the transformation of individuals in psychological terms is a prerequisite, that is, transformation from traditionalism to individual modernity. There is no prior reason to assume that in becoming modern, the people of “traditional countries would lose whatever qualities had made them more friendly, humane, personal, warm, open, secure, or otherwise attractive and adjusted in their traditional mode. Modern people may be different, but they are not deculturated.” Individuals affected by economic conditions, in turn effect the functioning and development of the economic system and the economy itself. The whole process of development or modernization should be viewed as a triad relationship between the individual, the economic system or conditions, and the political system.5 In this triad the individual plays the preeminent role. Modernization means the transformation of political, social, economic, intellectual, religious, and psychological systems. Transformation does not always mean the destruction of the past.

1Javaid S. Islam and Modernization. A Comparative Analysis of Pakistan, Egypt, and Turkey. New York. 1994, 12. 2Gu¨ngo¨rO¨. Siyasal˙ Islamda Bo¨lu¨nmeler. Istanbul. 1997. 3Javaid S. Islam and Modernization. A Comparative Analysis of Pakistan, Egypt, and Turkey. New York. 1994, 126 4Merad A. C¸ag˘das¸I˙slam. Istanbul. 1996,54. 5Go¨le N.˙ Islam ve Modernlik U¨zerine Melez Desenler. Istanbul. 1999, 29. Page 3 of 16 Altinkas. QScience Connect 2014:14

Transformation is more subtle and complicated than the destruction of the past, and yet is no less radical. Modernization requires the willingness and ability of the elite to bring about the necessary changes. When we look to societies (e.g. Turkish society), we can say that in societies where governments encounter strong opposition and often fear the antagonism or religious functionaries, or other vested interests that do not tolerate disturbing the status quo, the prime need is not to isolate such groups, but to win their support.6 Those who benefit handsomely from the existing economic structure usually develop a vested interest in maintaining the system, which is neither efficient nor suitable for rapid future growth. To achieve this, they solidify their control of the political system by joining forces with powerful groups in the country, like landowners, religious leaders, and senior civil and military officers.

Religion and modernization Historically, religion has played a major role in integrating societies; it has also been used to prevent change and to maintain the status quo.7 Considering the influence of religion in a society, it seems much would depend on what a particular religion advocates or is based on. When we look to the major values of Islam and their relativity to modernization, we can see a general tendency inside Islam towards modernity. For example; . World is created by God and is real. . Wealth is not compatible with religious goals. . History moves toward divine culmination. . Each individual is created with an eternal soul and all souls are spiritually equal. . The Qur’an is the only spiritual authority, no clerics are authorized to dominate the polity. . Administration of law and education is the state’s responsibility and no one has ecclesiastical authority.8 Religious ideas and values provide broad guidelines, and for religious systems that are deemed to be progressive, it is the people who subscribe to those values and who interpret them one way or another in a particular historical era, who are the ultimate arbiters of what becomes of those ideas and values. So, the existence of an intellectual environment becomes of crucial importance. Religion is a very powerful force that can work positively or negatively, depending on the content of a particular religious doctrine, its interpretation and application. It is a serious matter that requires the full exercise of human intellect.9 Religion hindered progress as long as it remained dogmatic, unexamined, and an exclusive domain of some people. Religion becomes an obstacle to progress when it is politicized or becomes an object of politics. The same is true when the religious establishment controls or attempts to control the functioning of a society.

Islam The most serious problem in the Muslim society has been that a synthetic exposition of the Qur’an has not taken place. Islamic scholarships suffer from two problems: “lack of a genuine feel for the relevance of the Qur’an today, which prevents presentation in terms adequate to the needs of contemporary man; but even more a fear that such a presentation might deviate on some points from traditionally received opinions.” Within this context, we have to define the term “secularization”; it is to separate the polity from religious ideologies and ecclesiastical structures, the expansion of the polity to perform those regulatory functions previously performed by the religious establishment, and, to emphasize temporal goals and rational, pragmatic efforts, or secular political values. In some societies the separation of religious ideology is not only unlikely to occur, but would be harmful were it to occur. The decisive factor in the development process is the ideology or the religion itself. In Turkey, for instance, Atatu¨rk attempted radical secularization but with little success. The secular measures had a slight impact in the countryside. The more distant the area was from the capital

6Go¨le N.˙ Islamın Yeni Kamusal Yu¨zleri. Istanbul, 1999, 27. 7Javaid S. Islam and Modernization. A Comparative Analysis of Pakistan, Egypt, and Turkey. New York. 1994, 25. 8Javaid S. Islam and Modernization. A Comparative Analysis of Pakistan, Egypt, and Turkey. New York. 1994, 27. 9Fincancı Y.˙ Islam ve Demokrasi. Istanbul. 1994, 13. Page 4 of 16 Altinkas. QScience Connect 2014:14

or from the major cities, the less chance there was that its inhabitants were even aware of the change.10 After Atatu¨rk’s death in 1938, the resistance to secularization became more noticeable in the countryside. According to Go¨kalp, in primitive societies all institutions are based on religion, which gives them value and power. In organic societies, however, religion should be confined to institutions that are relatively spiritual. He argued that religion becomes harmful when it is extended to worldly or secular institutions, for it prevents these institutions from adapting themselves to the necessities of life. Go¨kalp did not underrate religion as a great social force. In fact, he proposed positive measures designed to spread its influence as a character-building element of great value for individuals and society. He wanted to bring all religious matters under the authority of the central government. And he felt that a separation of functions would be beneficial to both fields and to religion itself. He was fully aware that people can neither entirely drop the religion they hold sacred, nor can they dispense with the necessities of contemporary civilization.11 Religious education can be combined with secular education so that each person is given the opportunity to be well conversant with the fundamentals of religion, which means the study of the Qur’an. The downfall of Muslims started when Islam became a habit for them and ceased to be a socioeconomic program of life. The separation of religion and state, in the Islamic context, means to neutralize the power and influence of a class which has no legitimate reason, on the basis of the Qur’an, to exist in the first place. The state needs to be cautious that existing religious organizations or groups, be they religious educational institutions or religious political parties, do not perceive and interpret the existence of a separate religious body to mean a free hand in religious matters, for it can lead to fanaticism. The religious institution needs to be a separate and clearly defined structure, but a structure that is counterbalanced and checked by the state authority. The creation of such an institution presupposes that people who come to occupy places in such a body have received modern education, which includes study of the Qur’an; and they are open to discussion, debate, and criticism.12 There is a need in Islamic societies for universities “to produce scholars of the highest quality in Islamic studies; capable of interpreting Islam and presenting it as a body of thought that can meet the challenge of modern times and fulfill the requirements of a modern scientific society.13” The ulema are the least educated in modernity. A major cause of this failure is the impossibility in many parts of the Muslim world to discuss problems in an open and frank way. Official censorship, fear, hypocritical forms of social , and vested prejudice preclude open discussion.14 According to Weber; rationality and bureaucratic organization had made it possible for humans to gain control over nature and effectively organize society.15 A rational society had to have modern values, social consciousness and the subjective experience. Capitalism produces a society that is run by machine-like rational procedures without any intrinsic meaning. Secularization is the social product of capitalism. Capitalism, with rationalization as its base, produces institutional and cultural differentiation, leading to specialization in different social spheres.16 In a secular society, religion is confined to interpersonal, rather than public relations. And, as a last assumption, industrialization is not possible without a society becoming secular, or it is the secularization of a society which paves the way for industrialization. According to Islamists, in Islam the spiritual and the temporal are not two distinct and independent domains. The nature of an act, no matter how secular, is determined by the attitude of the mind behind the act. Islam is a single indivisible reality. In Islam, it is the state’s responsibility to transform the ideal principles of equality, solidarity, and freedom into space-time forces and to realize them in a definite human organization. Religion is essentially a mode of living and is the only serious way of handling reality. In Islamic societies, there has been a general failure to understand the underlying unity of the Qur’an; instead, emphasis has been on the isolated words or verses of the Qur’an. Whereas the overwhelming

10Okutucu MH.˙ Istikamet S¸eriat: Refah Partisi. Yeryu¨zu¨ Yayınları. Istanbul. 1996, 42. 11Go¨kalp Z. Modernles¸me ve Medeniyet. Earth publications 3. Istanbul. 1922, 56. 12In the Turkish case, this idea was unfulfilled and the modern education of the Qur’an was not generally achieved. This led to one of the basic dilemmas of Turkish society today, the clash of secularism and . Including the misunderstood perception of Islamists on the secularizing and progressing of Turkish policies, that the state tries to undermine Islam and Turkish society traditions. 13Javaid S. Islam and Modernization. A Comparative Analysis of Pakistan, Egypt, and Turkey. New York. 1994, 51. 14Esposito JL, Voll JO. . 1996, 78 15Weber M. Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft. 1922, 650-678. 16Javaid S. Islam and Modernization. A Comparative Analysis of Pakistan, Egypt, and Turkey. New York. 1994,56. Page 5 of 16 Altinkas. QScience Connect 2014:14

emphasis of the Qur’an is on the establishment of a social order based on socioeconomic justice and ethical values, the major part of Islamic history up to the present time has neglected its importance and urgency. There has always been an understanding of “Minimal Islam” and “Negative/Punitive Islam”.17 The present-day Muslim societies are faced with massive illiteracy and an unenlightened educational system. Islam is distorted and exploited for party politics and group interests and the result is that Islam becomes a sheer slogan and is reduced to demagoguery. The lack of a proper method of interpretation is another big problem in Muslim societies.

TURKEY, MODERNITY AND ISLAM Turkish Republic and secularization policies Turkey’s population is overwhelmingly Muslim and secularization has been used as a main doctrine since the foundation of the Turkish Republic. After the victory against the allied forces, Atatu¨rk and his cadres started to use a strict secularization policy, which was a complete rejection of Islam from Turkish politics. Before we examine this process, it is important to point out that this rejection was not only a political one, but also social, economic and, to a certain extent, cultural. As mentioned above, transformation does not mean the destruction of the past. Atatu¨rk and his cadres misunderstood the term of “transformation” and they totally neglected the Islam that was (and still is) deeply rooted in the beliefs and lifestyle of Turkish society.18 Atatu¨rk’s decision to subsequently abolish the caliphate was an important step for Turkish society. But, he missed an important assumption, that a society predominantly Muslim must pursue Islamic ideals. If it does not, it is liable to lead to complacency and corruption. The reason for this being that if any other ideals are adopted, no matter how similar they might be to the Islamic ideals, there will be a lack of understanding and commitment to those ideals, as the intellectual bases of those ideals will be misunderstood. So, the only viable option for a Muslim society is to understand and implement Islamic ideals. An ideal Islamic state is a state that Muslims consider to be good. Western democracy cannot be transposed to another society, particularly Islamic, merely through a democratic form of government. The ethical element in an Islamic society or an Islamic democracy must come from Islam.19 Only then does it become viable, and only then can there be a commitment to it, for it will contain within itself the elements of loyalty and accountability. But, in Turkish society the reforms made by Atatu¨rk were completely against the assumptions previously decribed. We see the results in today’s political life of Turkey. These reforms can be counted as the prohibiton of polygamy, making civil marriage compulsory, giving equal rights to women (suffrage etc.), suppression and closure of religious orders and societies, adoption of an European based legal code instead of the Islamic Shari’a, official declaration of the secular Turkish state and illegalizing the Arabic script. The overall purpose of such measures was to break the power of fanaticism of Islamic conservatism, which had become the hallmark of Muslim Turkish society. It was the refusal of the ulema to rethink the shari’a law preceding the Ottoman rule that resulted in the secularism of Atatu¨rk. In this secularism aim, there was no liquidation of religion. If Islam had lost any of its influence over the people, it was because of the superficiality and incompetence of the religious teachers. Atatu¨rk said in one of his speeches: “We recognize that it is indispensable in order to secure the revival of the Islamic faith, to disengage it from the condition of being a political instrument, which it has been for centuries through habit.” In the old Ottoman society, for the majority of people, Islam had come to mean occultism, belief in superstitions, and, at best, preoccupation with prayers and mindless following of traditions. In terms of the modern Islamic experience, the Kemalist reform program was a vigorous application of adaptationism to the Westernizing secularist style. The old institutions of Islamic politics and society were systematically eliminated rather than being reformed.20 The office of the sultanate was abolished in 1922, the caliphate in 1924, and the old Islamic legal structure was eliminated in a series of reforms during the following decade. The formal organizations of tariqats were outlawed, pious foundations were brought under direct government control, and religious education was taken out of the hands of

17Mardin S. Tu¨rkiye’de Din ve Siyaset. Religion and Politics in Turkey. Istanbul. 2000, 217. 18Go¨le N.˙ Islam ve Modernlik U¨zerine Melez Desenler. Istanbul. 1999, 78. 19Esposito JL, Voll JO. Islam and Democracy. Oxford University Press. 1998, 189 20Voll JO. Islam: Continuity and Change In The Modern World. Westview Press, University of Michigan. 1982, 185. Page 6 of 16 Altinkas. QScience Connect 2014:14

the traditional ulema. Even reference to Islam as the religion of the state, which had been included in the first republican constitution, was eliminated in 1928. There is a significant failure in this secularist reform, which in order to discover the national culture made the mystic literature, heteredox sects, heretical movements, and similar activities, objects of special interest.21 They viewed the Islamic period as an episode in the national and civilizational aspects of Turkish history. For modernization efforts to succeed, the foremost task was to change the prevalent conceptions about religion, which could be effective only if the people came to believe in new conceptions of their own, through education. It meant going back to the original source of Islam, the Qur’an, in an intelligent manner, keeping the historical conditions of the time well in mind. It required a new approach to education, in which the study of the Qur’an was carried out concurrently with modern education.22 This was something that could not be achieved by Kemalist ruling elites in Turkey. When we look to the principles of Kemalism and their aim for a new lifestyle in modern Turkey, we can see their deportation from Islam. The keystone of the modern system, in terms of the legitimation of political authority, was that it was to be based on the will of the people. The new slogan was ‘Sovereignty Belongs to the Nation’. That basis of political authority meant a transformation of the ideological foundations of the state, and the old system, in which God is the sovereign and the real authority is God’s, not the people’s will, was eliminated. Nationalism directed the focus of loyalty to the new nation-state, populism emphasized the importance of the people as opposed to the elite, revolutionism supported the willingness to accept constant transformation, and statism defined the role of the government in the economy. Secularism, spoke directly of religion, and the Kemalist program was explicitly secularist. The secularism of the Turkish republic aimed at bringing an end to all the old institutions of faith, it excluded formally religious considerations from the political arena and rejected social distinctions based on religion. However, the program did not reject or oppose religion in general; rather, it aimed at making adherence to Islam a personal, individual matter in an environment where a person was not obliged to follow some externally established set of rules and doctrines. It was a secularist rather than an atheistic program of modernizing reform. As a nationalist program, Kemalism worked to nationalize Islam by making it more Turkish, in order that all Turks could understand their faith without having to resort to professional interpreters. The language of the faith was an important key. The call to prayer and mosque ceremonies were given in Turkish. The state encountered strong opposition from reactionary and rebellious elements who formed the Republican Progressive Party. The party appealed to the masses on the basis of religious promises. Invoking respect for religious ideas and dogmas, the party appealed to the people for the reestablishment of the caliphate and religious law. The party wanted to protect the medresses, the tekkes, the pious institutions, the softahs, the sheikhs, and their disciples. The party charged that by abolishing the caliphate, the Kemalists had ruined Islam and that people would be made unbelievers. The party advised the people that assimilation with the Occident meant the destruction of Islamic history and civilization. This party was closed by the Kemalists with the effect of the Sheikh Said Rebellion in eastern provinces of Turkey, which was based on religious principles and was under huge influence from the Republican Progressive Party.23 The problem that occurred was a vacuum in Turkish society in all the areas of life by the decline of Islam. The biggest failure of the Kemalist elite was that they acted under the illusion that cultural change could be imposed from above through the force of law. The reformers did not probe deeper to discover what was wrong with the prevalent Islamic religious ideas that had so decayed Turkish society, and how to correct the situation. The Kemalists’ aspiration to westernize Turkey, a Turkey where men and women had equal rights, wore modern dress, danced and dined in the Western way, and were versed in Western philosophy and art, had little meaning in the value structure of the countryside.24 The state, through its secular policies and programs of westernization, had threatened the value system of a traditional Islamic society without providing a new ideological framework which could have mass appeal. We should not forget that in Islaimic societies, especially, if you can persuade the masses that

21Javaid S. Islam and Modernization. A Comparative Analysis of Pakistan, Egypt, and Turkey. New York. 1994, 176. 22This is called the fundamentalist approach to religion, specifically Islam. Shown later in this essay, Turkish Islamic movements rejected this approach in their view of Islamic life and politics. 23Go¨le N.˙ Islam ve Modernlik U¨zerine Melez Desenler. Istanbul. 1999, 54. 24Go¨le N.˙ Islam ve Modernlik U¨zerine Melez Desenler. Istanbul. 1999, 98. Page 7 of 16 Altinkas. QScience Connect 2014:14

something they are asked to do is religiously right or enjoined by religion, you can set them to any course of action.

The multiparty system and the reaction of the masses The issue of religion came to surface in secular Turkey when the single-party rule of the Kemalists gave way to a multiparty system. Religion now reentered politics. The new political environment provided an opportunity to air religious grievances through political parties. With the 1950 elections and the governing of the main opposition party (Democrat Party-DP), things started to change in the Turkish Republic. In this process, again, Islam played a role. The narrow restrictions placed upon religion had not been fully accepted by many Turks, especially in rural areas. Part of the DP program, which was later implemented, was to expand the programs of religious instruction and to end the use of Turkish translations for the call to prayer and the Qur’an. Those features were factors in the DP’s electoral popularity. While mentioning this period, we have to emphasize the Nation Party that was formed in 1948 and had a more clearly religious program that advocated and the substantial relaxation of the secularist aspects of Turkish policies. The Nation Party was significant as it represented a continuing minority of people in Turkey who advocated a greater adherence to Islamic traditions. It was the first manifestation of an organized fundamentalist political party within the Turkish political system. Although it was outlawed in 1954, for attempting to use religion for political purposes, it was succeeded by the Republican Nation Party, that won almost 5 percent of votes in the 1954 elections. The major challenge to the Kemalist political system came from developing policies of the DP itself. It promised the peasants not only religious freedom, but also better economic and living conditions, and facilities. During the rise of the DP, after its establishment in 1946, the ruling Republican People’s Party tried to change its perception for the masses by loosening its highly and strictful secularist policies. In the Seventh General Congress of the party in 1947, delegates criticized the RPP governments for neglecting the religious training of clerics, as well as for not providing religious education to the youth. The government’s secularization policies were blamed for the alleged lack of public morality. But, this did not help RPP win the 1950 elections, as mentioned above. The new prime minister, Adnan Menderes indicated that secularism had been unsuccessful in Turkey and, therefore, could be changed. The government permitted the broadcasting of Qur’anic readings over the state radio. The state ruled that all primary school students were required to attend classes on religion unless their parents specifically asked for an exemption. The state also established Prayer Leader and Preacher Schools in seven cities in 1951, and their number was increased to 16 in 1954–55. In the same year, the state increased the budget of the Presidency of Religious Affairs from 3 million to 8 million Turkish liras. An unprecedented increase occurred in the following: publication of religious books and pamphlets, pilgrimage to Mecca, wearing of religious garb in public, mosque attendance and construction of new mosques or repairation of old ones. Religious education fell into private hands. Thus, no change took place in the content and method of religious education. By politicizing religion, the government was seeking to divert public attention from economic problems and extensive violations of civil liberties.

1960 coup and the organization of Islamic movements The decade of the Democratic Party’s rule ended in 1960 with a military intervention. The armed forces considered themselves as the guardians of Kemalism and were annoyed by the party’s partial withdrawal from secularism and other Kemalist principles. Hence, they closed down the party and banned it. Otherwise, their coup had few tangible results. After the military had returned to their barracks and handed the government to an elected parliament, in 1961, there followed a period of liberalization. This was expressed mainly in limiting official censorship of the press and other publications. Not surprisingly, the 1960s was a decade when many clashing ideologies became a matter of public debate. Suggestively, the common ground of Marxist, chauvinism, and Islamist discourse was their criticism of Kemalism. The Islamists invested most of their efforts during the 1960s in three domains: education, publishing, and organization. In addition to pressuring the authorities for increasing allocations of Islamic classes at school. Islamists promoted an ever-growing number of Qur’an courses for adults in the villages. A great effort was invested in the publication and sale of low-cost Islamic literature: works on Islam, the life of its Prophet and other leaders, Islamic history and mysticism, commentaries on the Qur’an, works explaining the dogmas and rites of Islam, collections of Friday ceremonies, as well as school textbooks Page 8 of 16 Altinkas. QScience Connect 2014:14

and translation of Islamic classics into Turkish.25 These were supplemented by many Islamic-minded dailies, weeklies and monthlies, whose circulation rose parallel to the increase in literacy. Organizational activities were carried out on two levels: via Islamic philanthropic associations, whose number grew annually, and via underground activities of various Islamic groups not officially allowed to associate. All these served as recruitment centers of support for the first Islamic political party in the history of the republic. During this period, as semiurbanized and rural Muslims began using diverse cultural categories to construct new identities to deal with the challenges presented by industrialization, migration from traditional villages to urban centers, the expansion of state power, and the popularization of knowledge through mass communication, they first organized within the Justice Party26 (JP). When the JP started to pursue proindustrialist and state-centric policies, Islamically sensitive small merchants, craftsmen and small farmers searched for a new institution to voice their protest.

Islamic political parties The fact that Turkey’s constitutions insulated politics from religion did not prevent the foundation of an Islamist party in 1970. The time seemed ripe for the Islamists to get out of the political wilderness and attempt to rejoin the mainstream. The Party for National Order (NOP) was established on January 26, 1970. Under different names, but with the same ideology, it survives to this day. Although it could not define itself outright as a religious grouping, the Islamist press hailed the party enthusiastically, so that its main characteristics were never in doubt. It immediately started to set up branches throughout Turkey, in the smaller towns and villages, especially amongst the religious circle.27 Although the party’s program and speeches emphasized its democratic views, a close look reveals its Islamist character. Its program stresses its support for spiritual values in carefully selected terms of Arabic origin, frequently employed in Islamist publications (instead of original Turkish ones and neologisms introduced by Kemalist innovators). It advocated freedom of conscience, but interpreted this to mean freedom for religious, Islamic education. Without openly condemning secularism, it rejected any sort of secularism that could be understood as hostile to Islam. Thus, when the second military intervention occurred in March 1971, it was not unexpected that judicial proceedings were instituted against the party before the Constitutional Court, which, in May 1971, ordered its dissolution on the ground that it was seeking “to restore a theocratic order in Turkey.”28 Erbakan was the leader of this party and after the banning of NOP, he escaped to Switzerland and stayed there until 1972. Erbakan’s friends established the National Salvation Party (NSP) in the 1970s to encompass and express their Islamic political consciousness. It was active for eleven years, successfully bringing Islam into the center of Turkish politics. By the summer of 1973, the party was a going concern in all of Turkey’s 67 provinces, gearing itself for the parliamentary elections in October of that year. Running for the first time, the party achieved impressive results: it obtained 11.8 percent of the vote and 48 seats (out of a total of 450) in the National Assembly, thus becoming the third largest parliamentary group, after the two mass parties, the Republican People’s Party and the . This success was due to the party’s tactics, such as having religious functionaries praise it in the mosques (thus flaunting the laws), and by presenting in its propaganda an effective mixture of Islamic treatise and socio-economic preaching, making up a compact message delivered in simple terms directed both at believers and at the unsophisticated, needy, or disgruntled. To the faithful, it intimated that it would be sinful not to vote for the only party that really cared about Islam and the restoration of its standing in public life, in education, and, at least by implication, in politics. To the needy and disgruntled, it promised change, introducing itself as the sole political group opposing large capital and championing the little man by advocating an overhaul of the political and economic system. As a result, the main electoral support for the National Salvation Party in 1973 came from the deeply religious and needy population of Central and Eastern Anatolia. This lesson was not lost on the party in subsequent years.

25Landau JM. Turkey Between Secularism and Islamism. Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. Jerusalem Letter. 1997;352:45. http://www.jcpa.org/jl/vp352.htm Accessed 8/04/2014 26Yavuz HM. Political Islam and the Welfare Party in Turkey. Comparative Politics. 1997;30(1):66. 27Toprak B. The State, Politics and Religion in Turkey. In: State, Democracy and the Military: Turkey in the 80’s. New York, Walter de Gruyter. 1988, 138. 28Yavuz HM. Political Islam and the Welfare Party in Turkey. Comparative Politics. 1997;30(1):68. Page 9 of 16 Altinkas. QScience Connect 2014:14

The NSP rose quickly during a period of political change that saw the creation of a Turkish civil society, in which organizations possessed an unprecedented level of autonomy from state interference. Asserting a strong, anti-Western viewpoint, while espousing the modern goal of rapid industrialisation, the NSP argued that “Turkey had a distinguished imperial past which was attributable to its success in combining military power with the building of an Islamic civilization.” Given that it was Westernization that had, in its view, weakened Turkish society, the NSP “promised a country which would be fully industrialised through economic cooperation with the Muslim world, the prerequisite of which was the return to Islam as the basis of social organisation.” Although it drew its support from economic groups on the margins of society, the NSP was sufficiently strong politically that it participated in three coalition governments between 1973 and 1978. The ideology of the National Salvation Party was embodied in a thinly veiled program to restore Islam in state and society, and turn it into the major factor in Turkey. Fearing legal proceedings that might close down the party (as happened to the Party for National Order in 1971), its spokesmen campaigned for moral progress, postulating a virtuous society, proud of its glorious heritage and ancient traditions. The party considered the entire country as a school, in which religious instruction should be the core of all education. The goal of moral progress was tied up with material progress, geared to improving the financial lot of the have-nots - a combination characteristic of the propaganda of Islamic groups in other Muslim countries at that time, such as Egypt. The top leadership of the party was made up of lawyers and technological experts, grouped around the party’s founder and chairman, , himself a professor of motor technology. Most, possibly all, had a religious background, with support groups among the Islamic-minded. It was Erbakan, however, who made all the important decisions. The political pamphlets he has published, often read and discussed by his admirers, offer an indication of some of his views on Islam (no source of truth outside Islam), a national development plan (the best for one and all), and the Common Market (a Catholic association, supported by Zionists and freemasons, hence noxious to Turkey’s interests). Early in 1974, as the third largest group in the National Assembly, the National Salvation Party was in a tactically convenient position to form a government coalition with either the Republican People’s Party or its rival, the Justice Party. The former was moderately left of center, the latter moderately right of center. Since the National Salvation Party was the champion of Islam, first and foremost, it could coalesce with either - and it did, first with the former, then with the latter. In both cases, Erbakan became Deputy Prime Minister and his colleagues received economic portfolios, which they put to good use to bolster their popular support. The Islamic-related activities and attitudes of the party’s cabinet ministers are of special interest, as they are characteristic of the previous and subsequent standing of the protagonists of Islamism and their antagonism to the secularization of Turkey. Examples are: unsuccessful bills in parliament to change the official weekend holiday from Sunday to Friday, or to make everyone offending God, in behaviour or speech, guilty of a serious misdemeanour. The number of religious functionaries was increased, as was the amount of time earmarked for religious broadcasts on state radio. A much- publicized drive was started against both gambling and the drinking and selling of alcohol, as was an anti-obscenity drive in all publications: books, newspapers, photographs, films, records and tapes. The widest interpretation was given to obscenity, which was also applied to art, as a ban on nude statues. While such measures increased the party’s popularity within certain circles, it may have caused some antagonism in others. In the 1977 elections, its vote declined and its group in the National Assembly fell to 24. Even so, the party’s activities were viewed with suspicion by secularist groups, chiefly by the armed forces, who considered themselves as preservers of Kemalism. In September 1980 the military intervened again, just after Erbakan had addressed a huge rally in , openly calling for Islamism. They closed down all political parties and ruled alone for three years, after which they returned the government to the civilians via new parliamentary elections in 1983, in which old parties were not permitted to participate.

THE WELFARE PARTY AND MODERNIZATION EFFORTS 1980 coup and the military rule Before the coup, Turkish society was shattered by ideological polarization and strife-ridden communal violence. Parliament was unable to elect a president, and the government was inept in providing law and order. The generals who came to power on September 12, 1980, instead of showing secular disregard for Islam, took several steps to strengthen it by opening new Qur’anic schools, making Page 10 of 16 Altinkas. QScience Connect 2014:14

religious courses compulsory, and employing new preachers. Moreover, in 1982 the military imposed a new constitution that restricted the activities of labour unions and voluntary associations, and abolished the autonomous status of the university and state-run television and radio. The leaders of the military coup, ironically, depended on Islamic institutions and symbols for legitimization; fusing Islamic ideas with national goals, they hoped to create a more homogeneous and less political Islamic community. Islam, in this radical departure from the military’s past practices, offered a way to reduce or even eliminate the cultural differences that led to the polarization of Turkish society. Moreover, the leadership of the 1980 coup considered Islam a pacifying and submissive ideology, preferable to the threat of communism. What Antonio Gramsci argued in the case of Italy is applicable to Turkey: “The particular form in which the hegemonic ethico-political element presents itself in the life of the state and the country is ‘patriotism’ and ‘nationalism’, which is ‘popular religion’, that is to say it is the link by means of which the unity of leaders and led is effected.” The leaders of the military coup used all available means, but especially religion, to secure consent to their dominance. Through Islamization of the society, the coup leaders sought to engineer a new form of depoliticized Turkish-Islamic culture that would reunify the society. In order to attain this goal, the national culture report was issued.29 The report was based on the Turkish-Islamic synthesis, whose bedrock was the family, the mosque and the military barracks. These three institutional pillars were expected to produce a disciplined, unified, and well-ordered organic society and a powerful, unified, and harmonious state. The military government preferred to employ religious sentiment and traditional allegiances, rather than the principles of participatory democracy, to achieve political stability and national unity. It aimed, through Turkish-Islamic synthesis, to identify the state and nation as one jamaat (community) modeled after the concept of ummah (religious community). Although the 1982 constitution allowed the state to intervene in every aspect of social life, social groups responded with liberal agendas demanding free space and deregulation of the economy and education. This liberal reaction unleashed a new debate about the boundaries between the state and society, and between the individual and society, the post-1980 political and economic setting clearly favored the activities of Islamic groups and sufi networks. Turgut O¨zal, the then prime minister, pursued a policy of Islamizing the educational system and prepared a new curriculum of national history and geography that constantly used the term Milli (national) in the religious sense. The expansion of higher education, print media, and mass communication played a critical role in the public emergence of an Islamic identity in the late 1980s. Democratization and economic liberalization in Turkey opened new public spaces for marginalized Islamic groups to find their voices. The process of democratization carried political Islamic views and sensitivities from the periphery to the center of the political forum. After the coup, when the state decided that Muslims had to be taken into the system to pursue the goals of economic development and eliminate the threat of the left, it could carry out its decision only on the basis of “soft Islam”. Subsequently, Islamists poured into the system through an expansion of educational opportunities, economic activity, and party politics. The educational means of involving the Islamic masses included more Imam-Hatip schools, Qur’anic teaching seminaries, and new Islamic private colleges and high schools. These schools helped establish new foundations and associations for carrying out social activities. The economic sphere was opened by new companies owned by Islamist entrepreneurs and by the establishment of an interest-free Islamic banking system. Meanwhile, conservative groups found the soft ideology of Islam promoted by the coup leaders to be fertile ground for the development of political parties (eg. the Welfare Party). As the Muslim masses began to take part in the system and to shape the educational, political, and economic spheres with their own norms, the state became legitimate in their eyes. Welfare Party: The Welfare Party, compared with the previous Islamist parties of Turkey, modernized traditional norms and institutions by breathing new life into them. Moreover, the expansion of modern conditions and economic growth, instead of undermining traditional networks and belief systems, have infused religious institutions and belief systems with new meaning. Ali Tu¨rkmen and his 30 friends established the Welfare Party on July 19, 1983. Because the generals decided to maintain strict regulation of the role of Islam in public life, they vetoed the founding members, and the party could not enter the first national elections after the coup, held in 1983.

29Yavuz HM. Political Islam and the Welfare Party in Turkey. Comparative Politics. 1997;30(1):78 Page 11 of 16 Altinkas. QScience Connect 2014:14

On March 25, 1984, however, the Welfare Party (WP) participated in local elections under the leadership of Ahmet Tekdal, won mayoral seats in Van and , and scored 4.4 percent of the total votes. In its first general party congress on June 30, 1985, Tekdal sharply criticized O¨zal’s economic policies and stressed social justice and political freedoms for the working classes. After the 1987 referendum, which allowed ex-politicians to enter into politics, Necmettin Erbakan and some of the pre-1980 cadres took over the leadership of the WP. In the parliamentary election of 1987 the party won 7.2 percent of total votes. Nevertheless, it was still short of the ten percent threshold required to gain a seat in the Turkish parliament. When the party won 9.8 percent of the vote in the 1989 local elections, its policymakers grew doubtful about being able to pass the threshold and formed a purely pragmatic alliance with the Nationalistic Action Party (NAP) and Reformist Democratic Party (RDP) in 1991. The Alliance won 16.2 percent of the vote and gained 62 seats in parliament in the 1991 general elections. In local elections on March 27, 1994, the WP won 19.7 percent of the national vote. Pro-Islamist mayors took control of 29 larger cities, including Istanbul and , and the WP became a significant force in Turkish politics. A year later the WP became the largest party in the Turkish parliament. The WP’s victory in the 1995 elections is less the result of Islam than of a complex set of factors. WP mayors have offered better services than their predecessors and worked hard to improve public services. Moreover, they reduced corruption and nepotism in their municipalities. The WP also acted more professionally than other parties on the left and right. Background of rising Islamism: One important strategy used by the Islamist movement was to develop an educated counter-elite as a base of support, especially by strengthening the Islamic stream in the educational system. During the post-1980 coup period, governments perceived Islamic education in the schools as a panacea against extremist ideologies. As Islamist supporters moved from provincial towns and villages to urban centers, they were more likely to gain access to formal education and opportunities for upward social mobility. Islamist groups responded to the needs and aspirations of the newly urban, who might include university students, professionals, shopkeepers, merchants, or workers. The groups offered food to the needy, scholarships and hostels to university students, a network to young graduates looking for jobs, and credit to shopkeepers, industrialists and merchants. Self-help projects conducted by women were particularly important to this endeavour. Financial assistance came from a newly formed Islamist business elite. In the late 1980s, a new urban middle class and business elite emerged whose members often originated from provincial towns. Their parents were often self-employed small traders, small shopkeepers, merchants and agrarian capitalists. Some came from state employed families. Many provincial youngsters from this background moved to big cities where they had access to higher education. Since their graduation, many joined the urban middle class through employment in the modern economic sector, which expanded in the 1980s as a result of economic reforms that replaced the statist economic model with a liberal approach. The liberal and export-oriented economic development model, adopted by the then Prime Minister Turgut Ozal, gave birth to a new business elite, originating from a provincial background. This new model provided opportunities not only to the established business elite, but also to the small and medium businessmen in Anatolian towns. Some of them have developed their businesses there. Others moved to Istanbul, seeking opportunities for expansion in this new commercial center. Originating from Anatolian towns, the new business elite desired to assert their provincial identity and preserve their values and traditions. Consequently, they have been called “Anatolian Lions” (“Anadolu Aslanlari”), differentiating themselves from the more urban, Westernized business elite represented by TUSIAD (The Turkish Businessmen’s and Industrialists’ Association, founded in 1971), whose members are the chief executives of Turkey’s 300 biggest corporations.30 In contrast, the Anatolian Lions went under the leadership of the pro-Islamist MUSIAD and now challenge the established business elite. MUSIAD, the Association of the Independent Industrialists and Businessmen, was founded on May 5, 1990 in Istanbul by a number of young pro-Islamic businessmen. The first letter of its acronym, “M” is commonly perceived as standing for “Muslim” rather than for mustakil (“independent”). The founders

30Landau JM. Turkey Between Secularism and Islamism. Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. Jerusalem Letter. 1997;352:45. http://www.jcpa.org/jl/vp352.htm. Accessed 8/04/2014 Page 12 of 16 Altinkas. QScience Connect 2014:14

of MUSIAD aimed to create an “Islamic economic system” as an alternative to the existing “capitalist system” in Turkey. This goal, though, remained only a slogan. The group’s membership reached 400 in 1991, 1700 by 1993, and 3000 in 1998. Its members’ companies’ annual revenue is US $ 2.79 billion. Members are active in most sectors of the economy, particularly in manufacturing, textiles, chemical and metallurgical products, automotive parts, building materials, iron and steel, and food products. There are also several powerful Islamist finance houses. In addition to the MUSIAD, informal economic groups also identify themselves with Islamic activism. Because the political center maintains its Kemalist secularist identity, oppositional peripheral groups identify with Ottoman-Islam traditions. Moreover, sufi orders play a key role in their developing business connections and facilitate their penetration into the economy. The Turkish Naksibendi leaders employ traditional network systems to pursue modern capital formation. For example, some food items produced by one of the leading firms in the country, U¨lker, are distributed by the Nurcu groups in Anatolia. The struggle between secularist and Islamic groups, therefore, have both deeply rooted historical and economic dimensions. As Demirel said in one of his speeches: “As long as there is poverty, inequality, injustice, and repressive political systems, fundamentalist tendencies will grow in the world and find fertile soil for their development.” This understanding implies that the growth of an extremist Islamic presence in Turkish society is temporary and is dependent upon a failure of the modernization policies presently being implemented. The question that naturally arises, therefore, concerns the degree to which the Turkish state can control the Islamic forces it has permitted to emerge. Demirel’s belief that “secularism is the umbrella for freedom of religion and conscience in the Turkish Republic” seems dangerously naive given the radical views of Islamic leaders like Erbakan. Relaxation of Ataturk’s strict prohibitions on religious expression invites the possibility of determined antidemocratic groups purposefully misusing those freedoms.

The program of the Welfare Party (modern approach) The most critical factors in the strength of the WP are found in its discourses on identity and justice. Muslim masses evoked Islamic symbols and institutions to express their discontent and, most important, construct their own modernity by re-activating Islamic tradition. The paradox of Turkey is that the expansion of a new conceptualization and a new phase of modernity and Islamization have coincided.

Just Order (Adil Du¨zen) The most appealing program the WP has presented is the Just Order, and most supporters identified social equity as the main objective of the Just Order system. When people were asked what the Just Order stands for their answers included justice, a secure social and economic environment, the protection of state property, an end to nepotism and corruption, cooperation between state and nation, protection of the unity of the state, and an end to undue western influence over Turkey. These common responses indicate that the Just Order is seen as a way, not of bringing about an Islamic political system, but of addressing Turkey’s immediate social and economic problems. The protection of the state and its property also are seen as the main objectives of the Just Order, for many people believe that their economic protection presupposes a powerful state. The Just Order does not mean an interest- free economic system or a welfare state; it stands for the prevention of injustice and religious discrimination against pious people.31 In this respect, Islam matters a great deal, not as a religion, but as a communication system and metaphysical basis of justice. Indeed, the leadership of the WP expresses the collective problem of social and criminal justice in the language of the people and provides an answer that has a place in their collective memory. While the WP’s policies are very conservative in form and are articulated in Islamic concepts, they are quite revolutionary in content. Three most common characteristics of the WP are honesty, justice and equality, according to people who vote for the party. Also; resisting corruption and bribery, protecting tradition and mores, helping the needy and poor, sincerity, unity, solidarity, and elimination of prostitution and social immorality are some other basic characteristics according to voters. As the party is rooted in a search for a conception of community to cope with the collective problems of justice and

31Okutucu MH.˙ Istikamet S¸eriat: Refah Partisi. Yeryu¨zu¨ Yayınları. Istanbul. 1996, 156. Page 13 of 16 Altinkas. QScience Connect 2014:14

identity, it seeks to revise shared understandings of morality, as well as to address social and economic problems. For instance, the leadership of the WP never hesitates to invoke the popular understanding of ummah as an ideal model to restructure society to overcome problems of justice and identity. The supporters of the party in Istanbul and Diyarbakır argue that the WP is different from other parties in Turkey because it emphasizes historic Ottoman and Islamic bonds, not Turkish ethnicity, and thus helps to bring Kurds into the system. The forces that motivate supporters of the WP to become involved in politics are not solely religious, but rather include the search for community and redistribution of resources. The WP is socially rooted in a traditional network system and mobilizes traditional groups, such as sufi and neighbourhood organizations.32 Political parties in Turkey at present, struggle over conflicting sociopolitical identities and conceptions of the ‘good life’. The poor and newly urbanized masses prefer to be identified and accepted as Muslims in the public sphere. Their quest for equal distribution of economic goods and for economic expansion finds expression in the WP’s Just Order. Consequently, the party offers an institutional framework for the voiceless and suppressed masses of Turkey, and for social movements seeking to redefine and transform social, cultural, and political interactions. The majority of new Islamist groups want free spaces outside the control of the state in which they can express their opinions and construct new identities. The governing public spaces, by constructing theatres for diverse rules and alternative ways of life, give religio-political solidarity groups room to breathe and create their distinctions and uniqueness. These spaces provide many opportunities for individual Muslims to produce their own conception of modernity.

Identity and the Welfare Party Through its institutions, the modern national-state forces individuals to play different and conflicting roles that split their personality and fragment their identity. As the state expands its power through new technologies, individuals are finding new shelters to protect their personal wholeness in religious idioms.33 Especially evident are the WP’s use of Islamic idioms in the image of a shelter and the use of the word national (milli) by Erbakan and his inner circle as an adjective. With its use of Islamic idioms and symbols the WP provides a forum within which diverse ethnic and regional identities can flourish and coexist. Although the leadership of the party views itself as a higher entity that supersedes local identities, in practice it functions as a space in which to negotiate political trade-offs between competing identities and loyalties. Erbakan does not see the party platform as a flexible structure that can be altered by new participants; rather, he demands that newcomers accept the form of the party, which acts as a school to mold and shape individuals. The WP has the potential to constitute and transform its supporters with a new Islamic identity and interest because the WP, unlike other parties in Turkey, has an articulate ideology. According to the leadership of the WP, there are three spheres of confrontation in Turkish society: ideological (left versus right and Islamist versus both Marxist and capitalist), ethnic (Turk versus Kurd), and religious (different sects of Islam such as Sunni versus Alevi). The liberal wing of the party seeks to harmonize these three zones of conflict by opening a series of communication channels and public spaces to socialize differences through interactions.34 The overall ideology of the WP is a form of Islamic liberalism, in that it does not see Islam as an alternative to politics but searches for ways in which to integrate Islamic identity and its symbols into the political sphere. The idea-making intellectuals of the party regard Islam as a voice within democracy. Although the WP is searching for ways to integrate Islamic identity and symbols into the political sphere, Erbakan avoids equating Islam with the party and tries to reach everyone, including non-practicing Muslims. He differentiated majoritarian democracy from pluralistic democracy and demanded pluralism and diversity as a necessary framework for coexistence.

Organizational structure of the Welfare Party The organizational structure of the party is known as the tesbih model (that is, the provincial organizational committee has 33 members, modeled after the 33 beads of the traditional Muslim

32Okutucu MH.˙ Istikamet S¸eriat: Refah Partisi. Yeryu¨zu¨ Yayınları. Istanbul. 1996, 178. 33Yavuz HM. Political Islam and the Welfare Party in Turkey. Comparative Politics. 1997;30(1):75. 34Okutucu MH.˙ Istikamet S¸eriat: Refah Partisi. Yeryu¨zu¨ Yayınları. Istanbul. 1996:182. Page 14 of 16 Altinkas. QScience Connect 2014:14

rosary). Each neighbourhood has an organizer who in turn appoints street representatives to collect information about the age, ethnicity, religious origin, and place of birth of the inhabitants on each street. At the district level inspectors review the work of the neighbourhood organizers every week. Each district also has a party committee consisting of 33 members. None of the other Turkish political parties are organized to communicate in this way with the neighbourhoods, the most crucial and vital units of Turkish society. For example, party representatives always take part in funerals and weddings to reaffirm communal existence. Moreover, if someone needs financial aid because of a handicap, the local party organization never hesitates to extend help. Politics for the WP not only offer services and help needy people, but also defines the symbols of Turkish society and shapes Muslim political imagination and social life. By establishing hegemony over the symbolic structure of Turkish society, WP seeks to become the hegemonic political force. The WP reinterpreted the Bosnian genocide to highlight what it felt was the great failure of the Kemalist elite’s project of making Turkey into a European country. Purposeful framing of international events and presentation of news stories by pro- Islamic media created a unified narrative of the “oppressed Muslim”. The WP’s strategists seek to shape the everyday imagination of Muslims and give them a feeling that they all share the same moral community in which sacred references play a key role. The WP has an important transnational aspect. It has the most intensive and highly organized connections with Turkish workers in Europe. The European National Outlook Organization was founded in early 1970s and has over seventy thousand members; it remains the most powerful transnational organization and has close financial connections with the WP. The WP differs from other Turkish parties by having organic connections with hundreds of associations and foundations that help keep voters together. The party establishes close connections with the people in their neighbourhoods and during elections and asks people in return to vote for the party.

Localization of the Welfare Party (rational and pragmatic approach) One of the main reasons for the WP’s success is the relative autonomy of its district organization to utilize local resources, devise its own strategies, and adopt the local language to win elections. The other parties have centralized campaign strategies and lack flexibility in verbal communication and face-to-face exchanges. The political map of Turkey is being redrawn to correspond with regional differences in the country’s cultural and social landscape. One of the strengths of the tesbih (rosary) organizational structure is its ability to absorb local cultural characteristics. In the towns of central Anatolia (Erzurum, Yozgat, C¸orum, Sivas) the WP’s supporters are generally middle class workers, small merchants and farmers; ideologically, they are conservative Sunni Muslim Turkish nationalists, who share a state-oriented political culture. In this region the party has become an institutional expression of Sunni Turkish versus Alevi identity. There are three reasons for the enormous leap in electoral support for the WP in central and eastern Anatolian provinces. First, by adopting a new policy of indifference to the Kurdish problem in the 1995 election, the WP neutralized the accusation of being pro-Kurdish. The Turkish Sunni voters did not vote for the ultranationalist Nationalist Action Party because of its collaboration with the governing coalition. Second, the WP’s candidates embraced an anti-Alevi posture. Finally, the mayors of Central Anatolian towns elected in 1994 had performed better than expected. The WP’s mayors ended widespread municipal corruption and improved public services. In the Black Sea region, however, the WP’s strongholds are highly urbanized or involved in the market-oriented production of tea, hazelnuts, and tobacco. In the last municipal elections, WP mayors won elections in Trabzon and Rize, two main Black Sea ports where economic development has been phenomenal as a result of trade with former Soviet republics. In both cities Russian, Ukrainian and Azeri prostitutes have prompted an “anti-Natasha” movement among local women’s groups, led by WP candidates. Although some journalists claim that women in these cities voted for to protect their marriages against prostitution, Islam is an effective code of conduct and cultural framework to combat such social ills. In southeast Anatolia, which is also known as the security zone because of the Kurdish insurgency, the Sunni Kurdish population voted for the WP, whereas the Alevi Kurds, who usually vote for the Social Democrats, voted for the pro-Kurdish People’s (HADEP). The WP ignored the Kurdish problem and did not dominate pro-Kurdish nationalists from the region so as not to lose Sunni Turkish voters. However, the dominant sufi orders of southeast Anatolia have supported the Islamic appeals of the WP. Page 15 of 16 Altinkas. QScience Connect 2014:14

In the Marmara region, in contrast, the WP presents a social democratic image. The party in Istanbul emphasizes justice and the distribution of benefits and responsibilities. The representatives of WP in Istanbul visited the night casinos etc. to get support from the prostitutes in those places by emphasizing the unequal distribution of wealth as the main reason of their situation, which is quite contrary to their policies in Black Sea region. Since the Islamic movement has different concerns in each part of the country, WP supporters also vary from one region to another. Yet each regional socio-economic problem is expressed in Islamic terms because the symbolic structure of Turkish society is Islamic, even though it is defined differently by each group. In Muslim society Islam constitutes a depository of meanings to navigate day-to-day interactions within and between communities. This shared understanding is not fixed or shared by every member of the community, but rather is inter subjectively constituted and constantly contested. Muslims in Turkey understand that Islam constitutes a source of mores to check daily practices. But they also understand that every sphere of social life from education to politics, to the economy to medicine has its own culturally rooted and Islamically shaped conventions and rules that cannot be reduced to Islam. Islam cannot govern every sphere of social life. What makes Islam relevant is not its claimed rigidity or inherent quality to govern human conduct but rather its flexibility. For example, landowners and party bosses in southeast Anatolia invoke Islam to consolidate the old power structure, but in industrialized cities Islam rallies the oppressed masses around demands for justice and equality. In general, the WP is based on four segments of the population: the Islamist intellectuals who demand free expression of religion in the public sphere; the Sunni Kurds who seek either autonomy or reorganization of the Turkish state to allow them to be recognized as a separate ethnic group; the squatter town dwellers who demand social justice; and the members of the new bourgeoisie who want less state intervention, more liberalization, and the eradication of state subsidies for big corporations.

The consumer culture in Turkey and the Welfare Party There has been a growing tendency in Turkey to a popular culture whose raw materials are the products of commercial activity, practices of mass-produced culture, and what society makes of these products and practices.35 Popular culture is an aspect whose analysis requires a new perspective that can point out linkages between new developments, such as increasing integration of the world through new technologies of communication and infrastructure, increasing commodification of every aspect of daily life, culture and information, consumerism, political and cultural diversity with the emphasis on micropolitics and new social movements, and persisting features of contemporary society, such as the supremacy of capitalism. The culture of consumer society bears some characteristics of the folk culture or tradition of the society prior to the integration into modern relations of production and consumption, because these characteristics have been assimilated into consumer culture through the process of gradual colonization, commodification and the market system. In this process, religious concepts and historical events become a subject of reinterpretation with the reproduced images and signs. While we examine the above situation and the modernization efforts of the Welfare Party by observing the rise of this organization as an instrument in the politicization of the Islamic movement, we should not forget the growing tendency in Turkey towards a consumer and popular culture: reproduction and duplication of the images belonging to Islamic-cultural environment, Islamization of modern needs and images belonging to modern life, transformation of religious needs and the goods used by religious masses into modern consumption commodities throughout changes in style and re- symbolization, selective adoption of prevailing stylistic features of consumption culture, and, implications of consumption of reproduced and reduplicated Islamic images for the power structure both in terms of new alliances and the form of center-periphery relations. Religion has become a neatly packaged consumer item taking its place among other commodities that can be bought and bypassed in accordance with one’s consumption whims. Although the Kemalist modernist center has refused Islam as an element of modern life, it emerged as a postmodern way of living in an environment in which everything is packaged and presented for consumption.36

35Bas¸tu¨rk L. Consumer Culture And Religiosity In Turkey. USA. 1998, 4. http://www.wakeup.org/anadolu/06/1/consum er_culture.html. Accessed 8/04/2014 36We should emphasize the role of Muslim media that emerged with the claim to transmit the Islamic message to the Page 16 of 16 Altinkas. QScience Connect 2014:14

CONCLUSION As a result, we can say that the Islamic movement generally has understood modernity as a means to achieve their aims for the governance of society. Modernization, for Islamists, means to combine the traditional value norms of a society with the new concepts of the modern life. Consumer culture and popular culture are two important aspects in the modern Islam countries’ perception of modernization ways. In Turkey, the Islamist movement, having its roots from the early period of single-party rule, has used the anti-Westernist characteristic of their movement to show the modernization aims of Kemalist elites as a means to isolate Islam from the spheres of Turkish society. So, they used anti-Westernism and put this term at the beginning of their movement within the modernization process of Turkey. The Welfare Party has used all means of modernization, for example, consumerism and mass media, with an overall change in the structure of the Turkish society (like migration, and the rise of Islamic entrepreneurs) as an advantage to govern the country. They also used the traditional values of Turkish society. They combined them to become the voice of the masses who were already faced with the shock of economic liberalization policies. The Welfare Party became a savior for them to become part of the modern system by also using their traditional values.

Footnote continued masses and to confront the negative image presented by the mainstream media against the Islamic oriented segments. This played a crucial role in the popularity of the Welfare Party through the means of distributing their views and criticizing the Kemalist view without restriction.