Religious Minorities, Islamic Revival, and the Emergence of Defensive Inclusion in Turkey

View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Illinois Digital Environment for Access to Learning and Scholarship Repository RELIGIOUS FREEDOM AS A PRACTICE OF THE NATION: RELIGIOUS MINORITIES, ISLAMIC REVIVAL, AND THE EMERGENCE OF DEFENSIVE INCLUSION IN TURKEY BY FATIH VAROL DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology in the Graduate College of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2015 Urbana, Illinois Doctoral Committee: Professor Asef Bayat, Chair Professor Mahir Saul Associate Professor Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi Professor Moon-Kie Jung, University of Massachusetts Amherst ABSTRACT Depending on fieldwork (semi-structured interviews, participant observation, and archival research) in Istanbul, I explore the impact of Islamic revival on the relationship between the state and non-Muslim minorities in Turkey and show there are important reforms shifting state policies toward non-Muslim minorities after the Islamicly-oriented Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi or AK Party) government came to power in 2002. I analyze the impact of the nation on the state and the reconstruction of the nation and the state through renewed local/global structures and actors in historical context to explain the meaning of recent changes. The Ottoman millet system produced a pre-modern form of religious pluralism until the rise of nationalism in the nineteenth century although non-Muslim minorities were second-class subjects to Muslims. After the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, the emergence of modern Turkey as a “nationalizing state” seeking ethnic, linguistic, and religious homogeneity under the rule of the secularist Kemalist elites produced an exclusionary polity toward non-Muslim minorities. Islamic movements constructed an alternative nationhood narrative based on the glorified Ottoman past as a reaction to the Kemalist narratives maligning the Ottomans since the early years of the Republic. Yet, it was also an exclusionary narrative accusing religious minorities of collaborating with western powers and of being responsible for the collapse the Ottoman Empire. However, Islamic movements have reconstructed the Ottoman past as a usable past through the narratives of Ottoman tolerance and identified the Turkish nation with tolerance in a defensive manner as a response to the globalization process that poses serious legitimacy II concerns over Islamic movements through the identification of Islam with religious fanaticism. This identity politics, which I call defensive inclusion, has resonated with the emergence of a better relationship between Islamic movements and religious minorities for a few decades and the positive shift in state policies toward religious minorities since 2002. However, Turkish/Islamic national identity does not perceive non-Muslims as part of the Turkish nation, but those who live with Turks under the rule of Turkish tolerance even if they are full citizens de jure. This situation, which I call neo-millet system, reproduces the second-class status of non-Muslim minorities in a polity operating through modern institutions even if the state is hospitable. This dissertation not only challenges mainstream theories including the Civilizational Approach, Modernization Theory, Assertive vs. Passive Secularism, and Rational Choice Theory that account for the origin of religious freedom by revealing their weaknesses to explain the Turkish case, but also offers an alternative approach by examining religious freedom or the dynamics of inclusion/exclusion of religious minorities as a practice of the nation. This dissertation also engages with the ongoing debate about the relationship between globalization and the revival of identity politics. Contrary to mainstream theories suggesting that the revival of identity politics based on the reinvention of the past under the impact of globalization triggers religious fanaticism, this dissertation shows that identity politics based on a constructed past paves the way of the emergence of religious tolerance within Turkish/Islamic circles. This dissertation also sheds light on the progressive role of the past/tradition in the moderation of Islamic movements and the construction of a legitimate Islamic identity that embraces multiculturalism and tolerance in the globalized world. III To My Parents, My Wife, and My Daughter IV ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Along the journey of my doctorate, I have been encouraged, supported, and inspired by many people. I would like to express my appreciations to each of them. Here, I would like to take this opportunity to express my thanks to my dissertation committee, Professor Asef Bayat, Professor Behrooz Ghamari, Professor Mahir Saul, and Professor Moon-Kie Jung, for their contribution to the development and completion of this dissertation. In particular, I would like to give my special thanks to my advisor, Professor Asef Bayat, for his constant support, insightful comments, and inspiring critiques. I am grateful to my parents, Ramazan and Emine Varol, and my brother, Sevket, for their endless support. My deepest gratitude goes to my wife, Hulya. This dissertation would not have been completed without her love, patience, and understanding. Last but not least, my daughter Hilye Canan, the cutest baby in the world, made my doctoral years colorful, cheerful, and joyful. V TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter 1: Introduction……………….……………………………………………………..1 Chapter 2: Religious Freedom as a Practice of the Nation………………………….……..26 Chapter 3: The State and Religious Minorities in the Kemalist Period…………….……...69 Chapter 4: Building Inclusion: Changing Dynamics of the Relationship between Islamic Movements and Religious Minorities…………………………………...……………......115 Chapter 5: The State and Religious Minorities in the Post-Kemalist Period……..………156 Chapter 6: Conclusion…………………………………………………….………………200 Bibliography........................................................................................................................208 Appendix A………………………………………………………………….……………228 VI CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION Religions and religious movements have increased their impact on politics and society in the recent history of the world. Although religious revival is sometimes seen as a threat to modern liberal societies because of the identification of religious movements with violence, authoritarianism, and dogmatism, a large number of studies (e.g., Casanova 1994, Smith 1991, Stepan 2000, Wilde 2007) show that in many regions of the world, religious movements have integrated into the modern world and begun to support modern societies. Yet, it is still a dominant discourse and perception that Islamic movements are not only a threat to the possibility of the modernization of the Islamic world, but also a threat to the stability of the world. I do not claim that Islamic movements are in no way responsible for the emergence and prevalence of anti-Islamic discourse, but the crucial point that I want to emphasize here is that totalizing and essentializing discourses about Islam and Islamic movements have been used to legitimize western intervention in Muslim societies and of the international support toward authoritarian regimes. Religious freedom and the idea of the protection of religious minorities, as Saba Mahmoud (2012) shows, have been favorite sites for the exercise of western power over the Islamic world for a few centuries. The idea of “religious freedom” and of the protection of religious minorities also plays an important role in manufacturing public 1 consent and support in the west for backing authoritarian regimes in the Middle East. Of course, the use of religious freedom and religious minorities by western powers to legitimize their [neo]colonial projects has led to the emergence of categorical hostility toward religious minorities because Muslims have perceived that non-Muslim minorities have been the internal collaborators of western powers in the Islamic world. Religious freedom is a wide issue which includes a large number of components affecting religious identities and activities such as property rights, religious education, bringing up children in accordance with the belief of parents, public visibility of religious symbols, public speech, building religious institutions, missionary activities, and so on. Therefore, the meaning of religious freedom varies from actor to actor and from society to society. While religious freedom means free proselytization in some contexts, for some people it is to be able to wear (or not to wear) a headscarf without any social and political pressure. More generally, religious freedom not only covers the practice of religion without any coercion by any institution such as state and church, but also the production of a polity in which the civil, legal, or political status of those who identify themselves (and/or who are identified) with a religious identity are not affected negatively (Mahmood 2012). Therefore, religious freedom is not only a matter of piety, but also a matter of categorization that affects those who are identified with a religious identity. Even if religious freedom covers all people within a polity, religious minorities are its greatest beneficiaries because of its positive impact on their everyday lives. In this dissertation, I examine the impact of the Islamic revival on non-Muslim 2 minorities, particularly officially recognized ones (i.e., Greeks, Armenians, and Jews)1 and the place

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