Moral Politics in Turkey

Muslim Students’ Perception of the Secular State

Sara Merdian Dissertation, submitted 13th January 2014

1. Supervisor: Prof. Werner Schiffauer 2. Supervisor: Prof. Barbara Wolbert

Faculty of Cultural Sciences, Chair for Comparative Cultural and Social European University Viadrina, Frankfurt/Oder, Germany

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Britta Ohm and Christian Wegmann for all their spiritual support and for reading, reviewing and discussing my drafts with me. I would not have completed my thesis without the two of you!

I am grateful to my interview partners for sharing their views and to some of them for staying in touch over the years.

My thanks also go to my advisors Werner Schiffauer and Barbara Wolbert for supporting my work and rescuing the completion of my thesis after I ran out of options.

My thesis was financially supported by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and the Cluster of Excellence “Religion and Politics in pre-modern and modern Cultures” WWU Muenster.

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Content

1. Introduction ...... 5 1.1 Politics and Ethics ...... 5 Religion and politics ...... 5 Secularism and recent politics in Turkey ...... 7 Heterogeneity ...... 9 1.2 Politics and Media ...... 11 1.3 Overview ...... 13 2. Method and Field ...... 16 Anthropology of and Islamic Anthropology ...... 16 Field and Science ...... 19 One Islam – many ...... 20 2.1 Fieldwork and the Anthropology of Media ...... 27 International Experience and New Media ...... 27 Internet – implications for research ...... 31 2.2 Communication and Culture ...... 33 The Other ...... 33 Understanding the Other ...... 39 What can a “halfie” learn in the field? ...... 42 2.3 Writing Culture ...... 47 The Discoursive Tradition in the Student Group ...... 47 Writing ...... 47 Gatewatching and Counterpublics ...... 53 2.4 Field and Environment...... 55 Community ...... 55 Economic and status divisions ...... 56 Heterogeneity ...... 59 Places ...... 61 Conclusion ...... 67 3. The Constitutional Referendum and Secularism ...... 68 The way to the constitutional Referendum ...... 68

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Inevitable Politics ...... 69 Secularism and Pain ...... 76 The public debate ...... 82 3.1 The Constitutional debate in the student group ...... 85 The leftist Boycott ...... 85 The Muslim Boycott ...... 86 “Yes – but it’s not enough” ...... 91 How to change society? ...... 93 3.2 Qur’anic Verses and their Use in the Discussion ...... 97 Cultivating Language and Mores ...... 97 Criticism and Critique ...... 100 Ethics and Silence ...... 104 Respect and Silence ...... 107 3.3 Perceptions of the State...... 112 Conspiracy Theories and Nationalism...... 112 Dealing with nationalism ...... 121 New Perceptions ...... 125 Liberalism ...... 128 Conclusion ...... 135 4. Toleration and Integration: Features of a better society ...... 136 The Ideal Society? ...... 136 4.1 Ethnic minorities: Integrating the Kurds? ...... 150 Conformity, Universalism and Cultural Ambiguity ...... 150 The Kurdish Issue ...... 154 4.2 Religious Minorities as Strangers: the Armenians and the Christians ...... 169 The Armenian Genocide ...... 169 The Hagia Sophia: Museum, Mosque or Church? ...... 179 4.3 Sexual Minorities: Muslims on Homosexuals ...... 187 Identity and Sex ...... 187 Private and Public ...... 199 Conclusion ...... 202 Kurds ...... 202 Christians ...... 203 Homosexuals ...... 203 5. Epilogue: Perspectives on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla and the Gezi Park Protests ...... 203 3

The Mavi Marmara Incident ...... 206 The Students’ Reaction ...... 208 Activists’ Perspectives and Aims ...... 215 The Gezi Park Protests ...... 217 Conclusion ...... 219 6. Conclusion ...... 220 7. Bibliography ...... 227 8. List of Interviews ...... 238 9. Illustrations and Tables ...... 241 Figure 1 Proposed Constitutional Amendments ...... 241 Figure 2 Penguen Cover following the Mavi Marmara incident ...... 242

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1. Introduction

1.1 Politics and Ethics

Religion and politics The question of why people seek to either explain the relationship between Islam and politics or deny its existence in plain terms has engaged me for some time. Some scholars (usually sociologists or political scientists) seem to struggle with questions such as “Is Islam compatible with democracy?” or “Is Islam compatible with the West?”, delivering opinions on the assumption that Islam is a patriarchal religion without the concepts of freedom and citizenship – a view that remains pervasive in the West.1 Accordingly, they deal with “Islam” as a political religion that supposedly enables authoritarian rule in the name of God, and contradict prejudices that perceive the popular Muslim masses as passive herds rather than subjects who interpret their religious texts. They either state that Muslims are apt to enact every word they read in the Qur’an or contradict this view that denies Muslims what Christians and Jews are perceived as having, namely the ability to freely interpret their holy texts as they wish.2

Other scholars (mainly theologians or Islamic scholars) either see no relationship between politics and religion or consider it as inconsequential to the subjects of their research. At least this is what I attribute their questions to when attempting to explain that I am using ’s concept of Islam as a discursive tradition to explore the political debates of Muslim students. From their perspective, I am confusing profoundly theological and religious questions with essentially political ones, and wonder how the Islamic tradition (in the form of Qur’an and Sunnah) relates with political debates at all.

Although I might not have yet captured the depth of their arguments in some points, it was an asset for me to profit from the work and insights of anthropologists and Islam scholars. Based upon what I learned from them, I would suggest – as often – that concepts do not essentially fit into one category or the other, but rather overlap whilst simultaneously opposing one another. At least this is what Asad understands as the relationship between the secular and the religious. 3 Similarly, the participants in my field research – a group of activist Muslim

1 s. Bayat (2007:5) 2 s. Asad (2003:11) 3 s. Asad (2003: 25)

students4 in Istanbul – saw the connection between religion and politics as evident, albeit distinct in many points, and thus referred to a relation that was not apparent to me at the start of my fieldwork.

While I found their understanding of politics very different from that I had held until having met them (see Chapter 2.3), I also found that they had a very different understanding of religion than I had, and to an extent still have.

Whereas religion for me had always consisted of , including the regular recitation of one’s prayers, learning one’s prayers, and skills such as reading the Qur’an – in short, something quite detached from politics – the other part of religion, namely the morals and ethics involved, had to be hidden away from the public, the possible misunderstanding and attention of others.

For the students I worked with in Istanbul, religion was something quite different. To them, religious morals instructed their behaviour in public, formed their views on political and societal issues, and were just as prominent as rituals in their everyday life. Indeed, politics and their religious views were inseparably connected.

They found connections between subjects such as annuity insurance or salaries and their religious morals, whereas I had never consciously suspected the slightest of such connections. Whereas my political understanding largely derived from a leftist perception of politics, I had not even previously been aware of my religiously inspired views. I had never even considered the connection of fear and shame that had led me to dissimulate anything that would point to my religious background as something that could influence my political views. Given that I felt it would have been impossible to voice religious (and more importantly Islamic) views on controversial issues in Germany, I never did so, and only recently realised a difference between the views and perceptions that I would openly advocate and those that I would perhaps keep to myself – two worlds that only surfaced on contradictory issues and clearly separate my personal opinions from those I would advocate in society. Therefore, the morals I live and understand as important in my personal life are none that I would stand up for in society. It is likely that these forms of engaged personal views and disengaged views5 in the public made my encounter with the students conflictual for me at times.

4 I have used pseudonyms for all the individuals I describe. 5 s. Taylor (2007) In Taylor`s view, the secular age is an age in which people publicly adopt a disengaged religious view, even if they are privately engaged believers. 6

For them, there was no such thing as a disengaged view – at least not one they somewhat tacitly endorsed. Their “disengaged view” was forced upon them, and they carried it along like a heavy suffocating mask.

Their religious views could be described as non-liberal in the sense that they had neither adopted liberalism as their doctrine nor wanted to succumb to liberal lifestyles or adopt liberal values. Their non-liberal views set them apart from mainstream Muslim society (or more concisely AKP6-supporters) in Turkey, and enabled them to rethink their Islamic approach concerning the AKP’s conservatism that they sought to challenge with political ideas that – in a first attempt to describe them – could be termed as leftist. What they engaged in was to challenge the established forms of society and the state of Islam (which essentially saw religion as a private affair) from the perspective of a disestablished religion 7 seeking to challenge society and politics for greater freedom and a say in politics.

Secularism and recent politics in Turkey For them, religion was an extremely political matter – and how could they perceive politics any differently? Given that modernisation in Turkey is largely associated with secularisation, the core concept at the centre of the Turkish modernisation project can be said to be “excessive, and even undemocratic”8 to say the least. The efforts to enforce laïcité (taking the example of France) have produced a block structure in Turkish society that has not only split the civil society in “backward Muslims” and upwardly mobile, if not “elite secularists”, but has also had a great impact on Turkey’s recent history. Often conceived as the guardian of laiklik (the Turkish term for laïcité), the military has been responsible for several military coups that have caused extreme setbacks to Turkey’s development towards a pluralist democratic country. In the last military coup, the so-called post-modern soft coup on 28th February 1997, the first pro-Islamic Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan was forced to resign by the National Security Council, which started a media campaign against the Islamists9, warning of a supposedly growing Islamist militancy.10 Under the influence of the National

6 Turkey’s imcumbent Islamist party, the Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi (Justice and Development Party) 7s. Casanova (1994: 55) 8 Roy (2007: xiii) 9 The use of the term Islamist has proven quite problematic in the context of Turkish politics and has been abundantly discussed by the Muslim student group I have worked with. For them it remained an unsolved question whether they should call themselves Islamist or not. The majority of the students thought that the adjective Muslim was more appropriate for them and dismissed the term Islamist. Regarding the fact that Islamism if often defined as “political Islam” and that the students did not pursue any politics in a traditional sense (s. Chapter 2) I have only used this term for party politics as pursued by the AKP. 10 s. Atasoy (2009:88) 7

Security Council, YÖK (Yükseköğretim Kurulu)11 subsequently issued the headscarf ban on university campuses.12 When the headscarf ban was unsuccessfully challenged by the AKP- government in 2008, the Islamist party had had to face a closure case. However, after the constitutional court rejected the demand for closing the AKP, political events took a turn with revelations on the so-called Ergenekon network, an organisation that had allegedly planned another military coup to save secularism from the AKP. The results of a controversial investigation into planned coups and the terrorist network are expected in spring 2013.

While the media reported extensively on the affair, for a long time most of the findings where contradictory as to what Ergenekon actually was or who profited from this movement and/or its discovery. After five years, Ergenekon is currently perceived as an ultranationalist network bringing together retired military officials, journalists, academics and assumedly a number of cooperating terrorist groups who are made responsible for a number of assassinations and other mysterious ongoings, including the planning of military coups on the government. Ergenekon is also believed to be an extension of the so-called deep state, a coalition of “invisible” military and political elites controlling political ongoings from behind the scenes, a secret state, acting parallel to the official state. 13

High military officials and many other members of the elite were tried and imprisoned with the investigation on the Ergenekon case. Despite it being questionable whether the investigation on the Ergenekon network and its plans of military coups have truly brought relevant information to light, the fact that the Ergenekon trials have taken place is probably a success in itself. This is not only because the AKP has exposed part of the secularist elites who have always suspected the Islamists of planning to overthrow the regime, and not even because the military has been deprived of its overarching power to interfere with the democratic political processes whenever “required”, but rather because Ergenekon has given people back some sort of understanding and perhaps trust in politics. Indeed, the era of military coups seems to have ended, and there is less place for conspiracy theories than only three years ago. Due to Ergenekon, today we can speak of a changed discourse in Turkey, one led by rational arguments rather than speculation on conspiracy theories, or as Britta Ohm puts it, a “de-ideologising and re-politicisation of the mainstream”14.

11 Council of Higher Education 12 s. Atasoy (2009: 89) 13 s. Atasoy (2009: 90) 14 Ohm (2010:8) 8

In these processes, the AKP has been unable to strengthen its profile as a democratic party, and many issues, whether Islamist issues or the Kurdish claims for more freedom, have not been fulfilled, despite the political developments.

Today, the AKP is perceived less as an Islamist party than a conservative neo-liberal party striving for economic success and a compliance of EU admission criteria. In many respects, the liberalised AKP has diverged from its initial Islamist ideology, and has disappointed Muslims. The liberalisation process of the AKP within the political process is another factor that has left Muslims in a public space that is just as secular as has always been. While the ascent of the AKP has opened up political spaces for Muslims, it has subsequently left them without the strongest political party supporting their cause.

Under these circumstances, the Islam that Muslims can live in Turkey cannot be lived to its fullest. Whether the headscarf ban in the public sector or the absence of Muslims in movies and serials, their rights and identity are neither recognised by law nor society that has its “soft” strategies to exclude them from whatever representation in the mainstream and openly corners them as the unwanted. To the Muslims, secularism is nothing more than a cruel and violent oppression. Therefore, consciously or unconsciously, the main subjects of their discussions evolve around the power of the state and secularism. The Turkish version of state secularism (laiklik), which corresponds to the French term laïcité, has been described by Olivier Roy:

Laïcité [...] defines national cohesion by asserting a purely political identity that confines to the private sphere any specific religious or cultural identities. Outside France, this very offensive and militant laïcité is perceived as excessive, and even undemocratic, since it violates individual freedom. It is regularly denounced in the annual report of the State Department on religious freedom in the world [...].15 For the students, the main source of reinterpreting, learning and reforming naturally had to be sought in Islamic tradition, rather than a secular ideology that estranged them from their cultures and past, pressing lifestyles and consumer cultures on them that opposed their spiritual approach to life and society.

Heterogeneity The years of suppression and ideological indoctrination in schools and the media have not been able to finally assimilate all Muslims; indeed, some groups of Muslims still engage in vivid criticism of secularism and the state. The modern Islamic discourses developed in

15 Roy (2007:xiii) 9 recent years are strongly influenced by the mainstream and subject-wise resemble debates that can be witnessed all over Europe. Accordingly, debates on ecology, homosexuals’ rights and many other topics are discussed with regard to a Muslim approach.

This phenomenon of actively engaging with society has been best described by a particular concept recently established by scholars such as Asef Bayat (2007), Nilüfer Göle (2006), Olivier Roy (2004) and Gilles Kepel (2002). According to Olivier Roy “Post-Islamism means the privatisation of re-Islamisation”.16

It is these discussions on secularism, democracy and the nation-state that firstly aroused my interest in the post-Islamists. The debate that Muslims engage with in the private sphere has led to a diversification of opinions17 and perspectives that now surface in the public discourse when students deprivatise their discussions and disclose them to a wider public. Moreover, the fact that their views are based on a non-western source and attempt to propose an alternative to the mainstream liberal discourse in Turkey makes discussions even more interesting. However, the subjects of their discussions are often influenced by the European discourses, which accounts for the growing power of Westernisation within Turkish society.

Another aspect that characterises the post-Islamist mindset in Turkey is an awareness not only of problems and difficulties faced by Muslims in the secular state, but also a sensitive approach towards other segments of society that are denied their rights in the secular state. Accordingly, Muslim groups take an interest in the Kurdish issue and show solidarity with the Kurdish movement.

However, this has only proved one way of explaining the students’ interest in politics. By- and-large, post-Islamism can be seen as a product of changing opportunities for Muslims. The end of revolutionary ideas (with the failure of Iran18) and possibilities that have opened up in Turkey with the AKP in power, a new structure of discourse in society can be seen as enabling post-Islamism. At the same time, the heterogeneity that post-Islamism advocates (in opposition to unitarian revolutionary ideas) can also be seen in a Muslim characteristic of endorsing opponents and working against permanent splits between Muslim groups. The unity to which the students often aspired mainly consisted on the basis of an acceptance of each other’s heterogeneity. Indeed, this heterogeneity often came to bear when talking to Muslims

16 Roy (2004: 97) 17 s. Göle