Focus Fight or Acquiesce? Religion and Political Process in Turkey’s and Egypt’s Neoliberalizations Cihan Tugal˘ ABSTRACT The Polanyian expectation that disruptive marketization will lead to move- ments and policies that seek to ‘embed’ the market in society needs to be tempered by closer scrutiny to historical, religious and political contexts. This article studies how movements respond to marketization. The analysis proceeds through a comparison of the Turkish and Egyptian neoliberaliza- tions, religious movements of the last decades, secular opposition, and finally recent processes, which have led to generally different social takes on neolib- eralism. The irony of the Turkish case is that with the empowerment of the Islamists, religious opposition to neoliberalism was muted and secular op- position further marginalized and labelled as ‘anti-democratic’. As a result, free market policies were not only sustained, but deepened and intensified, turning Turkey into a neoliberal ‘success story’. The (thus far) sustained mobilization of youth and labour in Egypt makes a direct imitation unlikely. Another major factor that would prevent a ‘Turkish’ solution to Egypt’s cri- sis is the contrasting structure of the religious fields. Moreover, while the passive revolution has further solidified the professional and unified religious field in Turkey, the revolutionary process in Egypt seems to reinforce the fragmentation of the religious field. The article points out that making Islam compatible with neoliberalism would be more difficult in a country with a fragmented religious field, such as Egypt. Although neoliberalism was im- posed from above and resisted from below in both nations, in Turkey it came to be embraced in the name of Islam and democracy, whereas in Egypt it remains an imposition and popular struggles against it persist. It is suggested that this process and field-based approach to a Polanyian problem can also shed new light on discussions about ‘actually existing neoliberalisms’. INTRODUCTION How can we account for the varying popularity of market reforms, and contrasts in struggles against them, across different countries? This article studies the comparable yet distinct neoliberal paths of Turkey and Egypt. Although these paths have shaped anti-market mobilization, the analyses The author would like to thank readers for comments received on an earlier draft of this paper. Development and Change 43(1): 23–51. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-7660.2012.01762.x C 2012 International Institute of Social Studies. Published by Blackwell Publishing, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main St., Malden, MA 02148, USA 24 Cihan Tugal˘ below demonstrate that economic indicators do not account for all the vari- ations regarding the popular embrace of neoliberalism (the ideology of free market rule). A long legacy of Polanyian critique of economic liberalism accedes that marketization generates wealth and growth, but points out that it cannot gen- erate jobs and social equity (Richard and Waterbury, 2007; Stiglitz, 2002). It is therefore not surprising that Turkey’s more thorough neoliberalization is matched by higher unemployment and inequality than in Egypt. However, Polanyi and Polanyians have also expected that such social disruption will lead to social disturbance and an eventual ‘embedding’ of the market (Block, 2003; Evans, 2008; Somers, 2008). Polanyi’s (2001 [1944]: 174–84) original argument implied that the more intense the market destructiveness, the more bottom-up the counter-movement against marketization will be. Later argu- ments pointed out that other factors, such as traditions of self-organization, mediated the influence of market reforms (Burawoy, 2004: 221–22). Yet the question remains: how should we comparatively analyse the relations between marketization and movements against marketization? What factors make a bottom-up movement more likely? This article sheds light on these questions by focusing on the interactions between market reforms, religious fields and political processes.1 Although this article does not provide a comprehensive analysis of the religious and political fields, the study is based on a comparative political sociology approach to Bourdieu’s concept of the field. A field is a com- petitive network of forces, where each organization wields power based on its differences from the other players. In this game of differentiation, each player has at its disposal not only certain resources (such as finances, distinct organizational forms and capacities, etc.), but also contrasting dispositions as regards how the game should be played. It is suggested here that the structure of religious fields vary cross-nationally (as well as on other scales) based on how unified or fragmented they are — i.e., whether one major orga- nization can claim to speak in the name of religion in the whole country, for example, through absorbing the major religious players into a mass party.2 Turkish society is much more unequal, but less mobilized against neolib- eralism than Egypt. It is not clear yet whether the market will be embed- ded in Egypt, but there is significant opposition to marketization. Why has Turkish neoliberalization met with limited protest? No doubt, the tortured readjustment to a liberal welfare state (health policies in particular) is an im- portant basis of consent, but restricted poverty programmes cannot by them- selves explain quiescence regarding other ills of neoliberalization (such as 1. A full theorization of how fields and processes interact to produce varieties of the counter- movement is beyond the scope of this paper. 2. The analyses below suggest that religious fields also vary as to whether the dispositions of its major actors are professional, messianic or traditionalist. These variations, and the factors underlying them, will be studied in depth elsewhere. Religion and Political Process in Turkey and Egypt 25 unemployment, deteriorating education, poverty, persistent inequality). We can only understand this by studying how religion and politics have been able to render the market popular in Turkey, whereas their interaction took a rather different direction in Egypt. This revision of Polanyian analysis is based on a suggestion, only hinted at in this article, that a thorough understanding of neoliberalization requires a two-pronged approach that studies articulations of the macro and micro dimensions of neoliberalism. Most of the literature on neoliberalism has been bifurcated: scholars have either focused on privatization, deregulation, cuts in welfare spending and agricultural subsidies, and fiscal discipline (Davis, 2006; Harvey, 2005); or, alternatively, on the development of an in- dividualist and responsibility-centred personhood (Brown, 2005; Foucault, 2008 [1978–1979]; Ong, 2006). However, multi-faceted processes in each dimension might interact with one another to lead to different paths of neolib- eralization. While this article focuses primarily on the macro-dimensions of neoliberalization, it incorporates the meso levels (the political and religious fields), which allows us to better link the macro and micro processes. Even though the neoliberalization of personal dispositions is not studied in depth here, the working definition of neoliberalization, as an always contested and impure process (Peck, 2010), thus includes (market-oriented) elements that stretch from privatization, deregulation, cuts in (or commodified restruc- turing of) welfare spending and agricultural subsidies, and de-unionization, to the micro-level development of market-oriented dispositions (cf. Keil, 2002). This combined focus is helpful, I suggest, because a market-oriented shift in the dispositions of broad, multi-class sectors of the population is beneficial to the sustenance of the macro indicators of neoliberalization. NEOLIBERAL POLICIES Mustafa Kemal Ataturk’s¨ revolution from above left a legacy of authoritarian corporatism in Turkey which gradually liberalized after 1950. Class struggle was denied and sectors were incorporated into the state based on occupation and employment status (though not to the same degree as in Egypt). Although the general orientation of the Egyptian regime was similar, it was also less democratic. Corporatist incorporation (Ayubi, 1994), much deeper than in Turkey, was organized through a state-run union and workers’ quotas in parliament and other elected bodies. A state-guided, import-substituting industrial capitalism was the rule of the land in both contexts. In Turkey, social policies were based on a conservative, family-oriented corporatism, which assumes that the primary beneficiaries of welfare are people whose families cannot take care of them (Bugra˘ and Keyder, 2006). In typical corporatist fashion, social benefits (not only health and pension, but even holiday camps and social clubs) were organized on the basis of sectors. This meant that formal employees in the public and private sectors 26 Cihan Tugal˘ were disproportionately privileged when compared to informal workers and peddlers. Initially, ‘Arab socialism’ aimed to extend social services and even employment to the whole population and distribute these equitably. The Egyptian vision was bolder than Turkish corporatism. But with sluggish development, it became clear that social benefits were going to be restricted to formal employees in the public and private sectors. As in Turkey, infor- mal workers were the losers of corporatism (Waterbury, 1983: 223). The Egyptian regime tried to make amends for this weakness through