2008_10_SRP_CornellKaraveli_Turkey

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Svante E. Cornell and Halil Magnus Karaveli
with the founding of the republic – a community of Muslims was told that
being Muslims was no longer the sole, or the most significant thing they had
in common – the republican enterprise did draw on the powerful sense of
Muslim solidarity. Turkish-speaking Christians, significantly, were excluded
from the Turkish nation that was to be constructed. (Notably, the
inhabitants of the Karaman region of Central Anatolia were deported to
Greece in 1923. And the request by the Gagauz Turks of Moldova to
immigrate to Turkey in the 1930s was rejected.)
The Islamic movement has for its part moved towards a more pronounced
nationalistic position. As President Abdullah Gül stated a few years ago, “we
[the Islamic conservatives] are religious and nationalist”. 27 The most
powerful Islamic brotherhood, the Fethullah Gülen movement, has made a
point of reconciling religion and Turkish nationalism. Just as they have
appealed to the right as well as to the left with liberal economic policies
coupled with generous welfare subsidies, the Islamic conservatives manage to
simultaneously canalize Turkish nationalism and Kurdish aspirations.
From the nationalist perspective that the military, in particular, espouses,
Islam can either be understood as a threat or as a promise. The Islamicization
of society implies a retreat from Turkish identity; that may be emotionally
difficult to accept for those who remain attached to the traditional definition
of what it means to be a Turkish citizen. On the other hand, it may
eventually prove that the integrity of the state can only be maintained by
elevating the Muslim identity of Turkey at the expense of Turkishness. An
Islamic conservatism that declares its loyalty to Turkish nationalism while
simultaneously managing to remain attractive to the Kurdish population
evidently fulfills a critically important mission.
And as the interrelationship between Turkish nationalism and Islam keeps
evolving Turkish nationalist perceptions of the West are partly transformed
as well. Atatürk had harnessed nationalism instrumentally; what mattered
was to modernize and westernize, and that entailed breaking out of the
Muslim ummah, as well as securing independence from Western, imperialist
powers. Yet, just as a total break with Muslim solidarity was to prove
utopian, the relationship to the West was inherently ambiguous. Turkey had
27 Kaplan, p. 119.