Islamic Political Identity in Turkey

92 islamic political identity in turkeyThe Sociopolitical Implications of the Marketas a “Public Space” in the 1990sDuring the free market transition of the 1980s and 1990s, the market spacesprovided a material base on which diverse and competing visions of Islam wereproduced. These competing visions have crystallized into three general forms.Political Islam seeks to attain political power and transform society through theinstitutions of the state. Cultural Islam perceives religion as a form of civilizationand seeks to inXuence cultural and social identities in this regard. EthicalIslam seeks to treat the faith as a source of norms and mores that creates a commonmoral language by rearticulating experiences. It is my contention that politicaland ethical Islam fall within the larger sphere of cultural Islam.Turkey’s “market space” has had four major impacts on the formation ofIslamic identity. First, the associational life that takes place in the market leadsto the establishment of thousands of new foundations and associations inwhich group consciousness is expressed in terms of the market rather thanthe individual. Second, technological advances have helped to disseminatediverse voices and thus facilitate the fracture of an authoritative Islam. Third,entrepreneurship, characterized by market eYciency and rationality, has createda protoindividuality that is marked and conditioned by Islam. And fourth,patterns of consumption are used to objectify Islam and create boundaries.The Emergence of an Islamic Bourgeoisie: The Case of the MÜS8ADThe marketplace has been instrumental in creating an associational life that isoutside the purview of the state. The goal of these civil society–based associations(as opposed to state-formed and operated associations) has been to weakenthe state’s bureaucratic power and open new spaces for the politics of identity.Identity formation in Turkey in fact has been driven by these associational societies.Turkish civil society has “thickened” considerably as a consequence of the1980 economic liberalization and the 1989–1991 collapse of the Cold War, whichremoved the “communist” security threat that antiassociational state oYcialshad been able to exploit in the past. In short, economic resources formed thebasis of a richer and thicker associational life in Turkey, and these associations,in turn, became the habitat for the construction and articulation of an Islamicconsciousness in accordance with market needs. For instance, between 1980and 1995 a total 39,369 new associations were established, compared with only24,272 in the entire period from 1926 to 1980. As of 1995, there were 63,641associations and foundations in Turkey (table 4.1). 41 During the Özal period,Turkey experienced a major expansion of associations and foundations.Özal, the man most associated with the liberalization of the Turkish economy,helped to transform the market into a space for identity formation. He strengthenedassociational societies by establishing coalitions between various emergingIslamic groups, intellectuals, provincial medium-scale businesses, and new