Islamic Political Identity in Turkey

5The Role of Literacyand the Media in theIslamic MovementWe are always changing and becoming. . . . But this is to stateanother basic condition of making sense of ourselves, that we graspour life in a narrative. . . . In order to have a sense of who we are, wehave to have a notion of how we have become, and of where we aregoing.Charles Taylor, Sources of the SelfThe momentous transformation of primordial religious identity intoa modern political identity in Turkey has been carried out via arevolution in mass printing and education and the creation of a newgenre of Muslim intellectuals. 1 This transformation, which promisesparadoxically a renaissance of Turkish Islamic thought and cultureand its internal secularization and pluralization, is the most profoundphenomenon on the horizon, transcending any particularindividual or movement. The locus for this, as well as much else, interms of Turkish Islamic sociopolitical movements, has been theNak7ibendi order. It served as the conduit of change and allowedthe transformation of orally based tekkes (SuW lodges) into textualcommunities, a change made possible by the revolution in mediatechnology and mediated by a new autonomous class of Muslimintellectuals. This process, in turn, has endowed the current generationof Turkish Muslims with a sense of agency, encouraging themto participate in politics so that they may better shape the societythey live in.Although the media/technological revolution is tied to socioculturaltransformations that compelled SuW lodges to adapt modernmeans of communication, these developments did not eliminate thetraditional SuW lodges entirely; these traditional networks continue