Islamic Political Identity in Turkey

the role of literacy and the media in the islamic movement 105question: How do we know that God exists? (2) They have undermined the authorityof the traditional ulema and facilitated the emergence of new urban Islamicintellectuals who operate under the guise of popular media pundits. (3) Theyhave led to the disintegration of large Islamic communities in favor of emergingsmaller publication-based groups. These developments have had unexpectedlong-term social consequences. For instance, the processes of producing anddisseminating knowledge, once Wrmly based in tradition, have been exhaustivelysecularized. In addition, the discursive fragmentation that results from the spreadand economization of print technology has increased opportunities for marginalvoices to contest a totalistic and uniform interpretation of Islam and also challengedthe state’s secular dogmas. This in turn has facilitated the evolution of theTurkish-Islamic synthesis.Print as the Habitat for Identity ConstructionSome scholars have examined the social and political impact of printing onMuslim societies. However, they have not examined the role of literacy andprinting from the perspective of articulating and objectifying diVerence andpromoting what Robert Hefner aptly calls “civic pluralism.” 7 I argue that printculture frees creative forces by oVering opportunity spaces for groups and individualsto challenge prevailing practices and to establish new roles and relationships.In the case of Turkey, the government expanded its power over educationand printing to create a new secular and national public culture. 8 The regulationof universal education and print were two of the “most powerful and eVectivetools of the program of secular reforms.” 9 Since the 1970s, the Islamicgroups have been using the same tools to challenge the hegemonic state ideologyand “reinvent local and oral Islam in Turkish urban life.” 10 The spread ofeducation and mass communication prepared the ground for the transformationof political Islam. The Islamic component of identity in the Turkish Republichas taken on a new saliency. Islamic and ethnic groups (Alevis, Albanians,Caucasians, Bosnians, and Kurds) increasingly have made use of the media todissolve centralized hegemonic voices emanating from both the state and society.Literacy and printing opportunities bring diverse Muslim groups togetheras part of an overarching Islamic identity and discourse that, paradoxically, alsopromotes further internal diVerentiation and pluralism among Islamic groups.The current vibrancy of Islamic political identity and activism would be neithervery appealing nor widespread in the absence of modern print and communicationstechnology. The written word and the press have allowed for the emergenceof a new Islamic intelligentsia capable of challenging the authority of theulema and of traditional SuW groups.Modern communications are not based on face-to-face dialogue or con-Wned to a sacred zone (mosques or SuW lodge) but are carried out by a varietyof means, from newspapers and radios to television and other visual symbolicimages that condense time and space. Condensing time and space brings theother into the home, the oYce, the shopping malls. And while the other can