Islamic Political Identity in Turkey

the role of literacy and the media in the islamic movement 109Print and mass media communications technology have also induced Islamicintellectuals to expound new forms of discursive knowledge that aremore abstract, reXective, and universal in content. In other words, the productionof knowledge is freed from its traditional oral-based accounts of properIslamic practice and doctrine dating to the time of the Prophet. Therefore,newspapers, magazines, television stations, and radios are a means to transmitnot only decontextualized Islamic viewpoints but also discursive spacesfor critical thinking and dialogue. To manipulate Islamic meanings of socialand political practices in a communication-based modern society, one needsan “elaborate code” of Islam, that is, a code in which “the message is containedin the code and not in the context.” 22 The current articulation and disseminationof Islamic commentary is context-free in terms of the traditional narrative.The understanding of these context-free Islamic commentaries becomesfeasible as a result of mass education. The new sacred places of reviving Islamicconsciousness are Islamic literary circles and magazines. The role andimpact of new urban Islamic intellectuals thus is tied closely to print anduniversal mass education.Civic Pluralism, DiVerence, and ModernityThe debate over Islam’s role in society in the earlier years of the Republic waspushed to the margins, and it gradually became an issue to mull over for thosewho were excluded from the center. During the 1990s, these marginal voicesmoved to the center and have become an integral part of the national debateover identity through the mass circulation of Islamic magazines. In the 1970sand 1980s, however, these magazines remained marginal vis-à-vis the dominantsecular and nationalistic public culture. As statist ideology fractured, thesemarginal voices gradually moved to the center.These discursive spaces have three main characteristics. First, they remainfragmented over the basic issues of society, and these amorphous spaces bringwriters and readers together in public, without bracketing their identities andsuppressing their particular voices, to create issue-based consensus and commonground. Second, these spaces are zones of struggle, resistance, and radicalimagination. There always has been a struggle in Islamic journals to expresstheir respective diVerences from each other. Third, the plurality of the Islamicmedia and journals mirrors the diverse social structures of Islamic groups.The diversity of periodicals allows one to conclude that three broad trendsexist in the Islamic publishing arena. These trends are: (1) socially oriented Islam,which embraces the SuW orders and their publications (8slam, Altìnoluk, 8limve Sanat, Kadìn ve Aile, Semerkant) and the Nurcu publications (Sur, Yeni Ümit,Köprü, Karakalem, Nubihar, Yeni Dergi, Sìzìntì, Zafer); (2) intellectually orientedIslamic publications, which incorporate Western-inXuenced Islamic intellectuals(Tezkire, 23 Dergah, De:i7im Yarin, Yeni Zemin, 24 8zlenim, 25 Bilgi ve Hikmet,Sözle7me, Bilgive Dü7ünce); (3) politically oriented Islamic publications that were