Islamic Political Identity in Turkey

110 islamic political identity in turkeyconnected to Islamic political parties and to other smaller factions within largerconservative parties (Cuma, Nehir, Yörünge, Yeni 6afak [AKP], Milli Gazete); and(4) radical Islamist publications that advocate struggle outside the legal means(Gercek Hayat, Haksöz, 8ktibas, Tevhid). The radical Islamic journals and writersdefend violent resistance to the secular system in Turkey. These journalsbecome spaces of dissemination of radical ideas and places of recruitment ofrevolutionary and romantic believers in the establishment of an Islamic state toengineer an Islamic society by force. Politics, for the radical Islamists of Turkey,is about Wnding and Wghting against the enemies of Islam. Their journalsare sites of Islamic fascist ideas and thick anti-Semitism. The competition amongthese publications is important in terms of articulating diVerences in the framingof diverse social and political issues through the symbolic language of Islam.In airing diVerences through the media, one sees the competing versions ofsociety and politics within the Islamic movement. Therefore, mass communicationplays an emancipatory role in terms of bringing marginal voices into thepublic sphere. Yet the diVerences among Islamic groups increasingly have beenarticulated in the media. This has led some Islamicly oriented people to readonly the books of a speciWc publishing house. Certain publishers try to avoidbeing associated with a particular interpretation and aim to create, through diverseIslamic publications, a reading public that identiWes with general Islamicconsciousness rather than speciWc sects.These journals have challenged the state’s understanding and presentationof Islam and Islamic institutions as instruments for fostering national unity.For example, Yeni Zemin was very critical of the state’s attempts to use Islam asa common bond to neutralize Kurdish grievances. In eVect, Islamic publicationsprovided spaces that promoted the evolution of a more pluralist understandingof Islam. Print-Islam, then, facilitated a decentering of hegemonic Islamic voicesand prevented any group from dominating the presentation of Islam as a monolithiccivilization and religion. Therefore, the proliferation of Islamic journals,magazines, and radio and television stations opened new spaces of imagination,and helped to foster new discourses.In order to understand the organic ties between the media and SuW orderson the one hand and modern intellectuals and the media on the other, one needsto grasp the pluralizing implications of modernity. Modernity has led todiVerentiation and individualism more than it has led to homogenization largelybecause of the dissolving eVects of mass communication and a “consumer culturethat celebrates diversity, so that fashion and taste in religion become onemore ‘good’ to be consumed.” 26 This dissemination and incorporation of diverseand, in some cases, historically separate cultures creates a debate over authenticityand paradoxically generates movements against extreme syncretization.In modern Turkey, the syncretization of Islamic political identity means thefusion of liberalism, nationalism, democracy, and religious beliefs all together.This syncretization assists the integration of the marginal voices at the peripheryinto the national discourse. Indeed, the peripheral idiom of the Nurcu movementin the 1950s had become the central voice of the Islamic identity debatein the 1990s as a result the syncretizing ability of a series of magazines, news-