Islamic Political Identity in Turkey

162 islamic political identity in turkeythe quality and quantity of the “stream is going to have direct impact on the pool;if the problem is in the pool, it will not have an aVect on the sources of thestream.” 39 Since the state is a servant of the people, its employees, for Nursi, donot even need to be Muslims because their duty is to serve the people in accordancewith the law.Paradoxically, the success of the Kemalist reforms also resulted in the Nurmovement’s growth. The expansion of communication and universal education,the centralization of law, and the growing secularization and disenchantment ofsociety were also products of the Kemalist revolution. Drawing a distinction betweenthe positive and the negative consequences of Kemalism thus fractures mydiscussion because an analysis of the Nur movement involves a self-preservingdialogue within its internal and external boundaries. For example, the Nur movementWrst took hold and expanded in the western provinces of Anatolia; the literacyrate was higher there, and people there thus had a greater capacity forunderstanding the Nurcu message than did people in the eastern provinces, wherethe landowning elite, known as sheiks or a:as, controlled daily life. In fact, thewestern provinces of Anatolia have remained the center of the movement. 40As the attributes of modernity expanded to the periphery, individuals’ needsfor a symbolic structure and for religion were transformed. For example, althoughthe urban environment tends to encourage skepticism, religion in thecity becomes a form of identity and a network system that allows one to copewith urban problems. The rapid migration of rural populations to urban centersas a result of expanding capitalist conditions necessitated a new religiousidiom that Nursi ably sought to provide. His project involved a break withinIslamic tradition, one that could appeal to the rapidly evolving conditions of ruralpopulations recently uprooted to urban centers.With its textual characteristics, the Nur movement created new possibilitiesfor those who had moved from rural areas to urban centers and desired toreconstruct their conception of Islam in a prevailing age of skepticism and secularism.These “textual communities” secularized Islam in an eVort to make thesecular functions of nature and life accommodate sacred concerns and understandings.The printed word became a vehicle for the formation of a Nurcuconsciousness. Another main feature of the Nurcu movement is that it hasstressed the signiWcance of reason over miracles in religious understanding.The Formation of Textual Communities as DershanesAfter Nursi’s death in 1960, his inner circle transformed into “textual communities”and spread across Turkey. If Nursi’s ideas gave meaning to the everydaylife of his followers, it was this circle’s organizational strategies that providedthem with the institutional resources and the dynamism to become a leadingsocial and religious movement. These “textual communities” got together to readout and interpret his texts in dershanes. The dershane is a special apartment orone-Xoor building where a congregation of people meets to read aloud and discussNursi’s writings. Although his goal had been to present a book that did not