Islamic Political Identity in Turkey

1IntroductionOn June 28, 1996, for the Wrst time since the formation of theTurkish Republic in 1923, Turkey’s prime minister was a leaderwhose avowed political philosophy and personal identity was basedon Islam. By winning 21.3 percent of the total vote, along with 158seats in the 550-seat Parliament, the Welfare Party (RP: RefahPartisi), after intensive maneuvering, was able to form a coalitiongovernment with the True Path Party (DYP: Do;ru Yol Partisi) ofTansu Çiller. This coalition between the pro-Islamic prime ministerNecmettin Erbakan and the Europhile-secularist Çiller aptly reXectedthe dualistic tensions inherent in contemporary Turkish identity andheld promise for the dawn of a new era in state-society interactionsin Turkey. However, this promising start at reconciling the deepsocial Wssures introduced by the radical secular reforms of MustafaKemal and his followers was derailed abruptly by the militarybureaucraticestablishment’s “soft coup” of February 28, 1997. 1 Thesoft coup plunged the Turkish state into a renewed legitimacy crisis.Not wanting to cede power to civil society, the Kemalist militarybureaucraticestablishment once again had launched a counterattackagainst what it considered “enemies of the state,” this time focusingintensely on politically active Turkish Muslims rather than Alevisand leftists.This Kemalist (those who espouse Mustafa Kemal’s ideas ofnationalism and secularism) eVort to preserve authoritarianism,however, confronts the law of diminishing returns. The Turkishstate faces the imperative of liberalizing its economy to meet globaldemands—a process begun under Turgut Özal (1980–1993)—andover the long term cannot avoid liberalizing its political system aswell. However, traditional Western and Turkish scholarship, overly