Islamic Political Identity in Turkey

176 islamic political identity in turkeyon the Turkish state. In the early 1980s, the Kurdish Nurcus began to organizearound Tenvir Publishing House (Tenvir Ne7riyat). The group stressed educationin Kurdish by defending Nursi’s Medresetü’z Zehra project for a universityin eastern Anatolia, which proposed education in Turkish, Arabic, and Kurdishin modern sciences and religious studies. Moreover, the group criticized the“TurkiWcation” of the RNK by eliminating any reference to “Kurdistan” or“Kurd.” 58 This group later organized as the Med-Zehra community under theleadership of Sìddìk Dursun and began to publish Dava magazine in 1989. Themagazine’s articles regularly questioned the close connection between Turkishnationalism and the Nurcu movement and tried to construct a Kurdish Nursi.The attempt to maintain balance between Kurdish nationalism and Islamismled to a split within the Med-Zehra community; more nationalist Kurds, underthe leadership of 8zzettin Yìldìrìm, established the Foundation of Zehra Educationand Culture in 1991 and began to publish the monthly magazine Nubiharin Kirmanca Kurdish in 1992. 59The Kurdish nationalist magazine Yeni Zemin, which was funded byYìldìrìm, tentatively tried to present Nursi as “a Kurdish nationalist” by recallingthe struggle of the younger Nursi against the Kemalist state. The editor ofYeni Zemin, Mehmet Metiner, argued, “I like the activist Said who struggled forthe recognition of Kurdish identity. Said was a major step in Islamic thoughtbut his contribution did not end there.” 60 Metiner, also a Kurdish ex–politicaladvisor to Tayyip Erdo:an, sees Islam as a means to challenge the state and toopen political space for the expression of Kurdish nationalism. The ethnicizationof Nursi is achieved by selectively reading his writings and life struggles. SomeKurdish intellectuals argue that the state constantly persecuted Nursi not onlybecause of his Islamism but also because of his ethnic Kurdish identity. Althoughmost Nurcu groups reject these attempts to transform Nursi into a Kurdishnationalist, the rise of Turkish and Kurdish nationalism has contributed to thecreation of two separate ethnic groups among the Nurcus.Class and Generational DiVerences in the Nurcu GroupsSince 1983, the Nur movement consistently has defended the free market andthe withdrawal of the state from the economic and educational spheres. The newAnatolian-based bourgeoisie welcomed this position and used its Wnancial meansto open new dormitories and study houses. Since the 1980s, most of the newbusinessmen have allied themselves with the policies of the ANAP, as have mostNurcu groups. New expanding markets consolidated the position of this newbourgeoisie and the revival of a socially conservative, politically progressive,market-oriented Islamism. The most prominent contemporary leader of thegroup, generally known as the neo-Nurcus, is Fethullah Gülen, who navigatedthe movement among this new bourgeoisie and mobilized them to support hisprivate high schools in Turkey and Central Asia.In examining generational diVerences in dershanes, I realized that the worldof the reader evolves from generation to generation. New communities of read-