Islamic Political Identity in Turkey

introduction 5Politically active Muslims in Turkey have evoked Islamic symbols and institutionsto express their notions of community, identity, self, and justice. Moreimportant, they have utilized Islam to construct their own version of modernity.By struggling to revitalize Ottoman-Islamic culture, Islamic social movementshave brought with them something entirely new: the vernacularizationof modernity and the internal secularization of Islam in terms of rationalization,nationalization, and the accommodation of faith to the overriding exigenciesof reason and evidence. In the context of this study, I deWne “vernacularizationof modernity” as the eVorts of Islamic intellectuals and movements to redeWnethe discourses of modernity (nationalism, secularism, democracy, human rights,the liberal market, and personal autonomy) in their own Islamic terms. “Vernacularization”is a somewhat paradoxical process, in which the boundaries of theIslamic normative tradition are simultaneously preserved and radically altered.It both conWgures and assimilates certain aspects of modernity; however, it rejectsand contests them at the same time. This attempt combines religious valueswith ideas supporting the emergence of an autonomous human agent. Akey cultural aspect of modernity centers on the notion of autonomous humanagency. Individual autonomy is protected by the rule of law and by the expansionsof rights and freedoms. There is emancipation from the hegemony of traditionalpolitical and cultural forms of authority. Accordingly, the autonomousMuslim individual is expected to take part in the formation of a new politicaland cultural order, especially through protest and participation in social movementsand related political parties. The modern themes of equality, freedom andjustice, and identity and solidarity have become the central building blocs of thenew, emancipation-oriented Islamic movements. These movements oppose boththe hegemony of the nation-state and the domination of the traditional code ofIslamic morality, and seek instead to promote the defense of cultural and politicalrights of individuals and identity groups. In the 1980s, the weakening of thenation-state in Turkey created new opportunities for Islamic movements toconstruct their own autonomous social, political, and cultural spaces. Thus, thestate-controlled, “top-down” westernization aims and the Islamic, “bottom-up”emancipation process have come into conXict over the type of society they seekto create, over the goals of modernity itself. One of the crucial impacts of thevernacularization of modernity is the internal secularization of Islam. By “internalsecularization” I mean the rationalization of religious practices and exclusionof magical elements and the acceptance of a universal conception of thesacred. Moreover, secular thinking has been incorporated into mainstream Islamicthought. “Internal secularization” is the process by which Muslims focusall their energy and activism increasingly on this world and decreasingly on apostulated otherworld. For instance, Islamic time is measured from the establishmentof the Ottoman state (and its successes) in 1299. Islamic movements,as actors of social change, imagine Islam in terms of modern concepts ofdemocracy, nationalism, and secularism. One major feature of the Islamic movementsis the TurkiWcation of Islam. For instance, the Islamic movement treatsTurkish history not as a period within Islamic history, but rather Islamichistory is examined within Turkish history. Moreover, Turkey for the Islamic