Islamic Political Identity in Turkey

202 islamic political identity in turkeytive culture of Anatolia to accept a more active participatory role by women isdiYcult. 80 Before the 1997 coup, there were a number of all-girl schools, andsex-based segregation remained at the core of the Gülen movement. As a resultof the 1997 coup, gender-segregated private and public education was ended,and all schools gradually became mixed. Thus, as far as gender equality is concerned,the Gülen movement is not proactive but rather reactive, and changecomes as a result of state policies.There is a deep-seated suspicion among some radical Islamic groups thatthe state seeks to use Islam to secularize it from within. Some even see Gülen’sclose ties with state authorities as having accomplished the nationalization ofthe RNK. Others, however, view this elaborate courtship between Gülen andthe state as inevitably leading to the domestication of the state along Islamiclines. They argue that by gradually penetrating the state Gülen and others willbe able to transform its Kemalist and antireligious foundation and render impossibleany repeat of the “Jacobin” assault on Islam that Mustafa Kemal andhis coterie carried out. In order to avoid attack in the 1997 coup, Gülen publiclydefended the military crackdown against the RP government and did not opposethe suppression of peaceful Sunni Islamic groups in the country. 81 He hasnot been very consistent on the issues of democracy and human rights and hassought immunity by promoting his group’s interest before the rights of civilsociety as a whole. 82 He regularly courted the state by supporting campaignsagainst radical Islamist groups and excused the military’s intolerant policiesagainst any manifestation of religion in public. Gülen and his community triedto present themselves as “soft” and “moderate” vis-à-vis other Islamic groupswithin Turkey. By stressing their diVerences from other groups as more “moderate,”they tried to gain legitimacy from the Kemalist state. Moreover, Gülenand his followers oVered little criticism of the oppressive state policies againstnonviolent Kurds and many independent-minded journalists.The Paradox of Persecution and Forced Liberalization (1997–2002)Catering to state policies did not help the Gülen movement. On June 21, 1999,the state-guided media launched a Werce, orchestrated attack on Gülen and hisactivities as being “reactionary” and a “threat” to the secular nature of the Turkishstate by broadcasting his speeches made in the late 1970s and early 1980s. 83On the basis of these speeches, the Ankara State Security Court prosecutor requestedan arrest warrant for Gülen on charges of plotting to overthrow the stateby establishing a clandestine organization. The State Security Court rejected therequest of the arrest warrant on August 28, 2000. On August 30, 2000, GeneralKìvrìko;lu, then the chief of the General StaV, said publicly that Gülen “plansto undermine the State” and that he had supporters in the civil service, even inthe judiciary, and “that’s why his arrest warrant was rejected.” On the basis ofKìvrìko;lu’s accusations, the state prosecutor indicted Gülen for “attemptingto change the secular characteristics of the Republic” by allegedly trying to establisha theocratic Islamic state. 84 The prosecutor also alleged that “the organi-