Islamic Political Identity in Turkey

208 islamic political identity in turkeythe Wrst avatar of Erbakan’s Islamic political party. Advancing demands for justiceand identity remained the two pillars of the movement. In modern Turkey,Islamic identity was Wrst explicitly articulated in the political domain by theMGH. The MGH conveyed the voices of Islamist groups to the public sector,representing Islamist interests in Parliament, also allowing at this time moreopenly Islamist Wgures into the administration of local municipalities and thelarger national bureaucracy. Consequently, the MGH played a vital role in integratingmarginalized yet vast sections of Anatolian Turkish society into thepolitical processes through presenting a more inclusive identity rooted inOttoman-Islamic tradition. 3Many Turkish Muslims during the period of the early 1970s began usingnewly opened opportunity spaces for articulating formerly prohibited identitiesand demands for dealing with the challenges of secularism, industrialization,urbanization, and the popularization of knowledge through mass education andcommunication, and they supported the formation of the MSP to encompassand express this newly formed consciousness. After the closure of the MSP bythe military coup leaders in 1980 and the RP in 1998, the same social groupsre-formed as the FP. 4The changing names, from Milli Nizam (National Order) to Milli Selamet(National Salvation) to Refah (Welfare) to Fazilet (Virtue) to Saadet (Felicity)reXect both the pressures of the ongoing power struggle between the secularKemalist center and the Turkish-Islamic periphery and also the main politicalplatform of the party during each period. 5 National Order, for example, is synonymousin popular Turkish with the concept of a religiously rooted just order.Milli does not mean simply “national” but also connotes religious ethnos, andit continues to be articulated as an ethical signiWer of justice, loyalty, and community.Milli easily could be used interchangeably with “religiously deWnedcommunity,” 6 and it also was used because any form of religious designationfor a party has been against the law. 7 In other words, the Islamic movement inTurkey always has managed to connect to society by skillfully utilizing religioussymbolism. Selamet (salvation), refah (welfare), fazilet (virtue), and saadet (felicity)are symbolic vernacular concepts and are thus understood and carry meaningamong ordinary Muslims.The MNP and the MSPAs the secular Kemalist ideology began to be imposed by the center over muchof traditional Anatolian social life, religion gradually was politicized and becamethe dominant counterhegemonic identity of the broad periphery. When the laterinternal power struggle within the secular sector made support from the peripherycrucial, concessions such as allowing limited public manifestations of religionwere made in order to harness this support. First the DP and then itssuccessor, the AP, demonstrated a more sensitive attitude toward religious sentimentsin a notable break from the militancy of the early Kemalist period.