Islamic Political Identity in Turkey

the national outlook movement and the rise of the refah party 223lamic identity oVers a Xexible repertoire to accommodate diverse roles and identities.This was especially evident in the RP’s use of Islamic idioms explicitlylinked to the image of shelter. It also was evident in the consistent way thatErbakan and his inner circle used the word milli (meaning religiously rootednational community) as an adjective to indicate their Ottoman-Islamic sense ofcommunity. In addition, they used the word hak (the authentic, godly,sacred,and just system of Islam) to diVerentiate themselves from other political parties.The RP supporters I interviewed in 1997 were quite aware that the partyrepresented both their political and religious idea:when you look at other parties you see them as an association ofinterests or an organization to distribute state-based goods and jobs.Whereas the RP is something more than that. It is an expression ofour identity. 52This view is an indication that participation in RP activities facilitated the realizationof personal identity within a web of sociopolitical networks. The pro-Islamic movement led by the RP drew heavily on the following sources: thegrievances and discontent of the large Kurdish population; the prevalent religiousnationalisticideas and beliefs in central and eastern Anatolia; the capacity tomobilize its supporters to act collectively for self-realization in a local and globalcontext; and the opportunities to redeWne the role of the state. For many ofits supporters, the RP oVered an answer to the basic questions “Who am I?”and “Where do I belong?” By deWning Turkish nationality in terms of Islamicidentity, the RP managed to exploit the keenly felt sentiments relating to identitypolitics in contemporary Turkey. Those who voted for the RP tended to bepious and sought to fulWl their personal and collective identities by joining activitiesand campaigns and eventually voting for those parties that manifestedthe realization of an Islamic identity, an identity that is all the more resonantbecause of the Werce persecution of the Kemalist era. This realization, in turn,involved a degree of tradeoV with other subnational and transnational identitiesand memberships.In order to distinguish his party from rivals on the political scene, Erbakanconstructed two diametrically opposed ideological categories: Batìl (the imitative,materialist, and colonial system of the West) and hak. In the fourth RPcongress, Erbakan claimed that the West (Batìl) consists of the DYP, ANAP, DSP,and CHP, four parties that were pro-EU. Aspects of the West, for Erbakan, includedthe exploitation and oppression of those societies that are deWned as non-Western, especially those in the Islamic world. On one occasion, as part of ageneral metaphor for the West, Erbakan said “the Cowboy, the United States,and AT, the horse [i.e., the European Community], create too many problemsin the world.” 53 He strongly rejected Western claims of possessing a higher anduniversal set of values and insisted that the West brazenly uses issues of humanrights and democracy only selectively and self-servingly. For Erbakan the mostglaring example of the West’s hypocrisy was the way the architects of “the newworld order” devastated Iraq for its aggression and ignored and actively coveredup the far more brutal Serbian aggression and genocide in Bosnia one year later.