Islamic Political Identity in Turkey

224 islamic political identity in turkeyErbakan deWned the concept of hak as respect for human rights and therejection of coercion and exploitation. He argued that society should stress libertyin political and economic matters while maintaining a communitarian responsibilityfor the less fortunate. Erbakan maintained further that the mainfeatures of hak were put into practice in the period of the Seljuk and Ottomanempires. Having a perspective on an imagined utopia is necessary for everysociety to transcend itself. Although some Islamic movements have as theirutopic paradigm the era of the Prophet Muhammed, the RP in Turkey stressedinstead the classical Ottoman period. 54The RP leadership turned Islam into a “storehouse of images” to determinewhat constituted unjust conduct and how a sense of community could remedy it. 55In Erbakan’s view, the concept of the Just Order was the key to the successful governanceof both the Seljuk and the Ottoman empires, and “when the Ottomansbegan to imitate Batìl, their state disintegrated.” 56 Erbakan’s message was understoodand internalized by the masses much better than that of the other parties orthe militant Islamic groups that proposed to create an Islamic utopia on the basisof the Qur’an. This mode of thinking attaches a sacred quality to the state by presentingit as a gazi state, that is, defender of Islam against external threats, andrequires a loyalty to the state. In Muslim societies new ideas as well as revived oneseVectively are disseminated by evoking such a historical consciousness.The RP sought to distinguish between Westernization and modernity. 57Westernization, in the Turkish context, was a process of alienation from one’sown cultural values and history and its replacement by an empty shell that onlycould be a pale shadow of the Other that it aspires to be. This weakness, in turn,was viewed as causing underdevelopment, the lack of political independence,the erosion of moral values, and the subjugation of the Turks in their own historicalregions. Modernity, by contrast, was viewed as a necessity for survival,and its technological, scientiWc, democratic, and industrial elements were notseen as being incompatible with Islam. In having this view, the RP ideologueswere very close to Ottoman liberals like Namìk Kemal, who also thought that aprudent incorporation of Western attributes, such as democracy, liberalism, andindustrialization, could be accomplished without compromising essential Islamiccustoms and values. The promotion of a liberal political and economicagenda, in fact, was cleverly used by the RP to assail the authoritarian aspects ofthe Kemalist tradition while increasing their popularity and credibility with thosewho were dissatisWed with the present system.The RP proposed two solutions for Turkey’s underdevelopment: revitalizingcultural bonds in order to ground modernity in authentic Islamic values andindustrializing Turkey in order to secure political and economic independence.The party hoped to create a symbiotic relationship in which cultural values softenedthe negative impact of industrialization and ideally promoted its success,as was the case in east Asia. With its use of Islamic idioms and symbols, the RPprovided a forum within which diverse ethnic and regional identities could Xourishand coexist. The RP supporters’ conception of Islamic identity brought fragmentsand subidentities together without negating them and created a moreholistic understanding of identity.