Islamic Political Identity in Turkey

introduction 9dition and policies in the formation of an Islamic movement? I argue that MustafaKemal (Atatürk) melded a diversity of loyalties and identities together to createone nation-state by imposing an oYcial state ideology. In the process, he also eliminatedpublic spaces where traditional Ottoman-Islamic networks invested societalnorms and meanings. Many scholars assumed that the thoroughgoing andextremely coercive Kemalist program had succeeded in creating a new “secular”Turkish Republican reality. In hindsight, however, these policies eventually setthe ground for societal groups to turn to Islam as a counterideology to the authoritarianhegemony of the state and its administrative elite. This analysis ofIslamic movements will start with the state not because my approach is state-centricbut because Turkish political culture is state-centric. 8 In other words, in the caseof Turkey, the concept of “nation” is derived very much from the state. The conceptof the state and its authority is more embedded in the imagination of theTurks than is the notion of the Republican nation. Since the Turkish nation wasa project fostered by the state, such a study must start with an examination of thestate’s role in shaping modern Turkish society. Moreover, an examination of contemporaryIslamic movements indicates the way these movements have shiftedfrom a state-centric to a society-based focus.By exploring the interactions between the state and society within the contextof politics and the market in Turkey, I will argue that Islamic movementshave developed four sets of strategies in relation to changing circumstances.These strategies gradually became four competing visions about the role of religionin Turkish society. These social strategies chronologically are: a spiritualethical Islamic movement, which seeks to treat faith as a source of norms andmores for creating a common moral language by rearticulating communal identity(1925–1950); a cultural Islamic movement, which perceives Islam as a formof civilization and seeks to inXuence cultural and social identities in this respect(1950–1970); a political Islamic movement, which seeks to attain political powereither to improve the economic position of a segment of society or transformitself through the institutions of the state (1970–present); and a socioeconomicIslamic movement, which stresses the role of the market, associations, and thepublic sphere as a way of transforming society (1983–present). It is my contentionthat political and socioeconomic concerns articulated in Islamic idioms arefalling into the larger sphere of cultural Islam because of competition with otherethnic and parochial (hometown) loyalties. Thus Islamic political identity graduallyis becoming more amorphous, more durable. In other words, there is noset index for reference to “being a Muslim”; rather the present amorphousnessof Islamic identity has led to stronger and more resilient political identities inthe face of state opposition.In chapter 4, I address a more speciWc question: Why is Islam, rather thannationalism or localism, used to articulate issues of justice and identity? Howdoes Islamic identity compete with and complement other loyalties? In thischapter, I examine the informal, personal, and Xuid nature of Turkish society.I argue that Islamic political consciousness, as a form of “imagined community,”continuously is shaped and articulated by the competing claims of religious,social, economic, and political forces. 9