Islamic Political Identity in Turkey

234 islamic political identity in turkeyeducated these forces by incorporating them into the political system. Its politicalstructure constituted a web of associations, networks, and relationships. Ittransformed rural values into urban values. Turkey’s social stability owes a lotto the RP and other religious networks. Although it did not solve the Kurdishquestion, it prevented the radicalization of Kurdish nationalism. The RP’s stresson Islamic symbols and networks helped to release the Kurdish nationalisticenergies and prevented the dominance of solely ethnically based opposition tothe Kemalist system. Some members of the military establishment recognizedthe constructive role of the RP. The PKK’s activism, combined with the suppressivepolicies of the Turkish state, resulted in the secularization of the Kurdishidentity and disengagement from the RP. Islamic political spaces-in-betweenTurkish and Kurdish identities were destroyed as the RP acquired more Turkishand conservative features after the 1991 elections. The pro-Kurdish HADEPemerged as the dominant agent to articulate secular and nationalist Kurdishidentity claims.Women’s Role in the RPIslamic groups want to maintain the distinction between themselves and seculargroups by regulating Muslim women’s sexuality. Women, for the Islamists,have been and still remain the icon by which social stability and the family is tobe maintained. 89 After the mass rape of Muslim women in Bosnia, the Islamistsbecame even more determined to conWne symbolically Muslim women’sbodies within the protective borders of the umma during the 1994 and 1995elections. At the same time, politics, economic development, and the debate overmodernity put women in a particularly diYcult situation. Although some Islamicwomen’s groups share in an antimodern disposition, their antimodernismdoes not necessarily make them traditional. 90 Opposed to a modernity that collapseddiVerences in gender roles, most of these women’s groups redeWnedthemselves, and their quest for a new community formed along religious lines,as is expressed in their support for the RP. However, the views of their urbancadres regarding the proper place of women in society was often quite diVerentfrom what many men would like to have seen in the Islamic movements.Women’s groups played the most crucial role in carrying the party’s messageto the far corners of society. For example, Sibel Eraslan, the head of thewomen’s group in Istanbul, claimed that there were women’s groups in 22 counties,and each group consisted of 33 women. In addition, each neighborhoodhad a women’s group that consisted of 14 women, under the control of its countygroup, and each street had a women’s group of six that reported to the neighborhood.91 There were, in all, around 250,000 women activists who claimed towork for Islamic principles. There were very few university graduates amongthese activists, although the number of graduates rapidly increased. Instead, theparty managed to mobilize women through grassroots politicization, with thewomen’s groups besieging neighborhoods and conveying RP’s message to