Islamic Political Identity in Turkey

244 islamic political identity in turkeytuning” to restore the status quo. 16 Indeed, when diverse identity movementsmake claims and upset the balance, the military historically has moved to reimposethe Kemalist equilibrium.On February 28, 1997, the armed forces openly moved into politics via theNSC, on which top generals sit ex oYcio. The NSC declared the Islamic movementto be the number one internal security threat, placing it above the Kurdishseparatism and external challenges, to the existence of the state and to the Republicand ordered the Erbakan government to implement a list of 18 directives(see appendix). 17After some resistance, Erbakan signed the “directives” on March 5, 1997,and asked the cabinet to implement them. President Demirel justiWed the directivesby insisting that they were necessary to protect the secular nature ofthe Republic. Social democrats, such as Deniz Baykal, the head of the CHP, andthe ANAP of Yìlmaz supported the military’s intervention in the political arenaby presenting the army as another “pressure group” with progressive goals.However, when the military realized that the RP was not willing to implementits directives, it decided to force the government out of power.The directives identiWed Muslim businesses, the Islamic education system,media, and religious activism as primary threats to the secular nature of theTurkish state. 18 The goal of the military was to roll back the Muslim sectors ofcivil society by closing oV their opportunity spaces. 19 Because of the emergenceof these new opportunity spaces, Kemalist hegemony had lost its control overnational and municipal layers of the state. Pro-Islamic mayors had been winningand controlling large budgets, and these mayors were using the resourcesof municipalities to compete at the national level. Moreover, the Kemalist dominanceover economic resources was coming under challenge as a result of thenew bourgeoisie that was seeking a larger share in the market. In addition, theKemalist control over the production of culture and norms was undermined asa result of the diversiWcation of cultural networks. For instance, the state-ledradio and television stations were forced to compete with private ones. Finally,organizational life, in terms of bourgeoning civil society groups and associations,did not allow any form of oYcial ideology to become dominant. The militarynot only wanted these associations and foundations to be closed but also identiWed“19 newspapers, 20 television stations, 51 radio stations, 110 magazines,800 schools, 1,200 student hostels and 2,500 associations” that it claimed werepart of reactionary political Islam. 20The Securitization of IslamA major characteristic of the 1997 coup was that judges and journalists, ratherthan bullets and tanks, supported and implemented it. The military authorityused the mass media, as well as brieWngs, conferences, and regular public announcementsto inform the judges and the public about the existential threat tothe state stemming from political Islam and Kurdish ethnonationalism. In order