Islamic Political Identity in Turkey

256 islamic political identity in turkeyernment” in the 2002 elections. Voters outside of the oYcial establishmentlegitimated their claims of rights and recognition of identity by framing theirdemand in terms of the broader European discourse of human rights. However,one must be careful not to place too much emphasis on the electoral rise andfall of the Islamic parties, because doing so ignores the widespread and deepcrossfertilization of Islamic and European ideas and practices in the everydaylife of Turkey. The Islamic movement represents only one sector of such activities,but it is important to realize that it has changed the national agenda, introducedan index of being modern in an Islamic way, and brought Islamic ethicsto the public sphere.The AKP’s Dual Electoral Revolution: Earthquake and RestorationThe 2002 election represents a historical break in terms of providing to a sociallyMuslim party an opportunity to restructure the political landscape andexpand the public sphere. Among the 18 parties that competed for seats inParliament, only two actually won seats because a party is required to obtain10 percent of the nationwide vote to be able to send representative(s) to Parliament.The AKP came in Wrst by winning 34.26 percent of the popular voteand 363 of the 550 seats in Parliament. The CHP also mustered almost 19.40percent of the votes and 178 seats. Independent candidates won other nineseats. The election result represented a popular repudiation of the authoritarianpolitical establishment. A large plurality of voters believed in AKP, or atleast were willing to take a risk for broader political change. The elections sweptaway a generation of established politicians, giving the AKP a majority of seatsand the right to form a government on its own. One also may see this electionas a restoration of an Islamic movement that was forced out of power in the1997 coup. Thus the elections signiWcantly transformed the political establishmentand brought the AKP to power with a clear mandate to redeWne thepolitical center in terms of societal values. In fact, a majority of the electoratewas searching for a new social contract based on the global discourses of democracy,human rights, and social justice, the underlying ethical principlesof such a contract.The 2002 election thus was not about establishing an Islamic state or institutingIslamic law but rather about redrawing the boundary between the stateand society, consolidating civil society, and reconstituting everyday life in termsof a shared vision of “the good life.” A majority of voters hoped to create a morallyjustiWable modern and participatory life in which civil society is in chargeof its own fate. The excluded and marginalized sectors of society, along withthose who hope to expand opportunity spaces, want their leaders to make politicaldecisions that inherently share their moral language referring to themeaning of the good life. The Muslim idea of an inner self that is capable ofinitiating resistance and generating imaginative dissent from social practicesprovides religious sanctions for civil values. Despite the inroads of Kemalist