Islamic Political Identity in Turkey

the securitization of islam and the triumph of the akp 259ment. The military, along with the judiciary, used all available means to criminalizethe opposition. Because of these developments, many Muslims witnessed theerosion of their rights and freedoms and the reduction of opportunity spaces bythe establishment: the coalition of corrupt politicians, the media, businessmen,and some power-hungry generals. In August 2001, Mesut Yìlmaz, then a deputyprime minister, boldly said that the military had orchestrated a so-called nationalsecurity syndrome that was responsible for the slow progress of democratizationand integration with the EU. The military responded to Yìlmaz’s “unfortunatespeech” by issuing a sharp statement, noting that it was not the “national securityconcept” but “those [i.e., politicians] who did not fulWll their responsibilities orthose who gave priority to personal gains rather than political stability in the faceof such pressing issues as economic bankruptcy and widespread corrupt activitieswho were to blame.” 60 The Ecevit government was ineVective, and consequentlythe political spaces gradually shrank so that all major decisions were madeby the state bureaucracy in the name of the state and much of society was excludedfrom the political process.The Nationalization and Westernization of IslamismAlthough the electoral cleavages in Turkey are usually examined in terms eitherof the center-periphery framework or as merely being a religious protestvote against failed government policies, the AKP victory is a sign of the constitutionof a new social center and the socialization of the political center with thenew hybrid ideas of nationalism, Islam, and Westernism. There is a dominanttendency among Turkish scholars to treat the vote for Islamic parties as a protestvote. However, this approach ignores the “constructive” aspect of Turkishvoting behavior. Many people voted for the AKP because they were unemployed,hungry, and marginalized and excluded from almost all economic and politicalprocesses. However, they also voted to reconstruct a new center of politics.Erdo;an is just one of those who was excluded and marginalized by the establishment.But as the state tried to exclude Erdo;an, his popularity increased andhe became the symbol of the marginalized (mazlum, “persecuted”). His treatmentcast him as the Nelson Mandela of Turkey’s excluded majority. Given theevolution of the NOM since 1994, one can see the political transformation ofpolitical Islam, in general, and Erdo;an in particular. A self-made man, whosold lemonade as a boy to support his family, Erdo;an possesses working-classvalues and has enough pragmatism to keep an open mind when it comes topolitics. However, like other political players who have graced the Turkish politicallandscape, he views himself as the embodiment of the party, a sultan andnot just a member. In this respect, Erdo;an may make the same mistakes asErbakan.In addition to the leadership, the AKP includes a new generation of Muslimpoliticians, such as Hüseyin Çelik, Ömer Çelik, Abdullah Gül, Akif Gül, MuratMercan, and Abdullatif 6ener, who have risen to prominence because of the ex-