Islamic Political Identity in Turkey

the securitization of islam and the triumph of the akp 261Islamism in central Anatolia is Xuid, supporters share the same symbolicworldview, and transition between the two groups is very common. The boundarybetween “us” and “them,” for the AKP, is deWned in religious terms.Turkishness also is deWned in terms of religion and “we” the “Turkish Muslims”who serve God and society and “they” who serve Atatürk and the state. Inthe electoral success of the AKP, Turkism and Islamism were conXated. Forinstance, the heartland of Turkish Islam, in such cities as Erzurum, Kayseri,and Konya, overwhelmingly voted for the AKP. Thus the normative base of theAKP consists of a Turkish-Islamic synthesis within new global discourses ofhuman rights and democracy. The 2002 elections represent the nationalization(TurkiWcation) and Westernization of Islamism in Turkey.The AKP’s understanding of Europe and stress on Turkey’s membershipin the EU is an outcome of its “Western” layer of identity. It is “Western” interms of stressing human rights, the rule of law, economic liberalism, and respectfor popular will as the guiding principles of public policy. Its WesternismdiVers from the Kemalist Westernism in that it stresses bottom-up modernizationand respect for the popular will and recognizes civil society autonomousfrom the state. This is the direct opposite of the ossiWed Kemalism that exists inTurkey today. The AKP’s understanding of secularism is not “negative” butrather a “positive” one. It attempts to rearticulate the Ottoman Islamic ethos asthe spirit of tolerance, accommodation, and coexistence of faiths, cultures, andideas. This modernist and Western-inXuenced Islam has also appealed to manysecularized, urban, and well-to-do Turks who have felt that the party could providea much-needed corrective to the prevailing corrupt and authoritarian politicalstructure.The Tension between State and SocietyThe secularist Kemalist establishment, even though it has limited mass appeal,enjoys the full support of the military and judiciary as it guides public policy.There will be a number of areas where the AKP will conXict with the military.The key question is how much the Turkish state is prepared to accommodatethis dynamic new political Islam. After a century of struggle between the secularstate and Muslim society, a reasonable compromise is a possibility withinthe framework of integration with the EU. The AKP’s experiment with democracyreveals the failure of an authoritarian secularism that is informed by crudeorientalist conceptions, like those of Bernard Lewis, that posit Islam as inherentlyopposed to democracy, pluralism, and modernity. Ironically, for manydecades the main obstacle to full democratization in Turkey has not been Islambut rather the authoritarian secular ideology of an oppressive state elite, whichfound many apologists in Western circles.Erdo;an’s goal is to change this equation:My story is the story of this nation. Either this nation is going to winand come to power or the arrogant and oppressive minority group,who look at Anatolia with contempt and are alien to Anatolian