Islamic Political Identity in Turkey

the securitization of islam and the triumph of the akp 263These new Islamically shaped public spheres and actors cannot be reduced torepresenting antimodernist or antiglobalist reaction but rather are productsof these new social forces. A new, hybrid, national, Islamic, modern identityand roles are under construction.ConclusionThe 1997 coup reminded society that it is not the owner of the state but ratherthat, in the Kemalist view, the state is the real owner of society. The entire Turkishconstitutional system is based on protecting the state and imposing a speciWclifestyle on society. Demirel, then president, argued that the 1997 couporiginated in the “proclamation of the Republic” and added that this process“will continue.” 62 Indeed, exclusion and persecution in the name of creating asecular nation-state has been the source of Turkey’s numerous fault lines andconstant instability. The 1997 coup sought to cleanse the Islamic presence fromthe public spaces of economy, education, the media and politics. In its anti-leftistcampaign, the state had used Sunni Islam as a Turkish-Islamic synthesis afterthe 1980 coup, and in 1997 it used the Alevi community against Sunni politicalIslam. However, the 1997 coup brought forward a questioning of the army’srole more than the 1961 and 1980 coups. In particular, many conservativeMuslim Turks, who constituted the traditional backbone of the military andmilitarism, started to question the legitimacy of the army. These groups usedto think of the army as the “heart of the Prophet” (Peygamber Oca:ì). Their questioninghas been very positive in the long run in terms of challenging the guardianrole of the military, strengthening civil society, and emphasizing thesigniWcance of human rights. Islamic groups all supported Turkey’s entry intothe EU as a way of controlling the excesses of the Kemalist army. The majorimpact of the 1997 coup was the Islamic rediscovery of Europe as a space andan idea to protect human rights and the rule of law. In other words, many conservativeMuslims recognized that Europe was more liberal than a Turkish societyregulated by the rigid military doctrine.At the core of the contemporary crisis in Turkey lies the oYcial state ideology,Kemalism. Kemalism does not see social, cultural, and political diVerenceas an integral part of democracy but rather treats sociopolitical “diVerence” as asource of instability and a threat to national unity. The current ethnic (Kurdish)and religious (Sunni Islamic and Alevi) movements seek to redeWne themselvesas “Muslims,” “Kurds,” and “Alevis” through the means provided by globalization.These identity- and justice-seeking social movements are in direct conXictwith the Kemalist project.Turkey needs a new social contract. The realization that coexistence dependson shared rules and the recognition of diVerences helped to transform the Turkishcitizenry’s conception of Turkey from being the “home” of a speciWc group,particularly Sunni Turks, to being a “hotel” in which each group has its ownroom and they all have to create the shared rules of coexistence. Consequently,