Islamic Political Identity in Turkey

islamic social movements 23to undemocratic aspects of modernism. Political developments in Turkey sincethe early 1990s demonstrate the naiveté of the conclusions presented by suchleading proponents of the school of “modernization as Westernization” as DanielLerner and Bernard Lewis. Lerner, for example, conWdently claimed that “theproduction of ‘New Turks’ can now be halted, in all probability, only by thecountervailence of some stochastic factor of cataclysmic proportions—such asthe atomic war.” 35 In other words, Lerner and similar scholars had a very subjective,albeit unconscious, notion of modernity by which they meant “them”would become like “us.” In contrast, I propose a more objective deWnition:modernity is a global condition in which individuals and groups are able toredeWne social relations on the basis of social imagination. This imaginationpresupposes a rich repository of tradition, without which traditional societieswould lose their inner cohesiveness and viability, the very precursors for moderndevelopment.Imagination plays a critical role in the process of constructing Islamic politicalidentity. Since Islam lies at the core of the symbolic structure of Turkishsociety and is the main source of shared moral understanding, Islam is the repositoryfrom which Muslim actors draw values, critiques, and judgments.Imagination, among Muslim agents, provides the healing power that opposesmodern forces of fragmentation that threaten both the individual personalityand society as a whole. Imagination acts to link individuals with society, spiritwith matter, the present with the past, and the world with the mind. Imaginationfacilitates the withdrawal from the outer to the inner domain in which theself is formed. Imagination thus helps us to go beyond the limits of our experiences.For Said Nursi, imagination provided a dynamic bridge between the principlesof reason and the empirical senses, thus allowing an understanding ofthe wholeness of the human and natural worlds.Islamic Social MovementsIn the construction of Islamic political identity out of primordial religious attachments,social movements form a critical bridge between the primordialityof Islam and the modern genesis of Islamic political identity. But what is a socialmovement? Sidney Tarrow has provided a comprehensive deWnition of socialmovement as a “collective challenge by people with common purposes andsolidarity in sustained interaction with elites, opponents and authorities.” 36Alberto Melucci and Alain Touraine have taken this deWnition a step furtherwith their new social movement theory. 37 This theory is based on a set of beliefs,symbols, and values with the goal of restructuring everyday life practices.New social movement literature, which links identity and ethics to the processesof cultural transformation, oVers a useful conceptual avenue to follow in orderto penetrate the construction of Islamic political identity in Turkey. 38 Islamicmovements seek to reconstitute identities, institutional structures, ways of life,and the moral code of society through participating, inXuencing, or controllingcultural, educational and economic spheres. These movements are comprised