Islamic Political Identity in Turkey

islamic social movements 31development of a capitalist market economy, institutionalized rules of law, andincreased acceptance of liberal values—and its membership within Europeanorganizations—have created new opportunity spaces for the understanding of the“self” within a broader community. Everyday life–based movements indicate thatIslamic identity is about deWning and living “the good life.” One’s political engagementis informed by one’s moral commitment. Religious faith, or religiouslyinformed moral character, propels one into action. Islamic practices and ideas areutilized to legitimize alternative practices and lifestyles. Questions like these—What is the good life and how does one realize it?—are very much at the center ofthe contemporary religious revival. One of the structural outcomes of new opportunityspaces is the emergence of new Muslim actors and more conscious andassertive Islamic social movements as agents of social change.The Cycle of Islamic Movements andthe Shifting Opportunity SpacesKemalism is the term used for the top-down, state-imposed political and culturalreforms of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (1881–1938) to create a secular society andstate in Turkey. Since the 1920s, the goal of the Kemalists (those who espouseAtatürk’s ideas) has been to Westernize every aspect of social, cultural, andpolitical life to create a secular, national, and republican state with a Westernidentity. Despite this state-led secularization policy, Islam has continued to oVera set of rules for regulating and constituting everyday life. Given the ongoingstruggle between a militantly antireligious state elite and ideology and the majorityof society, for many Turkish Muslims, Islam continues to serve as arepertoire and a site of counterstatist discourse and an organizational frameworkfor social mobilization to deal with the stresses of development.Between 1922 and the 1950s, the Kemalist reforms aimed to create statemonitoredpublic spaces to secularize and nationalize society. The opportunityspaces were limited, and the repertoire of action varied from rebellion to fullwithdrawal to create inner spaces safe from the penetration of state power. ThisdiVerentiation was based on each group’s access to opportunity spaces, and theirgoals and strategies to further expand these spaces to produce social change (seetable 1.2). The centralization and interference of the state politicized religion toan unprecedented degree. Rigid state policies led many people to perceive Islamincreasingly as the language of opposition. Thus the large Sunni peripheryembraced Islam as a way of challenging the policies of the center. This “oppositionalMuslimness” of the periphery tried to develop a new language tocounter Kemalism on the one hand and struggled against folk Islam by stressingthe textual basis (the Qur’an and hadith) of Islam on the other. Secularism ceasedto denote just the separation of state and religion in Turkey but instead becamea virtual creed and designation for the ruling elite. Thus the debate between Islamand secularism is a debate about the boundary of state and society, the publicand private. It is also a debate over the codes of everyday life.