Islamic Political Identity in Turkey

46 islamic political identity in turkeyThe Kemalist Cultural Revolution (1922–1950)In order to understand contemporary Turkish Islamic movements, one needsto comprehend the essentially antagonistic and intersubjective role played by astill largely Muslim Anatolian civil society and a Kemalist state establishmentwhose raison d’être is to combat it. Since its inception the Kemalist militarybureaucraticestablishment has viewed large sections of its own society, ratherthan foreign countries, as its main threat. Kemalism, like other ideologies generally,serves as a means for the acquisition and maintenance of its own power.To comprehend the political and ideological crisis confronting the Turkish state,one must explicate Kemalism in terms of its conception of politics and community,which is informed by its secular-nationalist worldview. There is an inherentcontradiction between Kemalism and democracy, since the former deWnespolitics as a means to realize an elite-deWned and administered common good:a docile, homogeneous, and secular nation-state.Kemalism, in the manner of other radical revolutionary movements, deWneditself in obsessive antagonism to the ancien regime, in this case the Ottoman-Muslim state and society. Kemalist “secularism” was meant to represent“progress” and “civilization” against alleged Islamic “backwardness” and “Orientalbarbarism.” 33 For this reason, Kemalist ideology has been obsessed with“the security of secularism,” which is manifested as Werce hostility to publicmanifestation of Islam. Resistance to or even mild questioning of secular objectiveshas been viewed as tantamount to high treason against the state, andsuch challenges always have been regarded as security issues to be dealt withoutside the normal political processes. For the sake of the security of secularism,the Kemalist system sought to create its own secularism-friendly Islam,known as enlightened Islam, or ça;da7 8slam. In order to protect its foundingideology, the Kemalist elite opportunistically employed Islam for the realizationof a modern and secular Turkey.There are several political consequences of the Kemalist worldview. First, itprevents open and participatory public debate over the formation of a social contractby insisting on its own predetermined ideal society: a secularized and Westernizedhomogenous nation-state. Second, it does not tolerate the articulation ofdiVerent identities or lifestyles in the public domain since they undermine theKemalist vision of an ideal society. Third, it treats “politics” as a management issueto realize predetermined Kemalist ends. Finally, it limits political participation tothose who subscribe to Kemalist goals and seek to promote them; those who arenot fully committed to Kemalist ideals are depicted as backward, irrational, ordivisive and are excluded from the public sphere. The overall eVect, then, is todelegitimize dissent and opposition in public space. Politics, therefore, is an “administration”in accordance with predeWned principles. The military’s maintask is to supervise and monitor the public sphere and punish those who do notact in accord with Kemalist principles. Even the Turkish Parliament is not free todetermine legislation but rather is an institution that passes laws that accord withthe views of the main guardian of Kemalism, the National Security Council (NSC).