Islamic Political Identity in Turkey

54 islamic political identity in turkeyample, in the way the state framed the Kurdish resistance it sought to legitimizeits own claims and justify its domination. In other words, the Kemalist statediscourse on the Kurdish issue evolved as a result of these rebellions, with thestate becoming more sensitive about its policies of creating a secular Turkishnation. Thus one needs to take these rebellions into account to explain thesecuritization of Kurdish and Islamic identity claims by the state. After the rebellions,politicized Sunni-Islam evolved as a surrogate Kurdish identity in southeasternAnatolia.Vernacular of Political OppositionThe Sheik Said and Menemen rebellions helped to redeWne the concept of politicsin Turkish society. After 1930, the state elite considered participatory politicalactivity to be a dangerous and potentially regime-threatening phenomenon,whereas society as a whole viewed politics as the arena of the ruling elite andsought an apolitical and cultural venue for challenging radical Kemalist secularism.The excluded groups developed a new vernacular in which to expresstheir notions of a political reality that would enable them to protect their personalconceptualizations of morality and deWnitions of “the good life” and underminethe state policies of “civilizing” society.These rebellions heightened the fears of the Republican elite concerningan ethnoreligious counterreaction. Their initial response was to attempt to severIslam from nationalism completely, that is, to Turkify society without religionthrough the institutions of the state. The Republican elite developed three strategiesin order to penetrate the periphery with its reforms: to create a reformistelite to carry the reform message to small towns; to establish People’s Houses,which were supposed to provide the bridge between the masses and the Republicanelite; and to raise the social and economic standards of rural areas by establishingVillage Institutes (Köy Enstitüleri). 62 However, the Republican purgesof traditional institutions and networks undermined the state’s ability to carryits reforms to the periphery. In other words, by destroying traditional networks,the secularist Republic destroyed its own means of penetrating and reshapingthe traditional periphery. By closing the Association of Turkish Hearths (TürkOcaklar1) and opening the People’s Houses (Halkevleri), the Republicans alienatedlarge segments of society. 63 The former institution, founded in 1912, hadplayed an embryonic role in the formation of Turkish nationalism. Its understandingof nationalism recognized the constitutive role of Islam as an inseparablepart of national culture and identity. This was, of course, in contradictionto “Atatürk’s” notion of a pre-Islamic Turkish nationalism conWned to Anatoliaand completely loyal and subservient to himself. The Hearths were closed in1932, and People’s Houses were opened in 14 provinces to introduce the newvision of Kemalist society to the periphery. The People’s Houses sought to disseminatesecularism and nationalism by creating connections between the ruraland urban populations. 64