Islamic Political Identity in Turkey

62 islamic political identity in turkeyon June 16, 1950, after Parliament passed a DP resolution to nullify article526 of the Criminal Code, which penalized the call to prayer in Arabic with ajail sentence of three to six months and a Wne of one to three thousand Turkishliras, the DP rushed to pass a new rigid law to protect the stature and reputationof Mustafa Kemal.Actually, there was a rising tide of anti-Atatürk sentiment and actions inthe country after 1950. In response, the DP passed the Law to Penalize Anti-Atatürk Criminal Conduct on July 25, 1951. This law was aimed at the TijaniSuW order’s attacks on Atatürk’s oYcially omnipresent busts and statues as hatedsymbols of persecution and representatives of a pagan ideology. 7 The law madeit illegal to deface images of Atatürk or to insult his memory, and the leader ofthe Tijani order, Kemal Pilavo;lu, was sentenced to Wfteen years for his actionsagainst Atatürk memorabilia. 8 The DP also used its parliamentary power to enacta law closing the Peoples’ Houses on August 8, 1951. 9While trying to protect the Kemalist legacy, the DP also created conditionsfavorable for the publication of Said Nursi’s long-banned Epistles of Light afterthe Higher Criminal Court of Afyon decided on May 25, 1956, that “there is nocriminal and threatening element” in the writings of Said Nursi. 10 While theopposition CHP criticized the DP for violating the principle of secularism andpoliticizing religion, ambiguity continued to be reXected in the DP’s contradictoryresponses to the desires of the periphery and the center. In 1959, for example,the minister of home aVairs used police force to prevent the burial ofthe most prominent Nak7ibendi sheik of the period, Süleyman Hilmi Tunahan,in the garden of Istanbul’s Fatih Mosque. 11 In addition, the government did notallow Said Nursi to enter Ankara, although following his death on March 23,1960, some high-ranking local DP politicians participated in his funeral in Urfa.These ambiguous policies toward religious issues force me to conclude that theargument about the DP pursuing a pro-Islamic policy, especially after its setbackin the 1957 election, are inaccurate. 12The co-optation of Islamic groups varied according to time and the issueconcerned. During this period, the DP government carefully co-opted certainIslamic groups, for example, the Nurcus and Nak7ibendis, into the political systemto expand its electoral base. This co-optation helped the DP to consolidateits position within society as a network of politics and the state under the DPgradually realized the signiWcance of Islam and tried to “normalize” its policiestoward Islamic institutions and informal networks. The DP’s liberal policiestoward Islam prevented the radicalization of religious groups and expanded thesocial basis of the state by integrating religious groups into the system. However,under the Cold War conditions, the Turkish state, alongside Americanstrategy, gradually utilized Islamic movements as a front against communismand the Left in Turkey. During this period, Islamic movements blended withanti-Russian Turkish nationalism to protect the status quo. In the 1950s and1960s, Islamic movements acquired nationalistic, anticommunist, and conservativefeatures. Thus Islamic movements fully integrated into the center-rightof the Turkish political spectrum. The main goal of the Islamic movement becameWghting against leftist forces.