Islamic Political Identity in Turkey

72 islamic political identity in turkeywith other groups by ignoring their customs and tradition andmother tongue, national history, literature, music, Turkish-Islamicarchitecture, mevlid, the Ottoman military march (Mehter Mar71),their cleanness and respectfulness? The diVerence between aProtestant Russian and a Protestant German, between CatholicItalian and Catholic Spaniard is a fact of life; our diVerenceswith other Muslim nations are just the same kind of nationaldiVerences. 45This ideology was aimed at overriding particularistic interests by stressing thedanger of anarchy and social divisions to the family, nation, and state. The ideologyand solutions of the Intellectuals’ Hearth Association—Islam and nationalism—helpedto shape the 1982 constitution, as two Hearth members were alsokey members of the Constitutional Preparation Committee.The military coup leaders thus used religion, among other means, to secureacceptance of their authority. For example, they turned the D8B into a constitutionalinstitution. Article 136 of the 1982 constitution sets the goal of the D8B as“promoting and consolidating national solidarity and unity.” 46 In addition, article24 required the state to carry out religious and ethical education within the contextof “national solidarity and unity,” stipulating that the state is the only institutionto carry out religious education and making religious education and ethicscourses compulsory in elementary and high schools. In the preparation of article24 in the Consultative Assembly, the framers of the constitution justiWed compulsoryreligious teaching as a means of oVering a “standardized knowledge onIslam” and “a source of national culture, which is the primary task of the state.” 47The constitution expressed the views of the coup leaders, who considered religiouseducation at the time to be an essential “glue” for national unity. Nonetheless, theconstitutional framers argued that the role of teaching “proper” Islamic beliefswas the sole business of the state-run educational system, not a task of privateinstitutions or schools. Thus, while the coup leadership eased up on the intenseantireligious hostility of the early Kemalist period, they also sought to conWne andcontrol all Islamic thought and associational life to suit their narrow power goals.Whereas the Intellectuals’ Hearth Association utilized Islam to overrideother interests and identities, the oYcial D8B simultaneously employed Turkishnationalism to open up more spaces for religious practice. Working in tandem,these two organizations were eVective to a large degree in persuading muchof the public and state oYcials to internalize the new Turkish-Islamic synthesis.This new hegemonic ideology, however, neglected the multicultural characterof Turkish society and the particularity of Kurdish ethnic and Alevi sectarianidentities. Moreover, antinationalist Islamist writers criticized the Turkish-Islamic synthesis as a new pro-American ideology that aimed cynically to manipulateIslamic sentiments to undermine the universality of Islam and the unityof Muslim solidarity by stressing Turkish ethnicity. 48 The left-wing and agnosticKemalists were also critical of the thesis because it toned down the secularaspect of Turkish nationalism and undermined the authenticity of religionresistantKemalist secularism. 49