Islam's Marriage with Neo-Liberalism: State Transformation in Turkey

Islam's Marriage with Neoliberalism State Transformation in Turkey Yildiz Atasoy Islam’s Marriage with Neoliberalism ...

Author: Yildiz Atasoy

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Islam's Marriage with Neoliberalism State Transformation in Turkey

Yildiz Atasoy

Islam’s Marriage with Neoliberalism

Also by Yıldız Atasoy: HEGEMONIC TRANSITIONS, THE STATE AND CRISIS IN NEOLIBERAL CAPITALISM (edited) TURKEY, ISLAMISTS AND DEMOCRACY: Transition and Globalization in a Muslim State GLOBAL SHAPING AND ITS ALTERNATIVES (co-edited with William K. Carroll)

Islam’s Marriage with Neoliberalism State Transformation in Turkey Yıldız Atasoy

© Yıldız Atasoy 2009 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6-10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2009 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN-13: 978–0–230–54680–6 hardback This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne

For my sister Yasemin

The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear. Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks

Contents

Acknowledgements

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1 Islam’s Marriage with Neoliberalism

1

2 The Allure of the West

32

3 Turkish Islam: Unthinking Kemalism?

70

4 Reconstituting the State: The Islamic Framing of Neoliberalism

107

5 Kemalist State Feminism and the Islamic Dress Code

137

6 Politics Without Guarantees: The Headscarf Ban

164

7 Headscarf Madness: Narratives of Religious Rights

201

8 Conclusion

239

Notes

253

References

256

Index

280

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Acknowledgements I would like to acknowledge Merlin Press Ltd for giving me permission to reproduce the extensively revised version from the following sections of ‘The AKP and neoliberalism,’ ‘The realignment of Turkish capital,’ and ‘The class ambiguities of an Islamic orientation’ sections in Chapter 4, which were published in ‘The Islamic Ethic and the Spirit of Turkish Capitalism Today’ in Socialist Register 2008: Global Flashpoints. I would also like to acknowledge International Publishers for giving me permission to reproduce the epigraph.

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1 Islam’s Marriage with Neoliberalism

In 1999 the Helsinki Summit officially positioned Turkey within the European Union (EU) enlargement process. Since then, Turkey has been undergoing an extraordinary political, economic, and cultural transformation. The Copenhagen Summit of 2002 accelerated this process of change when EU leaders decided on the specific date of 17 December 2004 to review Turkey’s candidacy. In the light of serious efforts undertaken by successive Turkish governments, EU leaders decided at their December 2004 Summit to begin accession negotiations with Turkey on 3 October 2005. These negotiations have been underway since then. The EU Accession Partnership document adopted in 2000 specifies the programme of change for Turkey. It is based on the implementation of the Copenhagen economic and political criteria – which sets membership requirements as determined by the Copenhagen European Council of 1993. The Copenhagen criteria specifies no fewer than 32 policy areas for political reform and 85 areas of economic reform leading to Turkey’s harmonious integration with the EU (Ugur 2004: 75). Since the 1980s Turkey has adopted a number of specific policies to transform its economy from a state-dominated and protectionist model to a market-oriented one, mainly through trade liberalization, privatization, and increasing competitiveness. This has helped Turkey reach the Copenhagen economic objectives. Despite the difficulties in fully implementing EU-induced market-oriented reforms (Faucompret and Konings 2008: 49–150), the European Council sees the most important obstacle to membership in relation to the Copenhagen political criteria. In particular, it urges the government to meet the political objectives of the Copenhagen criteria and institutionalize a west European model of democracy. 1

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Turkey has made important progress with respect to democratization. In 2000 Turkey’s coalition government was comprised of the centreleft Democratic Leftist Party (DSP), the far-right National Action Party (MHP), and the centrist Motherland Party. On 18 March 2000, that government announced its commitment to reform in the National Programme for the Adoption of the Acquis Communautaire (NPAA) and initiated policy change towards satisfying EU preconditions for membership. After coming to power in 2002, the ‘pro-Islamic’ Justice and Development Party (AKP) also declared its commitment to EU membership. It moved forcefully to fulfil the Copenhagen criteria as proclaimed in the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights (Negotiating Framework 2005). The success of the AKP in the national elections of November 2002 was decisive for parliament, enabling the government to act with resolve in meeting EU membership requirements. The AKP received 34.2 per cent of the popular vote and gained 66 per cent of parliamentary seats. It established a single party majority rule for the first time after more than a decade of fragile coalition governments. It also formed the first ever ‘pro-Islamic’ majority government in Turkish history. The notoriously ‘secular’ Republican People’s Party (CHP) received 19.4 per cent of the popular vote and 34 per cent of parliamentary seats, becoming the only opposition party in parliament. Other political parties failed to pass the 10 per cent threshold for representation in parliament. For Recep Tayyip Erdogan (2002), leader of the AKP, EU membership is the single most important project for Turkey since the establishment of the republic in 1923. To fulfil the requirements of this project, the AKP adopted the Emergency Action Plan in 2003 and revised the NPAA instituted by the previous coalition government (LoewendahlErtugal 2005: 38). Under the so-called harmonization laws passed in 2002 and 2003, seven major political reform packages were adopted with the aim of fulfilling the Copenhagen criteria. In order to satisfy the Copenhagen criteria, the AKP has expended tremendous effort instituting significant legislative changes. The government intensified its resolve after the December 2004 Summit of EU leaders. As a result, in the brief period from October 2004 to July 2005, the AKP-majority parliament succeeded in passing 166 laws. The general assembly convened 125 times, having met for a total of 696 hours and generating 33,049 pages of documentation. Parliamentary commissions worked 1231 hours and recorded 17,200 pages of deliberation (Turkish Daily News 21 July 2005). If one includes the reforms adopted by previous governments since 1999, more than a third of the original text of the 1982 Constitution (prepared under the undemocratic conditions


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of the 1980 military coup) was amended (Ozbudun and Yazici 2004). Significant improvements were realized in the protection of fundamental rights and liberties, including freedom of religion and conscience, freedom of expression, and freedom of association (Denli 2007: 97). Turkey’s traditional secularist elite, most notably the military and judiciary bureaucracy, often views the AKP’s pursuit of EU-oriented democratic reforms as an attempt to institutionalize Islamization-bystealth. The AKP is accused of gradually shifting the emphasis in state ideology from Kemalism to Islamism, an accusation which has deepened cultural tension within Turkey. This tension has been partly ‘created’ by the military and judiciary to justify their frequent interventions in politics in the name of strengthening the Kemalist foundation of the state. Kemalism is the official ideology of the Turkish state, named after the founder of the Republic of Turkey, Mustafa Kemal. It represents a path taken by ruling civil–military cadres in their institutionalization of national sovereignty through a state-led economic developmentalism and secular nationalism known as laiklik. Kemalism has fundamentally shaped the direction of relations between rulers and ruled and continues to frame the particular content of political struggles over inclusion, exclusion, domination, and subordination. With the establishment of the nation-state, civil–military bureaucratic cadres were elevated to a politically dominant position from which they could safeguard that frame (Atasoy 2005: 23–85). Due to the fact that Kemalism formed the state under the tutelage of bureaucratic cadres, the AKP-led reform programme directing Turkey towards the EU also presents a challenge to the power of civil–military bureaucratic cadres. It raises the possibility that Kemalism can be revised to permit political renegotiations around the relations between rulers and ruled. The three most contentious areas in these relations consist of the military’s frequent interventions in politics, Muslim women’s wearing of the headscarf, and the Kurdish issue. These three issues are closely connected to a transformation in the Kemalist basis of the state which is deeply embedded in the constitution.

Transformation in the Kemalist state An interesting case in point was the military’s opposition to the election of Abdullah Gul, the AKP’s candidate for the presidency in 2007, simply because his wife wears the turban, a fashionable form of headscarf frequently worn by young Islamic women. General Yasar Buyukanit, then chief of general staff, expressed this opposition in an e-mail hastily posted on the General Staff Website. This has become

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known as the e-memorandum of 27 April 2007. The note advised that ‘the fundamental founding principles of the state of the Republic of Turkey, most importantly the laiklik principle’ must be protected. Laiklik is a form of secular nationalism which refers to the state’s control over religious institutions and religious practices. It redirects nationalist sentiments around a singular unifying culture. The result has been an authoritarian concept of national culture that emphasizes homogeneity, political unity, and solidarity (Koker 1995). The General Staff justified its political intervention by declaring that ‘the Turkish Armed Forces is one of the parties in laiklik discussions and its absolute defender . . . loyalty to the Republican regime must be demonstrated through action, not on the surface but in essence’ (Genelkurmay Baskanlıgı 27 April 2007, my translation). The General Staff’s warning received strong support from the CHP and the DSP which organized large rallies in Ankara, Istanbul, and Izmir in April and May of 2007. Banners carried at the rallies declared the turban a ‘reactionary flag’ and accused the AKP’s presidential candidate of being a threat to the ‘laik’ republic (Yayla 2007). The Constitutional Court exacerbated the election controversy by re-examining the parliamentary by-laws and related constitutional provisions, and then questioning whether the number of deputies who participated in parliamentary voting was adequate for the session to be legally valid (Today’s Zaman 28 April 2007). For Ergun Ozbudun (2007), a professor of constitutional law at Bilkent University, the judicial intervention was aimed at disrupting parliamentary procedural process, thereby predisposing parliament to apprehension and doubt in its effort to exercise legislative power. Both the military’s veiled e-coup and the legal manoeuvring by the Constitutional Court served to strengthen accusations of Islamizationby-stealth levelled at the AKP. This in turn reinforced a politics of Islamic resentment against the laik state bureaucracy. The Islamization-by-stealth accusation was played out in the 22 July 2007 national election and resulted in the AKP securing another five-year term in government. In the July 2007 election the AKP increased its popular vote to 46.7 per cent, up from 34.28 per cent in the 2002 election. Abdullah Gul became president soon after. The CHP and the DSP, which formed a centre-left coalition, received 20.87 per cent of the vote. The far-right MHP secured 14.3 per cent of the vote. During the elections the AKP adopted a ‘liberal’ stance, as opposed to the statist, nationalist platform of the centre-left CHP–DSP coalition and the far-right MHP. The position of the CHP–DSP and the MHP in part reflects their opposition to the AKP-led liberalization programmes adopted to fulfil EU Copenhagen


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criteria. They argue that the AKP has become acquiescent in the face of EU pressure to adopt specific policies. Central to this argument is the implication that some EU membership requirements may undermine national sovereignty. The CHP–DSP and MHP have also accused the government of not taking a strong stand against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), the outlawed Kurdish separatist organization. Most importantly, it remains unacceptable for many on the centre-left that the AKP has an Islam-sensitive perspective on certain policies that outlaw the wearing of the headscarf by university students and state employees, as well as on policies that impose restrictions on religious education in general. However, for the MHP, whose nationalism is more closely tied with Islamic sensibilities, the AKP’s Islam-sensitive policy orientation appears acceptable. Regardless of their differences, both the CHP–DSP and the MHP display a strong commitment to Kemalism and favour an interventionist, strong state. The AKP, on the other hand, supports policies that more generally favour limiting the interventionist capacity of the state through liberal–democratic reforms. While then Chief of General Staff Buyukanit did not dispute the national election results, or the subsequent parliamentary election of President Gul, he insisted on the need to repeat his warning that the Turkish Armed Forces ‘do not change [their views] from day to day . . . We are fully behind what we said in April . . .’ (Falk 2007: 14). Given the military bureaucracy’s continual justification of its warnings by reference to the notion of an Islamic threat, it is not surprising that this has caused citizens to greatly resent the military’s portrayal of Islam as a constant threat to the state. This resentment has been further deepened by the military bureaucracy assuming guardianship over civilian politics (Saribay 2007). The judicial bureaucracy continues to accuse the AKP of Islamizationby-stealth. Only eight months after the AKP’s election victory in July 2007 (with approximately 47 per cent of the vote), the Constitutional Court voted unanimously to hear a case calling for the banning of the AKP, and the barring of the prime minister, president, and 69 other party members from active politics. Abdurrahman Yalcinkaya, chief prosecutor of the High Court of Appeals, brought the case to court in March 2008. In an 162-page document, he accused the AKP government of aiming to transform a secular country into an Islamic state, indicating that ‘this risk has been increasing every day’ (Rainford 2008). In his petition the chief prosecutor claimed that ‘the real aim of the party . . . [is] to bring religion into education and into public institutions – and eventually overturn the secular state’ (Rainford 2008). This case has come to

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be known as a ‘judicial coup.’ The staunchly secular former president Ahmet Necdet Sezer, well-known for using his veto power to undermine the government, appointed eight of the 11 court judges. The basis for the legal challenge noted above was parliament’s approval of a constitutional amendment to lift a ban on wearing the headscarf in university – a ban strictly enforced on campuses since 1997 when the military ousted a democratically elected government by accusing them of being Islamist. The parliamentary vote lifting the ban was carried with 401 in favour and 110 against. It allowed university students to wear the headscarf if tied under the chin but continued to ban more enveloping versions (BBC News 7 February 2008). The selfdeclared defenders of the laik order, including the military and judicial bureaucracy, view lifting the headscarf ban as only a first step in the government’s attempt to ultimately Islamize the state. The accusation by military and judicial bureaucrats that the AKP is engaged in Islamization-by-stealth is based on a belief that the AKP’s leadership cadre and founding members have maintained an ideological commitment to the pro-Islamic national view movement. To support this claim, the political upbringing of leading AKP members within that movement is often mentioned. Included in this group are Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, President Abdullah Gul, and former Parliamentary Speaker Bulent Arinc. Because of the political background of the AKP’s founding members, some critics see the AKP as a reformist extension of the national view manifestation of political Islam (Gungor 2002). However, the AKP, as the 6th ‘pro-Islamic’ party established since the late 1960s, has distanced itself from the national view ideology of former pro-Islamic parties. Under the leadership of Necmettin Erbakan for more than 40 years, the national view movement has critiqued western imperialism and Turkey’s adoption of western modernity as the source of its economic problems, its political–military dependency, and its declining national sovereignty. According to national view ideology, structural imbalances generated by western political and military dominance in the operation of the world economy induced powerlessness in the Turkish state and undermined its capacity to produce effective and autonomous social policy. In an attempt to find a remedy, the national view positioned Islam as a social–cultural value in its formulation of a non-western route to economic development. A rearrangement of the economy and society required a decoupling from western-dominated structures of power and a rapprochement with Muslim states. From this perspective, Islam was seen as the source of a moral ethos of scientific development and


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technological achievement. The national view upheld a collective identification with Islam as a source of national culture and regarded Islamic ideals and cultural practices as central to spiritual transformation. It also envisaged a politically strong state able to cultivate Islamic moral principles and spirituality in the national consciousness. In short, the national view aimed to relate an Islamic ethos to the techno-scientific world, and to re-embed economic activity in social relations governed by Islamic morality (Atasoy 2005: 115–45). Having said this, it must be underscored that the national view represented an articulation of the capitalist economy, technology, culture, and Islam within a state-led national economic developmentalism. The AKP, on the other hand, does not wish to decouple Turkey from western-dominated structures of power. It seeks EU membership as an important step in Turkey’s economic and political reconstruction. The AKP represents a gradual movement away from a state-led developmentalism in keeping with EU Copenhagen criteria. It defines itself as a conservative democratic political party which stands for the ‘societal centre’ (Erdogan 2007). Effectively positioned in a social reconstruction project, the ‘societal centre’ symbolizes the political mobilization of newly rich Anatolian and Istanbul-based capitalists, small producers, and women with concerns over the headscarf ban, as well as Kurds with ethno-cultural claims. The coalition also includes some members of the CHP–DSP and Islam-sensitive nationalist MHP disheartened over the state-centrism of these political parties. Notable examples from the Left here include former secretary general of the CHP, Ertugrul Gunay, who is currently an elected minister of culture in the AKP government, and DSP founding member Haluk Ozdalga, currently an elected AKP parliamentarian. The AKP is establishing a more inclusive form of politics that incorporates economically, culturally, politically, and regionally divergent groups into a neoliberal political imaginary – all filtered through an EU-inspired process of trans-nationalization. This undermines the pro-Islamic national view ideology, which still maintains that western cultural norms and practices have a corrupting influence (Atasoy 2009a: 170). The AKP-led liberalization programme also challenges the bureaucratic–authoritarian implementation of Kemalist state-centric principles. To be sure, there are clear ideological differences in views on the desired politico–cultural basis for the state. The AKP views the current expression of Kemalism as an embodiment of social control through bureaucratic vigilantism. Grounded in the authoritarian practices of state-ruling civil–military bureaucrats, the Kemalist project created an

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important cultural hierarchy. It consisted of a privileged few among an unelected bureaucratic elite and secularly oriented bourgeoisie on the one side, and a large segment of the general Muslim population on the other, whom Kemalist bureaucrats have questioned in regard to their cultural suitability for modernity (Atasoy 2007: 122). The AKP’s support of policies directed towards Turkey’s EU membership has only exacerbated the long-standing tension between a strong bureaucratic adherence to laik unitary ideology within the Kemalist interventionist state and a weak commitment to pluralism and divergence in cultural practices outside state authority. The current surfacing of tension signals a path favoured by the AKP of transferring power through parliamentary negotiation and debate. In its push for EU membership, the AKP raises the possibility of a mutable Kemalist frame which directly confronts the authoritarian bureaucratic base of the state. The April 2008 ‘judicial coup’ is significant here because under the pretence of defending laiklik it masked a power struggle over who was to lead state transformation in Turkey. The military and judiciary bureaucratic elites who see themselves as defenders of the laik Kemalist order have strategically positioned themselves against a newly empowered group of Muslims who claim to combine their Muslim beliefs with a commitment to secular principles of the state. The AKP’s challenge is to ensure the bureaucratic acceptability of certain groups who identify with modes of social experience that transcend traditional Kemalist cultural boundaries of citizenship. Included in these groups are newly wealthy Muslim capitalists, women with concerns over the headscarf ban, and Kurds with ethno-cultural claims. The laik-Islamic antimony tends to correlate with a long continuum of different positions in regard to Turkey’s modernity project. This turns in large part on a rethinking of material structures of solidarity and recognition: a transformation wrought through a state-led economic developmentalism which articulated economic policy and growth in national terms, and a laik notion of nationalism which constructs the ‘nation’ as a culturally unified territorial community. Kemalism has been key in ideologically framing a state-centric national developmentalism and laiklik as a project of modernity. Defined as a ‘collective mobility project’ (Sarfatti-Larson 1977), it has been pursued politically by state-ruling bureaucrats generating a support base for the placement of a segment of the population on a ‘bourgeoisification trajectory’ (King and Szelenyi 2004: 110). This segment has consisted of individuals with urban, highly educated, westernized, and secularized backgrounds. Of course, no political parties have been consistent over time in their commitment to the


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bureaucratically pursued embourgeoisement project. Nevertheless, it is true that the discursive attachment to Kemalism by both centre-left and far-right political parties is embedded in a dream of national sovereignty to be realized through state-led economic developmentalism. For the AKP, on the other hand, Kemalism has primarily entailed strong state authority imposing itself on society as a territorial discipline. The AKP has extrapolated the implications of this for a reduction in state interventionist power in the material and cultural dimensions of social life, thus bringing the AKP into conflict with the defenders of the Kemalist state-centrism. Most notably, these defenders are the military and civilian judiciary bureaucrats, as well as centre-left and far-right nationalist political parties. The AKP, in contrast, aims to reconfigure society through a neoliberal discursive synthesis between a Muslim cultural orientation and European standards. It does so through a liberal turn against the nationalist rhetoric of cultural homogeneity, which, it has been assumed, can be achieved through an ideological adherence to laiklik. Interestingly, close inspection of the AKP’s official ideological stance, party programme, and political campaign documents reveals that the AKP has never presented an anti-Kemalist, anti-laik position, contrary to what secularist propaganda would suggest. Still, the debate is very real because for the AKP the ideological domination of Kemalist statecentrism has strengthened bureaucratic power in the state. This power has been associated with an adherence to statist developmentalism in organizing territorial politics that favours private industrialists but disadvantages large segments of Anatolian population. In contrast, the AKP’s policies aim to reorganize the Kemalist state and its privileged political alliance structure by adopting a more liberal–democratic political stance and a neoliberal market-oriented economic model that might be achieved through Turkey’s EU membership. At stake here is the transformation of the Kemalist state. The AKP flourishes in relation to its political renegotiation of the Kemalist political order through an Islamic resignification of cultural issues. It challenges the authoritarian fundamentals of the state, but without being overtly religious and without shattering the laik foundation of the modernity project. Nonetheless, it grafts the Kemalist dream of national sovereignty and development onto a trans-nationalized political space. Despite the fact that the AKP upholds dominant Islamic normative standards, its ideological outlook is based on blending a Muslim cultural orientation with Euro-American values. The AKP has declared its commitment to the promotion in Turkish politics of key norms from

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western liberal thought. These include human rights, individual freedoms, political participation, secularism, and liberal democracy (Duran 2004a: 134). Clearly differentiated from the national view orientation of former pro-Islamic political parties, Erdogan’s Islam-sensitive AKP articulates a discourse of culture that resignifies the ideological orientation of Islam through an attachment to liberal democratic principles. Three central areas of concern are deeply implicated in the AKP’s Islamic resignification: the military’s frequent interventions in politics, Muslim women’s wearing of the headscarf in university, and the Kurdish issue. Each of these three contentious areas ties the AKP’s Islamism to norms of liberal democracy, personal freedom, and cultural expression. It is these issues that tend to frame a shift in state–citizen relations in Turkey, which the AKP implicitly links to interpretive conflicts within the Kemalist trajectory of state formation. In this way the AKP is gradually reworking the state-centric ethos of Kemalism through a ‘neoliberal synthesis’ (van der Pijl 2006: 26) between a cultural construction of interpretive meanings and material conflicts over those meanings within the state. What cannot be overstated, however, is that this reconfiguration of the Kemalist state is not opposed to secularism. Once again the question is: How does an Islamic cultural construction of meanings that is specifically tied to Turkey’s EU membership intersect with neoliberal restructuring of the state and the economy?

Islam’s adherence to a neoliberal credo The AKP frames its ideas and policies relating to the attachment of Islam with neoliberalism in the context of Turkey’s EU membership. Emphasis is given to some of Islam’s moral–ethical and cultural dimensions, which are resignified in conjunction with Euro-American normative categories. Prime Minister Erdogan articulates the intersection of Islamic meanings with neoliberalism as part of a social transformation rooted in ‘. . . the reproduction of our own authentic value systems on the basis of our deeply rooted ideational tradition, along with the universal standards adopted within a conservative political orientation’ (quoted in Akdogan 2004: 13, my translation and emphasis). Although it unsettles the national view perspective, Erdogan’s act of resignification locates an Islamic outlook within a binary view that distinguishes between what is authentic and what is universal. It is in conjunction with the implementation of Copenhagen political criteria and associated power relations that Erdogan envisages a reconceptualization of Turkey’s ‘authentic’


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value systems, along with the ‘universal’ standards. A closer reading of Erdogan’s statement, however, reveals that ‘authentic’ and ‘universal’ have a meaning far more complicated than is at first apparent. In his statement, Erdogan views the principles of liberal democracy, individual freedoms, and human rights as categorical expressions of universal standards in which the reproduction of national cultural values should be anchored. Edward Said (1979), Slavoj Žižek (2001: 152), and Immanuel Wallerstein (2006) would argue that this view represents a mode of knowledge that describes particularities of European local traditions in universal terms. This comes to mean a ‘distorted representation’ of universalism. For Žižek (2008: 294), distortion is ‘asserted as the site of universality: universality appears as the distortion of the particular’ (emphasis original). Consequently, Erdogan’s appeal to the universal is not because of its genuineness or distortions, but because of its representation of categorical meanings for the cultural construction of interpretive expressions. Globalized as a universal, ‘norm-setting context, [and] fostering a particular outlook’ (van der Pijl 2006: 19), European ways thus become intertwined with an Islamic reframing of interpretive meanings for a social change model. ‘The translatability of European particularities to a norm-setting position is clearly not a trans-historical phenomenon’ (Atasoy 2009a: 171), but a historically contested negotiation of standards that prevail in the reconfiguration of the state and political economy. Contestation is about the political domination of a mode of knowledge in ‘bracketing off the economy from the sphere of political choice’ (van der Pijl 2006: 29). An Islamic intersection with European framing of neoliberal practices gains a meaning within this context among the social forces which utilize a distinct neoliberal imaginary in the social and material relations of reconstituting the Kemalist state. Here, the very idea of the reproduction of authenticity seems to have acquired a broader meaning. It now includes a redefinition of a ‘knowledge structure’ (Gill 2000), an ‘ontology,’ which is integral to an understanding of state transformation – and through which political struggle over the renegotiation of standards and recognition of societal differences take place. In Turkey, this helps to reconstitute a broader controversy between ‘laiks’ and ‘Islamists’ – one which has characterized intellectual debate in Turkey since the nineteenth century (Atasoy 2005). Erdogan’s search for an authentic culture presents a counterclaim to the ideological dominance of the Kemalist knowledge structure and its explanation of socio-historical reality. The AKP’s struggle to reconfigure the Kemalist state is taking place within the territorial space of the state but is constituted through

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the incorporation of global processes. Erdogan’s resignification of Muslim cultural values and practices through the adoption of European standards subjects national policy making to a particular kind of negotiations that at least partially lifts the ‘national encasements’ (Sassen 2007b: 50) of policy agendas made by the Kemalist nationalist elite. To the extent that the political negotiations are contingent at the national territorial level on material and cultural tensions and conflicts, a particular restructuring still entails a project of transformation within the state through a process of transnationalization, rather than ‘the boundary-transcending practices’ of a post-nationalist politics (Beck and Grande 2007: 113–14). However, it is difficult to name the resulting form of the national state emerging as a historical outcome of neoliberalism. To be sure, Erdogan’s ‘search for an authentic culture through transnationalization’ undermines Kemalist epistemology of state-centrism as a specific historical phenomenon of the 1930s. However, Kemalism is constitutionally safeguarded, and, therefore, maintains its enduring political significance as a frame of reference in ideological and material conflicts. Grounded in the political dominance of certain groups, namely state bureaucrats and large private industrial capitalists, Kemalism remains relevant to the political negotiations. Erdogan’s search for ‘authenticity’ and political mobilization of the ‘societal centre’ represent a shift in the primacy of state-centrism in the cultural, imaginative, and material relations of citizens. This also entails an Islamic ‘reworking of the idea of civic nationalism’ (Calhoun 2007: 16) away from statist laiklik, insofar as the Kemalist knowledge structure in refiguring the state still matters. In order to uncover the ‘contingent content’ (Wallerstein 2006) of an Islamic state reconstitution project, we must therefore explore the actual events and processes involved in organizing the ruling relations of emergent forms in the context of Turkey’s EU membership. This book pushes the question of a rearticulated discourse of social change further, in a direction that allows us to address the remaking of Islamic politics in terms of the substantial transformations that are taking place within states in relation to the neoliberal restructuring of capitalism. If social theory is to contribute to our understanding of state transformation, it must give us a systematic account of both the opportunities for and constraints on historical possibilities of social change. Such possibilities are not fixed but constantly negotiated within a specific conjuncture of global political economy. My contention is that the material and discursive conditions associated


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with both domestic and international power dynamics are expressed in the political reframing of an Islamic project of state transformation. I aim to uncover the ‘contingent content’ of Islamic resignification against the background of Turkey’s EU membership, the very site for the political assertion of universality that naturalizes the neoliberal market economy in Turkey. This demands an exploration of how diverse sets of political orientations, normative standards, and cultural practices are brought together under a disciplinary neoliberal form of capitalism. In explaining his assertion of universality as the ‘distortion of the particular,’ as I have also discussed elsewhere (Atasoy 2009a: 171–2), Žižek (2000: 313) argues that in politics, ‘universality’ is asserted when an agent posits itself as the direct embodiment of universality against all others within the global order. The agent of universality consists not only of international drivers of market-oriented policy reforms, but of publicly invisible members of the ‘symbolic class’ (Žižek 2000: 322). Empirical research on ‘international coercion’ – defined as the exertion of international pressures for policy imitation among countries (Campbell 2004; DiMaggio and Powell 1983; Henisz, Zelner, and Guillen 2005) – focuses on the role of dominant states (Kogut and Macpherson 2003) and multilateral organizations (Rude 2005) in affecting policy results. I suggest that it is not only the EU, the United States, the IMF, and the World Bank that exert pressure on policy as agents of international coercion. Members of the symbolic class also play a significant role, particularly from within. The symbolic class includes religious groups, academics, scholars, journalists, and others whose domain of work involves the production of a worldview or symbolic universe. In the Turkish context, this includes Sufi orders and religious communities such as the Fethullahcilar, Islamic intellectuals, writers, poets, and journalists. These individuals and groups are actively making history by creating cultural repertoires and steering ideological frames of action in a specific direction. These entanglements have consequences for Islamic reworking of the state. Clearly, there are disagreements among members of various groups within the symbolic class in terms of the actual content of ideas, their construction, and political direction. Therefore, it is important that we uncover how divergent views and political standpoints are brought together in the refiguring of an Islamic stance. While there are powerful global pressures on governments to adopt particular policies, it is wrong to assume that specific policies adopted under international pressure produce a coherent outcome at the

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aggregate level. The nationally diverse social conditions in institutional arrangements and social–cultural settings within the global system create multiple possibilities for policy direction (Block 1986). At issue here then is not only that governments respond to coercive pressures but that they conform to and embody the ontological frames of a neoliberal market economy. This further complicates my fundamental question: How does an Islamic political orientation that is tied to Turkey’s EU membership articulate with neoliberalism? How are we to answer this? I argue that an exploration of how diverse sets of political orientations, normative standards and practices are brought together should also take into account how a neoliberal policy framework has achieved an epistemic value to be emulated. It is easy to see why an Islam-sensitive AKP would be pragmatic in emulating neoliberal policy patterns. While it may have an ideological desire to reduce state intervention in the economy, the AKP also tends to adapt to political realities. Given its tendency to conform to the norms and social structure of the EU, the AKP may strengthen its political status and legitimize its efforts to restructure public politics in Turkey. However, while its policies may be consistent with the normative patterns of the EU, these policies must also have coherence within the institutional, social arrangements of the neoliberal global market economy. Thus, an interesting empirical question emerges: In the light of diverse institutional conditions, national differences, and local particularities, how is normative conformity to the EU model mediated by local factors in such a way that both the EU and Islamic standards are reconciled? In other words, in what ways are various intervening factors (such as the headscarf ban and the Kurdish issue) subject to negotiation, reframing, and reinterpretation? An effective, systematic exploration of this question must account for the links between participation in global structures of power and the reproduction of moral claims and symbolic attachments involved in incorporating a given ontological strand. This book builds on theories that conceptualize the political shaping of the capitalist economy as a historically constructed process (Arrighi 1994; Block 1977; McMichael 2004; Polanyi 1944; Tilly 1990; van der Pijl 1984). Moreover, the present work develops the categories and concepts necessary to uncover the discursive interpretive struggles within the specific processes of current political and economic restructuring. I also expand on the idea that discursive battles offer analytical leverage which sheds light on the moral–emotional–cultural reception of international models (Molnar 2005).


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The epistemic privilege of globalization and democratization discourses Both ‘globalization’ and ‘democratization’ discourses constitute significant aspects of an ontology for the transnational integration of European political space – through their domestic effects on economic, political, and social change. The dominant policy orientation framing the EU’s enlargement criteria has been a large-scale restructuring of member states’ national economies along a market-driven neoliberal capitalist economy model and a broader process of state transformation consistent with liberal democratic principles (Keating 2004; Smith and Timmins 2000; Ugur and Canefe 2004; van der Pijl 2006). In this respect, the EU acts as an ‘agent of international coercion’ (Henisz, Zelner, and Guillen 2005: 875). When membership is conditional on the adoption and implementation of reforms, its coercion is direct. When it influences a shift in domestic coalition politics in favour of a political faction which supports a given policy, the coercion is more indirect. There is also a threat of direct or indirect punishment if reforms are not implemented. In this case, the threat includes the rejection of membership or a long delay in membership negotiations, or the imposition of further reforms which again may alter domestic coalition politics and policy struggles in favour of a specific approach to policy making (Atasoy 2009a: 172). The AKP-led policy changes adopted to integrate Turkey into the EU have grafted the transformation of the Turkish state and culture onto an EU discursive framework. Although accession negotiations have been underway since 2005, the EU may never grant Turkey full membership status. This conditional status allows the EU to exercise direct coercion on Turkey’s policy making, which significantly affects available political options, high-stakes policy orientations, rival positions, and plausible alternatives. By conditioning the historical moment, membership requirements figure in the normative values and political objectives of those competing for power to control the direction of change. Here, the international coerciveness of the EU is indirect. It runs through contentious political positions between the AKP which stands for neoliberalism and the CHP–DSP and the MHP which continue to formulate a nationalist–statist response. Consequently, creating opportunities for a move away from the Kemalist path, EU policy impositions have been the greater source of conflict among various political parties, including the bureaucratic cadres. This is especially evident in terms of the democratization process in Turkey.

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Neoliberal restructuring of the economy is not a major area of conflict among political parties. A market-based development model has been embraced since the adoption of the 24 January measures in 1980, and was firmly consolidated after the September 1980 military coup. From that time on, various governments have pursued policies to actually implement neoliberal market capitalism, thus gradually shifting Turkey’s economic policy orientation from a state-dominated and protectionist model (Atasoy 2005). Moreover, Turkey has been incorporated into the European free trade system since 1995. The large, secularly oriented business groups organized around Türk Sanayicilari ve I˙s Adamları Derne˘gi (TUSIAD), the pro-Islamic business groups represented by Müstakil Sanayici ve I˙s¸ Adamları Derne˘gi (MUSIAD), and many highly educated technical professionals are all strong supporters of the market economy model (Atasoy 2003/2004). Virtually all political parties agree on the neoliberal principles of privatization of public corporations, foreign direct investment, liberalization of trade, and entrepreneurship. These are seen as the keys to long-term economic growth and wealth creation for everyone, although disagreements exist over the correct state polices to implement them. Still, one should not exaggerate policy differences in regard to their adherence to ‘the neo-liberal creed’ (Arrighi 2007: 353). According to a survey conducted by Radikal (28 July 2007), AKP supporters are more ‘tolerant’ with respect to foreign ownership of state-owned companies and real estate purchases, but their level of tolerance is not high enough to single them out as staunch supporters of foreign ownership. The disapproval rate for all political party supporters remains a very high 63.5 per cent for foreign ownership of state enterprises, and 59.2 per cent for foreign real estate purchases. Differences emerge in terms of the degree of opposition to foreign ownership. The far-right MHP has a very high disapproval level of 80.2 per cent and 78 per cent against foreign ownership of state enterprises and real estate purchases respectively. The centre-left CHP’s disapproval also remains at very high levels, 69.3 per cent and 62.9 per cent respectively (Radikal 28 July 2007). Nevertheless, both the far-right MHP and the centre-left CHP welcome foreign direct investment for Turkey’s economic growth (CHP Bulten Icerikleri 2008; CHP Parti Politikalari 2008; MHP Ozellestirme Raporu 2009).1 For both political parties, this should be in tandem with a slower pace of neoliberal restructuring and, more generally, greater selective privatization of public companies through a ‘dispersed shareholding model’ (Sher 2009: 188) rather than the block sales of companies.


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A more general area of controversy in Turkey’s tangled political terrain involves the actions of the AKP government in generating cultural meanings to frame EU-oriented changes around an ‘individual rights and freedoms’ discourse. These new meanings are now leading to the transformation of the Kemalist state. Pertinent questions that follow from this include: What are the normative and institutional opportunities and constraints faced in making policy within these larger material and discursive conditions of change? How is EU membership linked to these rival definitions of national culture and state building? As Turkey charts its course for European transnational integration, what kind of state and cultural politics may develop? And how will Islamic sensibilities remain influential in the reshaping of power dynamics? What forms of moral–political life will be configured for individual citizens? And how will individuals be enabled to engage in this new cultural ethos? This book, then, explores the links between policies related to Turkey’s EU membership and the production of moral claims, discursive orientations, and symbolic attachments. These links are contingently centred on the organization of a neoliberal market-based political economy. We know from reading Karl Polanyi’s (1944) The Great Transformation that liberal knowledge about human nature, and ideas about land, labour, and money as commodities played a crucial role in the constitution of nineteenth-century market society around the ‘self-regulating market’ principle. Through the 1980s, 1990s, and beyond, neoliberal ideas articulated around ‘globalization’ and ‘democratization’ discourses have been immensely powerful in the recreation of what Polanyi calls a market society on a global basis. In terms of EU-integration policies, neoliberal ideas constitute the discursive framework for the transnational integration of European political space. National policy debates are positioned within this context. However, it is not an easy task to explain how an Islamic orientation plays a culturally constitutive role – acting as a cultural engine of change around the neoliberal discursive mode of argument. This book helps explain how an Islamic social change programme is being attached to the EU’s neoliberal discursive framework.

Globalization discourse At present there is no consensual understanding in regard to a single referent for studying globalization (Rossi 2007). Nonetheless, much sociological theorizing centres ‘globalization’ around the neoliberal principles and policy ideas adopted to restructure capitalism and restore an

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open world market economy. This is mainly carried out through the liberalization of domestic economies and trade, the privatization of various forms of public property, services, and policy making, entrepreneurship, and new managerial arrangements (Atasoy 2009b: 7). Globalization is a complex political process involving the restructuring of capital and classes, the reorganization of states and political alliances, and the reconfiguration of societies and social life. There is no doubt that liberalization and privatization policies adopted since the 1980s have altered prevailing ways of exercising power in many countries, although they have not taken hold to the same degree in different countries (Henisz, Zelner, and Guillen 2005: 873). State institutions and practices have been transformed and reconfigured in the process. Beatrice Hibou (2004) defines this as ‘privatization of the state.’ This process concerns not only the gradual withdrawal of the state from welfare provisions and the privatization of public economic enterprises and services, but the privatization of various state practices in policy, norm, and law-making. It underpins an elaborate process of transforming state institutions and practices to facilitate the exercise of power in the direction of what Colin Leys (2007) has called ‘total capitalism.’ For Hibou (2004: 1–45), state transformation does not necessarily mean loss of control by the holders of state power in favour of private actors gaining autonomy, because the range of forms of state intervention and political regulation has in fact been widened. What is involved here is the recombining of forms of the public and the private, which Yves Chevrier (2004) coins the refiguring of ‘historical paths of the political.’ Somers and Block (2005: 260–1) have used the term ‘market fundamentalism’ to describe the neoliberal restructuring of capitalism, due to the ‘religious-like certitude [on the part of] those who believe in the moral superiority of organizing all dimensions of social life according to market principles.’ This is not merely a shift in emphasis, although the precise ways in which the neoliberal reconfiguring of the economy, state forms, and society is occurring remain unclear. Much uncertainty arises from the mutation in the very notions of what is private and what is public, as well as the location of the social and the political as a condition of human activities. Of course, these are not new questions. Hannah Arendt (1958: 22–78) demonstrated that these ideas have never been self-evident and static. What is significant for the purposes of this book is the need to underscore the fact that the state is being reconfigured as the very notion of private and public is being altered. Under the specific conditions of Turkey, changes in the Kemalist state are transforming the old modalities of public space organized


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for state-dominated ways of life, including religion. Private space has long been crafted for the home, family, and faith. The reconfiguring of the Kemalist state is not the unmitigated outcome of various Islamic groups working towards the ‘retreat of the state’ (Strange 1996). But it does relate to the question of the production of ideas and meanings beyond the framework of the state. As Chevrier (2004: 253) observes in a different context, the orientation of social action and the production of meaning pass from the state and state-dominated social and normative patterns to the social – a social . . . [produced as] a multiple entry process . . . In this process the possessor of the most official mark of collective recognition – the state – no longer has a privileged position . . . the state is losing the monopoly of institutionalization of the social. This is a complex phenomenon which signifies the mutation of the state-based trajectory of what Ulrick Beck (2000) calls the ‘first modernity.’ And it is occurring through interaction with the historical trajectory of ‘globalization.’ For Beck (2000), the first modernity represents an institutional definition of the social as nationally divided territorial space. Kemalist social engineering certainly belongs to the discursive framing of the first modernity, as a historically specific trajectory of territorial containment. The mutation of the Kemalist state modality involves reconfiguring the social and political relations of emergent forms. Here, Islamic discourse seems to have incorporated global dynamics into the reshaping of the current trajectory of the state through its marriage with neoliberalism. A relevant question follows from this: How is EU membership linked to the reconfiguring of the state through an Islamic reshaping of power dynamics? Neoliberalism reconfigures the social and political around a belief in the ontological primacy of market economic frames of reference as a way of acting within the economy and the state. This belief in the market is embedded in a knowledge culture which Margaret Somers (1995a) calls a ‘conceptual network.’ It combines assumptions about the creation of a ‘market society’ around a self-regulating market principle. The logic in the creation of a market society is rooted in the diffusion of certain normative assumptions such as liberalism, the minimum state, and privatization of public enterprises and the economy. Polanyi (1944) has argued that these normative assumptions sustain the idea of a self-regulating market imagined as a unified and coherent

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economy operating through autonomous price-setting mechanisms of commodity exchange. The epistemological foundation of neoliberal policy-making lies in a theory of separation between the private sphere of the market economy and the public sphere of the administrative state (Somers 1995b). The market economy is the private, anti-political, de-politicized, naturalized side of the dichotomous formulation of what is private and what is public (Somers 1995a: 114; 1999: 123). The private sphere is assumed to exist with its own laws of the economy and imperatives of profit maximization which ‘when untouched by political intervention [,] will tend toward equilibrium and order’ (Somers and Block 2005: 271). This is what Ellen Meiksins Wood (1995: 235) defines as the enclosure of the economic sphere from the political. However, for Polanyi, the emergence of the ‘liberal’ market economy before the turn of the twentieth century was not a result of the freedom of the economic sphere from government intervention. Polanyi (1944: 1–29) has described such a belief in the idea of a self-regulating market economy as a stark utopia. He is referring here to the desire of economic liberalism to realize a self-regulating market through the fictitious commodities of land, labour, and money. Self-regulation implies that all production is for sale; accordingly, there are markets for labour, land, and money. But labour, land, and money are not commodities. They are not produced for sale on the market. ‘[L]abour and land are no other than the human beings themselves of which every society consists and the natural surroundings in which it exists . . . [and] actual money, finally, is merely a token of purchasing power which, as a rule, is not produced at all . . .’ (Polanyi 1944: 71–2). But the fiction of their being so produced became the organizing principle in society (Polanyi 1944: 75). With the help of this fiction, the state and its policies create the conditions and make the arrangements to construct the self-regulating market to which human society becomes subordinate. What gives the market economy an appearance of disembeddedness, naturalness, and coherence is the continuous and sustained political effort to constitute market capitalism around the fiction of self-regulation. After all, it took over 70 years of active, deliberate state involvement to transform Britain into something approximating a laissez-faire market society. This was revealed in the nineteenth-century demolition of the social protective mechanisms of the mercantilist regime in English Poor Law history – a change consistent with the interests of the then rising industrial and financial bourgeoisie (cf. Somers and Block 2005). By extension, behind the current neoliberal façade of economic liberalization, privatization,


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and minimum state intervention is the reconfiguration of the state as a new political modality that entails constant negotiations between dominant actors and the redrawing of boundaries between the public and private. The eighteenth-century concept of economic rationality produced a trans-historical meaning for the uniformity of human nature and is the link converting the self-regulating market fiction to a dominant perspective and policy idea. The discourse of the self-regulating market of classical economics was contingent upon earlier interpretations of the independence and freedom of rational individuals from societal constraints. Thinkers like John Locke developed an understanding of society as an aggregate of free actors making rational choices. These discursive traditions provided a conceptual bridge between the nineteenth-century theory of self-regulating markets and contemporary theorizing of ‘globalization’ (Alexander 1988: 85). For nineteenthcentury economic liberals, the idea of economics was equated with the maximization of production and consumption in a world of scarcity. It was argued that the market promotes greater efficiency, and, therefore, was most likely to contribute to the general welfare of the greatest number of individuals (Gill 2000: 50–1). As argued by Somers and Block (2005), Lockean liberalism is the common cultural legacy for the idea of self-regulating markets free from political interference. This knowledge culture ‘embeds markets in a story about how they are self-regulating natural entities’ (Somers and Block 2005: 281) and provides a discursive frame for the conversion of nineteenth-century economic liberalism into twenty-first-century neoliberal restructuring of the global political economy. Building continuities with this knowledge structure, present-day neoliberal norms and meanings sustain a vision of a market society by ‘privatizing the state.’ Neoliberalism’s marriage with particular national trajectories generates context-bound spheres of the imaginaire for the social and the political. The implication here is that the concepts of liberalization and privatization blend with different historical and cultural contexts in shaping ‘the imagined economies of globalization’ (Cameron and Palan 2004). This transforms the sphere of the political by rearticulating norms and actions to be recognized as having a general socio-cultural public value. In connection with privatization and liberalization, the political reworks the relations between public power . . . and the nexus of actions, discourses, norms and symbols . . . related to the organization of the community as a

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legitimate social entity: a legitimacy whose ultimate claims to existence do not lie in the powers that be, not in religious or moral claims, but in those very relations [that redefine the social]. (Chevrier 2004: 242) The distinguishing feature of neoliberal restructuring is the de-linking of the political from the sphere of the social, which has occurred since the eighteenth-century enlightenment project of modernity – the first modernity in Beck’s definition. This means that a fundamental reformulation of the state is taking place along a mutation of political categories. Neoliberalism becomes more of a discourse on the primacy of market forces in redefining the place of the public sphere, and, hence, in reshaping societies. This entails more than what is implied by concepts such as ‘the retreat of the state’ (Strange 1996), ‘competition state’ (Cerny 2000), or ‘reduction in the regulatory role of the state’ (Brady, Beckfield, and Seeleib-Kaiser 2005). The ‘privatization of the state’ does not denote a withering of the state, but fundamentally new ways of reconfiguring the social by redefining the space of the political. As the dominant policy perspective across the global economy (Fiss and Hirsch 2005), neoliberalism provides a frame for a set of ideas and norms about the interpretation and construction of the market economy and the transformation of the state. Nevertheless, this process of giving meaning is subject to political struggles that promote or challenge interpretations of existing social arrangements. The Islamic attachment to neoliberalism as a global policy idea is thus an empirical question of inquiry. Specifically, we must ask how an Islamic orientation to the global market economy is framed? What are the dominant views? What are the points of tension? What is the role of IMF- and World Bank-imposed conditionality agreements and EU-induced reform programmes in bringing about these policy objectives? This book draws attention to the need for closer scrutiny of the interplay between general discursive structures and national interpretive processes in shaping policy outcomes that redefine the boundaries between the private and the public and reformulate the state.

Democratization discourse ‘Democratization discourse’ articulates an argument for transforming power relations within states through a normative orientation towards liberal democracy. For the implementation of liberal transformative politics, it singles out criteria that prevail in the relations of governing and


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political participation in most of western Europe and North America (Macpherson 1977). These criteria consist of the principles of liberty, the rule of law, respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms (including freedom of expression, freedom of religion, women’s rights, and trade union rights), respect for and protection of minorities against intrusion by the state, as well as the stability of institutions guaranteeing the overall process of democracy (Negotiating Framework 2005). These principles consist of a shift in citizen–state relations towards greater citizen participation, equalization of participation, enhancing citizens’ control over governing, and extending citizen protection from arbitrary action by government (Tilly 2004: 23). Although they neither constitute sufficient conditions for democracy nor aggregate into an idealized model of the democratization process (Tilly 2004: 39), these mechanisms nonetheless indicate a process of change for reconfiguring power relations within the state. Democratization underlies a political process of reworking the form of the state through struggles for a more limited state (Wood 1995: 225–37). This may enhance citizenship rights within states, but it also expresses the classic antimony of state versus market in the definition of democracy. This essentially redefines democracy by reducing it to liberalism (Wood 1995: 234), reflecting a Lockean emphasis on the emancipation of market forces from the confines of the state as its defining characteristic. Locke’s arbitrary separation of the private economic sphere of the market from the public realm of the state allowed liberalism, on its most elementary level, to be understood in terms of ‘removing the state’s hand from the market, and . . . keeping the state from impinging upon decision making in the social arena’ (Wallerstein 1995: 98). For liberalism, the more important criterion is always to uphold the individual as possessor of ‘inalienable rights’ rather than to significantly affect power dynamics and inequalities within society. This is the viewpoint which unites liberalism and capitalism, defined as liberal democracy. What is more, the neoliberal redrawing of the boundaries between private and public realms is now manifested in the current context of inequalities stemming from a complex combination of ‘accumulation by dispossession’ (Harvey 2003) and various forms of privatization that are generated beyond the confines of the state-territorial logic of society. This casts further doubt on the possibility of democracy in terms of criteria framing the process of governing and political participation. Although it is a highly ‘contested’ concept (Connolly 1993), democracy has been ‘globalized’ as a singular ‘normative ideal’ (Diamond 2000;

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Nash 2000: 216). Francis Fukuyama’s (1992) The End of History and the Last Man explains the normative ascendancy of ‘liberal democracy’ in global politics in relation to the collapse of communism in the late 1980s and 1990s and the rise of a market-driven economic model. Samuel Huntington shares this view that normatively associates democracy with the capitalist market economy. Huntington (1991) has expressed his ideas on ‘democratization in the late twentieth century’ in his book The Third Wave. For him, the world history of democratization consists of three waves, each with its own distinctive characteristics of growth, consolidation, and reversal. The nineteenth-century experience in western Europe and the United States constituted the first wave, followed by a second wave from the 1950s to the early 1960s that occurred in parts of Latin America, Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. The third wave occurred in southern Europe in the 1970s and Latin America in the 1980s, with the expectation by Huntington that former Soviet Bloc countries would follow in the 1990s (Atasoy 2009a: 173). Huntington connects the third wave to a variety of factors which in varying combinations can promote democracy. They are: (1) market economic growth which raises living standards and levels of education, and also increases urbanization, civic expectations, and the ability to express them; (2) the deepening legitimacy problems of authoritarian governments; (3) changes in the Catholic Church which make it more likely to oppose authoritarian regimes; (4) external forces (such as non-governmental organizations (NGO), the EU, and the United States) promoting human rights and democracy; and (5) the general snowballing effect that produces normative emulation. Thus, Huntington’s treatment of democracy as waves focuses on patterns of economic development and political culture that might be conducive or inimical to a stable practice of democracy. He describes each wave in terms of a transition from non-democratic to democratic political systems, a consolidation of democracies, and then an ebbing or reversal which produces de-democratization through crisis and breakdown. Huntington conceptualized the Cold War state system as divided between democratic and non-democratic states. While capitalist states were described as democratic, socialist states were undemocratic. For him, the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet military bloc created the material conditions for the worldwide diffusion of democracy. For Huntington (1997: 6), the ‘great achievement of the “third wave” has been to ensure the universality of democracy in western civilization and [to] promote its manifestations in other civilizations.’ Its future lies in the transformation of electoral democracies into liberal


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democracies. This is premised on the political commitment of the elites of non-western civilization to the liberal democratic values of the west (Huntington 1997). Huntington sees Latin America as the natural starting place for the transformation process because Latin American culture resembles western culture, albeit loosely (Huntington 1996: 46). Next in line are the orthodox countries of eastern Europe. According to Huntington, an international association of organizations and movements dedicated to expanding democracy on a global basis and enhancing its performance within countries should act as a vigilant lobby group. Huntington published The Clash of Civilizations in 1996, five years after the publication of The Third Wave. Even though he does not make the connection, The Clash of Civilizations portrays the reversal of democracy’s third wave in the late twentieth century. For all the power of the normative idea of democracy as well as intense international pressure, the Clash of Civilizations shows that Huntington is well aware that democracy has not been embraced everywhere in the entire world. Reasons can be found, he suggests, in the remoteness of nonwestern cultures from western ways and the degree of western cultural influence on non-western societies. Huntington asserts that Muslim countries and parts of East Asia may not experience democracy because of the democracy-inhibiting cultural characteristics of Islam and Confucianism. Islam constitutes an antithesis to the universalist standing of western democracy and is mobilized by actors who wish to challenge western cultural structures and ideas through the instigation of religious conflicts in civilizational terms. For Huntington, democracy appears to be a fixed set of rules, procedures, patterns, and normative standards which can be characterized as an ideal type. It is a product of western civilization embedded in the ideas of individual liberty, the rule of law, human rights, and cultural freedom that began in western Europe a millennium ago. And the ‘third way’ contemplates a universal grounding for the adoption and legitimation of the cultural scheme of liberal democracy globally. As such, it does not have room for the incorporation of contestations, conflicts, gaps, or crises into the process of recreating democracies – phenomena which vary from region to region, period to period, and culture to culture (Markoff 1996: xvi). Charles Tilly (2004) has shown that by and large the process of democratization is actually the outcome of rebellions, confrontations, revolutions, and retaliations intertwined across several centuries within the European context. Tilly suggests that liberal democracy does not reside in general laws but has emerged contingently from political struggles within European national histories (Tilly 2004: 8–9).

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This challenges ‘democratization discourse’ which assumes a single path to democracy and generates meaning over its replicability across diverse social settings in the world (Atasoy 2009a: 174). There is no doubt that democratization and globalization discourses have achieved an ‘epistemic privilege’ (Somers and Block 2005: 265) status in fuelling social transformation in Turkey today. Reforms undertaken by the AKP government to speed up the process of Turkey’s EU membership have, to a large extent, focused on the transformation of Kemalist knowledge culture. That culture had embedded a particular path of modernization in Turkey since the early 1930s – a culture of secularism, militarism, statism, and authoritarianism (Keyder 1997; Navaro-Yashin 2002). Globalization and democratization discourses now constitute the backbone of the EU-induced reform programme spelled out in the Copenhagen criteria. They may ultimately triumph over Kemalism and reaffirm Turkey’s path on a neoliberal trajectory of social change in its marriage with Islam. Yet, ideas can only achieve a dominant position if they make sense for the lived experience and cultural values of specific social groups (Mahmood 2005). The task, then, is to bring forward the interpretive struggles, competing ideas, public narratives, and explanatory systems that frame Islam’s marriage with neoliberalism through its engagement with globalized discursive structures. The ‘sociology of ideas’ perspective (Camic 1987; Camic and Gross 2001) is helpful in making a connection between ideas and neoliberal restructuring. Rooted in a recent formulation in social theory which assumes that social science is distinctly evaluative in nature (Alexander 1988: 80), the sociology of ideas perspective questions assumptions made in the ‘sociology of knowledge’ (Mannheim 1929/1986) about material self-interest based on social-class or market position as a determinant of policy. Rather than conceptualizing ideas in functional terms as mediating structural social-class positions, this perspective takes ideas, public narratives, and explanatory systems that cognitively embed policy outcomes as central to a distinct field of inquiry (Campbell 1998; DiMaggio 1994; Fiss and Hirsch 2005; Somers and Block 2005). How a pro-Islamic orientation blends with neoliberalism is an empirical question that demands close scrutiny of interpretive processes in terms of the actual embodiments of neoliberal discursive frames. But this inquiry should be made without construing a disparate account of the particular at the expense of complex world-historical processes. To be sure, the specific social processes and socio-cultural/intellectual or symbolic settings need to be uncovered to understand how they affect the very


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connection between the ethical and the political in the imaginary of a social change trajectory. This type of inquiry involves a highly contentious process as various groups struggle for the power to interpret reality, reshape culture, and position themselves in history (Tilly 2004). From this perspective, current political conflicts and discursive tensions in Turkey can be charted as a ‘framing contest’ over the direction of a social change programme (Gamson and Modigliani 1989, cited in Fiss and Hirsch 2005: 30). These conflicts are being played out over Turkey’s integration into the EU and within the world-historical dynamics of neoliberal restructuring. In this book, I intend to connect the structural and discursive factors that help us better understand how a neoliberal market economy model and liberal principles of democracy are embraced in the reshaping of Islamic political agendas that transform the state. This is an empirical investigation into highly contested terrain. It requires us to place a specific Islamic imaginary within the process of neoliberal restructuring as a particular manifestation of a general process that ‘reinvents capitalism’ (Bayart 1994) on a global basis. Still, this process refigures an Islamic politico–social imaginary through an epistemology that continues to reproduce a history of ‘European universalism’ and serve as the basis for a rhetoric of power (Wallerstein 2006).

Organization of the book The book consists of eight chapters. Each is organized to further our understanding of the historically variable articulation of Islam in Turkey in relation to the exercise of state power. For this purpose, the book also provides an overview of the political and economic changes of the Turkish state, from the late Ottoman period to the present era. By exposing the powerful forces confronting the state, a framework is developed for interpreting the dynamics of Islam within contemporary Turkey. Also illuminated are the historical forms of capital fractions and political interests, including the patterns of elite formation, and their incorporation into the state. Finally, each chapter provides empirical evidence for the articulation of Islam, not only by the political elite, including the military, but also by Muslims confronting changes in their day-today activities. We see how Islam becomes a critical, epistemic resource for the state and for Muslims themselves in reconfiguring specific social relations and frames of reference. An empirical foundation for the book is provided through an analysis of data collected from published documents and interviews. The

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first type of data is drawn from official statistics, pro-Islamic newspapers, periodicals, research reports, and the literary writings of members of the Muslim symbolic class, including public intellectuals. The textual analysis of these documents facilitates the drawing of a general picture of dominant Islamic views around three highly contentious issues – the military’s frequent interventions in politics, Muslim women’s wearing of the headscarf, and the Kurdish issue. I weave these distinct areas into individual chapters of the book where appropriate, but particular attention has been given to the repositioning of Islamic capitalists in the economy and Muslim women’s wearing of the headscarf. The second type of data consists of interviews with 40 women and men in Ankara, Turkey. This set of data allows us to demonstrate how Islamic ideas are reconfigured in particular around what is arguably one of the single most important issues in Turkish politics today – the wearing of the headscarf by Muslim women. Presentation of this data is essential in order to show how these issues are used to frame the nuanced ways in which EU membership requirements are approached and met. Muslim women’s wearing of the headscarf is an aspect of freedom of religion. The key aspect of freedom of religion is the expectation that the state in a secular context refrains from establishing or promoting a particular religion (Denli 2007: 94). The state is also expected to permit the search for the religious and the spiritual conditions of experience, as one option among many other possibilities of lived experience (Taylor 2007). Of course, differences in and the appropriateness of religious beliefs and experiences must not be a consideration. There are numerous examples of the state’s violation of the equal enjoyment of freedom of religion in Turkey. These include: the headscarf ban; difficulties faced by nonSunni Alevi-Bektasi Muslims and non-Muslim minorities in relation to religious education and religious publications (R. Cakir and Bozan 2005; Oran 2004, 2007a; Yannas 2007); the exclusive promotion of SunniHanefi Islam by the state through the Directorate of Religious Affairs (R. Cakir and Bozan 2005; Tarhanli 1993); and the closing down of Imam-Hatip junior high schools through Law No. 4306 (R. Cakir, Bozan, and Talu 2004; Gunay 2001: 7–9). The same law has also restricted Koran course attendance to children who have graduated from grade eight in secular schools. The law was modified in 1999 to permit children to attend Koran courses after grade five or after they reach an equivalent age (usually 12 years old). These issues add considerable complexity to the unfolding relations of state, society, and religion in Turkey. The present work does not discuss the freedom of religion in general,


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but incorporates the headscarf ban within a broader discussion of the Kemalist state and its mutation. Relations between the Turkish state and the Kurdish people have also been problematic for many years. Since the 1980s these relations have become increasingly violent. Although this conflictual relationship predates the republic, the state’s denial of the existence of Kurds as a culturally and linguistically distinct category of people, and its treatment of the Kurdish struggle as a national security concern have been contentious issues throughout much of the history of the Kemalist state (R. Cakir 2004; Kirisci and Winrow 2002; Kurban and Yolacan 2008; Olson 1996; Yegen 1999). Despite its significance for state transformation and the pressures applied by the EU, there is still enormous resistance to the Kurdish movement based on the idea of the indivisible territorial unity of the state and the unitary conception of the Turkish nation. This book does not include an extensive discussion of the Kurdish movement but incorporates various pertinent aspects of the subject into a broader discussion of Kemalist state ideology.

Outline Chapter 1 offers a broad theoretical discussion of Islam’s ‘marriage’ with the epistemically privileged discursive frames of neoliberalism. Chapter 2, ‘The Allure of the West,’ traces the historically grounded interpretive tensions between Kemalist and Islamic ideational stances from the late Ottoman Empire onward. This is done by unpacking the intertwined stories of liberalism, market capitalism, and laiklik deployed as a pedagogical technique of cultural management and citizenship control. The chapter also examines the dominant role of state bureaucrats in the power plays and application of a bureaucratic/statist version of European universality. Chapter 3, ‘Turkish Islam: Unthinking Kemalism?,’ focuses on the mutation in the Kemalist modernity project under neoliberalism. State bureaucrats continue to exert direct and indirect influence and ideological control over the social conditions and political dynamics of neoliberalism. A bureaucratic/statist notion of ‘Turkish Islam’ is anchored to the moral disciplining of Kemalism in refiguring the ethos of sovereignty under neoliberal processes of capital accumulation. The chapter argues that there is a real possibility of social fascism emerging in the direction of a militarized form of politico–ethical framing of rule. Chapter 4, ‘Reconstituting the State: The Islamic Framing of Neoliberalism,’ explains the political resignification of moral values and ethical

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standards by Islamic groups in the development of an ethos of Muslim engagement with the market economy. The methodology employed here demonstrates the significance of an epistemological assumption that incorporates ideas and institutional processes into a contextualized understanding of state transformation. The Islamic framing of neoliberalism embodies a dual character: its embeddedness in the epistemically privileged status of both the European ideational programme and the Islamic narrative of ‘righteous’ individuals and the good society. This points to an interesting dialectic that helps us rethink the multidimensionality of interpretive conflicts being waged in Turkey over the shaping of a public ethos of state sovereignty beyond the Kemalist state and its claims to a territorialized culture. Chapter 5, ‘Kemalist State Feminism and the Islamic Dress Code,’ examines the construction of the cultural–political status of women’s Islamic clothing practices from the late Ottoman Empire onward. Integral to the nation-state formation processes of the 1930s, educated, urban women from the large cities of Ankara and Istanbul rose to positions of privilege within the Kemalist cultural hierarchy. These women, known as Ataturkcu, though silenced within the bureaucratically articulated state feminism, were seen as crucial in the realization of a laik ‘cultural turn’ to ‘modernity.’ In contrast, women from the Anatolian hinterland who followed an Islamic dress code were seen as culturally ill-suited for that modernity. This chapter shows that it is within the debates over the ethical–political meaning of women’s Islamic clothing that an epistemically uncertain concept of Kemalist modernity was framed in which Islamic normative practices are gradually being displaced in the public sphere. Chapter 6, ‘Politics Without Guarantees: The Headscarf Ban,’ focuses on the possibility of Islamic ‘transformative resistance’ directed against Kemalist state practices surrounding the headscarf ban since the 1980s. Islamic ‘transformative resistance’ includes the political and pedagogical shaping of a general Islamic normative position in refiguring futures. Although without guarantees in producing a coherent transformational outcome outside of the state nationalist position of Turkish Islam, it is clear that Islamic groups have situated their interpretive judgment in a social imagery of individual human rights and freedoms discourse. Some Islamic groups articulate their concern within the discourse of liberal democracy and by reference to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and EU standards. Others are committed to the notion of ethical–moral universalism and the institution of a more ‘comprehensive democracy’ understood as a way of human life. This represents


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an Islamic search for refiguring an ontological base of existence beyond the moral authority imposed by the state. Although difficult and uncertain, this search may help foster a more democratic future with a commitment to global solidarity movements. Chapter 7, ‘Headscarf Madness: Narratives of Religious Rights,’ examines the existential resentment of women who wear the headscarf against Kemalist state practices. The chapter illustrates how larger political projects and personal life experiences interact in the making of an Islamic standpoint. By incorporating different views of women and men on the headscarf controversy in Turkey, the chapter considers how the experiences of the headscarf ban have become part of a process of redefining a political–cultural–emotional terrain. A discussion of the Canadian debate on the founding of the Islamic Institute of Civil Justice and the Canadian Supreme Court’s decision regarding the religious divorce of an Orthodox Jewish woman helps to further illustrate the arguments made by my respondents on the headscarf issue. Their arguments turn around the question of how to think about civil matters with a religious dimension in such a way that the notion of democracy can be grounded as a way of life in social conditions of ‘trust,’ ‘trustworthiness,’ and ‘respect.’ Chapter 8, ‘Conclusion,’ weaves the various summary strands in each chapter together into a general account of the possibility of transformation in the Kemalist state and its practices of sovereignty under neoliberal conditions of economic and political restructuring.

2 The Allure of the West

Kemalism, which has been accepted as official state ideology since the 1930s, represents a watershed moment in Turkish history. Although it fostered a radical displacement of Islamic and Ottoman sources of nationhood from the state structure, Kemalism did not entail a separation between state and religion. Rather, it embodied a specific reconfiguration of the state which allowed it to act with key agency in controlling the production and dissemination of religious knowledge. Religion was to be kept under state control by civil–military bureaucrats who would then inflict the state with a cultural homogeneity achieved through laiklik. Kemalism personified an understanding of society through laiklik, but it required a shift from a society grounded in faith in the omnipotence of God to one comprising an aggregate of ‘free-willed’ individuals making rational choices. These individuals were expected to rely on scientific reason rather than faith as a means of knowing. This shift in the concept of society expresses the ideological dominance of liberalism found in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European social thought (Hawthorn 1976). European liberalism also provided early twentiethcentury Kemalism with a cultural schema to reconfigure society through westernization. Kemalist bureaucrats have also cast a shadow over religiously oriented individuals in regard to their cultural suitability for western modernity. This has fragmented society between those who subscribe to Kemalist laiklik and those who advance religious claims and discourses of state making and national culture formation. The Kemalist attempt to reproduce European modernity by fragmenting society continues to frame public life in Turkey, although it has been subject to significant modification. 32

The Allure of the West

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The Kemalist vision of emulating the political, cultural, economic, and intellectual character of European societies was predicated on ‘hiding God’ in the privacy of the home. The moral stance behind this Hidden God (Goldmann 1976) also involved removing God from the public sphere of politics and the state. However, the Kemalist ideal of a liberal society has not proven entirely persuasive. The institutions of Kemalism were not completely successful in expanding the liberal principle of equal rights for everyone in society in all aspects of material and cultural relations. Behind the pretence of ‘emancipating’ citizens from the omnipotence of God in society, Kemalism masked the particularistic interests of a specific class and the domination of a bureaucratic elite. Further, it predisposed individuals and groups to a moral rethinking of social justice, as well as a rethinking of them as victims of Kemalism – which in turn opened them up to what Mike Davis (2001: 20), in a different context, calls ‘unequally endowed groups.’ This moral rethinking of Kemalist ‘injustice’ coincided with the possibility of change in Kemalist patterns. And it is emerging from within a heterogeneous collection of public narratives and explanatory systems rooted in cultural values, images, rituals and normative standards that continue to affect the lifestyle choices and customary practices of many Muslims. The recent surfacing of political movements around Islamic references is seen by Kemalists as a threat to the integrity of the Turkish state and modern–secular ways of life. However, I believe that Kemalist laiks have got it wrong. Rather than being a regressive force moving Turkey towards a theocratic state, Islamic politics aims to rework the thinking and ethos fostered by Kemalism. It entails a change in the Kemalist state to be sure, but without being either against ‘secularism’ or overtly religious in public life. Key questions arise from this conceptually critical Islamic moral and political rethinking: what kind of Islamic politics is emerging? What does it hope to achieve? Does it aim to cultivate a ‘public ethos of engagement,’ to evoke Connolly (1999: 5), between European and Islamic moral sensibilities and normative patterns? Or, does it constitute an illiberal movement? And how does it interact with conceptions of secular modernity and the rule of state in Turkey? In overcoming seemingly antithetical formulations, I imagine there may be more to accomplish than simply reproduce ideologies that assert the moral superiority of secular modernity and view Islam as a potential impediment to that morality. A re-examination of Turkish state formation provides a basis for rethinking the intricacy of the discursive links

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within which the political elite, bureaucratic cadres, and Islamic groups actively deliberate over the meaning of secularism, modernity, and westernization. I propose a dialectical approach that construes the discursive relations between Kemalism and Islam as mutually constitutive in providing meaning structures to state formation. In order to make sense of Muslim responsiveness to the contestability of Kemalist principles, we first need to uncover the historical process of establishing a national modernity project as imagined within the Kemalist path. The cultural implications of such a project are bound up with great uncertainty.

Liberal clothing: One size fits all The European conception of liberalism adopted by Ottomans during the second half of the nineteenth century constitutes the historical background for Kemalist modernity and the Islamic critiquing of its cultural authority. According to Cemil Meric (1974/2005), a Turkish nationalist essayist, Kemalist modernity is a historical continuation of Ottoman liberalism. Meric defines Ottoman liberalism as the blind emulation of spacespecific practices from European societies, but without knowing much about the specific histories of these practices or without critically evaluating their applicability. It is this history of applying what is not necessarily applicable that, in Islamic thinking, constitutes the roots of the Kemalist intellectual tragedy. For Meric, Kemalist modernization rids Ottoman reality of its symbolic modes of expression in the ‘customary consciousness’ of individuals without seriously considering what to replace it with. He further contends that Europe provides a ready-made civilization for everyone, everywhere, like ready-to-wear clothing that does not require trying on (Meric 1974/2005: 54–5). Meric’s image of the resulting alienation is a powerful one: ‘Life resembles a poisonous pit, blind, and dirty. I am suffocated, but don’t have the strength to escape’ (Meric 1974/2005: 47, my translation). Orhan Pamuk (2006), although not an Islamist, offers an equally compelling description of the effects of European culture on Turkish society. He uses the term huzun to convey the sorrow and melancholy it produces. This theme of not knowing what ‘westernization’ would usher in, only that it would rid social life of religiously rooted demands (O. Pamuk 2006: 9–17), is an oft-repeated intellectual critique of Kemalist modernity understood as westernization.


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What has often been called ‘modernity’ in abstract terms actually refers to the historical connection between liberalism and market rationality derived from nineteenth-century Europe (Polanyi 1944). For Wallerstein (1995), liberalism is the worldview of free-market capitalism, a belief in continual, unending progress. He notes that ‘in order for history to follow its natural course, it was necessary to engage in conscious, continual, intelligent reformism . . .’ (Wallerstein 1995: 76). Liberal reformists believed that progress could not be achieved without a political programme to liberate ‘the people’ from false idols of the past and the traditional order rooted in the social relations of feudalism and the church. Progress in this context refers to an irreversible movement from the endless cultural diversity of particularities of human societies to a world unified into rational arrangements (Shanin 1997: 65). Liberalism encompasses a substantive view that promotes the incorporation of politically and culturally enabled, rational, and free-willed individuals into a well-functioning free-market economy. The Ottoman ruling elite had their own reasons for adopting liberalism which had nothing to do with the material and cultural tensions in society that led to liberalism in Europe. Ottoman liberalism was pursued as an ideological tool to manage the historical experience of the crumbling Ottoman Empire (Atasoy 1997). In order to prevent the break-up of the empire, the Ottoman elite wanted to restructure the state through the creation of a homogeneous public space that was multi-linguistic and multi-religious. Because liberalism defined the people as the sum of all individuals holding equal rights, and elevated them as ‘the historic subject of modernity’ to the status of sovereign (Wallerstein 1995: 78), liberalism was seen as a viable solution. The Ottoman elite believed that liberalism could provide the ‘cement’ to bind members of various religious, linguistic, and cultural communities to the state as equal citizens, thus levelling out deeply rooted cultural differences. Once seen as a universally valid condition of modernity (Wallerstein 2006), it is often forgotten that liberalism was born in the context of the seventeenth-century struggle for religious freedom in Europe (Cox 2006: 11–34). It is a European phenomenon initially nurtured by sectarian Christians who sought individual freedom from Church dogma to worship Christ and achieve personal salvation. It was also embraced by political theorists who were attempting to formulate alternative ways of thinking of the individual against the backdrop of the rise of modern science. Of course, for these theorists, among them Thomas Hobbes, a religious conception of individual liberty was an illusion in relation

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to the question of how to organize individuals within the framework of the state. For Hobbes (1651/1968), the role of the state was not to preserve individual liberty but to severely limit it within the confines of society. In other words, constructing ‘civil society’ was a matter of social order and part of state-building activity, as imagined in the intellectual history of western Europe. Insofar as ‘modernity’ rests on such an imaginary, according to Cox (2006: 57), ‘it tends to reject liberalism and supports in its stead monolithic “rational” government control.’ It seems that the Ottoman reforming elite also understood liberalism as a way of organizing individuals within the framework of the state, congruent with the then European illiberal thinking found, albeit in very different ways, in Plato’s Republic, Hobbes’s Leviathan, and even in Rousseau’s Social Contract. The Ottoman adoption of liberalism was contingent upon a desire to reconfigure the relationship between state territoriality and governance. For Ottoman reformers, the fundamental question was how to prevent nationalist conflicts and secessionist movements among the empire’s multi-religious, multi-linguistic communities. It was thought that a liberal concept of citizenship would make it easier to organize these diverse groups within the state as loyal subjects. It was also a means to re-establish the political authority of the state over deep cultural differences, inequalities, and local–communal power arrangements by keeping state-subjects in line. The desire to save the empire from collapse gave the Ottomans a perspective on liberalism that distinguished between individual freedom, with an egalitarian promise implicit in the creation of a national society, and the desire to strengthen state power vis-à-vis these individuals. In short, liberalism became an ideology to institute state power over individual freedoms and community-based group solidarities. As Ottoman liberals sought to achieve ‘national unity’ in the Ottoman Empire by strengthening the central authority of the state, liberalism became a cultural scheme for delineating a ‘public sphere.’ Individuals unified around the state were to be dissociated from their religious community affiliations, which, in political terms, came to mean suppressing heterodox elements in society, levelling out cultural differences, and instituting the primacy of the state (Atasoy 1997). Strengthening the central authority of the state coincided with a move away from the legacy of cultural pluralism founded in the millet system. This shift was later firmly established in the Kemalist state-making project, although the ideological relevance of the Ottoman millet system continues to persist in demands for a more culturally inclusive state.


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The Ottoman territorial logic of rule: The millet system By the seventeenth century, the Ottoman Empire had incorporated vast territories in the Balkans, central Europe, the eastern Mediterranean, the Middle East, and North Africa into its political and economic system. With a centralist government and a command economy, the empire contained a large number of economically, culturally, linguistically, and religiously distinct communities, including regions, provinces, tribal units, and the millets. The millet system managed these differences within an administrative and economic system under central government regulation. This effectively integrated various communities within Ottoman trading networks and productive arrangements. There were two main millets: one for Muslims and another for nonMuslims. Regardless of their ethno-cultural and linguistic differences, Muslims constituted a single millet. Non-Muslims were divided into separate millets according to their religious affiliation: Greek-Orthodox, Jewish, and Armenian. Millets were not territorially defined but made up of both urban and rural populations from distant regions. The members of different millets lived in separate quarters of their cities, towns, and villages under the leadership of their own religious leader. Imams, priests, and rabbis represented their respective millets before the government (Inalcik 1973: 150–1), exercising power locally in the name of the Ottoman government. The millets were internally autonomous and self-administering communities. On the condition of obedience and payment of a harac (tribute), which formed an important portion of Ottoman-state revenue, members were allowed to freely exercise their religion and live according to their own customs (Inalcik 1973: 7). They operated their own educational institutions, levied their own internal taxes, and maintained control over their community’s legal regime in most matters of civil law, including marriage, family law, inheritance, and inter-community affairs (Keyder 2006: 116, 119). Although they enjoyed autonomy in regard to intra-community concerns, the members of non-Muslim millets were denied opportunity of access to ruling positions in the central bureaucracy unless they converted to Islam. They were also not allowed to serve in the military and had to pay an exemption tax. Nevertheless, the millet system allowed communities considerable internal autonomy and political representation of cultural, ethnic, and religious differences independent of the imperial high culture of the sultan and ruling cadres. Ottoman-state law was valid for the entire population. It consisted of seriat (Islamic religious law) and the sultan’s kanun (law based on the

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sultan’s decree or ferman, which was not necessarily based on religious principles). State law operated in matters such as security, property, and taxes. The co-existence of community-based order and state-based civic order ensured the adherence of Muslim, Jewish, and Christian communities to the central government despite the fact that Islam (Sunni Islam) was the official religion of the state. However, there were no institutional arrangements for enforcing Islam on a non-religious ruler. Orf-i sultani or sultanic laws, which were widely used in matters of material production, distribution, and consumption, as well as tax-collection (Inalcik 1985), were also useful for ensuring the state’s responsiveness to the needs and complaints of the general population. The central government had to protect producers and respond to them as a source of state–tax revenue. Under this system, the community-centred practices of millets were reflected in kadi justice (Keyder 2006: 119). A judge or kadi rendered judgements in terms of his assessment of the ethical standards and cultural practices of the community. Millets were therefore subject to different community-based laws rather than one unifying territorial law. All community laws were based on kadi justice. State laws connected communities to the state’s extractive power, land system, and military organization. The millet system worked through a hierarchic division between the state-ruling elite and civilian subject populations, with subjects and the land they held belonging to the sultan. State power was consolidated with an almost independent existence from the local cultures of ruled populations. There was no difference among the masses between Muslims and non-Muslims. Regardless of religious affiliation, peasants, merchants, and craftsmen who constituted the productive classes of the empire enjoyed the same rights and responsibilities in their work positions. As the sultan’s subjects they all paid taxes, while members of the ruling class (men of religion, civilian and military bureaucrats, and their dependents) who were not engaged in productive activity were exempted from paying taxes. This division between the ruling elite and masses secured the sultan’s absolute sovereignty over vast Ottoman territories, but without taking away the substantive autonomy of communities. The moral logic of reciprocity defined the character of the relationship between the central state-authority and subject peoples. The state provided subjects with a system of justice and protection while subjects gave the state their obedience and taxes. Serif Mardin (1962: 97–108) defines this as the ‘circle of justice’ principle. It allowed millets to enjoy their customary practices and considerable autonomy free from excessive state intervention.


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The concept of ‘territorialism’ is also vital to an understanding of the Ottoman mode of rule. In territorialism, the conquest of new lands is essential for the production and extraction of resources necessary to sustain the state’s war-making capacity. This contrasts with the ‘capitalist logic of rule’ which considers territorial acquisitions a means and a by-product of the accumulation of capital (Arrighi 1994: 33). The territorialist logic of rule comes close to what Charles Tilly (1990) defines as a ‘coercion-intensive’ path of state formation in eastern Europe. Tilly (1990) examines state formation as historically specific to the relation of organized coercion to capital. He argues that states are shaped by the desire to wage and prepare for war, which stimulates their need to seek resources. Differences in the social–historical context of places explain variations in historical trajectories of state formation, which reflects state bargaining and organization practices related to resource extraction. Western European states such as England which balanced private capital accumulation with state coercion achieved a mix that was suitable for the creation of the nation-state. Eastern European states such as Russia never developed the urban capitalist classes which have come to insist on civil rights, but continued to finance military expenditures through an uncommercialized economy. Tilly’s model of the eastern European coercion-intensive path of state formation appears applicable to the Ottoman case. Ottoman rulers often concentrated coercion at the centre, while secondary means of coercion were distributed on the frontiers among loyal wielders of force through the territory they sought to control. Ottoman territories were in constant flux depending on the military capacity of the state to conquer new lands. Following military conquest, occupied areas became tributepaying territories while their non-Muslim inhabitants became protected subjects of the state (Inalcik 1973: 14). The Ottoman coercion-intensive path of state-making worked through the cooperation and co-opting of local power holders without transforming their power bases. It worked well until the seventeenth century as neither millets nor any segment of the economy was allowed to be politically and economically dominant. Although the sultan’s kanuns accommodated religious, cultural, and linguistic/ethnic heterodoxy in the empire, and millets enjoyed substantive autonomy over their community affairs, an appropriate public sphere where civilian groups could actively engage in state-level politics was absent. The central paradox of the Ottoman state-formation trajectory was that the territorial logic of rule persisted while the capitalist logic that shaped state-formation patterns in western Europe had begun to

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reorganize the world political–economic space (Arrighi 1994; McMichael 2004: 2–14). Under the growing impact of the industrial, financial and military power of European states (Inalcik 1973: 121–39), Ottoman rulers felt the damaging effects of capitalist logic from the mid-sixteenth century onwards. However, they could not establish a right balance between coercion and capital while responding to shifting worldhistorical conditions. The antimony between the territorial and capitalist logics of rule then resulted in the gradual dissolution of the linkage between the land-tenure system and the military organization vital to Ottoman classical arrangements.1 The Anglo-Ottoman Commercial Convention of 1838 represents the coalescence of the two logics in extending European influence over the Ottoman Empire. The convention was a free-trade agreement which removed state monopoly control over the economy and minimized import and export taxes (Issawi 1980: 74–5). The complexities of this convention and its implementation are beyond this book’s scope. It is important to note, however, that the opening of agricultural exports had devastating, multifaceted consequences for Ottoman society. It led to the expansion of cash-crop production, increased competition over land use, undermined traditional forms of land tenure relations, introduced a new regime of private land ownership, and intensified the conversion of waste and state lands into plantation-like farms by landed gentry (Quataert 2000; S. Pamuk 1987). The combined effect of these developments was that the territorial logic behind the Ottoman path of state formation which sustained the millet system was broken down. The state lost control over its land and revenues, and the linkage between the land-allocation system and military organization disintegrated. Moreover, the state lost its protectionist capacity over the population, and the traditional ‘circle of justice’ principle was broken. With the Land Code of 1858 Ottoman rulers officially accepted the private ownership of land, a right which in 1867 was also extended to the citizens of European states (Lewis 1968: 89–97). Changes in land-tenure relations and export production in agriculture did not impose negative effects on all religious and ethnic communities of the empire in the same way; some communities benefited while others were disadvantaged. Opening the empire to free trade with Europe intensified the economic and cultural differences among the empire’s populations. The resulting social unrest was evident in relations between the overwhelmingly Muslim population of taxpaying peasants, who held military obligations, and their tax-exempt non-Muslim counterparts, who were not obligated to perform military


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service (Inalcık 1969, 1987). While Muslim craftsmen were transformed into unskilled labour and Muslim peasants toiled on the land, nonMuslim merchants and agriculturalists became dominant in cash-crop production, assuming privileged intermediary positions in trade relationships with Europe (Issawi 1980, 1982). Those who benefited from the new opportunities provided by the market economy settled in newly designed European-style urban districts, acquired new tastes in material culture and adopted consumption habits based on imported European food and household goods. These changes figured in the emergence of a different meaning of cultural pluralism from that which had prevailed in the millet system for many centuries. As the state-ruling elite was unable to institute a new basis for loyalty and social solidarity, the segmented social space of the classical millet system and its social arrangements began to be a liability, leading to social tension and polarization. State rulers lost control over local, regional power holders. The weakening imperial structure ‘reinforced prospects for autonomy and claims to independence,’ grounded on specific ‘national’ loyalties and distinct ‘ethnic’ affiliations (Sassen 1999: 82). This was especially true among nonMuslim cultural categories in the Balkan regions of the empire. Greek nationalism, for example, had already developed to the extent that Greek merchants became divorced from the Ottoman economy and incorporated with European business interests (Kedourie 1970). Within the Muslim millet, Arabs were also searching for a nationhood of their own (Gocek 2002; Hudson 1977). In addition, there were Kurdish uprisings beginning as early as 1806 (Oran 2002: 873). These were largely tribal and religiously inspired mobilizations against the centralized Ottoman administrative system of state-revenue extraction after the Tanzimat (Kirisci and Winrow 2002; Oran 2002). Although these Kurdish uprisings had not yet been connected historically to a notion of Kurdish nationalism, during the early twentieth century the Kurds gradually entered the process of constructing a distinct sense of peoplehood utilizing the Kurdish language as a distinguishing category (Bozarslan 2003; Caglayan 2007; McDowall 2004: 87–112; Yegen 1999). Ottoman rulers sought to implement a programme of social change in an effort to counter the growing independence of local power holders, tribal leaders, and provincial ayans (local notables). It was hoped that such a programme would also prevent nationalist movements among various communities and millets, and help secure a position in the concert of Europe. This culminated in the constitution of 1876, which was a

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‘state modernization’ programme imposed from above. The constitution aimed to reverse what Zolberg (1983) refers to as ‘integration crises’ arising from the fact that ‘ethnicity’ had become a marker of national affiliation and state loyalty. It attempted to institute direct rule and greater state penetration into local, communal arrangements of social life in order to keep a grip on resources through taxation. This meant the transformation of the state into a rational–bureaucratic entity (Findley 1980) via the creation of a single legal ‘Ottoman national space.’ Subjects were then to be tied to the state as citizens without communal mediation. Caglar Keyder (2006: 117) defines this as the ‘transformation of a differentiated and layered political order into homogeneous space constitutionalism.’ As a result, the 1876 Constitution effectively ended the millet system, along with the substantive autonomy of communities in their dealings with the state. The refiguring of the political order entered into a redefinition of society through the revising of principles other than the cultural plurality of the millet system. Society was now to be defined as an aggregate of individualized masses, regardless of cultural affiliations and attachments, and despite growing social tension and inequality in society. This generated two distinct yet intertwined imaginaries of nationalism that continue to influence Turkish politics today: secular nationalism and Islamic notions of nationhood.

The fine balance of liberalism: Cultural freedoms and primacy of the state The key conceptual component of European liberalism was the creation of ‘the people’ – a view of individuals as being wholly eligible for the exercise of rights and in whom sovereignty is vested. This view achieved dominant cultural status in European politics between 1848 and 1914 in the context of the great ideological struggles following the French Revolution of 1789 (Wallerstein 1995). After 1848, the liberal, egalitarian thought of the French Revolution gave way to the normalization of a particular political project of liberal modernity in western Europe. The development of a unitary, centralized, and rational–bureaucratic administrative state (Weber 1918/1946) converged with the ‘nightwatchman’ doctrine of state sovereignty, thereby elevating liberalism to a position of cultural dominance in the relationship between the governing and the governed. This development was predicated on the creation of a new normative order, and a comprehensive rethinking of the ways in which we understand the rationality, autonomy, and freedom of individuals


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acting within the politically administered space of a market economy (Somers and Block 2005). The concept of biopolitics, which Foucault (2008) refers to as a government technology, is applicable here. It assigns individuals to states (Kaplan and Torpey 2001) and governs the lives of individuals and groups within states who are deemed capable of improvement as citizens. This, according to Patel and McMichael (2004), mobilizes individuals under the sovereign control of the state to act in ways favourable to market capitalism. From this perspective, both liberal and authoritarian regimes deploy biopolitical means to administer the relationship between government and notions of social life (Dean 2001; Gilroy 2004). In the Ottoman Empire, liberalism was articulated as a political project of citizenship in the cultural management of Ottoman subjects by the state. The story of how liberalism was implemented is also the story of how cultural schemes were deployed as pedagogical techniques to facilitate the expansion of a market principle in the empire.

The Tanzimat era (1839–76) The Tanzimat (charter of regulations) refers to series of reforms promulgated under the reigns of Sultan Abdulmecit and Sultan Abdulaziz. It initiated a process directed towards instituting unified citizenship in the relationship between the governing and the governed. Reformers hoped to replicate a western European method of governing, expecting that what had worked in the British case – which Tilly (1990) described as a ‘capital-coercive’ trajectory – should also work in the Ottoman case. Tilly (1990), of course, describes the emergence of the British trajectory within a thousand-year history of Europe. Tanzimat reformers saw the British path as universally applicable and believed that it could be implemented in the Ottoman Empire through a reform movement initiated from above. This involved a transformation of the Ottoman territorial logic of rule from one which relied on local and regional power holders to one which required the elimination of local power structures to create a centralized administrative system of state-revenue extraction and budgeting. Direct, centralized rule had its locus in the creation of citizenship and individual rights. The most novel aspect of Tanzimat reforms was its recalculation of social criteria for membership in the state – equality before the law among all Ottomans. With the 1856 reform decree, the equality principle was extended to areas of educational opportunity,

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appointments to government posts, the administration of justice, and matters pertaining to taxation and the military (Davison 1993: 64; Yapp 1987: 111). Theoretically, this would mean the dissolution of the classical Ottoman millet system. Combining the anti-defamation clause of the 1856 decree, which banned the unequal, discriminatory treatment of any group on the basis of religion, language or ethnicity, with the nationality law of 1869, the Tanzimat programme attempted to institute a secular concept of unified citizenship. It aimed to establish a direct link between the state and the people, eventually levelling out cultural–religious differences among citizen-subjects. The 1876 Constitution defined all subjects of the state as Osmanli (Ottoman), who ‘are equal before the law without distinction as to religion’ (Davison 1993: 64). The constitutionally guaranteed Osmanlicilik (Ottomanism) legally invalidated the older forms of political legitimacy and intensified a process that opened all administrative ranks to non-Muslims. This process, which was already underway after the 1856 decree, changed the cultural–religious composition of the state bureaucracy (Keyder 2006: 120). Without a doubt, nineteenth-century balance of power politics helped European normative standards infiltrate into the Ottoman moral framing of governance. This is what I call a geopolitical form of culture production. To be sure, the Ottoman ruling elite was deliberating upon a range of geopolitical and military possibilities to save the empire from disintegration. They saw the reforms as ‘enabling’ governing-vehicles to create a unified state to be deployed in the political–military struggles of the time. It was based on instituting formal equality between Muslims and non-Muslims. However, Christian subjects did not find the principle of equality desirable as it meant the abolition of all community privileges and exemptions (such as serving in the military). It also meant equal taxation, which would have required them to pay considerably higher taxes for the first time (Inalcik 1973). The outcome of a geo-political form of culture production could not have been predicted beforehand, of course. The irony of Tanzimat reforms is that while it was intended to save the empire by strengthening central state authority, it actually triggered an increase in uprisings and national independence movements. Many of the traditional Ottoman regulations which granted substantive autonomy to millets also increased the possibility of foreign states demanding greater protection for non-Muslims, to the extent of even wanting to be recognized as protectors of Ottoman Christian subjects. The 1869 nationality law was in fact designed to combat foreign states’ interference in Ottoman affairs in the name of protecting Ottoman non-Muslims (Davison 1993: 68).


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The reforms failed to unify the religiously, linguistically, and culturally diverse peoples of the empire. More profoundly, what actually failed was the idea of embedding state membership within a culturally unified conception of the Osmanli nation, disconnected from communal, religious affiliations. Nevertheless, in terms of their effects on social life, the Tanzimat reforms grafted an Ottoman social change programme onto the adoption of European-style patterns.

European universalism The process of Avrupalilasma (Europeanization) of social life intensified after Sultan Mahmut’s death in 1839. Four Tanzimat-era sadrazams (prime ministers) in particular, Mustafa Resid, Ali, Fuat, and Mithad Pashas, were quite knowledgeable on European political ideas and practices, demonstrating a strong taste for European social customs. It was they who officially opened the door to batililasma (westernization). In producing a model of social change, these Tanzimat men idealized the Enlightenment idea of progress as the source of European primacy in the fields of science and technology. The Europeanization process reached its zenith under the government of the Sadrazam Mustafa Resid Pasha (1800–58). Mustafa Resid Pasha lived in Paris in 1834 and 1835, and in London from 1836 to 1837, and again in 1838 as an ambassador of the Ottoman state. During his stay in Paris he developed a strong taste for French theatre, art, and literature. While in London he established close ties with British Foreign Minister Palmerston and Ambassador Stratford Canning. After returning to Istanbul as a foreign minister in the Sultan Mahmut II government, one of his first undertakings was to sign the Anglo-Ottoman Commercial Convention of 1838, which structurally adjusted the Ottoman economy to the requirements of the free-trade regime (Atasoy 2005: 32–6). Mustafa Resid Pasha has sometimes been called the ‘greatest prime minister’ (Oztuna 1978: 38–9). He is also referred to as the Koca (Great) Mustafa Resid Pasha. For poet Sinasi, he was ‘the prophet of civilization’ (Dogan 1979: 18). Mustafa Resid Pasha believed the Ottoman state could be ‘civilized’ by catching-up with European social standards. He described the European lifestyle as the basis for an Ottoman ‘cultural pedagogy of the people and the execution of a social order’ (terbiye-i nas ve icray-i nizamat) (Cegin 2006: 98). For the pasha, this was a project of modern-subject creation essential for the state to produce and reproduce a culturally unified social space. An issue of considerable importance arises here which allows us to better evaluate the importance of the Tanzimat in fragmenting social

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space while aiming to unify it – a fragmentation which continues to persist in Turkish politics. Tanzimat reformers idealized European civilization as universal (Gungor 1999: 16–23) in order to provide a cultural, normative perspective on modernity. Nevertheless, their reference to universalism was more contextual than absolutist. They juxtaposed European universalism understood as ‘civilization’ and the particularities of Ottoman–Muslim culture. Between these there were multiple possibilities for various versions of synthesis. Although they never defined what they meant by ‘civilization’ and ‘culture,’ they often drew a distinction between the two terms. This marks the dualistic thinking of the Tanzimat. For them, Islam was the backbone of Ottoman–Muslim cultural practices and normative standards, yet Ottoman Muslims should have belonged to European civilization. This signals the beginning of a series of experiments in Ottoman–Turkish history with a social-change model of modernization based on European universalism. Mustafa Resid Pasha, ‘the prophet of civilization,’ articulated a political project of inevitability and an urgency for the rebirth of Ottomans into European ways. Interestingly, the Tanzimat’s Europeanization project also introduced a paradox into political choice making, rooted in the alienation and culturally exclusionary practices of modernity. What Gramsci (1928/1971: 235, 245–6, 257–64) described in relation to the role of the state holds true for what the Tanzimat men thought about the state as well: It has to be ‘ethical.’ For Gramsci (1928/1971: 258), an ethical state ‘raise(s) the great mass of population to a particular cultural and moral level’ which corresponds to the requirements of the economy. The state is ethical because it educates the people to be loyal members who display civic virtue and morality. Similarly, the adjustment of the Ottoman economy to the requirements of the nineteenth-century market economy coincided with pedagogical reforms undertaken by the bureaucratic elite to create cultural openness to European ways. For the men of Tanzimat, the westernization project did not mean a wholesale replacement of the former system with a European model, however. In fact, they wanted to blend what was conceived as an Ottoman–Islamic culture with what was seen as European civilization. Nonetheless, they found it extremely difficult to embrace a solid position that would allow them to blend both; and ended up walking ‘the thin line of modernity’ (Pandolfo 2000). The culture of progress, science, and technology – understood to be uniquely western European – was used to justify the adoption of a secular system of pedagogy for educating subjects entering state


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management positions. Prior to the Tanzimat era, the general education of Ottoman Muslims consisted mostly of religious training in Koran schools and medreses. It was financed through vakifs (charitable endowments) and run by the lower ulema (Singer 2002). With the founding of advanced primary level public schools (Rusdiyye) in 1839 Muslims began to receive a mixed education in religious and practical subjects. Non-Muslims attending western-style schools within their millets were already receiving a mixed education in the modern sciences and the religious culture of their particular denomination. With the 1856 reforms which secularized the content of education, non-Muslims were also admitted to Ottoman civil and military schools in preparation for positions in the state bureaucracy (Atasoy 2005: 28). Secularization was of a particular kind, however. It instituted a mixed curriculum of studies in Islamic religion and modern sciences for Muslim students, while acknowledging the right of every religious community to establish its own schools (Somel 2001: 49). This marks the beginning of an Ottoman brand of secular education, combining scientific–technical knowledge with religious moral values (Atasoy 2005: 27–32). Reformers saw such an educational programme as essential for the growth of a competitive Ottoman power-base with the capacity to fend off foreign political and cultural interference. New educational opportunities were also created to open the way for a unified Ottoman state bureaucracy made up of Muslims and non-Muslims around the Osmanlilik concept. The Galatasaray Lise, for example, was established in 1867 to prepare both Muslim and non-Muslim students for bureaucratic posts. In addition to introducing economic reforms, building hundreds of secularly oriented schools and hospitals, and constructing highways, telegraph lines and railroads, the men of Tanzimat saw a change in Ottoman social life as a prerequisite for transforming the empire into a modernizing milieu. Bureaucrats, whose number reached over half a million by the end of the century, and many sultans were fascinated by all things European – including their plays and music, theatre, clothing (especially French), architecture, palaces, furniture, household utensils, china sets, and so forth. This shift in lifestyle was further promoted by an increase in consumer-goods imports from Europe, financed largely through greater foreign borrowing. The Dolmabahce Palace (which translates as ‘filled up’ garden palace) is a dramatic example of the extravagant European taste of Sultan Abdulmecit (1839–61).2 The estimated cost of building this opulent palace was 5 million gold pieces (A Historical Guide to Istanbul 1996: 131).

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An Istanbul banker commented on this huge expense by saying: ‘It is monstrous that the finances of a great empire should be ruined by the fantastic desires of a fool, who, already having fifty palaces, wants to construct fifty more’ (Blaisdell 1929: 30). The building of Dolmabahce Palace was a turning point: Topkapi Palace, which served the sultans since the fifteenth century, would not be used again as the residence of the Ottoman sultans and the centre of government. Sultan Abdulaziz (1861–76), who enjoyed similar extravagant tastes, continued the palace building trend of the era. Ciragan Palace was built with loans acquired from Europe and from local banks charging 12 per cent interest (Istanbul Guide n.d.: 92). The Baroque-style Beylerbeyi Palace, built in 1865, was also financed by high-interest foreign and domestic loans. It is not difficult to appreciate how the fancy for European-style palaces and luxury buildings contributed greatly to an ever-increasing Ottoman foreign debt. And in the process, life in Ottoman cities began to change. Daily life in certain districts of Istanbul, for example, came to resemble that of European capital cities. The consumption of imported luxuries became a cultural symbol of Europeanization. Many hotels, such as the Buyuk Londra Oteli (The Grand London Hotel) and the Pera Palace (1894), were constructed to accommodate visiting foreign merchants and travellers. Beyoglu, a district in Istanbul, became the hub of a flourishing western lifestyle for both Muslim and non-Muslim Ottomans. The area was filled with European-style cafes and patisseries serving imported European colonial coffees and teas, and clothing, furniture and hardware stores selling European manufactured goods. With tall stone houses replacing traditional wooden Ottoman architecture, Beyoglu became a miniature Europe in a largely Muslim Istanbul (A Historical Guide to Istanbul 1996: 28–33). Without delving into a detailed history of reforms, it is important to underscore that the Tanzimat initiated a genuine conflict of culture production that continues to frame politics in present-day Turkey. The failure of Tanzimat reforms to establish direct rule over diverse cultural communities generated ambivalence towards the emulation of European ways. A small group of intellectuals in the 1860s who called themselves the Yeni Osmanlilar (Young Ottomans) opposed the secularism of the Tanzimat. Among them were Sinasi (1826–71), Ali Suavi (1839–78), and Namik Kemal (1840–88). Although their opposition to Tanzimat reforms has sometimes been defined as a reversion to Islamism, this is not the case. Their opposition was not born in the mosques and they remained the men of Tanzimat. However, they wanted to reform the Ottoman state and situate it on the path of a


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European-style modernity by integrating a Muslim worldview into a distinctly Ottoman–Muslim culture.

The blending of Islam and western modernity Cemil Meric and Necip Fazil Kisakurek are two important contemporary Turkish nationalist essayists who have written extensively on the intellectual history of Turkey. Both have described the legacy of Ottoman reforms as a cultural tragedy in Turkey. Their critique helps us to better understand the Young Ottomans’ ideological significance in the Islamic reconfiguring of a cultural perspective in the present era of Turkish history. Cemil Meric (1916–87) offers his description of Turkish intellectual history in Bu Ulke (This Country). First published in 1974, the 26th edition of Bu Ulke was printed in 2005. The book continues to influence an Islamic critique of secularism in Turkey today. According to Meric, Young Ottomans were opposed to what he called the ‘wardrobe Europeanism’ of Tanzimat intellectuals. Tanzimat intellectuals, he argued, were unaware of what Europeanism was about, and wanted to disassociate the state from a 600-year-old cultural heritage. Theirs was an effort to import ‘ready to wear’ clothing from the European ‘wardrobe’ in an obvious attempt to copy the material features of European life. In his Umrandan Uygarliga (From Flourishing to Civilization) (1996) Meric defines the Tanzimat as ‘a corridor opening to the abyss of degeneration,’ and the men of Tanzimat as ‘heedless intelligentsia who set sail for the land of infidelity while amusing themselves with the sirens’ song’ (quoted in Cegin 2006: 98, my translation). For Meric (1974/2005: 112, 176–8), the tragedy was hidden in the annihilation of the sacred and the sanctified – which was Islam, the culture of the masses – by an unmindful group of men favouring European decadence. The Tanzimat elite had a ‘detached perspective,’ to use a phrase from Karl Mannheim (1975: 253, quoted in King and Szelenyi 2004: 43), when they acted to copy European normative patterns. It gave rise to the development of ‘inauthenticity’ in the production of a Turkish trajectory of social change. According to Meric (1974/2005), this is the source of a cultural tragedy that has been inflicted upon Turkish intellectuals for the last 200 years. Necip Fazil Kisakurek (1905–83), another Muslim and Turkish nationalist intellectual, shares this sentiment: ‘Tanzimat was merely an era of restructuring through the emulation of western ways, as understood by simplistic and shallow political puppets . . .’ (Kisakurek 1968/1976: 69,

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my translation). Kisakurek regards Tanzimat intellectuals as ‘Ucuzcular [cheap salesmen]. Quarter intellectuals who have lost the East but could not find the West’ (Tasyurek 2001: 2, my translation). These ‘halfbaked bogus intellectuals pushing for an uncontrolled and unsupervised process of imitating the rival world have corrupted Islam, and this murderous era first began with Tanzimat’ (Kisakurek 1968/1976: 139, my translation). For Kisakurek (1968/1976: 138), ‘it is not that Tanzimat [reorganization] of the Ottoman system should not have taken place at all, but that it should have been undertaken under the influence of, and within the context of, Islam as a much deeper and more comprehensive social change movement’ (my translation). Cemil Meric’s and Necip Fazil Kisakurek’s critique of Tanzimat reforms mirrors much of what the Young Ottoman intellectuals and Young Turks were opposed to. The Young Ottomans argued that the failure of the Tanzimat had nothing to do with the adoption of a project of modernity, but was rather a deviation from it. Under diplomatic/military pressure exerted by the great powers and with the threat of separatist movements, the Ottoman ruling elite gave ‘special’ concessions to Christians, thereby deviating from a liberal project of equality. The Young Ottomans believed that a liberal mode of governance could still be achieved in the empire if the connections between the state and citizenship were recast through a filter of Islamic legitimation. The Young Ottomans hoped to restore state authority through constitutional rule and create Ottoman unity based on Osmanlilik. The concepts of liberty, equality, and motherland were to provide the basis for equal cooperation by peoples of all religions in an effort to save the empire from collapse. The Young Ottomans wanted to create an Ottoman nation through a synthesis of European political institutions and an Islamic understanding of good government (Mardin 1962). According to Namik Kemal, an Ottoman rebirth did not mean a total rejection of Ottoman–Muslim culture but rather a marriage between ‘East’ and ‘West’ – a marriage ‘between the virginal idea of progress from the West and the mindfulness and virtuousness of the East’ (batinin ‘bikr-I fikri’ ile dogunun ‘akl-I piranesini’ birlestirme) (quoted in Meric 1974/2005: 139, my translation). For Meric, Namik Kemal’s approach was still nothing short of cultural plagiarism from Tanzimat reformers who were infatuated with the west (my emphasis). The Young Ottomans had no theory of resistance and political opposition, which brings them close to the illiberal European thinking revealed in the writing of Hobbes. The theory of human nature that all individuals are motivated to pursue self-interest was used to justify Hobbes’s


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theory of government. Hobbes was clearly not making an empirical claim but simply asserting that human action is by definition selfish (Cox 2006: 90). In the absence of a central authority which can create order, selfish individuals will act aggressively towards each other and produce social anarchy. For John Stuart Mill, this was the paradox of liberty (Spitz 1975): Some individual freedoms have to be surrendered in order for society to function in an orderly manner. A theory of human nature, then, justifies the sovereign power of the state as absolute over individuals. The Young Ottomans attempted to link an Islamic theory of responsible, good governance to a European theory of the sovereign power of the state as absolute over social space. They believed they could solve Mills’s paradox of liberty in this way. Having learned from European thinkers such as Mills and Rousseau, it seems that the Young Ottomans were trying to join the idea of individual liberty with the pursuit of the common good, which they understood the Islamic idea of common ethical bonds to be. An Islamic ethical stance was then to be played out somehow through constitutional rule, in order to limit the sultan’s absolute power. However, the Young Ottomans did not show how this was to be accomplished. At first glance, the Young Ottomans might appear to be influenced by John Locke’s theory of government because of their emphasis on the role of Islamic morality in limiting state power. For Locke, the centralization of power in the state had to be mediated and constrained, a view which offers some insight into constitutional governments (Ashcraft 1986). Locke maintained that the creation of a ‘private sphere’ of the economy separate from the public sphere of the state, comprised of relatively autonomous individuals, institutions, and associations, was central to the protection of individual liberties and a stable political order. Young Ottomans, however, provided neither a theory of opposition nor a clear distinction between the state and the individual. There was no discrepancy in their thinking between the belief that the King’s power comes from God and the theory that it arose through a contract with the people (Mardin 1962: 401). They simply believed that Islam could resolve the tension in liberalism that emerged from a dualism between the principle of individual freedoms and the idea of social cohesion implicit in the sovereignty of the state. Their adherence to an Islamic conception of responsible government was utopian. The Young Ottomans clearly erred on the side of social cohesion and sovereignty of the state rather than individual liberties and representation. Despite their moralistic stand and ethical sensibilities, they failed to produce a theory of government that reconciled the pursuit of

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individual freedoms and the common good. For Meric, this shortcoming reflects the cultural drama of the Ottoman intellectuals in general. Meric writes: There was nothing left from the eternal code of conduct, nor a capacity to develop a new one. There was no way to return to the old; bridges were already set-up to build the new. To live required renewing the old. But, where were we to start and how were we to proceed? The era was filled with a feverish search . . . sometimes wornout, sometimes full of hope. For the first time, the ulema lost its prominence in idea production, and a group of intellectuals emerged with new proposals. The Young Ottomans were the most famous representatives of this perplexed lot. (Quoted in Sahin 2006: 170, my translation) I believe this perplexity is rooted in a limited understanding of morality. Similar to the thinking of Tanzimat reformers, Young Ottomans also praised European ideas of progress. They were enchanted with the culture of science and technology and its contribution to material advances in Europe. Nonetheless, they believed in the importance of cultivating an Islamic ethical sensibility as a means of organizing Muslim unity, despite the multiplicity of religious/cultural groups in the empire. The Young Ottomans supported a programme of education which would merge Islamic religious principles with modern science and technology (Atasoy 2005: Chapter 2). They hoped that an Islamic education would help fend off the idea of European superiority over Ottoman socio-cultural arrangements, and they believed that the Koran was a fundamental source of social cohesion offering the greatest guarantee of individual freedoms. Sultan Abdulhamit (1878–1908) also placed great emphasis on Muslim–Ottoman unity, contending that it could be created through the overt deployment of pedagogical techniques for ‘reconstructing’ the Muslim individual. Abdulhamit’s educational programme merged the prominence of moral elements in the Islamic religion with knowledge of modern science and technology (Atasoy 2005: 29–30). This does not represent a departure from the Tanzimat path but actually builds on it, with the intention of producing a truly Muslim–Ottoman programme of social change. However, Ottoman reformers had no idea of how to blend a European culture of science and technology with Muslim ethics. The realization of Ottomanism proved to be a challenging task, given that Christians and some non-Turkish Muslims, especially from the


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Arab provinces of the empire, were not interested in the concept of Osmanli unity. It was within the context of recognizing the futility of Osmanlilik that a group of intellectuals known as the Young Turks developed an ideology of Turkish nationalism – one which relied on a secular, Turkish-ethnic understanding of morality. The Young Turks are the intellectual, spiritual forerunners of the Kemalist state. Their embrace of Turkish nationalism reflects their continuing ideological adherence to the Tanzimat notion of the state as a unitary agent of social change.

Blending Turkism, Islam, and western modernity The Young Turks (1908–18) were politically organized within the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP). They came to power with the 1908 Revolution which forced Sultan Abdulhamit to reinstate the constitution and reopen parliament. For 30 years beginning in 1878, Abdulhamit had ignored the constitutional regime. Although the Young Turks were initially loyal to the Muslim–Ottoman unity idea (Ahmad 1993: 39), they gradually developed the competing concept of Turkish nationalism (Behar 1992: 60–85; Berkes 1959; Turkone 1991) after a series of military defeats in the Balkans and other territorial losses. They also realized that Turkish-speaking people existed within the Ottoman Empire and that they could establish a Turkish state. This presented a break from the earlier Osmanli concept developed by the men of Tanzimat and the Young Ottomans who had either refused the writing of a ‘national’ history or never defined it as a Turkish history (Heyd 1950: 104–15; Yinanc 1969). After 1912 the CUP abandoned Osmanli patriotism and began to develop an ideology of Turkish nationalism. During the Young Turk era there were many attempts to write a history of the Turks for the purpose of creating a nationalist mythology. Hungarian anthropologist Vambery and Ottoman writer Mustafa Celaleddin Pasha (of Polish origin) made such attempts. Interested mostly in the origin of the Turks before Islam, both these writers claimed that the Turks, on the basis of their presumed racial characteristics, were part of a larger racial category of Turan which comprised Fins, Hungarians, and the Turks of Central Asia and the Caucasus (Behar 1992: 64–5). Vambery and Celaleddin Pasha simply assert that language and racial origin are the basis for a claim to nationhood. The Young Turks wanted to create a Turkish nation out of culturally, linguistically different groups by reference to their imagined unity of ethnic/racial/linguistic origins. And a Muslim religious orientation was to support this unity.

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One of the Young Turk intellectuals, and a sociologist, Ziya Gokalp (1876–1924) is often considered the father of Turkish nationalism. His writings reveal a link between the pedagogic Islamism of the Young Ottomans and the Turkish–Islamic formulation of the 1980s through the Kemalist concept of laiklik. Gokalp’s writings on the creation of ‘a modern Muslim Turkish nation’ have clearly influenced the nationalist– Islamic ideological orientations of Meric and Kisakurek, as well as the Fethullahcilar movement in the current era of Turkish history. Gokalp’s Turk–Islam formulation found its contemporary expression in the Turkish–Islamic synthesis ideology of the far-right MHP in the 1970s. The generals of the 1980 military coup instituted the Turkish– Islamic synthesis in the state structure. Ideological connections and political practices suggest that laik Kemalism and Islamic orientations are much closer than is often assumed – but are buried beneath the Kemalist ambivalence towards the role of Islam in state formation. Gokalp, who was from the inner circle of the CUP, contributed significantly to the project of Turkculuk (Turkism) as a viable ideology for building social cohesion in the remaining territories of the Ottoman state. As a sociologist who translated Emile Durkheim’s work into Turkish, Gokalp’s most important concern was how to achieve social cohesion. Gokalp developed his ideas on Turklesmek, Islamlasmak, and Muasirlasmak (Turkification, Islamization, and modernization) in articles originally published in Turk Yurdu (Turkish Homeland) magazine.3 These articles were later reprinted in a book published by the Ministry of Culture in 1976. In these writings, Gokalp (1976a) conceptualized Turklesmek (Turkification) as the generation of a feeling of national belonging and attachment to an idea of nationality. Islamlasmak (Islamization) refers to a sense of belonging to a transnational community of Muslim nations (ummah). It is a matter of being part of a civilization defined in terms of religion, the boundaries of which are defined by the divine book (Gokalp 1976b: 9–11). Muasirlasmak (modernization) refers to a national capacity to generate economic development and technological growth through the adoption of European scientific knowledge and techniques (Gokalp 1976b: 11). Gokalp (1976b: 12) sees these goals as complementary to the ultimate goal of creating a muassir Islam Turklugu (modern Islamic Turkism). Gokalp’s muassir Islam Turklugu replaced Osmanlilik. Gokalp understood the ‘nation’ to be a distinct cultural category of individuals unified by common language and religion (Berkes 1959: 72–4, 284–5). However, he rejected attempts to define the nation by an exclusive reference to Islam because it included Muslims of other ethnic–linguistic categories such as Arabs. Gokalp’s goal was to Turkify the religion of Islam by


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making it an element of national culture: ‘Our national ideal will be to reach Turkishness’ in every aspect of culture including religion (quoted in Berkes 1959: 103). Gokalp was against the Tanzimat concept of Osmanlilik. For him, it was a big ‘lie’; no other millets of the Ottoman Empire believed in it. They thought of Osmanli as inseparable from its Turkish roots. Only Turks believed in the possibility of an Osmanli nation. Seeing themselves as a mass of atomized persons, Turks had no conception of a nationality in their own social consciousness, only ties to kin, family, and village (Gokalp 1976b: 43–52). For Gokalp, the creation of a national consciousness required a new Turkist pedagogy cultivated by a corresponding pedagogy of Islamization. Before Tanzimat, Gokalp (1976b: 58) argued, children of Turkish families were educated in Islamic sciences and morality; the Tanzimat introduced western social values and modern technical sciences. Unable to blend the two, the men of Tanzimat created a polarized cultural orientation between the Islamic and the modern/western. In the end, Gokalp feared that children were becoming confused about the distinct cultural sphere of these orientations. They no longer realized that they held moral values, normative standards, and an ethical universalism belonging to the worldview of Islam, while also being profoundly influenced by the scientific knowledge and technology of another worldview originating in the west. Owing to this confusion, the Tanzimat programme of modernization transgressed the Islamic moral sphere and offended Muslims (Gokalp 1976b: 58–60). The children of Muslim Turks were never taught Turkish cultural values, ‘. . . the goal of Turkculer (Turkish nationalists) should have been the cultivation of a modern Islamic Turkism’ (Gokalp 1976b: 53). For Gokalp, the Turkification movement on which claims to national state formation were made required Islamization whereas the multi-religious cultural content of Osmanlilik did not (Turkdogan 1978: 133). Therefore, Gokalp urgently called for Islamlasmak (Islamization) in order to culturally unify atomized persons of Turkish origin and to generate a morally informed national consciousness. Gokalp (1976b: 42) wrote: ‘[W]e Turks must work to create a cultural synthesis of Turk-Islam although we must also be equipped with universal values of rationality and modern sciences.’ He (1976b: 28) added: ‘[A] modern Turk-Islam civilization can only be generated if we blend the natural sciences, philosophy, rationality, and methodology of our times with our national and religious traditions’ (my translations). His yearning was for a yeni hayat (new life) to be established from this blend – one that refuses both a trans-historical Islamic stand and the wholesale emulation of western standards (Gokalp

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1976b: 20–8). Gokalp’s Turk–Islam resembles Namik Kemal’s desire for a fusion between the ‘east’ and the ‘west,’ expressed as a synthesis between western rationality and ‘progress,’ and eastern mindfulness and virtue (batinin ‘bikr-I fikri’ ile dogunun ‘akl-I piranesini’ birlestirme) (Meric 1974/2005: 139). The difference here is that Gokalp saw Turkism, including a Turkified notion of Islam, as the prime mover of a social change programme, rather than Namik Kemal’s Ottomanism which integrates a Muslim worldview. There are meaningful continuities in the ideological orientations of the Young Ottomans (for example, Sinasi and Namik Kemal), the Young Turks (Ziya Gokalp), and, as I will examine in later chapters, more recent nationalist–Islamic orientations (Necip Fazil Kisakurek, the MHP, and Ulkuculer as well as the Fethullahcilar movement). The blending of ideas on nationalism, Islam, and western modernity is also expressed in different ways and at different times through Kemalist state practices of social cohesion.

Unease with Islamic referents: Kemalism While Gokalp never developed an ideology of Turkculuk and modernization that eliminates Islamic referents, the future adaptation of his thought by the founders of the Turkish Republic represents a clear break from previous Ottoman projects of Muslim unity. Yet, Kemalism is never at ease with what it has tried to replace and how. This unease is well expressed by the Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk in his description of the deep melancholy or huzun felt by many in Turkey: Great as the desire to westernize and modernize may have been, the more desperate wish was probably to be rid of all the bitter memories of the fallen empire, rather as a spurned lover throws away his lost beloved’s cloths, possessions, and photographs. But as nothing, western or local, came to fill the void, the great drive to westernize amounted mostly to the erasure of the past; the effect on culture was reductive and stunting, leading families like mine, otherwise glad of republican progress, to furnish their houses like museums. That which I would later know as pervasive melancholy and mystery, I felt in childhood as boredom and gloom, a deadening tedium. (O. Pamuk 2006: 29) Interestingly, what Orhan Pamuk describes in Istanbul (2006) as a source of constant huzun has also been a source of great emotional pain for


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many intellectuals on the pro-Islamic side. For them, Kemalist westernization caused a tragic break in the connection between self and society, reducing society to a collection of atomized individuals with no past (Meric 1974/2005: 37, 98). For example, in Cile (Suffering) Necip Fazil Kisakurek (1979: 14–16) writes: I moved around for months, shattered and perplexed, My soul is a cauldron and my intellect a ladle, Within ear-shot of the village of lunatics, Each and every idea is a pair of handcuffs within me. Time and time again the scorpion stung my soul, I moved from season to season in that way. I realized neither in fire nor in the gouging of flesh Is there a greater torture than the suffering of the mind. Dictionary, give a name to describe me; A name that everybody will recognize! My old clothes hold my hand; Mirrors tell me who I am. (quoted in Atasoy 2005: 77, my translation) This may be more profound than what Pamuk (2006: 101) describes as the ‘heartache’ or huzun felt by those living in Istanbul among the great monuments of the past. Kisakurek’s description is of a deep cultural alienation and moral derangement. In Ahsap Konak (wooden mansion), Kisakurek expresses his feelings further through the image of the konak where he spent his childhood during the final years of the Ottoman Empire. It symbolizes the communal feeling of moral disintegration shared by millions under the influence of the westernization process. Kisakurek writes: Every floor of this three story Ahsap Konak is a different world: Top floor: my grandmother crying while holding prayer beats Middle floor: my mother dancing with her lovers Downstairs: My sister screaming at the tom-tom beats. Like the maggoty cheese that I cut through from the middle, Please come and see it through its floors, here, my home! What kind of a pathetic tree that is, surrounding my entire vision. Its roots are honesty, its branches are imitation, its fruits are prostitution. (quoted in Atasoy 2005: 78, my translation)

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The Ahsap Konak represents the fragmented social space and cognitive emptiness in the minds of individuals. For Kisakurek, the westernizing elite from the Tanzimat onwards, including the Kemalist elite – whom he calls ‘spurious heroes’ – is responsible for this deplorable outcome.

Wholesale westernization The Republic of Turkey was founded in 1923 with Mustafa Kemal elected as its first president. He held the office for 15 years from 1923 until his death in 1938. The establishment of a new state ended a near centurylong Ottoman journey of trial and error reforms. It marked the beginning of a new journey of political and cultural reforms designed to reorganize the state and reconfigure society, culture, and, indeed, human life itself. The specific elements included republicanism, nationalism, laiklik, populism, statism (devletcilik), and revolutionism/reformism. The third congress of the ruling Republican People’s Party, convened in 1931, accepted these principles as the official state ideology – Kemalism. Kemalism is also known as Ataturkism or Ataturkculuk. Its principles became the unchangeable, founding principles of the Turkish Republic and were incorporated into the constitution on 5 February 1937. They turned into the ‘six arrows’ of Mustafa Kemal’s Republican People’s Party (RPP), and became the party’s emblem. The six arrows were implemented during the single-party era (1930–45) (Kadioglu 2005a) yet continue to frame the ideological orientation of the RPP at present. Kemalism settled – temporarily at least – one persistent question in the long-Ottoman debate on the role of westernization and Islam in modernization projects. The Kemalist cadres firmly believed that modernization was ‘a universal necessity’ (Patel and McMichael 2004: 235). It required state-management of the social change process in order to catch up with the level of capitalist economic development and technological advances in western Europe. Representing modernity in universalistic terms, Kemalists believed that scientific knowledge, formal rationality, technology, technique, and western culture were constituent elements of a unified whole. To realize successful development in the capitalist economy and in industrial technologies a wholesale adoption of western ways was needed. It is important to note that the Kemalist understanding of modernity departs from the Ottoman understanding. Ottoman reformers, including the men of Tanzimat, thought of western modernity as ‘contextualized universalism’ but not as ‘absolutized universalism’ (Beck 2000: 83). The main concern of many Tanzimat, Young Ottoman, and


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Young Turk intellectuals was with blending western modernity and Islam, both understood in universalistic terms but also as distinct. For them, western and Islamic ways were examples of ‘inclusive distinctions’ (Beck 2000: 82), referring to ‘a combination of universalism and contextualism.’ What is interesting here is that this reflects Gokalp’s (1976b: 12–13) approach to civilization as well, which he defined as ‘new’ and ‘genuine.’ Gokalp does not see this new civilization in the European customs and moral practices of everyday life, but in its technological and scientific developments. It is this ‘new’ form of techno-scientific civilization that Gokalp accepts as ‘universalist universalism,’ to which both western and Muslim nations, including the ‘Turkish’ nation, belong. Gokalp’s goal was to contextualize this techno-scientific universalism in relation to Turkish national culture, including the religion of Islam. This is a departure from the westernization project of the Kemalist state-making elite who understood the western model as both trans-historically universalistic and a totalizing normative feature of modernity. Kemalist modernity embraced the adoption of western techno-scientific and socio-normative patterns as a unified totality. In contrast, Gokalp (1976b) argued that a nation which turned its back on its culture could only produce a rootless, ahistorical imitation of a western lifestyle and moral values. Gokalp believed this was a call for disaster. In practice, Kemalist cadres pursued the emulation of western modernity as a method of citizen control. The Kemalist social engineering programme was designed to ensure the suitability of subject-citizens for the cultural requirements of western modernity. This included the deployment of state biopolitical power to manage the political–cultural tensions associated with the transition of persons from their former subject status within the Ottoman Empire to a new citizenship status tying them directly to the state. Cultural differences were levelled out and the substantive autonomy enjoyed by various cultural communities during the Ottoman Empire was eliminated. Kemalist biopolitics involved the generation of a territorially defined conception of a unified culture mobilized to reconstruct national modernity via disciplinary technologies of state control. Kemalism insisted that individual selfhood and social standing were to develop in relation to the state. It linked a territorial understanding of state–citizen relations (Kadioglu 1999: 64) to a Turkified notion of the nation (Kadioglu 2005a: 108). This is conveyed in a slogan attributed to Mustafa Kemal: Ne Mutlu Turkum Diyene (Great Happiness to Those Who Say I am Turkish) repeated every morning by school children before

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starting their lessons. Such slogans reflect a discursive orientation that equates the people, citizens, and the nation, with the state – and can be deployed in subduing interest- and culture-based politics. A slogan by Ziya Gokalp hak yok vazife vardir (there are no rights but duties) also illustrates this point. The Kemalist national modernity concept is a manifestation of what Beck (2000) has described as the ‘first modernity,’ which represents the Westphalian system of situating sovereignty within national jurisdictions. Kemalism is an ideological referent for the state’s territorial sovereignty. It expresses the agency of the state in organizing social life within its territorial boundaries. For Rosenberg (1994: 129–31), the sovereignty principle makes the unthinkable of the previous era thinkable: rule over the relations of citizenship and territorially unified jurisdiction under the state. This helps redefine state power to be ‘more absolute in its “purely political” prerogatives than other historical forms of rule’ (Rosenberg 1994: 131). Similarly, Kemalism provided the ideological underpinning for what Beck (2000: 9, italics original) calls ‘the territorial orthodoxy of the political and the social, posed in absolute institutional categories.’ It entails the reconstitution of the state political sphere so as to be external to society and makes the state a key unitary agency in reorganizing forms of social power. The principle of state sovereignty seen as a condition for situating Turkey on the road to modernity integrated a ‘universal’ narrative (attributed to western European achievements) and a particular configuration of social classes, political alliances, and cultural relations into the making of a national society. It melded a world project of modernity and the particularities of Turkey’s circumstances within a social-change trajectory by reconfiguring and transforming these particularities. Mustafa Kemal (Ataturk 1924/1954: 66) believed that a nation on the path of modernization should be united around the normative perspective of western modernity which is predicated on instrumental rational thinking, and scientific and technological development. The basic premise of the project is nationalism which defines the boundaries of the state, society, and culture as co-extensive. Culture, as a result, becomes essentially territorial (A.D. Smith 1983). It attaches an imaginary of cultural ‘homogeneity’ to the reproduction of western modernity within a space controlled by the state. It was in this context that the caliphate was abolished in 1924, following the elimination of the sultanate in 1922. The Seriat courts and office of the Seyhul-Islam (the highest religious official in the Ottoman Empire) were also shut down, and a Directorate of Religious Affairs


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was established in 1924 under the office of the prime minister. Religious schools and institutes were closed as education became unified under the Ministry of Education. Co-education for girls and boys was also introduced. All of these changes were ratified in the 1924 Constitution. The constitution also defined Turkish as the official language. Kurdish was officially prohibited, including its use in schools (McDowall 2004: 191–2). In 1925, religious brotherhoods were disbanded and their mescids (small mosques), convents, and sacred tombs closed. Religious titles such as sheikh and dervish were abolished. The Turk Medeni Kanunu (Turkish Civil Law) was adopted in 1926, translated verbatim from Swiss Civil law, replacing the Islamic Seriat. In 1928 the constitutional clause which proclaimed Islam the state religion was repealed. These reforms transformed the state structure and redirected social change onto a secular trajectory. They were also designed to change the symbolic framework of social and cultural life in Turkey (Bozdogan and Kasaba 1997). Attempts were made to penetrate the lifestyle and daily customs of the population in the hope of eventually displacing Islam from the public sphere and relocating it to the privacy of the home and family. Issues related to choice of clothing, where and how to live, what to eat, and what kind of music to listen to were all subject to Kemalist state scrutiny, which saw the adoption of European standards as essential to ‘becoming civilized’ (Colak 2005: 245). The reforms entailed a change in the habits of everyday life such that all identification with the former Ottoman Empire, especially religious identification, was eliminated. This was the case in spite of the fact that Islam did not frame all aspects of Ottoman daily life (Faroqhi 2000). In 1925 the sapka kanunu (hat reform law) outlawed the wearing of caps and fezzes by men because these were considered symbols of religious obscurantism. Men were expected to wear a western-style sapka (hat) to display their suitability for a modern way of life. Women were also discouraged from wearing the carsaf (a burka-like outer garment formerly worn by some Muslim women in the Ottoman Empire) and the facial veil, both defined as uncivilized forms of dress. ‘The wives of public employees were expected to be unveiled and dress like Europeans. Also, it was obligatory for all women employed as state officials and all schoolgirls to dress in a “modern” way’ (Colak 2005: 246). However, there was no legislative requirement for women to adopt a European dress code. Women who dressed in an ‘Islamic’ way were simply excluded from public representation. Reforms continued, with the Gregorian solar calendar replacing the Muslim lunar calendar in 1926. Then in 1928 the Latin alphabet was

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adopted and the script changed from Arabic to Latin. Attempts were also made to ‘cleanse’ the Turkish language of Arabic and Persian words. The educational system was thoroughly restructured along strictly secular lines. The Faculty of Theology, which had previously been responsible for higher education in religion, was abolished in 1933, and an Institute of Islamic Research was established within the body of the Faculty of Arts at Istanbul University. Higher religious education was thus replaced by scientific research on religion. In addition, after 1930 the ezan (the Islamic call to prayer) and the Koran were changed from Arabic into Latin-scripted Turkish. The legal code was actually changed to permit three-month jail sentences for those caught reading the Koran in Arabic (Tarhanli 1993: 20). In 1935 the weekly holiday was shifted from Friday to Sunday, and in 1937 laiklik became a constitutional requirement enforceable by law. Secularism in Turkey is referred to as laiklik, a word drawn from the French laicisme. It does not correspond to a separation between the state and religion. It is one of the core elements in the Kemalist state-building project, undertaken to regulate religious institutions, education, and normative standards by the state. Therefore, I use the term Kemalist laiklik to refer to an ideology of state control over and regulation of religion. The establishment of the Directorate of Religious Affairs was crucial for the Kemalist elite to achieve greater state control over religion (Tarhanli 1993). It was a government-funded and controlled organization, responsible for the production and dissemination of religious knowledge. All mosques were placed under its control, and all religious personnel, imams (prayer leaders) and hatips (preachers), became employees of the state – members of the secular bureaucracy. The Directorate of Religious Affairs became an important governmental technology deployed in the creation of a state-controlled ‘official’ Islam directed towards achieving uniformity around Turkish nationalism. Kemalist laiklik was not about a separation between the state and religion per se; it constituted a ‘biopolitical mode of governing’ (Ong 2006: 6) centred on self-engineering for modernity. By keeping Islam under state regulation Kemalism aimed to ‘enlighten’ and cleanse Islam of ‘traditional,’ ‘obscurantist’ elements which it found contrary to a ‘civilized’ way of life. This reflects a paradox in Kemalism. Gokalp saw Islam as both national (cultural) and transnational (civilizational). Under the influence of Gokalp, Kemalism saw the religion of Islam as instrumental in achieving social solidarity among citizens around the state. However, the Kemalist elite was not interested in Gokalp’s


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(1976b: 9–11) view of Islam as the source of a distinct civilization. Rather, they wanted to generate a state-defined religion of Islam, giving it the mission of inculcating patriotism and emphasizing one’s obligation to the maintenance of the sovereign state. Divorcing Islam from its ‘expression of the universal’ (Ramadan 2004: 11), the Kemalist elite wished to promote a form of religiosity specifically tied to Turkish nationalism in state formation. The differences in and the appropriateness of various Muslim cultural practices were believed to have consequences for state formation, thereby restricting the promotion of Muslim religiosity to a form of Sunni Islam regulated by the state. The Directorate of Religious Affairs was therefore a significant mechanism connecting the state and citizenship, not in terms of a juridical relationship but as a matter of cultivating civic responsibility and loyalty towards the self-government of individuals (cf. R. Cakir and Bozan 2005; Tarhanli 1993). During the late 1920s and 1930s state-employed religious personnel wrote completely new versions of religious textbooks. The directorate commissioned these books with the intention of promoting the idea that good citizenship was both a virtue and a religiously sanctioned moral duty (Dumont 1987: 3). In short, the state bureaucratic cadres of the Directorate of Religious Affairs played a pivotal role in managing laiklik deployed as a biopolitical technology of individual self-government and culture formation. Kemalist reforms were dedicated to the constitution of a ‘national culture,’ conceptualized as particular relations of control between the state, the civil–military bureaucracy, and tropes such as nation, homeland, ‘enlightened’ religion, and the economy. Kemalists believed that an ‘unenlightened’ Islam was incongruent with modernity. This went hand-in-hand with a cultural aversion to instrumental, rational thinking and techno-scientific culture. Nevertheless, the precise meaning of what Kemalism actually was has never been clearly defined (M. Arsel 2005: 19). It remains an indeterminate, abstract idea for the state, although an extremely powerful idea legitimating the structural position of a laik bureaucracy. The judicial and military bureaucracy, including public prosecutors and gendarmes, became key agents in sustaining the reforms. Consequences for those who did not conform were severe. Under the ideological influence of Gokalp, Kemalism integrated Turkish nationalism with a form of Muslim religiosity through the Directorate of Religious Affairs. Nevertheless, Kurds were already showing signs that the nationalist ‘mixing’ of the peoples within the Turkish state was based on the Kemalist misreading of the Turkish nation as an expression of a pre-existing unity of Muslim categories. Clearly,

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Kemalism was a partial account of national cohesion that distorted the complexity of linguistic, cultural reality, and was hampering the achievement of a more inclusive peoplehood construct by favouring state-level uniformity through the laiklik principle. Although an emergent Kurdish nationalism had previously existed among a small group of educated Young Kurds (Jwaideh 1999), it began to grow significantly after 1914. Many factors were involved, including large-scale conflicts with and the massacre of Armenians. Fierce nationalist claims to independence during the time of the First World War had helped redefine Kurdish existence in the Ottoman state in terms of ethnicity (Bozarslan 2002: 841; Kirisci and Winrow 2002; McDowall 2004: 87–112). With ethnicity emerging as a marker of Kurdish existence after 1914, Kurdish insurrections entered a new phase, gradually combining the tribal and religious insurrections of the earlier era into a more politicized Kurdish nationalist stance (Bozarslan 2002, 2007; Yegen 1999). The end of the Turkish War of Independence (1919–22) and the Lausanne Peace Treaty of 1923, which for the most part finalized Turkey’s present territorial borders (Atasoy 2005: 37), created an entirely new situation for the shaping of Kurdish nationalism around ethnicity. The Turkish delegation in the Lausanne negotiations was successful in securing the ‘non-Muslim’ religious status of people as the only distinguishing mark for their recognition as a minority group in the treaty (Oran 2004: 50–1). Contrary to commonly held assumptions (Akyol 2006: 73–4; Meray 1973), the treaty did not recognize religion or culture and language as markers of minority group identification for legal and political purposes in Turkey. As a result, while Christian Greeks, Orthodox Armenians, and Jews were minorities, various other Muslim, cultural–ethnic categories, including Kurds, Circassians, Lazes, Arabs, Georgians and other Turkic groups, as well as non-Sunni Alevi-Bektasi Muslims, which did not fit into the minority definition designed by the treaty, were excluded from minority status (Andrews 2002; Oran 2004). The Kurds, whose numbers are currently estimated to be between 12 and 15 million, constitute the largest category of people living in eastern and southeastern Anatolia today. Nonetheless, they remain unrecognized as a minority. The complexities of these issues are well beyond the scope of this book. However, it is important to note that the Lausanne Peace Treaty helped construct what Balibar (1991: 96) calls a ‘fictive ethnicity’ of Muslim people in Turkey – assumed to be religiously unified as a cultural expression of social cohesion. As a result, by reference to the Lausanne Treaty negotiated within the specific geopolitics of state-building


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processes in the aftermath of the First World War and Turkey’s War of Independence, Muslim categories were expected to be loyal to the Turkish state. This expectation laid the foundation for the repression of Kurds accused of creating a ‘separatist’ Kurdish-ethnic minority in later years. Their non-minority status was also used to justify ‘a policy of forced assimilation and destruction of the Kurdish culture’ (Gurbey 1996: 21). Turkish, defined as the official language by the 1924 constitution, also became the exclusive language of education except for some non-Muslim groups (O’Neil 2007: 75). As a result, Kurds were denied access to education in Kurdish. All reference to Kurdistan was excised from official materials (McDowell 2004: 191). The Turkish government also began to replace Kurdish place names with Turkish ones (McDowall 2004: 191; O’Neil 2007: 75). The Settlement Law of 1934 (Law No. 2510) represents another case of a government attempt to assimilate Kurds (Gunter 1997: 6). Although the law was not restricted to Kurds alone (Kirisci and Winrow 2002: 104), the great majority of people who were forced to migrate from the eastern provinces of Anatolia were Kurds. During the implementation of the law a total of 25,831 Kurds from 5074 households in the east were forced to resettle in western Anatolia (I. Tekeli 1990: 64). In addition to an emerging Kurdish nationalism around language rights, Kemalist reforms in general and laiklik in particular undermined the religious basis of the ‘fictive ethnicity’ of Muslims, thereby changing the ideological condition of Kurdish loyalty to the state (Atasoy 2005: 44–7; Yuksel 1993). Said Nursi (1876–1960) was a Kurdish religious intellectual and originator of the Nurcu community movement who continues to influence various currents of Islamic thought throughout Turkey (Mardin 1989). He saw Islam as the source of loyalty of all Muslims to the national state of Turkey, regardless of cultural differences (Atasoy 2005: 45–6). Within the context of Islamic unity, each cultural community would be able to maintain its own language, customs and culture. For Said Nursi, Kemalism was making a big mistake by favouring linguistic and territorial unity without including religion in the nationhood construct. There were 18 uprisings that took place between 1924 and 1938, 16 of which were predominantly Kurdish (Kirisci and Winrow 2002: 105). Said Nursi did not support these uprisings. The combined effect of various Kurdish uprisings in 1925, 1927–30, and 1937–38 (Bozarslan 2007: 42–3; Kurubas 2004; Mumcu 1991; Yegen 1999: 134–49) was that linguistically separate and religiously motivated Kurds were gradually being juxtaposed within the Turkish state. The Sheikh Said Revolt of 1925, arguably

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the most important of the Kurdish uprisings of the time, helped to further integrate an emerging Kurdish ethnicity into an Islamic orientation (Kutlay 2005; van Bruinessen 1992a, 1992b; Yuksel 1993). This gave rise to a unique combination of ethnic Islam and linguistic nationalism among Kurds in Turkey (Yalcin-Heckmann 1991). The Sheikh Said Revolt has had long-standing consequences for the solidification of the exclusionary practices of the Kemalist state. It forced state-level cultural unity and initiated the suppression of Kurdish cultural existence during the ‘decades of silence’ (Watts 2007: 53). The period was marked by the brutal repression of the 1937–38 Dersim uprising and the rebirth of the Kurdish nationalist movement during the late 1960s. The suppression of the revolt was followed by the stateled reconstruction programme of the Turkish nation, including forced assimilation of the Kurds (cf. Heper 2007; McDowall 2004: 209–10; O’Neil 2007: 76). The Sheikh Said Revolt of 1925, led by a Kurdish–Naqshbandi Sheikh in response to the abolition of the caliphate, was used to justify the deployment of state coercion for the purpose of eliminating opposition political parties (van Bruinessen 1992a, 1992b). This was the beginning of a militant laiklik, lasting until the 1947 Seventh Party Congress of the ruling RPP. At that time the party amended its official meaning to include a clause on respect for religion and religious expression as a matter of personal conscience (Jaschke 1972: 85–6, 98, 100). After the 1925 revolt, laiklik was implemented through special courts known as Independence Tribunals authorized by the Law for the Maintenance of Order. During the first two years of its operation the Independence Tribunals sentenced over 500 people to death. The law was in effect from 3 March 1925 to 4 March 1929. During this period, the Progressive Republican Party (1924–25) was banned from politics because of a belief that its support for the protection of individual rights and freedoms, including freedom of expression, was giving rise to Islamic opposition against state reforms, thereby threatening the security of the state (Tunaya 1952: 585, 611–18). After the Progressive Republican Party was banned a single-party regime was established which lasted until the end of the Second World War. With the exception of a short period in 1930 when the Republican Free Party was founded by a friend of Mustafa Kemal (with close collaboration from government officials including Prime Minister Ismet Inonu), a militant single-party rule framed the implementation of Kemalist ideology. The Free Party was envisioned as a subordinate ancestor, a ‘loyal opposition’ party (Giritlioglu 1965: 75). It dissolved itself in a few months when it became clear that genuine


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opposition was not possible against the political authority of Mustafa Kemal (Lewis 1968: 281). During the single-party period it became evident that the Kemalist stance in relation to Mill’s paradox of liberalism was in favour of the primacy of state power over all other liberties. Minister of Internal Affairs Sukru Kaya expressed this well when he said that ‘[W]e cannot sacrifice state authority just for the sake of liberty’ (Giritlioglu 1965: 79). Mustafa Kemal’s own Republican People’s Party (RPP) thus remained the only party permitted to operate in politics, working diligently to consolidate an authoritarian, repressive, and militaristic laik culture (Atasoy 2005: 48–50). This was clearly stated in a 1937 parliamentary speech by Sukru Kaya: ‘Our aim is to make sure that religion will not be part of material life and worldly affairs’ (Tarhanli 1993: 19). Laik culture was state controlled, while non-state-sanctioned thinking and cultural practices were viewed as a potential cause for religiously inspired opposition against the state. Single-party rule sought to precisely define the public political space in terms of what is culturally acceptable and what is unacceptable to the state modernity project. In the process, political space was refigured in a manner that was inimical to the expression of cultural pluralisms. The Turkish Historical Society (1931) and the Turkish Linguistic Society (1932) were established to remove Ottoman–Muslim cultural referents from the national memory. They advocated the ‘Turkish History Thesis’ and the ‘Sun-Language Theory’ (Gologlu 1974), which held a specific ethno-racial definition of the cultural, geographical, and historical ‘purity’ of Turks (A. Yildiz 2001). A secular project of linguistic and territorial integration was supposed to break with the Islamic–Ottoman past and the plurality of Muslim cultural expression. Similar to the idea of the Turan developed by the Young Turks, the Turkish history thesis was presented at the First Turkish History Congress in 1932. It claimed that the Turks belonged to a ‘race’ of people who emerged in Central Asia and then established great civilizations in Anatolia, the Aegean, and Mesopotamia (Behar 1992). The Hittites and Sumerians were also seen as Turkish forebearers (Seton-Watson 1977: 259). The sun-language theory, presented at the Second Turkish History Congress in 1937, argued that in the old shamanistic religion of Turks before the acceptance of Islam, the sun symbolized the power of nature against the power of God. From this point of view, the evolution of Turkish culture has followed a path based on a secular interpretation of nature rather than on Islam (Besikci 1991: 131–69; Gunaltay and Tankut 1938). According to these theories, Islam was portrayed as an ethnic religion of Arabs associated with the

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Arabic language and traditions (Lewis 1988). It was intended to show that ancient Turkish culture before the Turks adopted Islam was congruent with western modernity. The role of the state, then, was to eliminate foreign traditions of Islam from the Turkish way of life, and place the Turkish people back on their ‘natural’ trajectory. The task of the Kemalists was not easy, especially given the fact that more than 90 per cent of the people living in Turkey during the 1920s were Muslims (Jaschke 1972: 20). This included ethnically and linguistically diverse Muslim cultural categories (Kilic Ali 1955). For these people, local ties based on kinship, village, or religion were often more important than a general Turkish national-state identification (Lewis 1968: Chapter 10). Therefore, in order to contribute to the state-led creation of modern subjects, Halkevleri (Public Houses) and Koy Enstituleri (Village Institutes) were opened in 1932. These government institutions functioned as state-propaganda machines to spread republican principles among the general population (cf. Kadioglu 2005a: 112). They were founded to inculcate Turkish nationalism and the laiklik principle against the persistence of Islamic customary practices in the Anatolian hinterland. The education of the general population in the Turkish language, literature, and history, as well as in Turkish arts and theatre was intended to ‘ensure national unity in culture, ideals and thought’ (Cavdar 1983: 881). By 1940 there were 4521 halkevleri throughout Turkey (Cavdar 1983: 882). Although their effectiveness in transforming society is difficult to measure, the halkevleri were nevertheless important government vehicles for spreading modernity and transforming society (Yegen 1999: 180–8). Similarly, koy enstituleri were supposed to eliminate the cultural and religious backwardness of Turkish villages by enlightening their inhabitants on the virtues of modernity (Gungor 1999: 59–60; Tonguc 1970). The halkevleri and koy enstituleri, as well as the Turkish History Society and Turkish Linguistic Society, aimed at creating a Turkish citizen prior to the emergence of an individualist ethic in Turkey. Hence they were instrumental in forming a notion of citizenship that emphasized obligations instead of rights. (Kadioglu 2005a: 112) It is difficult to conclude that these innovative governmental technologies succeeded in creating an unambiguous sense of history and citizenship complete with a universalizing memory of modernity. It is fair to suggest, however, that Kemalist prescriptions created ‘normative


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conflicts’ between the cultural beliefs and everyday practices of Muslims in society, and the oppressive practices of the bureaucratic elite. Once emptied of its symbolic content, the end result was a society which appeared as ‘a seamless and structureless whole’ (Mardin 1984: 117), comprising a collection of atomized individuals linked directly to the state through mass political citizenship.

3 Turkish Islam: Unthinking Kemalism?

The Turkish state has experienced several periods of restructuring since its founding in 1923. The military coup of September 1980 was instrumental in instituting a social change programme that moved Turkey beyond the paradigm of the ‘first modernity.’ The precise meaning of this shift is difficult to determine, but what is readily discernable is that the Kemalist trajectory has been refashioned under the neoliberal restructuring of the Turkish economy. The military coup signals the transformation of the Kemalist form of state-developmentalist modernity to a new form established along neoliberal lines. This chapter examines the Kemalist construction of the first modernity in Turkey, followed by an extensive analysis of ‘social fascism’ in the context of a Turkish–Islamic remaking of the state.

Engagement with techno-scientific universalism Kemalism arose within a specific international conjuncture of historical circumstances during the 1930s and 1940s. During that period, fascism emerged as a solution to the devastation in Europe caused by the Great Depression of 1929 (Polanyi 1944), and Kemalism took a specific trajectory of state formation within that general context. Peter Gourevitch (1986) notes that the national policies of each country differ in terms of the relationship between the general trends of the era and particular national trajectories. There is no doubt that Kemalism incorporated certain elements of fascism, the full meaning of which has been well-analyzed elsewhere (Adamson 1980; Mann 2004; Paxton 1998; Renton 1999). Two of the chief characteristics of fascism are strictly controlled and state-sanctioned national culture formation through pseudo-corporatism, and a demonstration of loyalty to the 70

Turkish Islam: Unthinking Kemalism?

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unified nation-state by rooting out political dissidents and class conflicts through military authoritarianism (Patel and McMichael 2004: 233). Although fascism was historically specific to Germany, Italy, and arguably Japan, certain policy-orientations of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy influenced Kemalist cultural policies. While Nazi Germany provided a major ideological influence (Kocak 1986), the anti-worker stance of Fascist Italy proved useful as an example of labour repression and lowcost employment. The Turkish government’s 1936 labour law was based on the Italian labour law of 1935 (Yetkin 1983: 102), which denied workers the right to form unions and strike. With the 1938 association law, working-class demands were replaced by a cultural requirement to live ‘harmoniously’ within society (Atasoy 2005: 57). This law denied the existence of classes and the right to establish class-based organizations. As a time-specific ‘class project’ of the 1930s, Kemalism embraced a techno-scientific universalism which Gokalp saw as the only genuine, uncontested, and absolutist form of universalism. ‘Since modernity was said to be by definition the incarnation of the true universal values, of universalism, modernity was not merely a moral good but a historical necessity’ (Wallerstein 2006: 33). And so was the Kemalist attitude. They even created a need for it, by building a national economy in which Muslim–Turkish commercial and industrial classes would be dominant in order to ensure the economic independence of the state. Non-Muslims represented economically dominant classes in both commercial and manufacturing activities in the Ottoman Empire (Gocek 1996). As the non-Muslim population, including members of the commercial classes, declined drastically after the mid-1920s (Keyder 1981: 23), military–civil bureaucratic cadres emerged as an agent of industrial development. Claiming to represent ‘national interests’ as a whole, they elevated themselves to a ‘vanguard’ role, shaping industrial capitalism from above. There is no doubt that after the war they filled a vacuum created by the departure of non-Muslim commercial groups in the economy. Although pursued as a ‘collective mobility project’ (Sarfatti-Larson 1977), the bureaucratic vanguard assigned a subordinate position to small farmers and labour. Through the government’s discriminatory price, wage and taxation policies (Bianchi 1984; Boratav 1982; Hershlag 1968: 109; Keyder 1987: 104–5; S. Pamuk 1991; Toprak 1982), small farmers, in addition to industrial labour, were incorporated into the generation of surplus capital for industrialization projects. Small farmers who produced for immediate family consumption were responsible for approximately 90 per cent of agricultural activity (I. Tekeli and Ilkin 1977: 37–8). They were to be transformed

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from producing for their families to producing for external markets – a process that deepened commercialization and the market integration of agriculture along with the peasant way of life. In addition to managing the class relations of modernity, bureaucratic cadres were also assuming ‘class power’ in the economy for themselves (King and Szelenyi 2004: xvii). In the absence of a strong private commercial bourgeoisie, political power belonged to bureaucrats, whose self-proclaimed goal was to catch up with the European level of economic development. This entailed making industrialization synonymous with nationalism in a way that allowed state bureaucrats to secure economic power. In the process, they acquired the capacity to determine the political outcome of important questions relating to the access and distribution of resources. The building of a private Turkish industrial bourgeoisie (Hershlag 1968: 90–1; Kazgan 1999: 66; Toprak 1982) was tied to devletcilik (statism), which became one of the founding principles of Kemalism. During the 15 long years of a single party regime, devletcilik strengthened the ability of bureaucrats to consolidate political and economic power in the state. By the end of the 1930s more than half of industrial enterprises were state owned (Mardin 1980: 39). However, it was only after the 1960s that large private industrialists began to exploit significant opportunities under the protection of state bureaucrats and in a way that discriminated against smaller capital interests. Within the frame of Turkey’s national modernity project, devletcilik sustained an alliance between the possessors of power (bureaucrats) and a segment of the possessors of knowledge of modernity (secularly oriented intellectuals) in their bid to reproduce European techno-scientific universalism. Devletcilik, however, was not a well-defined concept. Celal Bayar, finance minister and director of the Business Bank at the time, claimed that devletcilik was only a temporary strategy to bolster private enterprise. And for the intellectuals writing in Kadro magazine, devletcilik did allow bureaucrats to carry out an industrialization programme but one that did not give rise to private capital interests in the economy. What they had in mind was a kind of socialist economy in which bureaucratic cadres would act as a vanguard class. For Sukru Saracoglu, prime minister from 1942 to 1946, devletcilik was an ‘advanced form of socialism’ that would institute an industrial economy under the unitary agency of state-ruling bureaucrats (Karpat 1959: 70). The coalition between bureaucratic cadres and a secularized segment of intellectuals is important for understanding the ideological basis of the Kemalist state and its social engineering of national culture around


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the denial of conflicting class interests. One intellectual writing for Kadro magazine proclaimed: ‘There is no mechanism invented to prevent class struggle in countries where private enterprise is dominant in the economy. Devletcilik is an [essential] strategy [if] Turkey [is] to industrialize and prosper without becoming entangled in class struggles’ (quoted in Atasoy 2005: 57–8). And the possessors of the new social order were to be state bureaucrats and secular intellectuals. To borrow from Mannheim (1972: 143), they were the ‘[watchmen] in a pitch-black night,’ agents and planners of a social change programme. Some of the ideas behind the coalition of Turkish bureaucrats and intellectuals committed to the creation of a national economy bear a close resemblance to Hegel’s theory of civil servants as a universal class, to Saint Simon’s emphasis on the role of science and scientists, and to August Comte’s notion of social engineering. Writing on the premise of an epistemological divide between the political state and the market economy (civil society), Hegel thought that an unregulated free market economy would give rise to the clash of class interests and the domination of particularistic classes. For Hegel, ‘[T]he governmental laissez-faire leads inevitably to concentration of productive capital in the hands of a few, while the many, demoralized by division of labour and cycles of unemployment, are depressed to the status of an unproductive rabble’ (Weiss 1974: 254). For Hegel, this negates the French Revolution’s promise of liberty, equality, and fraternity. The solution to such class-based conflicts would be found in a ‘universalized longing for political solutions’ (Weiss 1974: 254). Hegel thought that the rationally constituted state embodies universalism, expressing the universal will and interests of the community – a consensus hominum – of the people ruled by a communal spirit (Weiss 1974: 256, 258). This is a reification of the state as the actuality of an ethical idea. State bureaucrats were thought of as universal agents of an orderly society above the particularistic classes who ‘distinguish and discover what is universally recognized and valid . . . [and] have clung to what is substantially right, namely to the commands of the ethical order and the state’ (Weiss 1974: 256). In Hegel’s view, in order to carry out their universal historic task civil servants must be enlightened and embody the values, moral principles, and standards of universalism. Hegelian thinking has persisted in our own times through the ‘modern myth’ (Gray 2003: 4) that scientific knowledge and its technological application engender a universal morality which enables humanity to take charge of its destiny. Saint Simon and August Comte also viewed science as the ultimate source of human emancipation. In contrast to

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Hegel, however, their view was rooted in ‘an anti-statist bias [from] French intellectual tradition’ (King and Szelenyi 2004: 6). All of these ideas were well represented in the writings of Ziya Gokalp. Gokalp-inspired Kemalism was built on a Hegelian intellectual legacy which viewed the state as an ethical concept. It also borrowed the conviction from Saint Simon that the emergent social order was to be an industrial society organized in conformity with the technoscientific foundation of modernity under the leadership of scientists and industrialists. August Comte was crucial in linking the techno-scientific orientation of Simon to the reordering of society through social engineering. However, Kemalist social engineering did not take the state ‘above the particularistic classes.’ It simply strengthened the role of state bureaucrats in negotiating the power plays of modernity. Together, the Hegelian ethical state, Simon’s techno-scientific thinking and Comte’s social order presented a vision to the Kemalist elite of civil–military bureaucrats and intellectuals. It was a vision of state-controlled industrial development and the reproduction of European techno-scientific universality. The Kemalist elite applied this vision through the concept of devletcilik, expressed in a mutually reinforcing assemblage of state power and bureaucratic control directed towards the creation of an industrial society. And within this society, secularly oriented, large private industrialists would emerge dominant. In the process, however, state-ruling bureaucrats would also emerge as the possessors of political and economic power, equipped with the necessary financial capital as well as a cultural capital embodying the values and principles of European universalism. During the long single party era bureaucratic cadres institutionalized a development project by managing a system of class relations in a way that supported the growth of large private capital. And, the reified state emerged as the locus for reordering society through a profound belief in the power of social engineering. This included the creation of a private industrial bourgeoisie and the repression of labour and small producers through the application of a bureaucratic/statist version of techno-scientific modernity. Fascism and Stalinism were extreme European expressions of this (Gray 2003). Kemalism was distinct from fascism, which was historically rooted in an industrial, market capitalist society that ‘refused to function’ under the conditions of the Great Depression (Polanyi 1944: 239). It was also different from what King and Szelenyi (2004) described as bureaucratic power and technocratic rule mobilized under state socialism – which involves managing the class relations of an industrial economy. The Turkish case was about instituting an industrial


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economy at the time of the Great Depression when the global freetrade system was collapsing. Kemalism did not constitute a protective response to the institutions and destructive effects of a laissez-faire economy. Rather, it placed Turkey on a trajectory where the state was the main agent responsible for the creation of an industrial economy in which private industrial interests would be dominant. A bureaucratic version of modernity has defined state–society relations in Turkey since the 1930s, albeit in different forms during different historical periods of the Turkish state. In Polanyian terms, Turkey’s modernity project involved the instituting of a ‘market-integrated society’ (King and Szelenyi 2004: 193) in which state bureaucrats occupied a dominant structural position in the economy. These bureaucrats continued to be dominant in establishing a neoliberal programme of social change after the 1980 military coup as well. As will be made evident in this chapter, a clear understanding of the ongoing role of state bureaucrats is necessary to appreciate the points of tension that surfaced from the neoliberal realignment of social classes, the reconfiguring of power relations, and the shift in social–cultural dynamics. As the dominant power players in Turkey’s neoliberal social reconstruction, bureaucratic cadres have exerted both direct and indirect political influence. By instituting a ‘guardianship regime’ (Mahcupyan 4 December 2008), they also ideologically control the social, political conditions of mutation in the Kemalist modernity project. Since the 1980 military coup a mutation in the Kemalist configuration of social life has certainly occurred. This includes a passage from the ‘first modernity’ of state developmentalism to the current neoliberal reconfiguration and power plays of the economy. With the neoliberal realignment of social classes, the association between the power of state bureaucrats and big private capitalists – legitimated through the social– moral disciplining technologies of Kemalist secular nationalism – is bound to snap. And, yet, Kemalism is still a major legitimating symbol which continues to be deployed bureaucratically against any opposition movement.

Bureaucratic social reconstruction: Neoliberalism Even the possibility of Turkey’s adoption of a neoliberal economic model was historically grounded in the bureaucratic exercise of political power to overrule the development of any alternative social change model to Kemalism. Without doubt, the coercive effect of international lending by the IMF and the World Bank on the government’s economic

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policy has been evident in Turkey’s adoption of a neoliberal economic model. Beginning in 1978, the IMF-imposed debt rescheduling programme and the World Bank-imposed structural adjustment programme accelerated the government’s move towards market-oriented policies. The 24 January Measures of 1980 adopted before the military coup also reflect the government’s responsiveness to the policy preferences of the IMF and the World Bank. The measures were actually imposed by the IMF and the World Bank as ‘conditionality terms’ on Turkey’s loan agreement. The imposition of the ‘conditionality terms’ signalled an ideological shift towards market-oriented reforms in the 1980s. Turkey is not a special case in this regard. Many countries have institutionalized neoliberal policies in the world since the 1970s, although they have been implemented in various ways with significant differences in their effects on particular countries (Atasoy 2009b; Henisz, Zelner, and Guillen 2005). My point in regard to Turkey is that the neoliberal refashioning of a development model was as much a politically and bureaucratically manoeuvred act designed to reorganize Turkey’s political power structure as it was an act intended to transform its economy. The bureaucratic drive to change the domestic dynamics of political struggles favoured the coercive effects of the IMF–World Bank conditionality terms on policy shifts. By pushing forward the implementation of neoliberal market-oriented economic policies, military-coup leaders in Turkey initiated a social reconstruction project. Most importantly, however, they have not necessarily accepted markets as the integrative mechanism in the neoliberal reconstruction of society. Rather, they have attempted to keep the domestic balance of power within the political frame of Kemalism which has been constitutionally defined as immutable. Echoing Comte’s concept of social engineering, this would situate neoliberalism within a moral disciplining model designed to ensure the cultural appropriateness of citizens’ behaviour vis-à-vis the Kemalist state. This chapter uncovers the complex process through which a current reconfiguration of the power plays of neoliberalism is arising from within a militaristic social–moral disciplining of Kemalism. However, this is occurring with an altered understanding of culture production and Islam’s position in the state which may challenge the trajectory of the old Kemalist state.

Social fascism: Moral discipline and militarism After the coup, the military regime (1980–3) played a crucial role in the implementation of neoliberal policy measures. It was the military


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bureaucracy’s desire to reassert state power in society and reproduce the dominance of the knowledge culture of Kemalism as the true way to refigure public space. The reassertion of state power allowed a particular reconfiguration of social forces to redefine a clear developmental tendency along neoliberal lines. Subsequent civilian governments starting with the Motherland Party (MP), which came to power in 1983, followed a strong, interventionist state trajectory achieved under the military’s tutelage (Heper 1990; Ilkin 1991; Oncu and Gokce 1991). Since the early 1980s, neoliberalism has been accompanied by uncertainty in the power relations between forces of capital, citizens, and civil–military relations. As a time-specific project for reconstituting the economy, the state, and society, neoliberalism has been subject to conflicting interpretations, tactical alliances, and civilian–military political struggles. In Polanyian terms, there is a real possibility of social fascism emerging from instituting a ‘market-integrated society’ under these uncertain circumstances. I borrow the term ‘social fascism’ from Arturo Escobar (2004). He situates it within the processes of a neoliberal global capitalism which, as an economic–military–ideological order, subordinates regions, economies, and people to the requirements of capital accumulation. In the process, such an order further marginalizes cultures and knowledge of subaltern groups. Social fascism emerges under a political regime of ‘selective inclusion and hyper-exclusion – heightened poverty for the many and skyrocketing wealth for the few – operating through spatial-military logics’ (Escobar 2004: 209). This is also eloquently expressed in David Harvey’s (2003) concept of ‘accumulation by dispossession.’ While private enterprise and entrepreneurship are promoted as the keys to wealth creation for everyone, the reality is that increasing levels of impoverishment, growth in the informal sector, and shaky employment give way to what Philip McMichael (2009) calls a ‘universal ontological insecurity.’ Ontological insecurity is increasingly an everyday reality for large sections of the world population (Atasoy 2009c). It is not an exaggeration to say that the military bureaucracy’s 1980 intervention in civilian politics in Turkey has increased the militarization of society, intensified social uncertainty, and fostered culturally exclusionary practices. It has also harnessed a crisis ‘mentality’ in social change models of thought (cf. Insel and Bayramoglu 2004). As an active, autonomous agent behind the creation and reproduction of an ‘official Ataturkculuk’1 (Akyaz 2002) that is unchangeable (Mahcupyan 4 December 2008), the military bureaucracy justifies its frequent interventions by defining them as a method of state protection. It claims that these interventions are only directed against those political struggles

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that are forged by those from outside the true frames of reference for collective action in public life. Both Islamic and Kurdish groups are seen as driving the process of damaging official Ataturkculuk, the legitimate frame of action. Significantly, it is these groups that are often marginalized within the state-controlled public sphere of wealth-generation and power, facilitating a process which may lead to the flowering of political and ethical commitments elsewhere. In response to such a possibility, the military challenges these groups and their ‘poisonous’ politico–ethical stance with an aggressive nationalist fervour. What is at stake for the military is what William Connolly (2005: 3) calls ‘bellicose Unitarianism.’ In this case, it involves the protection of Ataturkculuk from diversity in society and the political representation of oppositional voices in the state. The security of the state, the territorial integrity of the nation, the unity of national culture, and the inviolable demands of sovereignty all constitute non-negotiable imperatives which link the defence of Kemalist unitarianism to exclusionary practices that prevent the mobilization of oppositional political projects of social change. The military, economic, and cultural dimensions of power are not identical (Arrighi 1994; Tilly 1990); they are intertwined but separate. The distinct yet contingent conjunction of economic, military, and political–cultural processes redefines the frame of reference for reorganizing the changing conditions of the national state. We cannot explain the military’s intervention in Turkish politics by reference to the structural weakness of big capital groups or politico–legal institutions and governments in advancing policy goals and redirecting economic policy orientation (Keyder 1987). The Turkish military maintains its institutional and political autonomy by harnessing all legal, constitutional, structural, and cultural means (Akyaz 2002; Jacoby 2004: 127–63). It exerts direct and indirect control over and beyond constitutionally elected governments and civilian institutions (Cizre-Sakallioglu 1997). In addition to the direct interventions carried out in the 1960, 1971, and 1980 military coups, the military bureaucracy has also devised new behind-the-scenes interventions. Most notable are the 1997 soft coup which led to the resignation of a democratically elected government, and the military’s use of the Internet, as was seen with the most recent 2007 e-coup during the presidential election. The military perceives itself as playing a ‘guardianship’ role in relation to the unitary state and official state ideology (Akyaz 2002). It has exercised its veto powers granted in the 1961 Constitution and the 1973 constitutional amendments and maintains an ideological stance that is ‘above politics.’ The military is


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institutionally and politically autonomous, and a largely unaccountable agent possessing a monopoly on force within national boundaries. In Ong’s interpretation of Schmitt’s definition of sovereignty, the Turkish military can be characterized as representing the essence of state sovereignty, not only in terms of its monopoly on force to coerce but in terms of its extraordinary influence on political decision-making, thereby setting a framework for the practices of citizenship and the unitary state (Ong 2006: 5). It acts as an autonomous actor with the continuing capacity to influence political outcomes in a direction that is acceptable within that framework. At the core of the autonomous agency of the military is its practice of extending its sphere of intervention and its social engineering impulse, not only into cultural nation-building, but also into what Patel and McMichael (2004: 236) refer to as cultural state building. By influencing the cultural dimensions of state activity and managing the frames of reference over a social change model, the military in Turkey has been a core player in the ‘moral regulation’ (Corrigan and Sayer 1985) of the national state. It rectifies Kemalist state ideology and the unitary state concept with a neoliberal reorganization of society that generates an undemocratic, coercive political atmosphere. The military’s managerial role in state regulation practices is critical to an understanding of the complexities of neoliberal state transformation. As historically specific to a project of domination (Abrams 1988), state making includes the disciplinary regulation of conflicting interpretations of existing social arrangements as well as political struggles over the character of these arrangements. State making is also an exercise in the legitimation of relations of subordination and the practice of acquiring the consent of subjects-citizens for their own subjugation (Abrams 1988). It seems that under the conditions of what Harvey (2003) calls ‘accumulation by dispossession,’ and given many of the uncertainties of neoliberalism emerging from various forms of privatization (Atasoy 2009c), including privatization of the state (Hibou 2004; Leys 2007), the military has installed itself deeply in the politics of discipline. It further intensifies social–political prohibitions and the individual self-restraints that would permeate the sensibilities of citizens. This points to complex political relations, yet the basic assumption made by the military bureaucracy continues to be the restoration of state primacy in social relations. It is this kind of assumption which implicitly relies on a presocial, trans-historical definition of a unitary agency of the state in order to maintain public order and social peace. This is deeply problematic as a basic ontological assumption (Rosenberg 1994), but it also supports

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some of the most dangerous ideas in regard to the political framing of rule. That is to say, there is a reconfiguration of state institutions and practices in order to facilitate the exercise of power in the direction of a militarized form of moral regulation. This is what Escobar (2004) has described as signalling developments towards social fascism. The 1980 military coup was a turning point in changing the framework of rule and the institutional regulative space of the Turkish economy. It included a neoliberal form of reorganizing the relations between economic, military, political, and cultural–ideological processes. In their self-declared attempt to reinstitute a politically strong, interventionist state (Cizre-Sakallioglu 1997), military generals wanted to depoliticize the sharpened societal grievances of urban marginal groups and the unemployed, as well as youth. These politically disillusioned segments of the general population had come to play an important role in the growth of ideological social divisions and political tensions during the 1970s (Atasoy 2005: Chapters 4–5). The military government formed after the 1980 military coup used extensive coercive power to suppress all manifestations of ideological politics. The 1980 military coup created a political environment of widespread state coercion and violation of many fundamental rights and freedoms (Arat-Kabasakal 2007). There is no doubt that the political system created by the 1961 Constitution and the 1973 constitutional amendments played a crucial role in the militarization of political power during the 1980s and beyond. The National Security Council (NSC) created by Article 111 of the 1961 Constitution has enabled the military to influence and at times directly control political developments (Akyaz 2002: 351). The NSC was envisioned as a mechanism ‘to determine principles, make plans, and choose policies necessary in order to exalt and protect the material and spiritual existence of the state against all kinds of aggression, assault, and offence’ (Balci 2000: 63, my translation). According to Balci (2000: 63), the founding of the NSC allowed the Turkish Armed Forces to become a primary institution and to make policy-choices within the state over and above elected civilian members of parliament and the council of ministers. The 1973 constitutional amendment reinforced the NSC’s position within the executive order, allowing the military to fulfil a primary advisory role in policy making (H. Ozdemir 1989: 95–8; 103–8). The military has since then directly influenced the policy choices of governments by setting policy parameters in terms of their compatibility with official Ataturkculuk. This implies that civilian policy-makers who may hold different positions as a result of ideological orientation, worldview, and political–economic


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interests should acquiesce to the military’s policy preferences. The 1982 Constitution supports the preferences of the military elite in influencing government decisions. Article 2 of the 1982 Constitution which defined the Turkish Republic as ‘a state that subscribes to Ataturkist nationalism’ (Heper 2007: 94) makes policy views different from those of official Ataturkculuk automatically unconstitutional. The 1982 Constitution further strengthened the military’s structural position in the balance of domestic power relations. The 1982 Constitution, which extended the number and political weight of senior commanders involved in NSC decision-making (Balci 2000: 59–62; Bayramoglu 2004: 92–7), required policy recommendations made by the NSC to be given priority by the government. A book published by the Secretary of the National Security Council titled Devletin Kavram ve Kapsami (the Concept and Content of the State) states that the NSC fulfils its responsibilities ‘within a democratic political system but in a much faster way with discretion and without harming the secrecy of national security’ (Milli Guvenlik Kurulu Genel Sekreterligi 1990: 43–4; see also Sarlak 2004: 288). The military frequently took measures to protect the security of the political system within official Ataturkculuk by widely expanding the NSC’s areas of policy recommendation to include the determination of school curricula, the selection of television programmes, the closing of TV stations, and the opening of more prisons (Cizre-Sakallioglu 1997: 157–8). Moreover, the State Security Courts created by the 1982 Constitution enhanced the military bureaucracy’s power within the judicial system. This was largely through political influence in the appointments of its members. In addition to the Constitutional Court created by the 1961 Constitution, both the State Security Courts and the NSC became the main vehicles for ensuring the protection of the state’s foundational principles as embodied in Kemalism or official Ataturkculuk (Bayramoglu 2004). Through these institutions, the high bureaucracy of the military and judiciary has taken upon itself the ‘duty’ of reproducing ‘correct’ state nationalism against divergent interpretations (Insel and Bayramoglu 2004). It has functioned as a coercive means of fusing the political and the cultural in a way that reproduces and diffuses a sense of nationhood knotted to the concept of state sovereignty. Although not confined to the suppression of the Left alone, all variants of the Left have been subject to the military’s coercive power. The establishment of the Confederation of Revolutionary Labour Unions (DISK) in 1967, the Revolutionary Youth (Dev-Genc) movement of the

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late 1960s and early 1970s, and the Revolutionary Path (Dev-Yol) of the 1970s all contributed to increased leftist political activism in Turkey. In addition to attracting youth, the Left drew significant support from the urban working class and gecekondu (urban shantytown) dwellers. The 1960s and 1970s were also a time of political reconstruction of Kurdish activism, largely in alliance with the revolutionary leftist organizations noted above (Bozarslan 2003: 34–8). In contrast to the religious and tribal-based uprisings of the 1930s, leftist Kurdish activists were recasting Kurdish issues around the themes of economic exploitation, political oppression, and cultural–linguistic rights (Watts 2007: 67). However, closer ties with the Turkish left also gave way to ideological fragmentation within the Kurdish movement. The Democratic Party of Turkish Kurdistan (KDP) which was founded in 1965 and inspired by the Iraqi KDP of Barzani (Bishku 2007: 80; Watts 2007: 72–3) was a nationalist party supported by the tribal, landed Kurdish elite. The Revolutionary Eastern Cultural Forum or DDKO (Devrimci Dogu Kultur Ocaklari) founded in 1969 was more influential in the shaping of Kurdish politics (McDowall 2004: 411). It played a key role in the socialist–Marxist refiguring of Kurdish national demands for recognition and realization of Kurdish political, cultural, civil, and economic rights. Although it was closed and its leadership cadre imprisoned after the 1971 military coup (Watts 2007: 75), the DDKO opened a space for the adoption of a Kurdish rights agenda by other leftist Kurdish organizations which continued to produce a generation of leftist Kurdish leaders. The Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) founded in 1978 by former member of the Dev Genc Abdullah Ocalan carried the leftist Kurdish rights agenda into the present with relatively little ideological modification (Ozcan 2006). The frame of the present work does not include a history of ideological and organizational alliances between Kurdish and Turkish leftist activists, nor an examination of the transformation of Kurdish political leftist activities into a national independence movement. Similarly, this book does not analyze the further radicalization of the movement and period of guerrilla warfare after Ocalan and other leading elements of the PKK fled to Syria in 1979 (Bishku 2007: 84–90), or the highly varied Turkish government responses. However, it is important to underscore that the leftist refiguring of the Kurdish rights discourse from the 1960s onwards firmly integrated Kurdish issues into the political agenda of Turkey. Various Kurdish nationalist political parties founded legally since 1990s have built their programmes on this legacy. This includes the People’s Labour Party (HEP), founded in 1990 and banned in 1993;


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the Democracy Party (DEP), founded in 1994, also banned in the same year; and the People’s Democracy Party (HADEP), founded in 1994 and closed down in 2003. The HADEP was replaced first by the Democratic People’s Party (DEHAP), and since November 2005, the Democratic Society Party (DTP) (Gunter 2008: 8). With the exception of the DTP, these parties have all been banned for disseminating separatist propaganda and for allegedly having links with the outlawed PKK. The DTP achieved representation in the Turkish parliament after electing more than 20 of its candidates in the 2007 elections. Accused of engaging in activities against the unity and integrity of the state and country, the DTP is also facing a closure case opened in 2007 by the Constitutional Court. The outcome is pending. The military and judicial bureaucracy and the Turkish nationalist political parties, including the ultra-nationalist National Action Party (MHP) and the social democratic Republican People’s Party (RPP), continue to define Kurdish politics as a potential threat to the integrity of the Turkish state. After the 1980 military coup the government adopted policies directed towards a brutal suppression of the Kurdish movement, once again repeating the policies of the 1930s. I believe there is definitely a possibility here for a ‘negotiated consent’ (Sennett 2003: 260) over the thinking and ethos of the Kemalist fundamentals of the state. However, such a possibility would require an ethical sensibility able to rework and modify the very core principle of the Kemalist state – territorially defined cultural homogeneity. This possibility, amazingly enough, was hinted at when the Islam-sensitive AKP leader, and Prime Minister Erdogan, admitted in 2005 that Turkey had a ‘Kurdish problem.’ He also indicated that more democracy is needed to solve the ‘grave mistakes’ Turkey has made in the past (Gunter 2008: 91). And in 2005 the state-owned Turkish Radio Television Corporation (TRT) formulated a policy titled ‘public broadcasting in mother tongues other than Turkish’ (Dagi 2009) and started broadcasting in Kurdish for a half-hour each day, as well as other languages. In 2008 TRT opened its sixth channel, known as the Kurdish TRT channel, broadcasting in Kurdish 24 hours a day. At the new channel’s opening reception, Culture Minister Ertugrul Gunay criticized the previous state practice of banning the Kurdish language. And in a televised speech dubbed in Kurdish, Prime Minister Erdogan said that ‘we don’t need to be afraid of our diversity’ (Turkone 2009). The MHP opposed Kurdish broadcasting on the grounds that it was ‘an attempt to divide the country into ethnic pieces.’ The RPP also opposed it on the grounds that the state should not give financial support in the form of national tax revenue to a particular

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ethnic struggle (Dagi 2009). Although the AKP also promised to wage war against the PKK in response to the escalation of armed conflicts in 2007, it is frequently accused of neglecting state security concerns and adopting policies to undermine the ideological core of the Kemalist state. In short, a regime of fear instituted by the 1980 military coup to prevent mutability in the Kemalist framing of the state continues to influence politics in Turkey today. Although police and the courts have blotted out the record, the Turkish Engineers and Architects Union (TMMOB) (2008) insists that the 12 September 1980 military coup instituted a regime of fear through civil–military security forces, the prosecution, and the judiciary, seriously threatening freedom of expression and assembly. The 1982 Constitution replaced the 1961 Constitution as military generals moved to restore the authority of the state as the source of public order. Military coup leaders argued that the provisions of the 1961 Constitution, which gave individuals more civil rights, universities more autonomy, students the freedom to organize associations, and workers the right to strike, were a danger to state authority. By defining fundamental rights and liberties in highly restrictive terms, the 1982 Constitution provided the military with further tutelage powers as guardian of the state (Ozbudun and Yazici 2004: 13). In flagrant violation of international human rights standards, including the European Convention on Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the post-1980 military-coup regime implemented the following measures: • political parties were closed down and party leaders banned from politics; • two out of three trade union confederations and 23,677 civil-societybased associations were closed down; • 650,000 people were detained; • 1,683,000 people were classified as a security threat to the state; • 230,000 people were tried in the courts; • among the 7000 people who were tried for the death penalty, 517 people received death sentences and 50 were actually executed; • 71,000 people were tried for their political-ideological orientations under Articles 141, 142, and 163. Adopted from Fascist Italy in the 1930s, Articles 141 and 142 did not permit what was described as ‘communist propaganda’ (Ahmad 1993: 136). Article 163 did not permit what was nebulously described as anti-laik activities; • 98,404 people were tried for being members of certain associations deemed in violation of the above listed articles;


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• 300 people died suspiciously and 171 people died of torture in detention; • 299 people died in prison. Among them, 144 people died suspiciously; 14 on a hunger strike, 16 in attempts to escape, 95 in other conflicts with security, and 73 from ‘natural causes’; • 43 were claimed to have committed suicide; • 30,000 people classified as sakincali (dangerous) were fired from their jobs as a precautionary act; • 14,000 people lost their citizenship; • 388,000 people were denied passports; • 30,000 left Turkey as political refugees; • 3854 teachers were fired; • legislation protecting the autonomy of universities was altered; • 120 university professors lost their positions; • 400 journalist were tried for a total of 4000 years of prison time and received 3315 years and 6 months; • 303 cases were opened against 13 large newspapers; 39 tons of newspapers and magazines were destroyed; • 937 motion-picture films were banned (TMMOB 2008: 2). The military regime targeted Turkish leftists, ultra-nationalists, and Islamists, as well as Kurdish activists, but it was particularly harsh on the Left. According to the military’s own statistics, of the 60,000 people arrested, 54 per cent were leftists, 14 per cent were ultra-nationalists, and 7 per cent were Kurdish separatists (McDowall 2004: 416). These numbers are disputed. The International League of Human Rights claims that more than 81,000 Kurds alone were detained within two years following the coup (McDowall 2004: 416). Regardless, it is clear that strict military control (K. Yildiz 2005: 16) pervaded the political system after the coup. The brutal use of coercive powers that allowed the abuse of fundamental rights and freedoms was justified under Articles 13 and 14 of the 1982 Constitution. Article 13 set the general ground for restricting all fundamental rights and freedoms, ‘namely safeguarding the indivisible integrity of the state with its territory and nation, national sovereignty, the Republic, national security, public order, public peace, public interest, public morals, and public health’ (Ozbudun and Yazici 2004: 15). Article 14 of the 1982 Constitution set the parameters for the abuse of fundamental rights and liberties. It stated that ‘none of the rights and liberties embodied in the Constitution shall be exercised with the aim of violating the indivisible integrity of the State with its territory

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and nation, of endangering the existence of the Turkish State and Republic . . .’ (Ozbudun and Yazici 2004: 16). Reinforced by the new constitution, Law No. 2932 (passed in 1983) made it an offence once again ‘to express, diffuse or publish opinions in any language other than the main official language . . . recognized by the Turkish state’ (Gunter 1997: 10). With this law, the names of villages were once again changed from Kurdish to Turkish (K. Yildiz 2005: 16). Kurdish speeches and songs were banned, and those caught singing Kurdish songs were prosecuted.2 A regime of fear was further reinforced with the establishment of a village guard system in 1985 (koy koruculuk sistemi). Members of this civilian defence force supplemented the military in the Kurdish-populated southeast. At least 65,000 village guards were recruited in the region (K. Yildiz 2005: 17). In addition, the postmilitary coup parliament passed State of Emergency Legislation (OHAL) in 1987. The legislation established a regional state of emergency government in southeast Turkey directed by a regional governor with little or no independent judicial review (Bishku 2007: 89; K. Yildiz 2005: 16). Decree 285 of July 1987 granted the regional governor the right to evacuate villages on a temporary or permanent basis, and carry on security operations against PKK militants in the villages (K. Yildiz 2005: 17). Although the numbers are disputed (Aker et al. 2005: 6–7; K. Yildiz 2005: 17), it is estimated that 3500 villages were evacuated by security forces from 1987 till 1999 when PKK leader Ocalan was captured in Kenya. Three to four million people became internally displaced as they were forced to migrate from their villages in the east to western regions of Turkey. It is also estimated that more than 30,000 people were killed in the armed struggles between the Turkish army and PKK militants. The emergency legislation lasted until 2002 when the government began to institute legislative changes in order to fulfil the Copenhagen criteria for EU membership, thereby opening a space for a political solution to the Kurdish problem. After 1993, Articles 13 and 14 of the 1982 Constitution were amended, and other major changes were made to the 1982 Constitution, the most substantive of which was made in 2001 in an effort to fulfil the Copenhagen political criteria for EU membership. Despite these changes, the Turkish Armed Forces continue to play a ‘guardianship’ role over civilian politics. This is largely because of the constitutionally granted prerogatives and privileges they have achieved through their active political involvement in the making of the constitution following each military intervention. Their first act of interference in the constitutional process involved the 1961 Constitution written after the 27 May 1960


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military coup, the second saw amendments to the constitution after the 12 March 1971 intervention, and the third involved the 1982 Constitution after the 12 September 1980 military coup (Ozbudun and Yazici 2004: 32–41). Military leaders no longer seek to take over power directly, nor do they place tanks and troops in the streets or issue mass arrests. Rather, they continue to oversee politics via a variety of constitutionally granted institutions such as the NSC, the CC, and the YOK. Through its influence on these organizations the military bureaucracy acts beyond its constitutional boundaries. After the 1980 coup their initial targets were the Left and the PKK-led Kurdish independence movement. Then, after the pro-Islamic Welfare Party formed a government in 1995, in coalition with the centre-right True Path Party, the military-dominated NSC declared that ‘the dark forces of reactionaryism’ – referring to Islamic groups and movements – were the real danger for state security. In its 28 February 1997 meeting, the military-dominated NSC’s Decision Number 406 made 18 recommendations to protect the secular character of the regime against these ‘dark forces.’ The most important of these 18 recommendations included the following: 1. The principle of secularism should be strictly enforced and laws should be modified for that purpose if necessary (recommendation 1). 2. Greater state control over the private dormitories, foundations, and schools affiliated with Islamic groups, which must be placed under the control of the state and eventually transferred to the Ministry of National Education (recommendation 2). 3. In order to give the minds of younger generations a love for the republic, Ataturk, the homeland, and the nation, and with the ideal and goal of raising the Turkish nation to the level of modern civilization. a. an 8-year uninterrupted educational system must be implemented across the country. b. the necessary administrative and legal adjustments must be made so that Koran courses, which children with basic [secular] education may attend with parental consent, operate only under the responsibility and control of the Ministry of National Education (recommendation 3). 4. The institutions of national education founded to develop an enlightened clergy loyal to the republican regime and Ataturk’s

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5. 6. 7.

8.

9.

10.

11.


principles and reforms must conform to the Law on Unified Education (recommendation 4). Religious facilities should not be used for political purposes (recommendation 5). ‘Media groups that oppose the Turkish Armed Forces’ based on their fundamentalist activities must be controlled (recommendation 7). Military personnel who have been expelled for anti-secular activities must be prohibited from employment in the bureaucracy or other areas of the public sector (recommendation 8). ‘Extremist infiltration’ into the Turkish Armed Forces, the universities, judiciary, and bureaucracy must be prevented (recommendation 9). Swift action must be taken against those who have contravened the Law on Political Parties, the Penal Code, and the Law on Municipalities (recommendation 12). Initiatives that aim to solve Turkey’s political problems on the basis of ummah (religious community) rather than the nation, and that encourage the separatist terror organization (Kurdistan Workers’ Party [PKK]) as part of the ummah, should be prevented from doing so by legal and administrative means (recommendation 17). Law No. 5816,3 which defines crimes against the great saviour Ataturk, including acts of disrespect, must be fully implemented (recommendation 18). (For the whole list of recommendations see Gunay 2001).

Then Prime Minister Erbakan, Turkey’s first pro-Islamic prime minister, signed the recommendations at the NSC meeting but insisted that their implementation required approval from the Turkish parliament. The military, on the other hand, wanted immediate implementation. In order to force the government’s resignation and instate the NSC decisions, the military waged a public multi-media campaign. This is known in Turkish history as the postmodern soft coup, due to the manner in which the military intervened in politics. During its campaign the military mobilized various groups over concerns about the future of secularism and the threat of growing Islamic militancy. This included left-leaning academics, trade unions, women’s groups, large business groups, and the judiciary. The campaign, in combination with the Ankara State Prosecutor’s court file, accused the Welfare Party and its leadership of violating secularism, forcing the democratically elected pro-Islamic Welfare Party-led coalition government to resign on 18 June 1997. Subsequently, in January 1998, the Welfare Party was banned from


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politics under the Political Parties Law and the Penal Code for violating secularism.4 The 28 February 1997 NSC meeting marks the beginning of an official anti-Islamic campaign, initiated and executed by the military and the judiciary. Then Chief of Staff General Huseyin Kivrikoglu launched this campaign by saying that ‘February 28 is a process . . . [that] will last a thousand years, if necessary’ (quoted in Gunay 2001: 2). In the process of carrying out this campaign, the judiciary and semi-autonomous state agencies such as the YOK have increased their political power over parliament, and implemented many of the recommendations of the NSC Decision Number 406. As will be discussed in following chapters, YOK’s headscarf ban on university campuses and the exclusion of Imam-Hatip school graduates from admission into university programmes (outside of higher religious education) were justified by the NSC’s 28 February decision. The military continues to stage anti-Islamic campaigns by mobilizing the media, civil society organizations, and the judicial system. A few of the most notable among these state-led campaigns are: the e-memorandum of 27 April 2007 posted on the Website of the Chief of Staff by General Buyukanit, the republican rallies staged against the election of President Abdullah Gul, and an attempt by the Constitutional Court to close down the AKP. In addition to launching public campaigns and issuing decrees and memorandums, the military has also undertaken measures with considerable discretion and without undermining the secrecy of national security, as stipulated in Devletin Kavram ve Kapsami published by the NSC Secretariat. There are now allegations that an ultra-nationalist ‘gang’ believed to be an extension of a clandestine network whose members have links to the Turkish Armed Forces is operating in Turkey to lay the groundwork for a new period of military rule. This shadowy network known as Ergenekon has been discussed extensively in Turkish daily newspapers since the summer of 2008. It is allegedly led by Sener Eruygur, a retired head of the Gendarmerie (a branch of the Turkish Armed Forces responsible for maintaining public order), and another retired General Hursit Tolon. Ergenekon is also believed to have been active during the Cold War in fighting against the expansion of Marxism and Soviet socialist ideology in the 1970s, and against the Kurdish separatist movement in the 1980s. It re-emerged in the 1990s to challenge political Islam. On 25 July 2008 a state prosecutor investigating a political-crime gang suspected of staging a coup against the Justice and Development Party (AKP) made public the details contained in the Ergenekon

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indictment. Court proceedings probing the controversial activities of Ergenekon began in October 2008. Ergenekon’s membership includes retired military officials, several prominent journalists and academics, and the leader of a leftwing Workers’ Party. The network is believed to have recruited ultra-nationalists and hard-line secularists and cooperated with a number of terrorist groups. It has also been alleged that Ergenekon is responsible for many political assassinations, including that of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink. Organizational links to numerous political groups have also been claimed. These include: Hizbullah, the PKK, the Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party/Front (DHKP/C), and the Turkish Workers and Peasants’ Liberation Army (TIKKO). Many in Turkey believe that Ergenekon is an incarnation of what is sometimes referred to as the Deep State – ‘invisible’ members of the military and political elite who have long controlled the country from behind the scenes (Globe and Mail 15 July 2008; Gunter 2008: 107–26). As has been discussed since July 2008 in the left-leaning Turkish daily Radikal and liberal–Islamic Today’s Zaman newspaper, Ergenekon continues to defend a secretive deep-state power structure made up of individuals typically drawn from, but acting parallel to, the state. According to critical essayist Turkone (2008) who writes in Today’s Zaman, the deep state concept as expressed through Ergenekon reveals a terrorist organization inside the state which commits murder and other illegal acts on behalf of the state. Largely immune from prosecution, its operations, which include intimidation, assassinations, and bombings, are often directed against those deemed to be in opposition to the official state ideology (Radikal 10 August 2008). Ergenekon also subcontracts gangs in its terror business (Turkone 2008), while cooperating with ultra-nationalist elements that exploit uneducated young men and pressure them to commit murder (Mahcupyan 15 August 2008, 30 July 2008). The Gendarmerie, especially its JITEM branch (the Intelligence and Anti-Terrorism Unit), whose existence is officially denied, has also been alleged to be heavily involved in deep-state political murders (Radikal 10 August 2008; Sarlak 2004: 292–3; Today’s Zaman 26–27 August 2008). More than 9000 cases of human rights violations against JITEM have been brought before the European Court of Human Rights, as well as charges of being engaged in drug and human smuggling, and arms trading with the PKK (Today’s Zaman 28 July 2008, 26–27 August 2008). The Turkish courts began to hear the Ergenekon indictment on 20 October 2008, but the hearings may not produce sufficient evidence to support the allegations. This was the case with the Susurluk


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parliamentary investigation of 1996 which exposed links between the criminal underworld, the mafia, and Turkish security forces within the state. The Susurluk incident refers to a number of ‘suspicious’ individuals who were killed together in a road accident. Those who died included a high-ranking police officer, an internationally sought-after mafia boss, former leader of the far-right Grey Wolves movement Abdullah Catli, and a Kurdish tribal leader who was the head of a ‘village guard’ unit armed by the state to combat the PKK. This incident would appear to offer evidence of a connection between state authorities, criminal gangs, and the ultra-right Grey Wolves. However, no arrests have been made. The hope that the Ergenekon indictment will produce evidence may also be met with disappointment. I agree with many prominent intellectuals and academics in Turkey who have argued in Today’s Zaman (15 August 2008) that the most promising outcome of an Ergenekon investigation is likely to be further revelations on the deep state.

State-led refiguring of the ethos of sovereignty: The Turkish–Islamic synthesis In addition to the use of coercive powers, the violation of democratic norms, and the abuse of fundamental rights and liberties, military coup leaders in Turkey have sought to reorganize public space within a generic understanding of national unity and harmony. This has involved a reconfiguring of politics and a military recrafting of Islamic morals, ideas, and values. In redefining the meaning of citizenship, a good citizen is expected to embody an ethos of responsibility before other citizens, the nation, and the state. This has resulted in the refashioning of a Kemalist understanding of secularism rather than its elimination. The post-military coup government sought to combine Islamic values and Turkish nationalism by mixing a faith-based ethos with the virtue of state-amplification and national unity. The nationalist laik ideology of Kemalism was cautiously mixed with Islamic moral values. The 1930s concept of laiklik defined in terms of the association between religion, faith, ritual, and private space was reinterpreted and given a new form known as the Turkish–Islamic synthesis (Guvenc et al. 1991). The Turkish– Islamic synthesis aimed to combine the reorganization of public space with a generic understanding of Islamic religion. Through the deployment of a citizen-Muslim concept it introduced a pedagogy of cultural action towards the self-identification of individuals with Muslim values and morals, while modifying relations with other citizen-Muslims. This resulted in a complex relationship between the reorganization of

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public space and individuals’ ‘cognitive maps’ – which Somers (1999) describes as ‘knowledge cultures.’ It is within these knowledge cultures that citizens engage that public space. The Turkish–Islamic synthesis redefined the character of the knowledge culture by modifying the role of religion in public space. Military leaders emphasized religious education as essential to the refiguring of an ethico-political life. Article 24 of the 1982 Constitution stated that ‘instruction in religion and ethics shall be compulsory in the primary and secondary school curricula.’ Although this helps to introduce Islamic values and mores into the cultural conditions of citizenship, it does not unthink5 (Somers 1999) the statist knowledge culture of Kemalism; rather, it situates citizenship within an image of public space derived from a Muslim culture as a source of morality. The general aim of this policy was to Learn in basic and middle education enough basic knowledge of Islamic religion and morals in accordance with Ataturk’s laicist and other principles, . . . thus the populace will obtain good morals and virtues to ensure in them a love of people, religion, morals, Ataturkism (Ataturkculuk), national unity and togetherness. [It was also stated that] . . . religious education will [A]lways take into consideration our state’s secular basis and always defend this principle . . . [It will] inculcate . . . into the pupils the exalted concept of the national value of the standard, flag, nation, and fatherland, and to strengthen brotherly and friendly relations, respect, love, togetherness and national unity. (Poulton 1997: 182) Islam thus becomes a cultural condition of citizenship, while also playing an important cultural role in the development of citizens’ critical responsiveness to the state. Through a statist reinterpretation of its ‘intersubjective public symbolic systems and networks of meaningdriven schemas’ (Somers 1999: 124) Islam refigures the narrative structure instilling Kemalism. What is being promoted here is a generic understanding of Islam in order to redefine the character of public space for citizen engagement. The clear expectation of the state was that this ‘enlightened Islam’ (Colak 2005: 246) would galvanize citizens’ sense of national unity against any ideologies from Marxist, leftist, Kurdish-separatist, and other ‘radical’ Islamic political projects. 1960 military coup leader General Cemal Gursel had previously defined the meaning of true, enlightened Islam. He stated that: ‘the


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cause of our backwardness is not our religion but those who have misrepresented our religion to us’ (quoted in Colak 2005: 249). For Gursel, the state should take it upon itself to teach the true Islam to the general population. Similarly, 1980 military coup leader General Kenan Evren (1991: 301) gave an important role to the state in establishing firm control over religion and instituting a true Islam within the normative framework of public life: Families should not give religious education to children. This would be improper since it may be taught incorrectly, incompletely, or through the family’s own point of view . . . I ask you . . . not to send your children to illegal Koran schools . . . religion will be taught to our children by the state in state schools. In 1983, the State Planning Organization (SPO) prepared a Report on National Culture which stated that the crisis of the 1970s was due to the corruption of Turkish moral and cultural values by ‘divisive foreign’ ideologies (SPO 1983: 535–43). According to the report, these foreign ideologies prompted Turkish youth and intellectuals to imitate western cultural values – a process destructive to national culture. Preservation of the nation’s culture was a duty of the state, and national culture, according to the report, was the sum of tradition and belief culminating in religion (Guvenc et al. 1991: 113–22). In order to counter the political influence of these ideologies, as well as materialist–atheist orientations, leftwing ideologies, and divisive ethnic separatist movements, the fundamental goal of the state was to strengthen nationalism. The SPO is clear in its report that the preservation of ‘national culture’ was and is a duty of the state. The post-military coup cultural investment in religion complements Kemalist laiklik by establishing a condition of possibility for the authoritative regulation of public life. It captures a strongly held emphasis on an ideological commitment to the primacy of the state. It is important to note, however, that although Islam’s relational link to national unity was cultivated to secure a harmonious public life and create a panacea for containing oppositional projects, especially from the Left, more ‘radical’ manifestations of Islamic movements were also subject to close scrutiny. An Islamic political movement emanating from outside direct state control was seen as radical, and, by definition, a threat to laik fundamentals of the state. The possibility of refiguring the cultural fundamentals of the state does not require an entirely new kind of moral thinking and cultural

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expression. The military government of the 1980–3 period actively enforced Muslim values in defining acceptable forms of social relations in public life, yet it did not invent the Turkish–Islamic synthesis ideology. Throughout the republican period Islamic moral principles and cultural practices have been reworked and reimagined to operate within the official state ideology of Kemalism as a disciplinary technology of governance. The Turkish–Islamic synthesis formulation represents a moment in the continuous and cumulative efforts at state regulation of Muslim–cultural activities. Despite its different manifestations, the statist interpretation of Islamic values has articulated a message of social responsibility and civic commitment to national unity by combining the primacy of the state and Muslim ethos with a notion of Turkish Islam. Although it still upholds piety, the idea of Turkish Islam expands a normative understanding of religion within the Kemalist framework of laiklik. As a particular way of relating to people and oneself within public life, Turkish Islam cultivates an ethical principle of embodied attachment to a unitary state concept. Aydinlar Ocagi The Turkish–Islamic synthesis concept was originally formulated by a group of intellectuals, mostly university professors from Istanbul University who had been meeting as the Aydinlar Klubu (Thinkers Club) since 1962. Among the members of this club were Ismail Dayi (a former Motherland Party parliamentarian), Professor Ayhan Songar, Associate Professor Necmettin Erbakan (a former leader of pro-Islamic political parties from the late 1970s to 1997 and the first pro-Islamic prime minister of Turkey), and Dr Agah Oktay Guner (a former National Action Party parliamentarian). The primary topic of discussion in the Thinkers Club was the relation of Turkishness to Islam (Yeni Gundem 22–28 February 1987: 11). In 1970 the club was converted to an organization called the Aydinlar Ocagi (the Hearth of the Enlightened). It is this group, the Aydinlar Ocagi, which launched the Turkish–Islamic synthesis concept into Turkish politics in the 1970s. The Aydinlar Ocagi was an association founded by a group of ultra-nationalist university professors, intellectuals, and businessmen. Out of the 56 founding members, 31 were academicians (Guvenc et al. 1991: 313–40). The group wanted to redefine Islam such that it would constitute an ethical foundation for Kemalist nationalism. It was the president of the association, Professor Ibrahim Kafesoglu, who produced the first ideological statement on the Turkish–Islamic synthesis, asserting that Islam, Turkish nationalism, and modernity could complement one another (Arvasi 1979).


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The Turkish–Islamic synthesis was publicized through the Ilim Yayma Cemiyeti (the Association for the Expansion of Knowledge), founded in 1973 by a group of politicians and intellectuals affiliated with the Naqshbandi religious order. This cemiyet was begun by important Naqshbandi member Yusuf Turel, and his friends, Abdulkadir Cavusoglu, Tahir Ugur, and Nazif Celebi (Mumcu 1994: 182–3). Other notable members included former Prime Minister and President Turgut Ozal, former cabinet minister Korkut Ozal, and politically influential businessmen Eymen Topbas and Mustafa Topbas, as well as Professors Nevzat Yalcintas, Ayhan Songar and Salih Tug (Mumcu 1994: 182–3). The Aydinlar Ocagi and the Ilim Yayma Cemiyeti argued that Turkey’s economic crisis in the late 1970s stemmed primarily from the failure of the Turkish educational system. Both groups felt that the educational system failed to provide the younger generation with the knowledge of national culture needed to fully appreciate their Muslim heritage (Guvenc et al. 1991). The ultra-nationalist MHP and its youth branch, the Association of Idealist Youth (Ulkucu Genclik Ocaklari), took up this ideology, with some modifications. During the late 1960s the MHP also viewed Islam an integral part of the ‘traditions, spirit, and beliefs of the Turkish nation’ (Poulton 1997: 157), but its greatest impact was thought to be its emotional appeal in promoting Turkism in the fight against leftist politics. The leaders of the 1980 military coup also believed Islam to be a significant force in curtailing the spread of leftist ideologies. The shared perception here was that a rigidly secular understanding of nationalism did not produce an emotional attachment to nationhood. Islam was seen to be capable of fostering a general ethos of engagement with Turkish nationalism and the state. This formulation of the Turkish–Islamic synthesis, however, represented a radical departure from the earlier republican ideology of the secular state. The Turkish–Islamic synthesis involved the writing of a new history recalling an Islamic–Ottoman heritage, in sharp contrast to the early republican removal of Ottoman–Muslim cultural referents from the national memory of the past. As discussed in Chapter 2, the Turkish Historical Society (1931) and the Turkish Linguistic Society (1932) were established to promote the ‘Turkish History Thesis’ and the ‘Sun-Language Theory,’ with a very specific ethno-racial definition of the cultural, geographical, and historical ‘purity’ of Turks. Turkish–Islamic synthesis ideology brought the history of Turks after Islam back into the reformulation of nationalism. The nation was still envisioned as a civic unity of individuals within the territorial boundaries of the state but through an emotional connection of religious virtue-based solidarity.

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The proponents of the Turkish–Islamic synthesis were convinced that the secular nationalism of the Kemalist trajectory served to remove Islam as a vital cultural link between the Kurdish and Turkish people, thereby creating ideological room for the rise of a secular separatist, nationalist movement among the Kurds (Ikibine Dogru 25–31 January 1987: 8–13). Therefore, the SPO Report on National Culture (1983) proposed the Turkish Islamic synthesis in part to create an Islamic cultural link between the Kurds and the Turks. This appears similar to what Said Nursi and Naqshbandi Sheiks claimed during the 1930s – that national unity should be conceptualized as the Islamic unity of various cultural categories within the territorial boundaries of the state (van Bruinessen 1992a, 1992b). In this sense, the Turkish–Islamic synthesis of the 1980s presents a neo-Ottomanist notion of state building in terms of a historical continuity between the Islamic–Ottoman heritage, Kemalist laiklik, and Turkish nationalism. For the religiously inspired Kurds, however, the Turkish–Islamic synthesis was the reinstitutionalization of Turkish nationalism, and the strengthening of a unitary conception of the state at the expense of Kurds. It was far removed from what Kurdish Islamic intellectual Said Nursi once claimed to be the basis for unified Muslim nationhood: an Islamic unity of cultural, linguistic communities. Although Said Nursi did not endorse Kurdish ethnicity, his ideas on Islamic solidarity contributed to the redefinition of Kurdish nationalism in relation to Islam. Following Said Nursi’s ideas, the Med Zehra ecole, an abbreviation for Medreset uz Zehra6 , has produced a remarkable synthesis of Kurdish nationalism and Islam in the rebirth of Kurdish nationalist activities (Ozoglu 2007: 30). The Med Zehra emerged in the 1970s from within the Nurcu community movement, challenging the leftist ideological basis of the Kurdish nationalist movement. It criticizes the Turkish nationalist orientation of the Turkish–Islamic synthesis. It is also highly critical of the mainstream Nurcu movement in general and the Fethullahcilar in particular for their denial of Said Nursi’s Kurdish origins and their support for the official ideology of the military government following the 1980 military coup (Atacan 2001; Kutlay 2005: 64). The Med Zehra movement claims that some Nurcu groups have distorted Said Nursi’s Risale-I Nur by removing certain words and paragraphs from the original texts during its various reprints in the Latin alphabet (Atacan 2001: 123). Words such as ‘Kurds’ and ‘Kurdistan’ were allegedly removed and replaced with such words as peasant, people from the east, and tribe, as well as certain paragraphs critical of Turkish nationalism. As a result, Nurcu groups, it is claimed, have undermined


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a universalist view of Islam and reinforced its Turkish nationalist interpretation. According to Seyhanzade, the founder of the Med Zehra, the Koran states that God created people of different nations and ethnic groups, not for the purpose of fighting with each other, but to meet, understand, and help one another. Therefore, no nation or ethnic group should be viewed as superior to another. If one denies the existence of different nations or ethnic groups and their languages, then he or she denies the word of God. Attributing a sacred meaning to any particular ethnic group puts one in danger of recreating cahilliye (pre-Islamic ignorance) period. (Atacan 2001: 128) Instead, Med Zehra pushes to the forefront the idea that each linguistic group is entitled to form its own state, and that these states should form an Islamic federation. An autonomous Kurdistan must be founded as part of this Islamic federation (Atacan 2001: 125). For the Med-Zehra movement, the founding of an Islamic federation presents an alternative trajectory to the oppression of Muslim communities by one another. The establishment of a regime of fear instituted by the 1980 military coup, and reinforced by the state of emergency government in the Kurdish-populated southeastern area of Turkey, was the turning point in the Med Zehra’s growing critique of Turkish nationalism and its denial of the existence of Kurds, and the Kurdish language, and even a ‘Kurdish problem.’ The Med Zehra’s critique is also directed at various ultranationalist Turkish Muslim intellectuals and political groups for their adherence to a project of cultural state building and a unitary notion of the nation based on a Turkish–Islamic synthesis that is oppressive to Kurds. Turkish nationalist intellectuals and political groups are a case in point.

Necip Fazil Kisakurek and Turkish–Islamic nationalism The concept of vatan (fatherland), which has been circulating among the general population since the nineteenth century, helps to reveal the crucial political role of religion in the neo-Ottomanist project of state building formulated as the Turkish–Islamic synthesis. The great nationalist, Young Ottoman poet Namik Kemal originally formulated the religiously inspired imaginary of vatan but its contours have changed over time. For Namik Kemal, the notion of vatan never referred to a

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secular concept that eliminated Islamic referents. It was a religiously inspired imaginary of nationhood which gave primacy to the territorial sovereignty of the state (Akgun and Calis 2002: 587). The political vision of Kemalism also expressed the cultural ethos of vatan but with an appeal to pre-Islamic and pre-Ottoman referents of Turkishness. For the advocates of the Turkish–Islamic synthesis, the single-party era Kemalist understanding of nationhood produced a form of cultural estrangement, almost a feeling of diaspora while living in the vatan. They wanted to create an ethos of engagement with the state for citizen-Muslims which expresses their cultural and emotional conditions of being and their source of morality rooted in Islam. Necip Fazil Kisakurek is the ideological father of this formulation. His version of a Turkish–Islamic synthesis situated Islam within a conservative, anti-leftist frame of ultraTurkish nationalism espoused by the MHP and its youth branch Ulku Ocakları since the 1970s. In his poem Sakarya, nationalist poet Necip Fazil Kisakurek described a non-religious ethos of vatan as a source of estrangement: ‘Oz yurdunda garipsin, oz vataninda parya’ (Destitute in your own home, pariah in your own vatan) (Kisakurek 1949, my translation). As illustrated in Chapter 2 of this book, Kisakurek’s poems Cile and Ahsap Konak convey a feeling of estrangement as a condition of existential resentment. In order to transform this condition of existential resentment, Kisakurek advocates the reorganization of a cognitive framework that recognizes the ‘embedded character of embodied faith’ within vatan, to use a phrase from Connolly (2005: 57). The Buyuk Dogu (Great East) symbolizes that framework and points to a model which engages the role of faith in public life. It is in the Ideolocya Orgusu, published in 1968, that Kisakurek refigures Islam as the ideological basis for Turkish nationalism (Duran 2004b: 139). Kisakurek created an image of the Buyuk Dogu in the essays published in his own periodical, the Buyuk Dogu, founded in 1943. These essays were later collected in Ideolocya Orgusu (the Web of Ideology). In Ideolocya Orgusu he describes the Buyuk Dogu as ‘a continuous, thorough, integrated faith, a worldview, and a poem of being’ that culminates in Islam (Kisakurek 1968/1976: 7, my translation). For Kisakurek, the Buyuk Dogu is the moral source of an ethico-political life in which individual and societal cultivation of habits, rituals, dispositions, sensibilities, and judgements are embedded. To put it differently, the Buyuk Dogu constitutes the symbolic basis for a deeper and more comprehensive social change movement, and is expressed in the epistemic field of morality through Islamic practices of being.


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Kisakurek’s nationalism was fused with an Islamic sensibility and a message of ethical commitment. His was a disciplined politics of becoming in the face of great anxiety and a sense of meaninglessness over a state-imposed secular culture in Turkey (Kisakurek 1968/1976, 1979). While the Kemalist understanding of laiklik represents a state-induced practice of forgetting the ‘visceral register of being’ (Connolly 1999: 29), Kisakurek’s Buyuk Dogu embraces the east (dogu) as an essential element of that register, rooted physically and spiritually in Islam, and challenging the existentially alienating effects of western materialism contained within laiklik. For Kisakurek (1968/1976: 8), ‘[T]he East that the Buyuk Dogu integrates and embraces is not tied to a race and geography outside the territorial boundaries of the vatan . . . We are looking for the Buyuk Dogu within the space of consciousness and visceral judgments inhabiting our own vatan at home within its territories today and tomorrow’ (my translation). Confined within the territorial boundaries of the national state of Turkey, Kisakurek’s Buyuk Dogu is a quest for an ethic of self-discipline and self-development through an Islamic reculturation programme. Rather than referring to a larger trans-state, trans-national phenomenon relating to the racial unity of Turks or a religious unity of ummah, the Buyuk Dogu in Kisakurek’s own words refers to ‘a refined and a spiritual journey into our own inner soul on feet with heels lighter than the breeze, rather than a rough and rancorous march toward outer climates on booted feet’ within the national vatan (Kisakurek 1968/1976: 8, my translation). The Ideolocya Orgusu presents a state-led Islamic social change programme for refiguring citizen-Muslims and recreating a Muslim society. Although the state is still conceived as a national state, it needs to be restructured along Islamic lines under the head of state whom Kisakurek calls the basyuce (supreme head). The state is defined as the basyucelik (the office of the supreme head council), and the basyuce is chosen among the Yuceler Kurultayi (supreme council), composed of a political elite well educated in Islamic matters. The Yuceler Kurultayi functions as the executive and advisor to the basyuce (Kisakurek 1968/1976: 257–341). However, real power, according to Kisakurek, remains in the hands of the basyuce. The yuceler kurultayi appears to be a powerless facade in the institution of a totalitarian state to morally refigure and regulate society (cf. Arendt 1951/1986 on totalitarianism). Moreover, for Kisakurek ethical self-development is relational; it requires the reorganization of an ethos of engagement within society between various groups. Kisakurek (1968/1976) defines the moral

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project of reconfiguring an integrated self as an ethico-political project resting on the possibility of reconstituting a public discourse through the organization of an ethos of engagement (cf. Atasoy 2005: 76–81). In this project, ‘the Buyuk Dogu composes “a mefkure senfonyasi” (symphony of an ideal), one for the East to listen to as an opus of its liberation’ (Kisakurek 1968/1976: 11, my translation). Kisakurek divided the interstate system between the two civilizational poles of east and west (Turinay 2004: 220). The east consists of Asia, in which Kisakurek includes the Muslim Arab Middle East, Iran, India, and China; the west consists primarily of Europe. An Asia-based focus on the east represents a meta-narrative of a distinct knowledge culture that needs to be mobilized in the east’s challenge of racist western projects of world domination. According to Kisakurek, the east and west divide represents a cultural contrast, opposite poles of emotional and symbolic value. Eastern subordination to the west has been rooted in its acceptance of the cultural particulars of the west as universals of ‘modernity.’ This has led to a blind imitation of western cultural practices. Kisakurek regarded European values as symbolic of the great ‘evils’ of life, synonymous with the impoverishment of the human soul. These values include: materialism, conspicuous consumption, egoism, instrumental reason, and spiritual/moral decadence (Buyuk Dogu 1943: No. 1–2 and 1944: No. 19–26). Under the imposition of a western life style, Muslims find themselves alienated from their cultural surroundings, creating the conditions for what Hannah Arendt (1951/1986) has called a ‘mechanistic atomism’ of mass societies. In a manner similar to Frantz Fanon’s ‘manifesto of liberation’ in The Wretched of the Earth (1967), Kisakurek pointed to the need to transcend the mentality of enslavement derived from decadent European values and to reject the ‘spurious heroes’ of the past. In contrast to a project of ‘modernization via westernisation,’ Kisakurek proposed a new path for revitalizing humanity through eastern values. He held that Asia was the source of a great civilization that was autonomous, pristine, and distinct – possessing the moral strength necessary to take power back from Europe (Turinay 2004: 218). Kisakurek believed that the Buyuk Dogu could re-emerge as a rival civilization to the west but it would require a strong leader. As was the case with the Ottoman Empire, Turkey could potentially perform and fulfil this leadership task if it reorganized the state. However, this transformational possibility for Turkey depended on its internalization of Islamic values. It was these values, Kisakurek insisted, that cultivate an ethos of engagement based on affection, caring, and sympathy, rather than the decadent, disenchanting values of the west.


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The essence of Kisakurek’s social, political thinking is an emphasis on the national sovereignty of the Turkish state under Islam. And ultimately, the Buyuk Dogu is a political project for repositioning Turkey as a strong, independent state within the interstate system. Kisakurek’s argument persists within the unfolding nationalist debate of Turkish Islam, albeit in different forms. Alpaslan Turkes, founder of the MHP, initiated an ultra-nationalist political mobilization of TurkishIslam ideology out of a heightened sense of a ‘communist threat’ against the Kemalist state.

Alpaslan Turkes, MHP, and the Ulkuculer Alpaslan Turkes (1917–97), founder of the MHP, was instrumental in combining Islamic referents with an ultra-nationalist political project of exalting Turkishness and the Turkish vatan. Before the founding of the MHP in 1969, ultra-nationalist politics was almost exclusively confined to the pan-Turkist tendency of Turkculuk (Turkism). Turk Ocagi (Turkish Hearth), a nationalist organization originally founded in 1911 (and officially established in 1912), was the main organizational advocate of Turkculuk. Its views were printed in the magazine, Turk Yurdu (Turkish homeland), which included nationalist writers such as Ziya Gokalp. The organization was closed down in 1931, accused of advocating pan-Turkism as a rival ideology to Kemalist territorial nationalism. It was reopened in 1949 but closed again in 1971 by military coup leaders. Since the mid-1970s its activities have been subsumed by the MHP and other organizations such as the Association of Hearts of Ideals (Ulku Ocaklari), along with its successor the Association of Idealist Youth (Ulkucu Genclik) (Can 2000: 202; Poulton 1997: 132, 143). In the 1970s the Ulku Ocaklari was one of the largest political groups in Turkey. It currently has 1000 local branches, approximately 20,000 active members, and more than 100,000 followers, known as Ulkuculer, who meet regularly in the ulku ocaklari (Can 2000: 201). The Ulkucu’s control and ideological influence over the Turk Ocagi has undermined its panTurkist orientation and strengthened the anti-communist orientation in its ideological stance. With 41 branches (ocaklar) and approximately 7000 members (Poulton 1997: 144) the Turk Ocagi has now confined its activities to the defence of Turkish cultural values and the territorial unitary state. The change in the ideological orientation of the Turk Ocagi under the influence of the MHP and the Ulku Ocaklari undermined the openly racist, pan-Turkist attitudes of secularly oriented Turkcu intellectuals.

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Similarly, the founding of the Union of Turkish Nationalists in 1964 by Alpaslan Turkes, established to replace the Association of Turkists originally formed by ultra-rightwing pan-Turkist nationalist Nihal Atsiz (Goksu-Ozdogan 2001: 278), became the main vehicle for an ultranationalist reformulation of Islam’s position within Turkish culture. Nihal Atsiz (1905–75) is known in Turkist circles as the second greatest Turkish nationalist after Ziya Gokalp. Atsiz was opposed to the Turkish History Thesis of the single party era because of its emphasis on a territorialized notion of the Turkish nation. He advocated a de-territorialized understanding of pan-Turkism as a political unity comprised of all Turks under one flag based on blood ties. For Atsiz, blood was also a cultural and moral indicator of national unity. By injecting the notion of blood purity into his definition of Turkishness beyond the territorial boundaries of the state, Atsiz also demonstrated his belief that the cosmopolitan cultural heritage of the Ottoman and Selcuk past contaminated the Turkish race. This was a common theme expressed in many magazines from the 1930s. Examples include: Orhun and Turk Sazi published by Nihal Atsiz, the Ergenekon and Bozkurt by Reha Oguz Turkkan, Tanridag by Riza Nur, Kopuz by Fethi Devetoglu and Turk Yurdu by Hasan Ferit Cansever (Goksu-Ozdogan 2002: 400). In all of these magazines, writers promoted the unity of Turks as an ideal to be realized through the development of historical consciousness. Fantastic stories were elaborated in heroic poems, and compelling novels were written to mould political sensibilities about blood unity. References were made to mythical, pagan symbols originating from the shamanism of Central Asian Turks before Islam. Ergenekon is one of these symbols. It refers to a mythical mountain in Asia where, according to legend, Turks gathered to escape the Mongol hordes. Another compelling symbol was Bozkurt (Grey Wolf), a mythical animal which led the Turkish migration from Asia westward towards Anatolia. In 1991, Nihal Atsiz’s Turk Ulkusu (the Turkish Ideal), a work published in 1966 as a 17-book collection, was recommended by the Ministry of Education as a school reference book. In this collection, Atsiz developed a perspective on militarism in which he argued that wars are necessary for nations to survive because they are the only vehicles with which to resolve conflicts of interests among nations (Atsiz 1966/1997: 7–9). War preparation has two dimensions: a material dimension which, for Atsiz, is a technique involving maximization of resource extraction and advances in technological power; and a moral/spiritual dimension which involves preparedness in terms of the strength of the national ideal. The spiritual strength of a nation allows advances in the material


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field, but its absence causes total disaster regardless of the nation’s economic and material strength. The motivational power behind national competitiveness is the national ideal which, according to Atsiz, culminates in the myth of Kizil Elma (Red Apple). In Kizil Elma, Atsiz shows that blood purity alone will not guarantee national unity, not without knowledge of national consciousness (Bakirezer 2002: 354). For Atsiz (1966/1997: 12), it is the strength of the Kizil Elma which allowed a million Turks who migrated to Anatolia in the eleventh century to imagine and establish a world empire that extended to four continents. Atsiz believed that many Turkish youth, unaware of the ideal of Kizil Elma, have adopted the foreign ideologies of Marxism and cosmopolitanism. Atsiz insists that Turks have long distinguished themselves in history through their military skills. And the success of the Turkish nation in advancing its national interest depends on its preparedness for wars (Bakirezer 2002: 352–7). These ideas were combined into a nationalist imaginary that was not hostile to Islam but which saw the religious piety of Muslims in Turkey as an important factor contributing to social solidarity. This brought Turkism into closer alignment with the official state ideology and a notion of Turkish Islam which characterized the nationalist discourse of the 1980s and 1990s. The ultra-nationalist MHP of Alpaslan Turkes played a crucial role in combining the Turkcu tradition with a territorialized nationalism of Kemalist official ideology (Bora 2002: 686) and an emotional appeal to Islam. In addition to the MHP and its youth branch, Ulku Ocaklari, the Association for the Struggle Against Communism (Komunizmle Mucadele Dernegi, founded in 1950) was an aggressive and violent nationalist organization. After the MHP and Ulku Ocaklari took control of the Komunizmle Mucadele Dernegi in 1977, the association ceased to exist. Upon taking control of these rival nationalist organizations, the MHP and the Ulku Ocaklari became the leading organization in articulating Turkculuk and Islam within an ultra-nationalist ulkucu movement, one in which Islam was always subordinate to nationalism. Reformulating the pan-Turkist tendency of Nihal Atsiz into a territorialized notion of Turkculuk through an Islamic appeal, ulkucu nationalism linked an anti-communist politics to the dream of national sovereignty (Hacieminoglu 1976). It views national economic power achieved through a state-led programme of industrial development as a precondition for protecting the political existence of the Turkish nation in the world. According to Professor Necmettin Hacieminoglu, an ideologue within the ulkucu movement, ulkucu nationalism represents ‘a return to the essence, a return to one’s inner self . . . ulkuculuk is

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an organic reaction against a microbe in the body . . .’ (quoted in Can 2000: 216, my translation). Thus, similar to the way in which a disinfectant is needed to fight against a microbe, spiritual–moral development is necessary in order to counter the alienating effects of western modernity on the Turkish national character. The leaders of the 1980 military coup incorporated the Turkish–Islamic synthesis ideology of the Aydinlar Ocagi into the official state ideology in a way that, as was the case with MHP idealism, subordinated Islam. The Ulku Ocaklari developed a more openly pro-Islamic Turkish–Islamic idealism after the 1980 military coup. Hence, the founding of a rival nationalist party, the Grant Unity Party (Buyuk Birlik Partisi – BBP) by the former president of Ulku Ocaklari Muhsin Yazicioglu and his Turkish–Islam idealists (Turk–Islam ulkuculeri) (Can 2000: 207–8). Nonetheless, the MHP still plays a pivotal role in the reproduction of an official ideology that subordinates Islam within Turkish nationalism. The MHP-style assemblage of religious and Turkish nationalist referents was reproduced by the military after the 1980 coup. The military officially accepted an Ulkucu slogan, ‘we are Muslim Turks’ (Ulku Ocagi Dergisi 1996) as a frame of reference for citizen action that was appropriate to state sovereignty. It reflects an Islamic position that modifies Turkishness in order to be appropriate to the Kemalist fundamentals of state nationalism without allowing Islam to emerge as a rival ideological stance. This represents a significant moment within the bureaucracy’s long history of constructing national history by reproducing a ‘correct’ state-nationalism. Both the NSC and the CC allow the civil–military high bureaucracy to take it upon themselves to protect official state ideology. Through these institutions, bureaucratic cadres function to ‘moralize’ politics on behalf of Kemalist laiklik and ‘enlightened Turkish Islam.’ The 1980, 1997 and 2007 military interventions are examples of this.

Turkish Islam under neoliberalism Since the 1980s Islamic politics has constituted the cultural platform for Turkey’s participation in the global capitalist economy. An ideological link exists between Turkish Islam, which constitutes an ideational frame of knowledge in the minds of practising Muslims, and the political alliances between various social groups in the competitive relations of market capitalism. This affinity between an Islamic frame of knowledge and neoliberal market capitalism is not timeless but formed within the specific historical circumstances of domestic politics in Turkey.


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After coming to power in 1983, the Motherland Party (MP) rearticulated Turkish–Islamic synthesis ideology within a neoliberal context as a mixture of neoliberalism, nationalism, and various Islamic platforms. An in-depth analysis of the MP’s ideological outlook and its power base is beyond the scope of this analysis, but the basic conclusion is clear. Under Ozal’s leadership the MP, although not an Islamist party, managed to establish a broad-based coalition and promote the view that Turkey’s economic development projects should rest on the moral/cultural strength and legitimacy of Islam (Atasoy 2003/2004). The presence of a strong pro-Islamic faction within the party was crucial in establishing a link between Muslim cultural values and a neoliberal economic development project. This new articulation of Muslim cultural values alongside neoliberalism has settled one persistent question in the political debate over the role of Islam in politics. The debate dates back to the second half of the nineteenth century when Ottoman reformers initiated a westernization programme to restructure the Ottoman state along secular principles. The secularization project was opposed by pan-Islamist reformers who advocated the adoption of western technology but not its culture. They argued that a nation which turned its back on its own culture could only produce a rootless imitation. For them, this was a call for disaster. The controversy was temporarily settled during the formative years of the Turkish nation-state in the 1930s when the founding leaders of the Turkish state eliminated any possibility of opposition against the ruling party. For them, technology and culture were seen as elements of a unified whole. Industrialization required a wholesale adoption of western cultural values. Nonetheless, with the establishment of a multiparty regime in 1945 and the rise to power of the Democrat Party (DP) in 1950, the intellectual debate on Islam re-emerged. By incorporating rural producers into the national economy the DP also integrated small producing peasants along with their Muslim beliefs and practices into the state structure. During the 1970s, the debate over culture versus technology was revised within the pro-Islamic National Salvation Party (NSP). The NSP popularized the theme of ‘western imperialism’ and questioned the presumed universality of a western model. Under Ozal’s leadership during the 1980s, Turkish–Islamic synthesis ideology integrated Islam as a cultural moral value within the strategy of a competitive export-oriented economic model, while also, according to Ziya Onis (1997: 743–66), connecting it with a liberal western orientation. The combined effect of these ideological shifts was that the west was no longer perceived as a

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coherent cultural unit of modernity, but as an economic power within the larger space of global competition (Atasoy 2003/2004). The pro-Islamic AKP which came to power in 2002 has deepened this engagement with the market economy by fusing Islamic ethics and western modernity, presenting them in universalistic terms as projects of liberal democracy and economic ‘globalization.’ As many Tanzimat, Young Ottoman, and Young Turk intellectuals did more than a century ago, the AKP is blending western standards – elevated to the level of universality – and Islam, understood as a distinct source of culture in Turkey. This is similar to Ziya Gokalp’s (1976b: 7–12) vision of Turklesmek, Islamlasmak, and Muassirlasmak (Turkification, Islamization, and Modernization), and not far removed from the state-led reformulation of Turkish Islam and official Ataturkculuk. Out of his concern with the effect of the Protestant ethic on the advent of capitalism in Europe, Max Weber argued that an a priori cultural opening was necessary for capitalism to evolve. This has a decidedly functionalist flavour, however. As DiMaggio (1994: 36) argues, such a position locates cultures ‘logically necessary to sustain markets [market capitalism] in places where markets have emerged.’ I argue that the study of Islamic politics in functional terms does not provide evidence of a much stronger link between changes in the power configurations of the state and the economy, and the cultivation of ethical sensibilities, scripts, attitudes, and justice norms that define an ethos of public engagement. Therefore, in the following chapter I focus on the ways in which groups who take up the cognitive, symbolic, and normative orientations of Islamic ideas interact with the deployment of state power over the shape of that power and economic strategy.

4 Reconstituting the State: The Islamic Framing of Neoliberalism

In explaining how an Islamic orientation blends with neoliberalism, I believe it is essential to take into account the ideas, public narratives, and explanatory systems upon which Islamic groups predicate their action. A closer examination of the interpretive processes of Islamic frames of knowledge shows that Islamic groups define their existing position and mobilize to reposition themselves in the economy through those frames. For the purpose of illustration, I employ a methodology that allows me to conceptualize the role of an Islamic ideational orientation in its constitutive and regulatory effects. Paul DiMaggio (1994: 28) defines culture’s constitutive role in terms of how actors define their interests and how the character of society is shaped. This includes the making of social classes and class cultures (Hirschmann 1977, 1986; Sabel 1982; Sahlins 1976; Thompson 1963), as well as the market-oriented social transformation of society (Polanyi 1944; Somers and Block 2005). In terms of culture’s regulatory effect, DiMaggio’s focus is on constraining behaviour. This includes the moral self-restraint, discipline, and regulation that normatively ground behaviour (Corrigan and Sayer 1985; Foucault 1966/1970; Polanyi 1944; Smith 1759/1976). Combined, the constitutive and regulatory roles of culture are reflected in the emergence of distinctive repertoires, strategies, values, sentiments, and cognitive orientations that connect the ethical and political in framing a social change trajectory. Various groups and movements struggle for the power to reinterpret reality, represent society, reshape culture, and reposition themselves in history. They interpret and aim to redefine frames of action in what Gramsci (1928/1971: 88, 108–11, 120, 229–39) refers to as a complex ‘war of position,’ the goal of which is to open a new political space around distinct social imageries. The war of position centres on a 107

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discursive ‘framing contest’ over the historical possibility of social transformation (Gamson and Modigliani 1989, cited in Fiss and Hirsch 2005: 30). In Gramsci’s war of positioning, power is exercised in society on a terrain of struggle for organizing consent over a social change model (Mouffe 1979: 168–204). In Turkey, this is played out over the bellicose unitary imagery of Kemalism in a way that connects an Islamic orientation to the politics of neoliberal social transformation. Alongside the AKP, other Islamic groups have participated in the institutionalization of neoliberalism. The Naqshbandi religious order, the Nurcu community (Nurcular), and the Gulen community (Fethullahcilar) have all done so, especially under the banner of enlarging civic engagement in the economy. This has appealed to a variety of social groups affected by deep class- and region-based inequalities and holding culture-based grievances against Kemalism. All of these groups are subject, albeit in different ways, to the ebb and flow of the global market economy which creates the material conditions of inequality. However, Kemalist ideology, which has allegedly eviscerated Anatolia’s cultural richness by imposing a homogeneous laik culture, encourages such groups to think of themselves as victims of social injustice, or what Mike Davis (2001: 20), in a very different context, calls ‘unequally endowed groups.’ In the absence of a strong Leftist movement, the connection between material and cultural tension has made Islam an appealing political project. It represents a powerful countervailing force in the face of both Kemalist developmentalism, with its class bias in favour of large Istanbul-based industrialists, and laiklik, as embodied in the authoritarian, homogenizing culture of civil–military state bureaucrats. Islam offers significant appeal to those over whom Kemalist bureaucrats have cast a long shadow by questioning their cultural suitability for ‘western’ modernity. The groups noted above include capitalists from smaller Anatolian cities, some large firms established in Istanbul, highly educated Muslim professionals from modest Anatolian families, and the urban poor and marginalized. All wish to reposition themselves in a state restructured along neoliberal lines but in a way that caters to their imputed Muslim cultural differences and regional background (Atasoy 2003/2004: 139). It is not difficult to see why the economically privileged might support a policy orientation focused on greater integration into the world capitalist economy. The greater difficulty arises in relation to the economically weak. Of particular importance here has been the political resignification of an Islamic orientation that ties claims for ‘access rights’ to the broader ideological frame of neoliberalism. References to the need

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to respect Muslim traditions within the domestic context of the state are thus linked to and draw upon the globalized ‘rights and freedoms’ discourse of liberal democracy. The following section outlines the story of how the AKP and other Islamic groups are contributing to a distinct phase in Turkey’s modernity projects. On the broadest level, this is occurring because the political power base of the Kemalist state is being opened up to contestation.

The AKP and neoliberalism1 It has now been more than 30 years since a market-oriented policy approach has been embraced in Turkey in order to reduce the role of the state in the economy. In the process of transforming the economy, a series of major crises have arisen since the late 1980s. The most recent, in 2000–1, resulted in a 9.4 per cent fall in GDP. The most vulnerable, poorest members of society, in addition to salaried professionals and smallto medium-sized company owners, shouldered most of the burden. Many skilled, well-educated workers lost their jobs, and among smaller companies the bankruptcy rate soared. For the first time in Turkey, artisans, shopkeepers, and small business-owning tradesmen went on strike, closing shops and demonstrating against neoliberal policies. The AKP came to power in the wake of this severe economic crisis. The party, which advocates the dominant neoliberal themes of privatization of public corporations, liberalization of trade, entrepreneurship, and private investment, has a broad electoral base, receiving support from both prosperous and disadvantaged segments of society. The AKP has successfully drawn on deepening inequality and mass dissatisfaction with neoliberalism to garner favour, while also promising to reduce poverty, extreme inequality, unemployment, and the informal economy. The AKP has been successful in becoming the leading party by incorporating broad segments of society that had supported the coalition partners of the previous government. In building a cross-class coalition the AKP has reframed an Islamic moral stance to fit a ‘Third Way’ party image that partly emulates the former political approaches of Tony Blair, Bill Clinton and Gerhard Shroeder. It charts a course of integration between the neoliberal market economy and citizen-empowerment politics. In this way it addresses the two central themes of contemporary Turkish politics: neoliberal restructuring of the economy, and transformation of the state along liberal–democratic lines. Both of these are central to the AKP government’s push for Turkey’s membership in the EU, which also requires a broader shift in Turkish ‘political culture.’ It is in

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relation to these transformations that an Islamic politics has gained considerable ground in the discursive battles being waged in Turkey today. The AKP’s state transformation policies operate through cross-class coalition building between economically disadvantaged groups and large, globally competitive firms. Contesting the normative assumptions and practices of Kemalist statism, the AKP advances an attachment to ‘a new social contract [idea] that facilitates an engagement between society and the state on the basis of universal justice and human rights principles’ (AKP 2002: 21). The AKP’s idea of a new social contract is wedded to ‘a human-centred understanding of politics and [the enactment of] regulations and practices applied to an effective manifestation of the national will’ (AKP 2007: 21). As highlighted in its Development and Democratization Program (2002), the AKP argues for the need to redesign fundamental rights and freedoms in Turkey to make them congruent with ‘universal standards’ and with the EU’s Copenhagen political criteria. Indeed, the AKP programme is in general very much in line with the politics of neoliberalism expressed in the ‘globalization’ and ‘democratization’ discourses of the EU. In substantive terms, the creation and maintenance of trust between the state and citizens is a key condition for the neoliberal politics of the AKP in order to promote its programme on human welfare, individual freedom, and social justice. In a manner similar to the Ottoman ‘circle of justice’ notion, the AKP’s emphasis on trust is culturally embedded in the reciprocity of moral obligations and expectations: citizens will entrust the state to serve them while the state will respond to their demands (AKP 2007: 150–61). The trouble behind this approach is related to an assumption that disadvantaged groups could rely on the state to willingly be more inclusive and responsive. It also assumes that advantaged groups would be willing to financially support a more just society. And, trust will ethically dispose various social classes and groups towards a citizen-empowerment project without expecting one to dominate the other. Although problematic, it is precisely because of this emphasis on trust that the AKP is in a good position to include aspects of cultural, social, and emotional life in a project of state transformation. The AKP’s linking of policy with a normative commitment to social solidarity through new representations of social and cultural space also undermines the elitism inherit in Kemalist state practices. The AKP is doing much more than politically mobilizing a reified conception of the ‘social’ and the ‘cultural.’ It is actively involved in constructing the very meaning of the cultural through an epistemic attachment to European standards.


The AKP’s commitment to European norms comes with a particular political–culture twist. The party links a neoliberal policy orientation to an Islamic version of what the World Bank calls ‘human capital growth’ (AKP 2002: 20–7; World Bank 2004). It goes beyond conceptualizing this as an aggregate of free actors in society making rational choices, and beyond the removal of state-imposed political, cultural, and administrative constraints. For the AKP (2002: 34), ‘combining world economic and European democratic normative standards with Turkish cultural values and moral precepts can produce an ethics that would apply in all aspects of the economy as a precondition for permanent and perpetual growth.’ Islamic moral principles are seen as a strategy for ‘asset building’ (Oliver and Grant 2004: 171) in human capital. What this ‘asset building’ means in practice is that disadvantaged individuals and groups must be empowered culturally to become actively engaged in improving themselves in the economy. Through self-reliance and self-discipline, individuals endowed with an Islamic ethos and morality would be able to fully manage their position in society. The basic assumption here is that a more democratic system would serve as the opportunity structure for the cultivation of a social ethic of self-realization. The identification of individual self-growth with economic freedoms underpins the AKP’s neoliberal orientation, politicized as a cultural project of citizenempowerment based on ‘trust.’ This represents a position on the role of the individual within the state that is entirely distinct from that of Kemalist elitism. The National Programme drafted by the AKP government in August 2008 to fulfil Turkey’s EU membership requirements emphasizes the establishment of a fully functioning democratic system. Defined ‘as a great reform movement that requires fundamental changes in every aspect of daily life and brings the country to the level of universal standards and applications’ (Turkiye Ulusal Programı 2008: 1, my translation), the programme identifies democratization as the most reliable basis for Turkey’s economic and political stability and development (Turkiye Ulusal Programı 2008: 2). For Prime Minister Erdogan, the implementation of the Copenhagen political criteria will enable Turkey to secure economic growth by aligning its own ‘authentic’ Muslim values with the European liberal principles of democracy, human rights, and individual freedoms elevated to a level of ‘universality’ (Akdogan 2004: 13). The AKP is also adopting the Copenhagen economic objectives that require a fully functioning market economy (Faucompret and Konings 2008: 49–150; Hukumet Programi 2007; The Programme of the 59th Government 2003; Turkiye Ulusal Programı 2008). The AKP government

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views IMF-imposed polices as part of a process leading to Turkey’s EU membership and it sets its own economic policies in relation to IMF requirements. These include greater liberalization – with significant restructuring of the agricultural and banking sector, privatization, tight fiscal policy, less state intervention, more equal conditions for competition and financial discipline to the informal sector (Boratav and Ozugurlu 2006; IMF 2007). The government policies of the AKP have explicitly outlined a neoliberal programme which redefines development as participation in the world market (Hukumet Programi 2007; The Programme of the 59th Government 2003). In implementing its market-driven policies, the AKP borrows heavily from the IMF which has been considered as an institutional pillar of economic development. The government signed the latest three-year stand-by agreement in May 2005 and received US$39.5 billion from the IMF (Faucompret and Konings 2008: 58). This is in addition to the US$8 billion bailout agreement signed by the previous government in 2001 (Atasoy 2009a: 177), over and above an existing US$11 billion loan (Blustein 2001). Indeed, in 2007, IMF loans to Turkey accounted for two-third of its outstanding credits, leading The Economist to call the IMF the ‘Turkish Monetary Fund’ (The Economist 2 February 2007). The IMF-induced crisis-management strategies and the EU membership process are all intertwined in the AKP’s intensification of the policy of privatization of public companies which began in 1984 (Grigoriadis and Kamaras 2008). The government’s privatization administration Web site lists 188 public companies as being completely privatized from 1985 to 2009. More than 50 per cent of state shares have been sold in 93 of these companies, many of which (66 companies) were privatized by block sale (Republic of Turkey, Prime Ministry Privatization Administration 2008). State shares were also sold off in 240 mixed companies (TUSIAD 2005a). Nevertheless, the actual implementation of the programme has been slow, largely due to public opposition to layoffs and legal proceedings launched by workers’ unions against some of the deals. The greatest increase in privatization occurred between 2005 and 2006 under the AKP government (TUSIAD May 2008: 138–9), when key infrastructure industries such as telecommunications (Turk Telecom), petrochemicals and other energy-related industries (TUPRAS, ERDEMIR) were privatized. However, since 2007 the privatization process has slowed again in the politically uncertain context of tensions emerging from the period of the military’s 2007 e-memorandum up until the July 2007 election, as well as the 2008 Constitutional Court case over banning the AKP. Since 2007, the government has dropped the privatization of some state-owned companies (such as the Halk


Bankasi – People’s Bank) and postponed the sale of others (such as Tekel Sigara – the cigarette manufacturing company, Turkish Airlines, Galataport, the National Lottery Administration, and Petkim – a petrochemical industry). Contrary to assumptions made about income generation, the effects of privatization have not been very significant. From 1985 to 2007, the total amount of income generated from privatization has been US$26 billion, of which US$13.6 billion has been spent to pay privatizationrelated expenses (T.C. Basbakanlik Turkiye Ozellestirme Idaresi Baskanligi 2008: 10–11). And most of the income – US$12.5 billion – was generated in 2005. Although this represents an increase over the US$1.3 billion generated in 2004 (Turkiye Ulusal Programı 2008: 15), the overall fiscal returns from privatization have been minimal. The creation of a political context for state downsizing, rather than revenue generation, appears to be the most important outcome of the AKP’s privatization programme. It is by no means entirely due to pressure from the IMF and the EU that the AKP openly proclaimed that it ‘supports a free-market economy with all of its rules and institutions, and adopts the principle that the state should not directly engage in economic activity’ (AKP 2002: 33). There is more at work here for the AKP than adhering to policies adopted in accordance with IMF stand-by agreements and World Bank conditionality terms. The AKP has its own reasons for wanting to dismantle the state-owned enterprises which have constituted the backbone of the Turkish economy since the 1930s. This is more complex than it first appears. Far from a move away from the state, particular attention is actually being drawn to the social and economic structure of the state. The meaning of privatization is intricately bound up with perceptions, ideas, and discursive dichotomies related to reconfiguring the content and character of the state. The reconstitution of the state through neoliberal restructuring of the economy is a ‘deeply contentious outcome of historically specific “state projects” ’ (Jessop 1990, quoted in Brenner et al. 2003: 9). This outcome is rooted in the old Kemalist state which deployed a variety of politico–regulatory strategies – including those relating to forces of capital and political power – to contain and monitor social processes and political–economic activities within the space of a society represented as ‘homogenous.’

The realignment of Turkish capital It is important to appreciate how private capital has been realigned during the rise of neoliberalism and its embodiment in the Islamic

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politics of the AKP. This is best seen in terms of the divergence of interests that has emerged within the Turkish Industrialists’ and Businessmen’s Association (TUSIAD), and between it and the Independent Industrialists’ and Businessmen’s Association (MUSIAD). TUSIAD, representing secularly oriented big business interests, is concentrated in the Istanbul region, and has strong ties to the Kemalist state. It has kept its distance from the AKP’s Islamic–political project, although it supports the AKP government’s neoliberal policies. MUSIAD, on the other hand, representing large- and smaller-sized Muslim business interests, mostly from smaller cities in Anatolia, has very weak ties to the Kemalist state apparatus and is a key element in the AKP’s cross-class electoral coalition. However, it is no longer possible to see political Islam as aligned only with ‘small and medium scale,’ and newly growing Anatolian capital, as opposed to the secularly oriented big bourgeoisie based in Istanbul. Since the mid-1980s the more successful pro-Islamic groups have already entered the ranks of big capital. Some of them are now located in Istanbul while maintaining strong family ties with Anatolian towns and villages. Still, the political legacy of Kemalist developmentalism (which historically marginalized Anatolian small capitalists) continues to have a profound ideological effect on the reproduction of differences between large Istanbul-based and small Anatolian capitalists. This is related to the cultural signification of a ‘Muslim other,’ and has led to a debate within business between secularists and Islamists over the best direction for Turkish society. In this debate, pro-Islamic business groups combine their economic success stories with the theme of Islamic social justice, while secularly oriented groups express concern over the political future of the Kemalist state. TUSIAD was founded in 1971 by the largest private industrial and commercial capital groups in the Istanbul region. Its headquarters is in Istanbul and it has only one Anatolian branch, which opened in Ankara in 2000.2 In 2005 TUSIAD had a membership of 458 firms which accounted for 43.2 per cent of total value-added in the Turkish economy, and 38.2 per cent of Turkish exports (TUSIAD Brochure). These firms are primarily family-owned and family-managed conglomerates. For example, among the largest TUSIAD firms, Koc Holding controls 108 companies and Sabanci Holding controls 50 companies. In 1998, the 15 largest TUSIAD companies in Turkey controlled over 500 industrial enterprises, as well as some of Turkey’s largest financial institutions. Most of the TUSIAD member companies have their origins in the state-led industrialization project of the 1930s. High-level state bureaucrats were actively involved in the founding of industrial firms,


transforming themselves into a private industrial bourgeoisie. Industrialization in Turkey has long been synonymous with nationalism, which directed social change onto a secular trajectory. Strong connections with state bureaucrats and dependence on state backing explain TUSIAD’s secularist political orientation. TUSIAD member firms still maintain strong links to the state and enjoy easy access to government support. They are aided by joint ventures with the military in production areas ranging from iron and steel, cement, automotive, pulp and paper, and food, to artillery ammunition, small arms, military vehicles and rocket systems (Arac 2004: 7; OYAK Group Companies 2007). The close ties between some of its members and civil–military bureaucrats often cause friction within TUSIAD because they tend to contribute to a lack of concern with the military’s frequent intervention in civilian politics. Leading oldergeneration TUSIAD members were pleased when the military engineered a soft coup on 28 February 1997, forcing the resignation of the democratically elected coalition government of the pro-Islamic Welfare Party. Many leading pro-Islamic businessmen were arrested, and 100 proIslamic companies were blacklisted. These firms were excluded from bidding for military contracts on suspicion of undertaking ‘Islamic fundamentalist’ activities against the secular state (Jang 2005: 203). For the owners of younger-generation TUSIAD firms, however, with limited linkages to the state, this was seen as harmful to democracy. Although charges against pro-Islamic business groups were never proven, the military’s action served to dampen the competitive growth of Islamic capitalists. And while TUSIAD strongly supports market-driven policies its internal cleavages have tended to prevent it from giving unified support to depoliticized regulation of the economy and more democratic standards for the state (Bugra 1998). During the 1970s TUSIAD’s primary focus was on the institutionalization of export-oriented industrialization to replace the post-war import-substitution model. It repeatedly argued that excessive state regulation was the source of Turkey’s economic problems. During the 1980s TUSIAD worked for the consolidation of market-oriented structural reforms, although they did so with hesitation, as they felt increasingly challenged by the fast growth of smaller export-oriented companies. The legitimacy problems associated with privatization and growing inequality were largely ignored. Since the 1990s, under the influence of younger-generation business groups, and in any case reflecting TUSIAD’s overall support for Turkey’s membership in the EU (which it welcomes as an agent of international discipline), TUSIAD has also supported the

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democratization reform requirements spelled out in the Copenhagen political criteria. These include: the rule of law, respect for human rights, and the protection of minorities. It has published no less than three reports on democratization in Turkey between 1997 and 2001. Under the influence of younger-generation firms, TUSIAD appears to have broken with the inhibiting social, cultural, and legislative arrangements of the old Kemalist state with which older TUSIAD firms had been so closely associated (TUSIAD 2007). As an organization of large private companies with origins in state contracts, TUSIAD’s unified support for liberal democracy is not entirely certain. In relation to the AKP’s commitment to EU accession, TUSIAD supports the party and the political reforms required by the EU, as well as the economic reforms required by the IMF. All three TUSIAD reports published on democratization in Turkey (in 1997, 1999, and 2001) emphasize the harmonization of domestic policies with international standards and the need to change current legal arrangements which restrict individual freedoms and the expression of cultural rights. However, when it comes to such issues as the headscarf ban and Imam-Hatip schools, TUSIAD reveals a deep-seated fear of Islamization by stealth, vowing to defend Turkey’s secular orientation against any and all issues that may be a threat to secularism. TUSIAD frequently points out that it aims ‘to foster the development of a social structure which conforms to Ataturk’s principles and reforms’ (TUSIAD May 2008: Preface). Regarding the AKP government’s latest attempt to lift the headscarf ban, TUSIAD has even argued that, although undertaken ‘in the name of equality and the right to education . . . [the] true intention [here] is to move Turkey away from its process of democratization and EU accession . . . [the headscarf issue] provides an opportunity for those who intend [to] inhibit Turkey from progressing on her path to a stronger democracy . . .’ (TUSIAD January 2008). Although it broadly supports the AKP’s Development and Democratization Program, TUSIAD’s historical connections with the state have thus far kept it out of the AKP’s cross-class alliance. MUSIAD (the Independent Industrialists and Businessmen’s Association, commonly referred to as the Muslim Businessmen’s Association), on the other hand, has a clear Islamic political orientation and is central to that alliance. Ten members of MUSIAD were among the founders of the AKP, and 20 members were elected as AKP parliamentarians in the 2002 elections (Jang 2005: 227–8). MUSIAD also provided much of the financial base for the AKP in the elections. It rejects the Kemalist cultural hierarchy which privileged big Istanbul-based business. It also presents itself as the champion


of ‘Muslimness’ to those who have been marginalized in that hierarchy, even though many of its leading companies refrain from referring to Islamic symbols in their business activities. MUSIAD, founded in 1990, represents the economic interests of young businessmen known as the ‘Anatolian tigers.’ Its members generally have modest Anatolian Muslim-family backgrounds. A total of 3000 of its more than 4000-member companies is located in various Anatolian cities (World Bulletin 2008). Nevertheless, a large number of MUSIAD companies tend to concentrate in Istanbul. The majority of MUSIAD-member firms are small- and medium-sized and employ fewer than 50 workers. In contrast to TUSIAD, 80 per cent of whose member firms were established before 1980, 70 per cent of MUSIAD companies were founded after 1980 (Jang 2005: 214–17). MUSIAD also has many branches throughout Anatolia (28 offices), unlike TUSIAD. MUSIAD aims to strengthen the export-market competitiveness of its member firms through co-operative and joint venture investments in corresponding areas of domestic production. MUSIAD Chairperson Omer Vardan sees such investment strategies as essential for a ‘sound placement of Anatolian capital’ in the world economy (World Bulletin 2008). The traditional sectors of concentration for these companies are labour-intensive industries such as textiles, garments, leather and carpets, construction, building materials, food processing and transportation. Since the mid-1990s, they have become involved in big-box grocery retailing, furniture making, computing and electronics, banking and the media. MUSIAD represents 15 per cent of the Turkish GNP (compared to TUSIAD’s more than 40 per cent), but its strength lies in export competitiveness (Shikoh 2006). It regularly organizes an International Business Forum (IBF) and a World Economic forum for the Muslim World, as well as annual trade fairs within the Organization of Islamic Conference. MUSIAD is the headquarters for the IBF, whose key objective is to utilize Islamic ethical virtues in wealth creation and support global-business networking among Muslim countries. MUSIAD’s initial opposition to Turkey’s EU membership has completely changed since the 28 February 1997 military soft coup. It now combines its earlier policies to institute a Muslim free trade zone (MUSIAD 1996) with a strategy that embraces Turkey’s membership in the EU. Within the framework of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), MUSIAD hopes to hold two meetings each year, thus increasing its contacts and co-operative projects with European business groups. Towards that end, MUSIAD has founded a

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Liaison Centre in Brussels which acts as an introduction point for its members moving into the EU economic space (World Bulletin 2008). MUSIAD presents itself as a civil-society organization that seeks to reduce state power in politics and the economy. This is the theme that has been repeated in MUSIAD publications since the release of its April 2000 report on Constitutional Reform and Democratization of Government (MUSIAD 2000). Similar to the AKP’s Development and Democratization Program, and in line with the democratization discourse of the EU, MUSIAD’s reports call for immediate implementation of the Copenhagen political criteria and a reduction in the military’s political power (MUSIAD 2000: 7–32). Although critical of the government’s fiscal-discipline policy which it sees as having disadvantaged smaller capitalists (MUSIAD 2008), MUSIAD supports the government’s commitment to the implementation of IMF policies that integrate Islamic financial organizations into mainstream banking and reduce the state’s involvement in the economy (Starr and Yilmaz 2006: 5). MUSIAD supports a social change project through an EU and IMFdriven process of market integration and democratization in Turkey. However, this process must be situated spatially with a reflexive glance at the actual opinions and beliefs of the people – a move that interferes with the concept of ‘homogeneity’ assumed within state territory (MUSIAD 2008: 141). This includes the cultivation of what Onuf (1989: 62, quoted in Cameron and Palan 2004: 6) describes as a propensity for ‘reflexive self-regulation’ within the state towards a reworking of the state space in the representational sense. Conferring meaning to the reform process, MUSIAD seems to be linking a national collective imagery with a social change programme that will be ‘for us and with an understanding that Turkey is part of the world society’ (MUSIAD 2008: 142). This appears to be a project for rebuilding power/knowledge relations in the representation of state space that differs fundamentally from the Kemalist format. In a manner similar to the AKP, MUSIAD offers a subtle but radical shift in the meaning of political life which challenges the Kemalist state’s social engineering role – one performed from top down by state bureaucrats in alliance with large bourgeoisie and politicians since the 1930s. MUSIAD (2008: 141) offers a different image of the state and political life from below, posited within the moral, normative, and cognitive framing of society. MUSIAD’s state imagery is premised on the constitution of a market society by adapting its rules and institutions to local–national conditions. MUSIAD (2008: 142) argues that it is essential for a social change programme to be established on the basis of


learning and acquiring knowledge from the moral–cultural values of society. Charles Sabel (1994: 137) has shown that social–cultural learning is not truly learning unless it disrupts existing relations of monitoring with regard to the relationship between the economy and the state. From this perspective, MUSIAD’s emphasis on social–cultural learning appears to be a call for a different political imaginary that ultimately undermines the Kemalist model of top-down political disciplining and regulation of social life. What is needed for MUSIAD is a new conceptualization of the ‘relations between thought and culture’ (Foucault 1966/1970: 50) that presents an ethos of cultural pluralism as an important source for a social change model. This is similar to the AKP’s novel approach to state transformation that emphasizes ‘trust’ as a complex entanglement of the political representations of the social and the cultural within the state. In contrast to the Kemalist conception of the political, stretching vertically from the state to the social terrain, both MUSIAD and AKP aim to formulate ‘horizontally articulated’ (Brenner et al. 2003: 14) linkages between the cultural and the social within political space. In a manner reminiscent of James Coleman’s (1988) use of the term, such a link is considered formative to ‘human capital’ creation. Insofar as it represents a newly growing bourgeoisie from Anatolia with weak connections to the state, it is hardly surprising that MUSIAD, in ‘refashioning futures’ (Scott 1999), supports IMF policies and has embraced the World Bank’s advocacy of ‘human capital growth.’ In particular, MUSIAD has accepted the shift in focus from state institutions to a reliance on the autonomy of the individual and the primacy of human economic rationality (World Bank 2004). This shift is recognized as a necessary precondition for the development of an entrepreneurial spirit among Anatolian lower and middle classes. However, it is melded with the notion that an Islamic ethic also asserts the primacy of the individual – which MUSIAD connects to a presumed Islamic requirement that humans be free from political and administrative constraints in order to realize their full potential. As one MUSIAD document puts it: ‘Allah requires only those individuals with reason, intelligence, and freedom to fulfil their religious duties’ (S. Ozdemir 2006: 162). The context of these claims is that the state’s major role in the economy during the early years of the Turkish Republic, along with its urban, industrial and westernizing biases, gave rise to a politics of resentment on the part of regional bourgeoisie, articulated around cultural issues. MUSIAD members often believe that they have been looked down upon and discriminated against by government bureaucrats because of their Muslim beliefs and rural Anatolian family backgrounds. They feel that

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they are perceived as backward, lacking the secular, urban, and modern cultural prerequisites for participation in Kemalist state-making. Reacting against this they have sought to achieve economic success by adopting a strong Islamic work ethic, both for themselves and for their children. Whereas the old Istanbul bourgeoisie embraced the Kemalist ‘idea of the state,’ the Anatolian bourgeoisie resents the Kemalist state as an oppressive bureaucracy. As a culturally distinct fraction of capital they question the inclusiveness of the existing public sphere. MUSIAD situates its wealth-creation strategies in the deployment of educational and disciplinary techniques at the individual level. Consistent with its embrace of ‘human capital growth,’ an Islamic work ethic is combined with the need for high-technical educational achievement. Although their upward social mobility is largely due to their attainment of a first-rate higher education at state-funded public universities, MUSIAD members have generally received an informal religious education from their neighbourhood Koranic schools or from family members. A religious moral education helps Islamic individuals contrast the economic rationality and self-interest assumed in commercial activity with Islamic virtue (Davis and Robinson 2006: 173–4). These individuals embrace Islamic ethics as a means of developing disciplined, responsible individuals, and seek to build a culture of capital accumulation that ‘associates high morality and ethical values with modern technology’ (S. Ozdemir 2006: 73). A religiously inspired, ethical individual is expected to develop a more communitarian economic attitude towards instituting a just society (Davis and Robinson 2006), rather than accumulating wealth for self-interest. To support this culture MUSIAD frequently cites statements such as: ‘Prophet Muhammed was the ideal merchant . . . one who does a good deed in this world receives the reward in this world as well as after death.’ These ideas are promoted in MUSIAD periodicals such as Homo-Islamicus (1993–7) and Cerceve, a newsletter called MUSIAD in Press, an Internet-based Information Bank, and various research reports. In contrast to TUSIAD firms, state involvement in the economy brought little or no direct benefit to MUSIAD firms. Consequently, they are strongly behind neoliberal economic reforms. An Islamic assetbuilding strategy appears to have helped many of them improve their international competitiveness. The best sources of capital investment for MUSIAD firms are the so-called hidden wealth of pious Muslims, accumulated in the form of gold jewellery; the inflow of remittances from Turkish immigrant workers in Europe; and public share-holding. Workers’ remittances come through share-holding investments and as


cash brought into the country in suitcases – mostly through the informal channels of religious communities. It is estimated that the Central Bank also receives approximately US$4 billion in such savings annually (Demir, Acar, and Toprak 2004: 184 – endnote 28). Kombassan Holding, YIMPAS, Buyuk Anadolu Holding, Sayha, and Ittifak are all holding companies that have prospered with Turkish workers’ savings sent home either as investments in equity shares or as cash donations. Kombassan Holding, which owns 60 factories and 100 firms, was established in 1988 by Bayram Hasim, a teacher from Konya. It has grown significantly with monies received from Turkish workers and now employs more than 30,000 workers. Although Hasim does not completely reveal his business connections or the amount of financial support he receives, he has stated that Turkish workers in Europe constitute the largest group of company shareholders (Dincel 1999: 162). It is also well known that the Association for a New World View in Europe, a Turkish pro-Islamic organization, collects cash donations from migrants in mosques and sends them to Islamic corporations through private couriers. The holding companies Kombassan, YIMPAS and the ULKER Group have been engaged in joint ventures in Germany, the Netherlands and Denmark since the mid-1990s. The Turkish military and the Capital Market Board have accused these companies of collecting large amounts of investment funds from unregistered sources via religious communities. Kombassan’s and YIMPAS’ accounts were investigated after the 28 February 1997 soft coup, but no evidence was found to substantiate the claim (Jang 2005: 212–13). There are now five interest-free Islamic banks operating in Turkey. Two are joint ventures established in the 1980s with Saudi and Kuwaiti capital, and three were established in the 1990s by Turkish Muslims. They are Anadolu Finance House, established by Istikbal Group in 1991; Ihlas Finance House, established by Ihlas Holding and the Turkish Religion Fund in 1995 (Ihlas Finance House declared bankruptcy in 2001); and Asya Finance House, established by the Fethullah Gulen community in 1996. Another Turkish–Islamic bank, Family Finance, was established by the ULKER Group in 2001.3 These Turkish–Islamic banks (excluding Ihlas) held about 4 per cent of total deposits in the Turkish banking system. Profit-loss sharing accounts, which offer returns on savings without officially paying interest, constitute approximately 85–90 per cent of their deposits (Jang 2005: 146–7; Yuce 2003: 4). Together with the unregistered financial dealings of religious communities, these banks play a significant role in mobilizing the ‘hidden wealth’ of Muslims for Islamic finance in both Turkey and Europe.

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It is noteworthy that newly wealthy medium- and small-sized firms have proved to be highly successful within those sectors of the economy that employ informal labour. The ILO’s Decent Work and the Informal Economy report of 2002 defines the ‘informal economy’ as including not only wage employment in unregistered workplaces but paid work not covered by labour and social security legislation (ILO 2002: 5–9). It is estimated that informal employment constitutes about half of total employment and over a third of urban employment in Turkey, compared to 5 per cent among the EU 15, and 11–15 per cent among the EU 25 (EU-ILO 2007: 10–11, 31; World Bank 2006a: 137). Many MUSIAD companies specialize in textile and clothing production for external markets, a sector which tends to be labour-intensive. Their labour management philosophy is expressed through ‘mutual social responsibility’ based on moral values and duties, so that unregistered wage-employment is made socially acceptable (Yildirim 2006: 236). Accordingly, wage earners in this context are not seen as members of a social class but as family members who are expected to provide services for the common social good based on mutual trust and respect.4 The TUSIAD leadership has called these informal types of capital mobilization and deployment of labour power illegal (TUSIAD 1995). For MUSIAD, however, the informal incorporation of ‘hidden wealth,’ workers’ remittances, and informal labour into the process of private capital accumulation facilitates the integration of Islamic trust networks within a dynamic market economy, and has the added benefit of doing so without state involvement.

Islamic trust networks Islam has clearly been a permanent partner in the state-led ideological configuration of cultural politics in Turkey since 1945. As examined in the previous chapter, the Cold War state strategy was to contain real or potential Leftist and radical Islamist movements by refiguring Islam as a cultural component of official state ideology. Hence the notion of Turkish Islam. This strategy has tied the political representation of Islam to conservative, rightwing political positions in the party politics of Turkey (Ete 2003). Sufi orders such as the Naqshbandi and religious communities such as the Nurcu cemaati and Fethullahcilar have, to a large extent, been responsive to this formulation, mobilizing Islamic ideas and beliefs by drawing on the statist Turkish-Islam concept. This has included the articulation of Islamic activities around the expansion of faith.


My intention here is not to dwell on the changes in the ideological orientation of these religious groups. The complexity of their ideas has been extensively studies elsewhere (among others see: Algar 1979, 1983; Mardin 1989, 1991). My aim is to first briefly examine how they mobilize ideas and beliefs in the formulation of Islam as a relational cultural–moral resource tied to the economy. Next, I will provide a more detailed account of the Fethullahci ‘interpretive frame’ (Snow 2004) on Islamic politics of neoliberalism. This analysis is important as it allows me to conceptualize the role of an Islamic ideational orientation in its constitutive and regulatory effects. This is crucial for a more thorough understanding of the political positioning of Islamic groups in the Gramscian ‘war of positions’ against the power players of the old Kemalist state. It seems that because of their ideological association with the notion of Turkish Islam, Islamic capital groups display a strong pro-developmentalist bias consistent with the Kemalist state. But it is also because of their internalization of developmentalist ideology that they are not able to create a ‘cultural hegemony’ in the state. The economic power of Islamic capital groups has laid the foundation for their emergence as a ‘neo-bourgeoisie’ (King and Szelenyi 2004: 26), culturally distinct from their secularist counterpart within the existing system of exploitation. Yet they lack the power to create a hegemony (Mert 2008) that is dedicated to managing a system of social reconstruction operating through the state technologies of coercion and consent. As will be examined in the following sections of the chapter, this is the basis for a ‘two-pronged’5 Islamic platform. On the one hand, it is grounded in a firm scepticism of the Kemalist exclusionary cultural hierarchy that supports Islamic mobilization in reshaping state power via an EU-induced democratization programme. On the other hand, it is based on the pursuit of socio-economic objectives through reinstituting the relation between culture and capital within neoliberalism.

The Naqshbandi order and the Nurcu cemaati: Cultural attachment to neoliberalism As an ancient religious order with roots in Turkey going back to the fifteenth century (Algar 1983: 3), the Naqshbandi has established a strong organizational structure that underpins its political success among students, university professors, educated professionals, and members of the bureaucracy (Mardin 1991). The Naqshbandi order has developed small community-based networks based on personal relations and linked them into a strong, centrally organized structure. This strategy has also

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defined the way in which their way of knowledge is pursued (Algar 1983). Such knowledge – defined as self-purification – can only be gained through absolute conformity to the teachings of the sheikh residing in one’s community. In Naqshbandi thought there are three sources of knowledge: the book, memory, and the practice of rabita. Acquiring knowledge is not seen as a solitary practice involving the study of religious texts only. Rather, the spiritual leader or master plays a crucial role in the learning process. A Schimmel (1975: 366) writes that the centre of Naqshbandi education is the silent dhikr (recollection of God in the heart) inspired by the spiritual leader. The second characteristic is sohbet, an intimate spiritual conversation between master and disciple. The close relation between master and disciple reveals itself in rabita (linking the heart of the follower to the heart of the leader) and results in the experience of spiritual unity and purification through education of the heart. It is this system of interpersonal linkages established for the exercise of sohbets and dhikrs within small-scale community-based networks that distinguishes the organizational strategy of the Naqshbandi (Atasoy 2005: 30–1). The main theme in the sohbet circles of the Naqshbandi is the social experience and daily life practice of Muslims. Sheikh Kotku, who is considered the greatest sheikh of the republican era after Arvasi, was convinced that Kemalist laiklik had devalued the moral–ethical dimension of social existence. In altering those conditions, Kotku believed that social life must be injected with greater moral strength. Kotku (1995: 17–46) claimed that achieving moral–spiritual maturity is the most difficult task for an individual, requiring a redefinition of the meaning of social life. For him, unless ‘faith in God’ and a ‘willingness to work for the well-being of Muslims’ are combined in the moral make-up of the self, a social life in need of transformation cannot even be imagined. Kotku (1995: 110) wrote: ‘we look at the mirror and try to beautify ourselves. We arrange our cloths accordingly. We wash our bodies to be clean. But our bodies are the property of the earth. It is the soul that ultimately must be beautified’ (quoted in Atasoy 2005: 125). Altering consumption norms figures prominently in the Naqshbandi mobilization of meaning in an Islamic refiguring of social life. Kotku cautioned his followers on the conspicuous display of wealth found in consumerism, which he believed to be the source of much moral distress. Kotku (1995: 73–4) warns: Don’t love this world! The world is arable land for the afterworld. Whatever you sow here you will reap it there. Be generous, charitable,


and benevolent. Don’t waste your money on sinful things. Don’t become lost in loose and dissolute ways of living. But you should love this world. Why? (Because) We will go to heaven from here. We will earn money here. We will look after the poor and needy with this money. We will live here in accordance with the knowledge (of the Koran), and educate others. Don’t care much for amusement. Don’t take delight in voluptuousness. Engage in practices that will lead you to heaven. (quoted in Atasoy 2005: 125–6) The basic argument here is that Islam, as a source of morality, must be taught in such a way that it becomes an existential basis for public life. In the development of a distinct Islamic ethos of engagement for social life, the Naqshbandi strongly promotes Islamic education in Turkey. In fact, this is the basis of the Naqshbandi mobilization of Islamic ideas and beliefs for generating a socio-cultural orientation within a TurkishIslam framework. This sort of articulation has figured prominently in the recent Islamic interpretive framing of wealth creation. In short, Muslims must emerge as morally inspired economic players and engage in a competitive market economy for wealth generation. The religious order is the moral architecture, providing the spiritual messages, ethical representations, and knowledge bound up with the values of market competition. This is a deliberate act of acquiring and disseminating knowledge that assigns meaning to Islamic cultural standards and practices in ways appropriate for Muslim engagement. It is on the grounds of cultivating this engagement that Muslim capitalists have emerged as a culturally distinct ‘neo-bourgeoisie.’ Said Nursi, originator of the Nurcu cemaati, was also focused on strengthening individual morality within a framework of faith set out in the Koran. Said Nursi (1876–1960) was an Anatolian Kurdish Islamic intellectual committed to cultivating an Islamic cultural disposition through a ‘return to the Koran’ movement. His writings have been collected into a six-volume commentary on the Koran, the Risale-I Nur. By reinterpreting the Koran in his writings Said Nursi hoped to construct a philosophy of political ethics that would serve as a guide for the selfdevelopment of Muslims faced with a disintegrating moral framework caused by the imitation of western ways. For Said Nursi, the cultivation of individual faith through the reading of the Koran and Risale-I Nur was by far the most important task in the establishment of a moral community. The transformation of the state through the application of Sharia law was the second requirement for instituting Islam as a

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way of life in society. The third requirement was the unification of all Muslims against the ‘moral regression’ of the West inflected on a Muslim way of life. This final requirement referred to the global integration of Muslims as a cemaat (ummah) beyond the territorial limits of national states. However, unless the initial first task of strengthening faith was successfully completed, the second and third tasks could not even be contemplated (Atasoy 2005: 79–81). Therefore, Said Nursi’s primary emphasis was on bolstering faith for self-growth within the social space of the state. This has been forged within the Turkish-Islam framing of the state through strategic alliances with conservative, rightwing political parties and the laik state bureaucracy, both of which seem to have supported the renewal of Muslim faith in order to strengthen Turkish culture and the economy. The religiously framed moral–cultural disposition of Turkish Islam functioning within the state space assumes a ‘social contract’ of inclusiveness. It takes its points of reference in ‘trust’ mobilized against the hierarchical and exclusionary relations of capitalism understood as a system of exploitation. This argument makes sense in the creation of an ‘imagined economy’ (Cameron and Palan 2003, 2004) based on Durkheim’s concept of organic cooperation of the faithful. From this perspective, both the Naqshbandi order and the Nurcu cemaati have become a political expression of the historical reworking of Islamic ideas for the purpose of creating meaning for wealth creation and economic development. Faith is held in tandem with a cultural openness to rational thought and scientific innovation which are privileged as instruments of economic development. For example, Said Nursi argues that the Koran reveals the laws of nature as the work of God, and that their discovery is to be made through rationalist interpretation. For Said Nursi, western progress ideology, formal rationality, and faith in modern science are not only acceptable but in complete conformity with the Koran (Atasoy 2005: 47). An in-depth analysis of Islamic religious orders and communities is beyond the scope of my analysis, but the basic conclusion remains: they have become the main drivers in the development of an ethos of Muslim engagement with the market economy. In promoting the view that Turkey’s economic development projects should rest on the moral/cultural strength of Islam, they have articulated a particular sociocultural understanding of Islam that bolsters social solidarity through the cultivation of faith. This observation convinces me that a formulation of Islam as part of national culture enriches an ‘interpretive


understanding’ (DiMaggio 1994: 27) that marries Islam with neoliberal capitalism.

Fethullahcilar The Fethullahcilar is one of the most influential Islamic social movements. It was developed under the leadership of prominent religious leader Fethullah Gulen (1941–), a retired Imam who previously worked as a state employee for the Directorate of Religious Affairs. Gulen was formally educated in state-run religious schools (L. Erdogan 1998). The writings of Said Nursi have been quite relevant to the Fethullahcilar’s moral teachings and ideological stance on refashioning social life. Gulen, like Said Nursi, reinterprets the Koran in his writings to demonstrate that it contains knowledge regarding the laws of order and harmony found in nature. This is the basis of the Fethullahcilar’s belief that an Islamic modernity project can be deployed through a reflexive grounding of social–economic restructuring on Islamic values of social justice and ideas of science and progress. The Fethullahcilar is involved in da’wa work in the tradition of the Tablighi Jamaat of the Indo-Pakistan subcontinent (Ahmad 1991: 510–23). They often describe their activities as hizmet (vocational work). Although it is the largest movement in Turkey, the Fethullahcilar does not maintain a formal membership registry. They work in the spirit of a dedicated mission and their primary concern is moral self-renewal. The success of the Fethullahcilar lies in its simple, direct, and personal appeal. It makes no demands on its followers to practice Islam. Rather, individuals engage in religious education and devotional activities within small, community-based groups. Participants, who form strong interpersonal relationships, meet regularly to read and discuss commentaries on the Koran, the Risale-I Nur, and the books of Fethullah Gulen. In addition to the work of Said Nursi, Ziya Gokalp’s ideas are also a significant influence on the Fethullahcilar movement (Yavuz 2003; Yilmaz 2005). Gokalp contributed to the Kemalist notion that Islam can be functional in bringing about social cohesion in society as long as it remains under state control. Kemalism had assigned the state key agency in controlling the production and dissemination of religious knowledge in its management of national culture. Similarly, the Fethullahcilar views Islam as a religion of self-development concerned primarily with moral aspects of social life. Although this may potentially contribute to social cohesion in society, it also protects the Fethullahcilar movement from interference by the state bureaucracy. Consistent with Kemalist

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state-making principles, the Fethullahcilar movement espouses a more liberal Islamic, Turkish nationalist ideology (Aras and Caha 2000), and is often praised for promoting ‘civic nationalism.’ The Fethullahcilar movement emphasizes the political consequences of Islamic ethics. It suggests that morally strengthened and Islamically rooted individuals will embrace the notion of active citizenship and be motivated to ‘do good’ for society. According to Gulen, Islam is a universalistic religion which promotes peace, dignity, and justice, and explicitly rejects any form of totalitarianism and dictatorship. He believes that Islam supports democracy, and that it should be left to the people to choose their form of government by reflecting on the circumstance of their place and time. Deliberation should be carried out with the closest possible attachment to Islamic moral principles on peace, dignity, and justice. Gulen argues that Islam does not offer an unchanging ideological formula for an Islamic state reconstitution project. In agreement with Ramadan (2004) who reinterprets Islam in the light of the cultural reality of Muslims living in the West, Gulen believes that Islam does not present a system of law outside the contingencies of space and time. He rejects any suggestion that Islam is a totalizing ideology, and makes the case for an imaginative rethinking of Islamic norms and principles for refashioning social life. He insists that ‘the Koran is a translation of the book of the universe, an interpretation of . . . the universe . . . Reducing it to political theories or forms of the state does great disrespect’ to Islam (Gulen 2005: 456). The Fethullahcilar movement has two central objectives in its pursuit of individual moral renewal: (1) to reconstruct individual thought in accordance with the ideas, moral values, and normative standards of Islam; and (2) to connect individualized pious belief to the transformation of individual behaviour in the public sphere. In setting these objectives the Fethullahcilar is motivated by the belief that Islam constitutes a ‘civilization for individual growth’ (Sirin 2005). What is interesting here is that by focusing on individual growth the Fethullahcilar also demonstrates a concern with individuals becoming better, socially responsible citizens of the state. The group advocates a piety that is to be attained through a quality education that connects the spiritual and material worlds (Gulen 2005: 452). Training of the ego through asceticism, kindness and sincerity are crucial to the realization of this piety. In shaping their focus on social integration and harmony, the Fethullahcilar advocates a consensual type of social contract based on self-limitation and moral development directed against injustice. The framework of reference for guiding individual action should be worked


out by articulating the universal values of Islam with Islamic normative standards for ‘doing good’ in everyday life. The common good of justice can be achieved if the faithful ‘. . . place their knowledge and understanding at humanity’s service’ (Gulen 2001: 2–3). For Gulen, self-reflection for the purpose of attaining a just, ethical way of life is a more important undertaking than the pursuit of a fixed, unchangeable framework for an Islamic state. The second most important criteria in the pursuit of the ethical way, for Gulen (2002: 2), ‘is to overflow with . . . a deep love for humanity and creation.’ An individual enlightened on the ethical way is the one who synthesizes mind, logic, and consciousness and devotes his/her life towards ‘doing good’ for all in the world (Gulen 2002: 4). There is no this world/that world or mind/heart dichotomy, for the believers’ emotions and reason are united . . . we need whole comprehensive minds . . . Such people must be in constant contact and interaction with the atoms, molecules, and particles of the people, just as the mind is in constant contact with the body . . . By conveying the messages of their soul to all and elevating them to the level of people who have knowledge, skills, and genius for the future, they will present them for the common good and society’s benefit. (Gulen 2003, quoted in Atasoy 2009a: 181) The Fethullahcilar movement does not expect overtly religious behaviour in public. It is far more interested in motivating Muslims for ethical disciplining that strengthens civil-society engagement in the economy rather than a retreat from it. To cultivate a distinctive ethical orientation the Fethullahcilar has developed a web of some 20,000 microcommunities known as the nur evleri, the first of which opened in Izmir in 1968 (L. Erdogan 1998: 114). These are small apartment flats which function to reinforce pious beliefs and assist in the cultivation of moral values for self-development. In addition, thousands of study circles and summer camps bring Fethullahcilar together to promote an ethical education. These informal networks are also the basis for a solidarity-promoting ethos among members of the communal group. Young people participate in these circles learn how to establish a meaningful life through temsil (example) rather than by teblig (words or instruction). The Fethullahcilar also operates seven private universities in Turkey. These are known as hizmet schools, and their ‘curriculum’ emphasizes moral development by temsil. The schools are locally run and follow a completely secular educational programme. They focus on the study of

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science and technology, and how to apply the resulting knowledge from such study to economic development. These schools are funded through the philanthropic support of business communities and are integral to the wealth creation strategy of the Fethullahcilar. The economic consequences of the Fethullahcilar’s emphasis on the self-attainment of an ethical foundation for ‘behaving well and doing good’ (Ramadan 2004: 82) cannot be overstated. The Fethullahcilar supports a free-market-economy model which cherishes economic individualism and entrepreneurship for wealth creation. But, the economic rationality of homo economicus based on the pursuit of self-interest is inconceivable in the Fethullahci worldview. An adherence to marketbased economic activity must be supported by a normative orientation for ethically grounded behaviour. This is similar to Adam Smith’s (1759/1976) insistence on the need for moral regulation of the pursuit of capitalist self-interest. For Smith, the morally restrained behaviour of self-interested and self-commanded individuals would provide the basis for benevolent acts and benefit the general social interest. In the Fethullahci worldview, an ethically responsible individual should unite the spiritual and material worlds by engaging in rational behaviour in an enlightened, harmonious manner informed by emotional intelligence: [N]eglect of the intellect would result in a community of poor, docile mystics. Negligence of the heart . . . would result in crude rationalism . . . It is only when the intellect, heart and body are harmonized, and [man] is motivated towards activity in an illuminated way . . . that [he] can become a complete being and attain true humanity. (Gulen 2000: 105–6, quoted in Atasoy 2009a: 180) Gulen’s vision of Islamic reconfiguring of social relations assumes a communitarianism and rethinking of social solidarity among Muslims. It embraces a culture of responsibility towards the less fortunate by economically successful individuals. Under the guidance of a moral framing of Islam, prosperous Muslims will be willing to enlarge the scope of civic engagement into an act of support for the justice, freedom, and dignity of others in a more egalitarian society. Nevertheless, an emphasis on the morality of economic behaviour in order to restrain selfishness and cultivate generosity does not inform us how Muslims experience social inequality and the economic uncertainties of market capitalism. Although it certainly stands for a more egalitarian and just society, the Muslim experience of ‘ontological insecurity’ (McMichael 2009) under neoliberalism remains an important empirical question.


The class ambiguities of an Islamic orientation Why do so many people who suffer under neoliberalism support Gulen’s Islamism and helps sustain the AKP’s cross-class coalition? On one level this may be explained by the phenomenal economic growth rate experienced from the beginning of the decade – reaching no less than 9.9 per cent in 2004 (TOBB 2005: 9). The fact that it remained as high as 6.1 in 2006 led a Financial Times (2007) report to exclaim: ‘cumulative expansion over the past five years reached 40 per cent, making it the longest and most stable stretch of uninterrupted growth since at least 1970.’ Moreover, the AKP government’s fiscal discipline has meant that inflation has fallen to a single digit for the first time in 30 years. On the other hand, high economic growth has been sustained by short-term capital inflows which, alongside the massive foreign debt – increasing from US$130 billion in 2002 to US$184 billion in 2006 – render the economy vulnerable to another crisis (T.C. Merkez Bankasi 10 January 2009). In spite of the high growth rate the government has been unable to deliver the social justice programme which it promised. Unemployment, which reached 11.9 per cent in 2006, remains a major social problem. And 87.4 per cent of agricultural workers, in addition to almost all of Turkey’s self-employed workers, have no social protection whatsoever. Women are the most severely affected. As of February 2007 only 23.4 per cent of women in the economically active age-group were employed, compared to 69.6 per cent of men (T.C. Basbakanlik Turkiye Istatistik Kurumu 2007). These figures contrast sharply with the 2005 EU-15 rates of 64.8 per cent for overall employment and 57 per cent for female employment (World Bank 2006a: 42). In the last two decades Turkey has created only 6 million formal jobs, although the workingage population has grown by 23 million (World Bank 2006b: ii). In short, phenomenal growth in the economy has only been achieved through heavy reliance on foreign borrowing and with limited formal employment. However, the informal economy is flourishing, absorbing otherwise unemployable labour. In 2004, 53 per cent of the employed labour force was unregistered – approximately one in three workers in urban areas and three out of four in rural areas (World Bank 2006b: iii). The World Bank estimates that over three-quarters of unregistered employees were working in unregistered workplaces in 2003, while the underreporting of workers and the wage bill in registered workplaces is estimated to be about 24 and 28 per cent respectively (World Bank 2006a: 37, 138).

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Employment for those with an education has been particularly problematic. In 2006, the unemployment rate for young people between 20 and 24 with a minimum of a secondary school education was 23.4 per cent, and for those aged 25–29, only 12.2 per cent (World Bank 2006b: iii). Relative poverty (defined as the ability to obtain food and basic nonfood necessities, and measured by a household consumption expenditure of less than 60 per cent of the median) affects 27 per cent of the population, more than in any of the EU’s 25 member countries.6 The data for 2005 also reveals acute income inequality: the income of the richest 20 per cent of the population was on average 7.3 times higher than that of the poorest 20 per cent. Regional inequality is even worse: Kocaeli, the richest city in the Marmara region, enjoyed a per capita income level of US$6165 whereas Agri, the poorest city in Eastern Anatolia, received US$568 per capita from national income – indicating a massive disparity rate between the two cities (Atasoy 2007: 133). Turkey’s economic growth has thus led to an increasing number of people living in cities under substandard conditions who are employed in the informal economy. Yet at the same time Turkey has virtually a zero poverty rate in terms of the standard measure of US$1 per person per day. The proportion of the population living below the food-only component of the national poverty line is also only 1.35 per cent, thanks largely to a very high degree of inter-household transfer of food, clothing, and housing – reflecting a significant level of social solidarity (World Bank 2005: 14). About one third of the general population lives in gecekondus (houses built illegally overnight). Gecekondu residents have a 35 per cent poverty rate (World Bank 2005: 34). These people obtain assistance to build their homes and find jobs through kin, neighbours, hemseri (persons from the same region), es-dost (friends), tanidik (contacts), torpil (influential contacts), and kivre kardesligi (fictive kin). Such networks remain highly significant in Turkish society today and are very effective in translating feelings of durust (trust) and durustluk (trustworthiness) into poverty alleviation, labour commitment and wealth creation (cf. Dubetsky 1976). For example, among the unemployed in Turkey, 31.5 per cent look for work within the informal networks of friends/kin/community (T.C. Basbakanlik Turkiye Istatistik Kurumu, Haber Bulteni 2007). Durustluk underpins the political aspects of mutual reciprocity, symbolizing the importance of strong moral character and ethical solidity. In addition to gecekondu dwellers, recent migrants, and the poor being integrated into the highly personalized networks of cash and employment in this way, capitalists are also seeking durust workers. Smaller capitalists prefer to hire hemseri because


they trust them more; and workers find jobs by informally mobilizing hemseri, tanidik-es-dost, torpil, and kin. The Ankara leather-processing industry and, more recently, the dried fruit industry, for example, derive many of its workers from Gudul, a small town near Ankara. In the face of economic hardship, trust networks invoke a strong cultural consensus: employers expect hemseri to work for lower wages without social-security provision; but labour is only willing to do so in return for ‘charity,’ and the necessary support when needed. What are we to make of the Islamic commitment to social cohesion in the context of a neoliberal economic orientation which continues to generate massive inequalities? The AKP government has allocated funds for employment creation and job-training programmes, offered credits to small entrepreneurs, and supported micro-credit, but this barely touches the real problem. More significant is the fact that the AKP government bases its social welfare policies largely on family and social solidarity networks. Its family-centred social policy focuses on motivating and mobilizing civil society initiatives that can provide social assistance (Bugra and Keyder 2005: 32). Non-governmental charitable organizations such as Deniz Feneri (Lighthouse) channel funds donated by Muslim businesses to the needy. Municipal governments have also become key players in providing social assistance, with budgets heavily reliant on donations from private individuals, thus acting as mediators between the local poor and Muslim charitable donors. This serves to support the privatization of social welfare under neoliberalism, reinforced by the Fethullahcilar’s Islamic ethic which relies on individual ‘righteousness’ and charitable initiatives to solve social problems. The relations of reciprocity based on mutual responsibility, respect, and trust may strengthen the role of Islamic charities, but it may also weaken it significantly. For example, the relations between capitalists and workers are highly exploitative, yet many MUSIAD member firms represent the emergent Anatolian middle-class, which is hostile to trade unions. They pressed the government to enact the 2003 Labour Law which excluded companies with fewer than 30 workers from jobsecurity protection. The previous law only excluded those with fewer than ten workers. The pro-Islamic Hak-Is trade union condemns the government for intervening in strikes which are believed to slow down exports, and it also blames the government for not taking poverty, unemployment, and informal employment issues seriously (Yildirim 2006: 248–52). A neoliberal reorganization of the middle classes through Anatolian resentment politics directed against the Kemalist state may yet give way to a new sense of bitterness on the part of workers and poor.

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An interesting dialectic thus emerges from the dual character of an Islamic perspective: its embeddedness in both the liberal-democratic capitalist ideas emanating from the European Union, and the Islamic narrative of righteous individuals seeking the ‘good society.’ Islamic groups aim to enhance individual capacities in a capitalist economy and they also support civil-society-based agents of charity. It may be useful in this light to rethink Weber’s famous thesis on the protestant ethic and capitalism. The Islamic emphasis on brotherly love and ethical discipline feeds into very personalized cultural processes of economic rationality which Weber seems to have ignored (Symonds and Pudsey 2006; Weber 1915/1946 and 1930/1984). The effectiveness of this Islamic ethic in materially addressing inequality depends on the individual will of believers who devote themselves to fulfilling hizmet (vocational work) and place it at the very centre of their economic activity. An Islamic ethic can hardly offset the actual dynamics of neoliberal capitalism in generating more inequality. Still, these inequalities will themselves do little to mobilize the weak and poor to form a socialprotest movement against neoliberalism. This is not necessarily because the symbolic relations of reciprocity and solidarity ‘contain’ potential opposition. Nor is it because marginalized members of society are unaware of the inequality that is masked by the culture of mutuality under which neoliberalism has developed in Islamic communities. Equally important, I believe, is the way politics work: not entirely and not always based on economic grounds, but always context-bound. The ‘moral’ politics of resentment needs to be taken into account if we are to understand why Islamic solidarity may not necessarily ‘snap,’ despite the existence of such significant inequalities. Cultural tensions are also important; at times they are even ‘created’ by the military and judicial bureaucracy. What is certain is that even as neoliberalism generates massive exploitation and subordination, this has reinforced a politics of Islamic resentment against the Kemalist state in Turkey. Islamic groups are instrumental in locating religion more firmly within the public space as an expression of existential resentment against the Kemalist social engineering programme. Political struggles, contestations, and resistance movements are at the heart of any project attempting to rearticulate political space. However, the Islamic cultivation of what Connolly (1999) calls ‘visceral aptitudes’ in politics still remains a puzzle here. It arises from the multidimensionality of interpretive conflicts being waged in Turkey over a social change trajectory. The shaping of the public ethos of state sovereignty is central


to the conflict in relation to the actual location of effective power to decide what the programme for social change will be. Micro-political issues are also crucial in these conflicts. They instill in the populace the very sentiments which suggest that the state practices of monitoring and regulation of social space are filled with undemocratic practices of governance.

Islamic groups and state sovereignty Within the context of an EU-imposed democratization programme and a market-economy policy orientation, Islamic groups are actively producing ideas which redefine the cultural/symbolic settings of state sovereignty. The rethinking of sovereignty occurs through a discursive contest over the meaning and limits of imagining a new public ethos of sovereignty as a measure of the actual practice of power within the state. Islamic groups aim to recreate this ethos detached from the power networks of state-ruling bureaucratic cadres which – in the name of national unity and homogeneity – deeply install the state in the lives of citizens. And yet, these groups are often ambivalent in the reformulation of sovereignty because they must act within the order and authority of the Kemalist state. As a result, while an Islamic knowledge culture cautiously relaxes the political primacy of Kemalist discourse and its power structure, it still cultivates the notion of Turkish Islam in reactivating the Kemalist basis of state sovereignty. The embodiment of the progress ideology that is inextricably linked to developmentalism supports Kemalism. A more pluralist orientation from below may potentially frame an alternative form of sovereignty based on a culture of ‘reciprocal giving’ (Hyde 1983: 16) and ‘trust’ by reimagining the public ethos in which state sovereignty is practiced. An Islamic symbolic attachment to reciprocity, mutuality, and morality governs an ethical position that may come to deeply challenge the Kemalist state in its unifying claims to a territorialized culture. This challenge is grounded in the Islamic embodiment of a normative authority, and, as articulated with the individuating effect of a neoliberal market mentality, embeds a trajectory of change within the state beyond national frames. What is important to recognize here is that in place of the territorially homogeneous space of the state, a historically specific Islamic politics of neoliberalism opens a multiplicity of micro-political spatial domains within the state. This situates state sovereignty within a different set of boundaries and notions of social space (Cameron and Palan 2003, 2004), compelling us to move beyond an epistemic logic of the state

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as a reified institution. The Ottoman millet system which historically ensured the substantive autonomy of cultural–religious communities provides an example from within, while EU membership requirements set the context from without – for the Islamic reworking of the relationship between sovereignty and culture in multiple social domains. Islamic valuations and judgements about the women’s headscarf present a challenge to the centralizing, authoritarian thrust of the Kemalist state which defines the parameters of women’s political activism. The Kemalist framing of state feminism is the subject of the next chapter, to be followed by a chapter outlining Islamic women’s responses.

5 Kemalist State Feminism and the Islamic Dress Code

The women’s headscarf issue takes up one of the most significant areas of debate in the struggle over an Islamic ideational orientation. After providing a brief history of women’s Islamic clothing as context for the current era of Islamic politics, this chapter examines the solidification of ‘state feminism’ during the formative years of the Kemalist state. A Kemalist debate with the ghost of Ottoman social life underpins both the state’s silencing of an autonomous women’s movement and the rise of educated, urban women to positions of privilege within the Kemalist cultural hierarchy. These women frequently refer to themselves as Ataturkcu or Kemalist women. After a lengthy historical struggle with the Kemalist state-ruling male elite, Ataturkcu women have come to identify themselves as modern and progressive. At the same time, they have defined Muslim women’s embodiment of a specific type of Islamic dress code as symbolizing a social condition of ignorance and backwardness. In this binary formulation of Kemalist ideas, the view that women’s Islamic clothing is a symbol of ignorance results from the persistence of an assumption that there exists an oppressive ‘Islamic’ tradition that supports male domination in society. Ataturkcu women see themselves as possessors of Kemalist laik knowledge that is crucial to sustaining a project of modernity against Islamic cultural oppression. In contrast, those women who practice an Islamic dress code are held outside of that knowledge structure. They are considered untrustworthy and incapable of promoting the modernity project.

A brief history of the politics of the headscarf ban At the end of the 1960s the discursive meaning of women’s Islamic body covering practices shifted from an emphasis on carsaf to basortusu and 137

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manto/pardosu. These words were used to describe the clothing worn by women in public space. Carsaf refers to a black garment which conceals the entire body. It usually consists of a top part which covers from the head to the hips and a lower part which is worn like a long skirt. Although not considered standard Islamic dress for women, its use spread widely during the nineteenth century. Basortusu refers to a headscarf tied under the chin which covers the head and the neck. Manto refers to a woman’s long-sleeved winter overcoat which opens in the front and is of varying length. Pardosu is a light overcoat worn in the warmer months and has been widely worn since the 1980s. From the 1950s to the end of the 1960s carsaf was used as a general term to refer to a variety of body coverings worn by Muslim women in public space. In its place, the state bureaucracy has actively promoted basortusu and manto/pardosu (Aksoy 2005: 144). The Turkish Women’s Union Association (1924–35, 1949–present) proposed the banning of the carsaf on 13 March 1956. It claimed that ‘as an uncivilized form of dress the carsaf was embarrassing Turkish women’s image in the world’ (Aksoy 2005: 138). In the official discourse of laiklik, the carsaf was associated with Islamic obscurantism, allegedly mobilized in opposition to the modernity of Kemalist reforms. And yet, no government has ever enacted a law to officially ban it. Rather than an outright ban, the wearing of the carsaf became regulated by municipal by-laws in 1935 (Aksoy 2005: 117–18). Very few municipalities actually banned its use (Arat 1998: 55), but because some municipalities did adopt by-laws, it was generally assumed that there was in fact a law passed by the central state government which made it illegal to wear the carsaf. Because of the widespread perception of a ban, women gradually stopped wearing the carsaf and began to wear the manto/pardosu as an overcoat to complement the basortusu. In the official discourse, the wearing of the manto came to symbolize Muslim women’s embodiment of European modernity as represented by the image of the French manteau style. The Turkish Women’s Union Association further proposed that the government provide affordable manto/pardosu to those who continued to wear the carsaf (Aksoy 2005: 138). Interestingly, all forms of women’s Islamic clothing were subsumed within the notion of carsaf, regardless of women’s actual practices. Although subject to little political debate during the 1940s and 1950s, there was a general expectation that the wearing of the carsaf would disappear. Governments tolerated the wearing of basortusu outside the home as customary social behaviour. However, women were expected

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to take it off if they desired to be present in the state bureaucracy or in the public sphere of paid work, education, or politics. Women’s coverage was therefore not seen as an enactment of piety, but a socially prescribed behaviour reflecting traditions that were ‘outside of modernity.’ Piety was a matter of faith flourishing in the heart and not in the manner of dress (Aksoy 2005: 136). Although it was not officially banned, Kemalist bureaucrats hoped that Islamic clothing would cease to symbolize a moral standing for women in society, and that the values and norms of western modernity would set the standards of decency and propriety. It was believed that as women internalized these western values they would stop wearing the carsaf on their own and accept this as emancipation from the oppressive practices of tradition. This would have shown the whole world ‘Turkish women’s progressive attitude to move forward towards civilization, towards the west’ (Sahingiray 1952). The continuing practice of women’s Islamic coverage was a source of constant annoyance for the modernizing elite who interpreted it as symbolizing the assertion of eastern cultural values against the west (Sahingiray 1952). By the late 1960s, not only the carsaf but the basortusu and long coat as well were perceived as signs of religious obscurantism mobilized in a counter-revolutionary movement against Kemalist laiklik reforms. Women’s Islamic clothing, regardless of variations, was seen in totality as a type of dress worn by fanatical and reactionary women who had taken a clear political position against modernity and progress. For example, the leader of the 1960 military coup, General Cemal Gursel, defined the carsaf as ‘a black marker, a symbol of disgrace on the face of Turkish women’ (Cumhuriyet 16 July 1960). Similarly, Alpaslan Turkes, a member of the committee involved in the coup, referred to the carsaf as ‘a black fire that covered the whole country under its smoke’ (Cumhuriyet 17 July 1960). A variant of this position was also used to describe the political status of the basortusu and pardosu worn by university students. In the late 1960s and 1970s, these types of clothing were subject to close political and administrative scrutiny on university campuses. State bureaucrats were dominant in refiguring the pedagogy of the true, enlightened, Turkish Islam to be taught in state schools. In addition to administering ‘pedagogies of persuasion’ (Mahmood 2005: 79–117) designed to establish firm state control over the meaning of religion, the state bureaucracy also redefined the normative framework within which religion was to be experienced in the public sphere. The state bureaucracy became active in managing the political effects of Islamic clothing. This was expressed by a shift in official references from

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the carsaf to basortusu and the long overcoat beginning in 1968 (Aksoy 2005: 144). In the 1966–7 academic year, a female student from the Faculty of Theology at Ankara University was warned about wearing a headscarf and long coat. In response to the warnings she removed them. However, there was an overall increase in the number of students who decided to wear the headscarf. And even though they numbered only six in 1968 (Aksoy 2005: 145), the faculty administration was alarmed and fearful of the rise of an Islamic reactionary movement. An incident in which student Hatice Babacan refused to take off her basortusu, despite repeated warnings, was portrayed as indicative of a growing counter-revolutionary Islamic movement on university campuses. Babacan’s basortusu was defined as a political symbol of an obscurantist pro-Islamic movement and she was expelled from the Faculty of Theology despite the fact that there was no legal headscarf ban. This was followed by boycotts and protests against the faculty administration. According to protestors, the basortusu was an expression of religious piety. Moreover, the connection made between the basortusu and a reactionary movement could only be seen as political oppression by the state and a violation of constitutionally guaranteed freedom of expression and consciousness (Milli Gazete 20, 29 April 1973). The removal of lawyer Emine Aykenar from the bar in 1973 is another notable example in the debate. The declared reason for expelling her from the bar was that ‘it is impossible to associate religiously inspired clothing with civilized dress and an occupationally required form of clothing’ (Milli Gazete 29 March 1973). Emine Aykenar responded from a legal–constitutional perspective, insisting that her constitutionally guaranteed freedoms were being violated (Milli Gazete 20 April 1973). The women’s clothing debate which began in 1968 continued on and off during the 1970s. The issue of Islamic dress was placed within a legal–constitutional context. Given that there was no legal state ban on women covering themselves, school administrators and legal bureaucrats used by-laws to prevent women from wearing the basortusu. Because of the shaky legal foundations for the basortusu ban, supporters of women wearing the basortusu argued the issue as a bureaucratic– administrative violation of the constitution and freedom of expression and conscience. The rationale behind such bans was clearly political. Through an amendment in its by-laws, Hacettepe University was the first advanced educational institution to define the wearing of the basortusu as a political act reflecting students’ ideological association with pro-Islamic political parties (Duzdag 1998: 33, cited in Aksoy 2005: 153).


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It was only after the 1980 military coup that the headscarf ban spread throughout the country as a legally grounded decision. As will be examined in the next chapter, the scope of the debate during the post-1980s expanded from an emphasis on the political–administrative violation of constitutional freedoms to the phenomenon of the deep state, the state’s aggressive intrusion on society, and the active political oppression of Muslims who adopt an Islamic code of conduct in the public sphere of education and employment. Since the 1980s, the word used to describe women’s Islamic body covering practices has changed once again from that of the basortusu and manto/pardosu to the turban. At present, the headscarf ban centres on the turban and is defined in generational terms. Basortusu has now come to refer to a type of headscarf worn by older generation women who tie it under the chin. It is presented as a social, customary mode of dress worn by older pious Muslim women. The turban, on the other hand, has come to be seen as a more elaborate, fashionable type of headscarf that is tied behind the neck and worn by younger women. The turban ban is legitimated on the assumption that this type of headscarf symbolizes an anti-laik political movement against the Kemalist fundamentals of the state. In order to better understand the significance of this assumption, this chapter will examine the historical construction of meaning often attributed to Kemalism in defining the parameters of ‘modern,’ laik women.

Epistemic uncertainty: What is modern? Behind all these references to Muslim women’s Islamic dress is a claim for the cultural–political status of the practice. A brief overview of historical variations in the meaning of Islamic clothing draws attention to the complexity of the politics of ‘discursive formation’ (Foucault 1972), with ever-changing statements, claims, and practices for defining women’s embodied behaviour. Official statements and practices, as well as Islamic women’s own claims and actions point to the binary character of the discursive debate. Women’s Islamic behaviour is grounded either in a traditional set of cultural prescriptions that are seen as oppressive, or in a set of modern values and standards that are assumed to be liberating. Within this binary, Kemalist discursive formation requires the kind of behaviour that expresses women’s participation in the national embodiment of western modernity. This requirement frames women who wear Islamic clothing as participants in a religiously reactionary movement that is inimical to their emancipation from the oppressive traditions

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of the past. Such discursive framing evokes emotionally charged and divergent reactions within feminist research. For Afshar (1998) and Moghadam (1991), who focus on statesanctioned ‘compulsory veiling’ in Iran, women’s coverage is a symbol of Muslim women’s subordination to men, and an element of a culture that restricts women’s personal freedom and individual human rights. However, when considering ‘voluntary veiling’ in Egypt, Hoodfar (1997) and Macleod (1991) identify a variety of reasons for women wearing the headscarf and show that young and highly educated women in particular are willing to adopt Islamic dress. These women use the headscarf to assure others that they can be active in the public arena and maintain their honour at the same time. In the context of Iran, Afshar (1998) and Moghadam (1991) describe women’s Islamic coverage in relation to a social transformation project that assigns women an object status amid the cultural requirements of social change. In the case of Turkey, according to Alev Cinar (2005), the Kemalist process of constructing images for modern women grants political agency to the male secularist elite. This elite has forged these images and monitored and managed their performance in the public sphere. The resulting women’s agency is limited to their constitution of themselves in relation to performing Kemalist expectations. Again, going back to feminist research on women’s Islamic dress, Hoodfar and Macleod point to the ‘veil’ as the site of women’s agency. Covered women appear as conscious, purposeful actors deliberately negotiating the dominant gender ideologies in their societies to advance their own interests and agendas. Nawal El Saadawi (1999) rejects this perspective and argues that Islamic dress can only be understood from within a women-subordinating Islamic discourse that defines female sexuality as dangerous to men’s morality. There is no doubt that such an argument runs the risk of framing women’s coverage by reference to an ahistorical cultural essence attributed to Islam. As I will discuss later in the chapter, a male-dominated formulation of the meaning of women’s coverage in the Ottoman Empire referred to the female body as sexually dangerous, causing potential discord in society. Although such a formulation has also influenced the politics of women’s coverage in Turkey, Islamic women’s own politics have undermined it (Tuksal 2000). The case of Turkey seems to illustrate that women’s Islamic coverage has become significant within the larger Islamic political movement since the late 1960s. In Turkey, the women’s Islamic movement is not only directed against the administrative activities of a secularly oriented male elite. It also challenges the Kemalist understanding of women’s modernity and participation in public life. And yet the question of


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women’s agency continues to be problematic. These women’s Islamic clothing represents an embodied attachment to an Islamic political movement. For Marnia Lazreg (1994), although women actively participate in an Islamic movement, their participation may undermine women’s attempts to achieve an independent self that transcends the moral boundaries of a dominant Islamic discourse. Still, this perspective reproduces a binary certainty about Islamic women’s status in society in terms of subordination to and emancipation from an Islamic movement. As argued by Leila Ahmed (1982, 1992), women’s Islamic clothing does not have an innate meaning inimical to or advantageous for women’s own interests, but reflects a historically specific symbolism of women’s status in society. According to Ahmed, it is in the context of Muslim encounter with European colonial powers that a discursive tradition was structured, creating the essentialist cultural dichotomies between Islam and the West. The values and practices of Islam embodied a backward culture which elicited women’s passivity and submissiveness; European cultural norms, loosely identified with the liberal tradition, presupposed freedom in favour of individual autonomy and self-realization. The post-colonial feminism of Ahmed (1982) identifies a potentially liberating symbolism in the act of ‘veiling’ as an anti-west movement. For Ahmed (1992), women’s Islamic dress signals a distinct cultural experience and is representative of Muslim resistance to western domination. This perspective suggests that the ‘allure of the west’ underpins the Kemalist discursive formation of covered women as culturally backward, indifferent, and perhaps unaware of their oppression. However, the case of Turkey does not support Ahmed’s argument on women’s Islamic dress as an anti-colonial nationalist symbol. Although Islam was important in defining nationalism from the late years of the Ottoman state, Muslim clothing norms do not symbolize an anti-western resistance movement (Barbarosoglu 2005). However, they have gained symbolic value within a religious ethos that has developed in relation to the political framing of normative standards for a social change programme within the state. The question of women’s agency is a deeply troubling issue in feminist theory. It assumes that women are active, rational subjects who seek autonomy and self-realization by struggling against the dominant norms and institutions that oppress them (Lovell 2003). This liberal emphasis within feminism belies the possibility that women also actively adopt dominant norms that systematically constrain their options (K. Davis 1993; Mahmood 2005). Therefore, women’s acceptance of Kemalist discursive formation does not necessarily reflect their

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emancipation. Similarly, women’s participation in Islamic clothing practices is not as straightforward as liberal/feminist thought assumes it to be. We should not ignore the possibility that women embody and actively support ideals and practices that might sustain principles of female subordination – a possibility that cannot be captured by binary thinking about women’s behaviour. This is not a straightforward story of cultural enactment of dominant norms; it is a story that discursively frames a particular articulation of normative orientations, along with the gendered power relations within which Kemalist women self-declare themselves as agents of state modernity. Before providing an analysis of the politics of women’s Islamic clothing in the next chapter, I will continue my study of the Kemalist articulation of meaning attached to women’s Islamic dress.

The historical construction of women’s Islamic clothing There is historical continuity in the state-led cultural transformation projects from the time of the Tanzimat era of the Ottoman Empire to contemporary Turkey. During this lengthy period, Muslim women’s practices of dress have been subject to intense debate. Discussion has centred on the limits of a normative structure of rules and regulations in framing women’s participation in the public sphere and its effects on their ‘empowerment.’ Norms of decency, modesty, and good manners have long been the criteria determining the boundaries of women’s public presence. Historically, these norms arose to re-establish customary behaviour that would ensure the ‘moral suitability of women’s clothing for safeguarding the respectability of the state’ (Aksoy 2005: 55). As women’s presence in public space was being refigured under the westernization project of the nineteenth century, the state tried to delineate ideal Muslim feminine virtues by issuing decrees (Tuglaci 1984: 11–22). The Ottoman state issued decrees to regulate a women’s dress code and limit women’s choices in an attempt to counter the cultural reconfiguration of daily life under westernization. The Kemalist rebuilding of the state entailed an epistemic break from a deep-seated Ottoman–Islamic past and a move towards modernity through westernization. Kemalist state rebuilding turns on the redefinition of symbolic codes and cultural aspects of social life, and consequent identification of the individual self with images of western modernity. Although no specific clothing law was adopted for women, the very act of Kemalist state building was bound up with the cultural–symbolic work of drawing boundaries between the old Ottoman and the new Kemalist state.


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These boundaries were drawn by representing the new state as the ‘emancipator’ of women from the subordinating, reactionary Ottoman– Islamic social practices embodied in women’s clothing. The ‘unveiling’ of women was equated with Turkey’s progress in ‘catching up’ with western modernity (cf. Cinar 2005; Yegenoglu 1998). This resulted in the unsettling of deeply rooted Ottoman–Islamic daily life practices, and prompted the rise of an ontological anxiety as constitutive of future Islamic politics. In the Ottoman Empire state regulation of clothing was well entrenched, with a particular emphasis on head covering. State-issued decrees to regulate clothing were directed primarily at men and designated differences in rank. These decrees were enacted within the Ottoman millet system in order to maintain the cultural boundaries of religious communities. As early as the sixteenth century (Seni 1995: 25–45), the state also issued decrees for Muslim women’s dress. And in 1725 a decree was passed in an attempt to prevent Muslim women from imitating the make-up and form of dress of Christian women on the grounds that it was undermining their moral integrity and public respectability (Akbent 1987: 105 cited in Aksoy 2005: 55). Muslim men were subjected to decrees as well, in an effort to encourage self-control and prevent their behaviour from violating Islamic norms of honour and public decency (Aksoy 2005: 56). These early decrees issued within the Ottoman millet system were intended to maintain distinctions in customary clothing practices and determine the public limits of moral behaviour. It is only during the mid-nineteenth century that the state issued decrees to regulate clothing norms in public space by eliminating cultural–religious differences indicated through dress. The possibility of imposing a uniform dress code was rooted in the conditions of an Ottoman attempt to unify the political and the cultural structure within the territorial space of the Ottoman state. This possibility arose from adopting a moralistic stand on how to refigure the cultural sphere of citizenship formation. In 1829, Sultan Mahmut II passed a law requiring all civil officials of the state to wear the fez, regardless of their religious affiliation (Cinar 2005: 61). There was no law issued during that time for women’s clothing, and the carsaf, traditionally worn by women in most urban centres in Arab parts of the Ottoman Empire, was becoming much more visible in Istanbul. By the 1880s the carsaf had greatly increased its public presence on Istanbul streets (Aksoy 2005: 57). The state attempted to ban it for alleged security reasons because men who committed crimes or were suspected of criminal acts were

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able to disguise their true identities (Aksoy 2005: 57–9). Nevertheless, the state was unable to completely ban it. The carsaf gained ever wider acceptance, especially in Istanbul, along with the yasmak (a veil covering the lower part of the face) and the ferace (a long-sleeved loose overcoat) worn outdoors by Muslim women. Although popular among women of higher rank in larger cities of the Ottoman Empire, the carsaf never became a standard piece of clothing for rural Anatolian women of lower socio-economic status. The increasing popularity of the carsaf is consistent with women’s shifting position in public space after the Tanzimat reforms. Considered a sign of women’s high rank, respectability, and inaccessibility (El Guindi 1999: 97–115), the carsaf was frequently adopted by women from ‘high society’ participating in the public sphere of education and paid employment. The Tanzimat reforms allowed girls to receive an education in state schools as early as the 1840s, although their education was largely at the primary school level. From 1842, girls could be trained as midwives after their primary level education (Aksoy 2005: 51), and, in 1858, were admitted to the rustiye public schools which produced candidates for the civil service. Nevertheless, very few women entered state employment after graduating from these schools, and those who did often worked as teachers (Quataert 2000: 66). The first school to train girls for teaching (Daru’l muallimat – Kiz Muallim Mektebi) was opened in 1870. Women’s participation in various domains of public life was an aspect of the Ottoman effort to catch up with the west (Kandiyoti 1998: 275). However, an Islamic ‘modesty-shame’ code continued to ‘describe the valued privacy attached . . . to women’ (El Guindi 1999: 104), which mediated their presence in the public sphere. Women’s Islamic clothing bridged a moral line that separated the protection of bodily privacy and modesty from participation in the public domain. Still, the type of body cover for Muslim women remained uncertain and subject to much debate.

Ottoman–Muslim intellectuals and women’s Islamic dress Fatma Aliye Hanim During the period of Ottoman social transformation, Muslim women were highly active in articulating their social concerns and defending women’s rights. These women were the educated daughters and wives of members of the Ottoman ruling class residing in Istanbul (Toska 1998: 76–7). They published the magazine Sukufezar in 1886, and wrote critical essays analyzing the Ottoman practices of Islam that had undermined


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their social position. Kadinlara Mahsus Gazete (a Gazette Special for Women), founded in 1895, and Kadinlar Dunyasi (Women’s World), published between 1913 and 1921 by the Osmanli Mudaafa-I Hukuku Nisvan Cemiyeeti, demanded greater rights and freedoms for women (S. Cakir 1996). Kadinlara Mahsus Gazete published 604 issues between 1895 and 1908 (S. Cakir 1996: 27–8). The goal of these publishing activities was to improve women’s social position in society and ensure their participation in public life. Some of the most notable women involved in promoting women’s rights during this period include: Fatma Aliye Hanim, daughter of Ahmet Cevdet Pasa, Fatma Zehra, Leyla Saz, Makbule Leman, and Fatma Fahrunnisa. As an advocate of women’s participation in the public domain, Fatma Aliye Hanim (1862–1936) used an Islamist perspective to denounce women’s wearing of the carsaf. She insisted that the carsaf was used to symbolize a customary context in which women were pushed into a secondary social position. Fatma Aliye Hanim is considered one of the first female writers of the Ottoman Empire. Interestingly, Fatma Aliye Hanim is also known for establishing the first Ottoman women’s charity organization, Nisvan’i Osmaniye Imdat Cemiyeti. She published five novels, five essay–letters–memoir style publications, one book of history, one book on philosophy, and one translation of a novel (Ucan Supurge 19 October 2008). Because of her opposition to the official Turkish History Thesis, her achievements have not been recognized within the Kemalist tradition of history writing. It was only in October 2008 that the government of Turkey acknowledged her work. And, in a significant move, the Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey decided to print her image on the back cover of the 50 Lira banknote released on 1 January 2009 (Barbarosoglu 2008). This is the first picture of a woman published on paper currency in Turkey. Fatma Aliye Hanim, who published under the name of Meram and ‘a woman,’ portrayed heroic images of highly educated, professional Muslim women in her novels. The female figures in her literary work were strong, self-confident, and independent wage earners in the public sphere who did not rely on men for their survival. This represents a departure from the usual representation of Ottoman–Muslim women in literary writings as romantic, passive, and subordinate persons who frequently ‘sacrificed’ themselves for family reasons (Canbaz 2005: 4). Fatma Aliye Hanim argued that the depiction of women as subordinate to men was mostly due to the fact that literary writers were men. These men were either unaware that women’s rights and freedoms were guaranteed by Islamic law, or they consciously rejected Islamic principles

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(Toska 1998: 74). As a result, male writers propagated ideas consistent with the adoption of European norms for Ottoman women’s liberation. Fatma Aliye Hanim defined this as ‘extreme westernization’ (Mardin 1992: 34). In her novels she depicted an image of Muslim women seeking to embody Islamic values and norms for their own empowerment. Her writings in Hanimlara Mahsus Gazete elaborated her Islamic standpoint in regard to women’s empowerment. With its greatest circulation between 1895 and 1908, the newspaper became a major vehicle for the defence of Muslim women’s rights in Ottoman society. The articles published in the Hanimlara Mahsus Gazete questioned women’s subordination in the family and society, but without rejecting their role as mothers and wives in the domestic sphere (S. Cakir 1996). Fatma Aliye Hanim also published articles on women’s issues in other newspapers such as Tercuman’I Hakikat, Inkilab, and Malumat. Her book, Nisvan’i Islam, published in 1891, was specifically written for Europeans and described women’s rights in Islam. The book was translated into Arabic, English, and French. In her writings, Fatma Aliye Hanim had no intention of giving advice to women as housewives, nor of glorifying women’s domestic sphere of work. Rather, she developed an image of Muslim women that contrasted with both the traditional Ottoman and western perspectives. The Muslim woman was to be well-educated, embodying strong Islamic moral principles in her life (Toska 1998: 75). Fatma Aliye Hanim insisted that women take up active roles outside the household but only in accordance with an Islamic belief system and code of dress. For Fatma Aliye Hanim, The wearing of a loose dress by women and covering the hair in public life fitted coherently with Islamic morality. The carsaf and other forms of whole body coverage, including facial cover, were not required by Islamic law but adopted as part of refiguring social customs for women. (Isin 1988: 24, my translation) For Fatma Aliye Hanim, the norms and practices of Muslim women’s clothing were reproduced over the generations within a multi-cultural Ottoman social context and under non-Islamic, and in particular, Persian, cultural influences (Koca 1998: 45–6). Although not consistent with norms required by the religion of Islam per se, the social customary behaviour adopted to constitute part of Muslim cultural traditions reinforced a secondary social status for women. Fatma Aliye Hanim has therefore connected women’s customary dress with their


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subordinate position in society but without pointing to Islam as the source of their subordination. Her argument was directed at the elimination of the carsaf-ferace. Moreover, she saw women’s wearing of the carsaf as indicative of the ‘extreme westernization’ that followed Tanzimat reforms. Women from higher socio-economic positions had often worn the carsaf as a way of concealing their revealing, western-style dresses while strolling on the streets of Beyoglu. It had nothing to do with the Islamic belief system. As a Muslim woman writer, Fatma Aliye Hanim approached the social position of women in society from an Islamic belief system that emphasized piety, modesty, and humility as the cornerstones of female religious behaviour. From this perspective, even the wearing of the headscarf by Muslim women was not an Islamic requirement but adopted within the totality of Islamic principles relating to societal morality. While Fatma Aliye Hanim wanted the carsaf to be abolished, she also recognized how highly Muslim women regarded their headscarves in upholding that morality (Fatma Aliye Hanim 1891; cf. Canbaz 2005; Kiziltan 1993). She knew that ‘[these] women would vehemently defend their headscarves with the utmost force’ (quoted in Canbaz 2005: 27, my translation). Ottoman male intellectuals who were much preoccupied with the westernization process and its effects on the state and society also wrote about women’s social position. Although Fatma Aliye Hanim was the first woman to write on the subject of women in society, male writers had also been writing about women for some time, among them Namik Kemal. Namik Kemal was an advocate of a social-change model blending a Muslim worldview with western modernity. He supported Fatma Aliye Hanim’s argument that Muslim women’s Islamic clothing was not a marker of subordination. For Namik Kemal, the problem did not lie in the religion of Islam, but in its misrepresentation. As a result, he frequently called for women’s education and participation in the public sphere. He also denounced the subordinating effects of Ottoman customary arrangements on marriage and family life. Another male writer, Abdulhak Hamit, went even further in his novel Tarik by suggesting that women’s position in society was a good indication of society’s level of modernity and progress (Aydin 1999). Therefore, in order to move ahead on the path of modernization, Ottoman reformers had to improve women’s social standing. These ideas were subject to intense debate during the late Ottoman period. One important site within which this debate occurred was the office of the Seyhulislam, the highest religious office in the Ottoman

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state structure and run by a male religious elite. Significantly, both Seyhulislam Musa Kazim (1858–1920) and Seyhulislam Mustafa Sabri Efendi (1869–1954) rejected the Islamic suitability of the arguments developed by Fatma Aliye Hanim. Seyhulislam Musa Kazim and Seyhulislam Mustafa Sabri Efendi According to Seyhulislam Musa Kazim, Islamic law (Seriat) required women to cover their bodies, including their hair, by wearing a form of dress that did not arouse sexual desire in men (Kara 1987: 53). He rested his position on a kind of ‘primordial human nature’ theory of men. He argued that: It is not within a husband’s capacity to resist the allure of and desire for a younger and more beautiful woman than his wife. Such an inclination, which is beyond the husband’s capacity and power to control, will destroy not only the affection between a husband and his wife but also the ties between the woman whom he desires and her husband. In other words, the happiness of both families will be destroyed as a result of the man’s lust and uncontrollable sexual appetite. It is in view of these sorts of circumstances that the Muhammedi seriat requires women to cover themselves. (Quoted in Kara 1987: 55, my translation) Musa Kazim’s reasoning for women’s coverage, which is based on man’s ‘human nature’ and the importance of social order, closely resembles the Enlightenment thinkers’ emphasis on individualism and rationalism. For Musa Kazim, the limitation of women’s presence in the public sphere is both reasonable and good for society. In order to maintain social order, women should do their utmost to ‘perfect’ their moral standing and help the individual man become more sensitized to the moral requirements of the social order. Otherwise, the result will be social chaos. Musa Kazim considered women bound by a ‘natural duty’ to protect their bodily privacy against male sexual aggression: [W]omen by nature are gentle and delicate and subject to male aggression. Therefore, an Islamic requirement for women to cover themselves is a great work of blessing, compassion, and benevolence. This is especially important at a time when high sexual appetite imprisons the human body within its oppression and aggression. Especially at a time when men are so sexually charged and defeated by their desire to commit unlawful sexual acts, women’s contact


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and friendship with men will do no good but lower their value as humans. (Quoted in Kara 1987: 53–4, my translation) Seyhulislam Musa Kazim clearly states that a piece of clothing used to conceal the woman’s body is a necessary material means of protecting the body from male sexual aggression. It is also regarded as a sacred symbol and gift from God that enables women to achieve a higher level of humanness by transcending the primordial qualities of nature. Based on these ideas, it was evident to Musa Kazim that women should be responsible for domestic duties in the private sphere of the home, while men must be responsible for work outside the home: To think otherwise is against their divinely inscribed nature . . . the goal of creating women is only to give birth to children and to raise them. Women’s employment in areas outside of their natural boundaries, wearing indecent, impudent clothes that expose their beautiful bodies to the sexualized gaze of men will result in the moral destruction of family life and the annihilation of human values. (Quoted in Kara 1987: 54, my translation) For Musa Kazim, it was acceptable for woman to receive some education, enough to fulfil their maternal and matrimonial responsibilities. But, ‘if women intended to gain higher education for the reason of working outside the home, they would end up abusing their divinely bestowed duties and, therefore, betray humanity’ (quoted in Kara 1987: 56, my translation). Musa Kazim agreed with Fatma Aliye Hanim that Islam did not forbid women from higher education and paid employment in the public sphere. But, he did argue that Islam does not require women to provide income for the family. He insisted that ‘in fact they should not have such responsibilities at all, because their employment in the male sphere will prevent them from fulfiling their natural duties as wives and mothers’ (quoted in Kara 1987: 58, my translation). Seyhulislam Musa Kazim tried to justify these assertions by reference to the religion of Islam, but Seyhulislam Mustafa Sabri Efendi seems to disagree that Islamic law requires women to cover their bodies. Rather than use theology, Seyhulislam Mustafa Sabri Efendi situates his argument within the social–customary definition of a Muslim social code for women’s modesty, respect, and protection. Both Seyhulislams seem to agree on the significance of women’s coverage for the moral integrity and social cohesion of society. In a manner similar to Seyhulislam Musa

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Kazim, Mustafa Sabri Efendi argues that the removal of Islamic dress from the definition of women’s moral code of conduct would cause fitne (intrigue) in society. ‘Good for nothing women’ would use this change in the moral code to expose certain parts of their body with no cultural notion of shame and, thus, disturb men’s morality by sexually arousing them (I. Arsel 1989: 60). Mustafa Sabri Efendi did not view the exposure of the face as diminishing women’s morality and respectability. But men were morally weak. Since men by nature were not able to control their sexual impulses, he argued that women should take moral responsibility and protect themselves from men’s aggression. The problem with this sort of argument, for Mernissi (1991, 1996), and for Fatma Aliye Hanim writing a century before Mernissi, is not with the religion of Islam. The problem is with the ethico–political dominance of a particular understanding of Islam by the religious–political male elite who reconfigure gender relations within which women are required to be obedient, subservient, modest, and humble. El Saadawi (1999) also rejects perspectives similar to those developed by Seyhulislam Musa Kazim and Seyhulislam Mustafa Sabri Efendi. She argues that these positions can only be understood from within the political dominance of a women-subordinating Islamic discourse that defines the female body and female sexuality as dangerous to men’s morality. Ismail Hakki Izmirli Ismail Hakki Izmirli (1868–1946) is an intellectual and professor of Islamic religion and philosophy who made significant contributions to the development of Islamic thought in the Ottoman Empire and Turkey (Kara 1989: 91–3). His writings are similar to those of Fatma Aliye Hanim, who argues that an image of women as subordinate within Islam is a misinterpretation. Ismail Hakki Izmirli disagrees with both Seyhulislam Musa Kazim and Seyhulislam Mustafa Sabri Efendi, who connected man’s innate inability to control his sexual impulses with the need to maintain social order through women’s embodiment of an Islamic modesty-shame code. For him, ‘the family did not consist of a subordinate wife and a dominant husband; but a partnership of the two’ (quoted in Kara 1989: 113, my translation). Women were created to fulfill the same goal as men. [Referring to Sura Zariyat 51/56 which stated that] ‘I created the spirits and humankind for them to worship me.’ . . . Women are neither instruments for men’s happiness and delight, nor a toy for their contempt and sexual appetites . . . There is no difference in women’s and


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men’s civil rights . . . they are equally obliged to learn and educate themselves . . . A woman can be a learned scholar, a saint, a statesman, a doctor of Islamic law, a teacher, a judge, a governor . . . with Allah’s eminence they can even be prophets as was the case with Prophet Jesus’ mother, Mary, or Asiye, who looked after Prophet Moses . . . There is no difference between women and men in terms of Allah’s commands and prohibitions. (Quoted in Kara 1989: 113–14, my translation) According to Ismail Hakki Izmirli, a woman’s sexuality does not diminish her respectability. Body coverage is not a denial of sexuality, nor does it restrict the scope of women’s rights and freedoms. Rather, Islamic dress is necessary for women to conceal their beauty from strange men and protect their honour and reputation against the sexual aggression and humiliating gaze of ‘inferior humans’ (Kara 1989: 114). In reference to Sura Nur (24/30), Izmirli points out that Islam instructs men to lower their gaze before ordering women to cover themselves (Kara 1989: 114, 116–17). Women’s Islamic clothing is neither a guarantee of women’s liberation and freedom nor an indicator of their subordination. It is merely an indispensable and reliable means to reduce harm, to stay clear of the wicked, and to minimize malicious acts in society . . . Men and women should converge in terms of their intellect, morality, goals, wishes, and inclinations, and there should be no difference in terms of their decency or good manners. A woman is a woman not because of her beauty or ornament but because of her intellect, decency, and modesty. (Quoted in Kara 1989: 115–16, my translation) There is no difference between the faithful, whether they be male or female. For Izmirli, both men and women are required to live a moral life in accordance with Islam, and women’s bodily coverage does not violate the equality principle implicit in the idea that ‘sovereignty belongs to God.’ He argues that ‘quite naturally, women should receive higher education and participate in many domains of public life as men do, and, thus, further contribute to societal happiness’ (quoted in Kara 1989: 116, my translation). Variations in the Islamic ideas developed by Fatma Aliye Hanim, Namik Kemal, Seyhulislam Musa Kazim, Seyhulislam Mustafa Sabri Efendi, and Ismail Hakki Izmirli do not produce a single-unified

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Ottoman–Muslim perspective on women’s bodily coverage. Fatma Aliye Hanim, Namik Kemal, and Ismail Hakki Izmirli have situated their argument within a model of social change that blends Islam with ‘modernity,’ whereas Seyhulislam Musa Kazim and Seyhulislam Mustafa Sabri Efendi have developed an Islamic perspective for the prevention of moral–sexual fitne (intrigue) in society. Their debate turned around the effects of Islam, Ottoman customary practices, and the influence of the Tanzimat westernization programme on women’s social status. Despite a divergence in perspectives, they all agreed that woman’s Islamic dress symbolizes a cultural notion of respectability, honour, modesty, and the right to non-intrusion. It was a code of morality that marked an asexualized presence of woman in the public space, enabling women to enjoy privacy and be in public at the same time (cf. El Guindi 1999: Chapter 5).

The Kemalist image of the Anatolian woman The Kemalist elite ignored the rich history of debate over women’s rights during the Ottoman Empire. Because of their privileged background as daughters and wives of members of the Ottoman ruling class, Ottoman women activists were referred to in a demeaning fashion as Istanbul kadinlari (Istanbul women) (Toska 1998: 78). Their promotion of women’s rights expressed within an Islamic frame was wrongly characterized as a manifestation of Ottoman traditionalism in opposition to the values of modernity (Ramazanoglu 2004). Women’s dress was construed as a moral metaphor, but in a way that displaced the carsaf and ferace as symbolic markers of old Ottoman ways. After placing covered women’s cultural suitability for modernity in doubt, Kemalist bureaucratic cadres acted as self-declared agents of modernity and undertook the remaking of women’s self-consciousness. They did so within the general framework of a social engineering and cultural management scheme that served Turkey’s modernity project. Those identified with Ottoman–Islamic ways were seen as lacking the cultural prerequisites necessary for participation in the Kemalist social change programme (Atasoy 2007: 127–8). In the process the old image of Ottoman–Muslim women was displaced from the Kemalist social imaginary. A crucial point here is that the Kemalist ‘moral order’ locks women who enact Islamic clothing norms into a permanent status of backwardness and subordination. In the sense defined by Charles Taylor (2004), the notion of moral order here goes beyond a collection of norms that


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govern social relations and/or political life. It ‘carries a definition not only of what is right, but of the context in which it makes sense to strive for and hope to realize the right’ (Taylor 2004: 9). As a conception, moral order shapes the ‘social imaginary’ in enabling the practices of a society (Taylor 2004: 2). The Kemalist image of moral order defines the features of Ottoman social life as backward and then identifies the realization of modernity in terms of a series of social customary transformations in normative standards and practices. My argument should be clear. The Kemalist instalment of a ‘modern’ moral order produces a conflictual relationship within the public sphere as it gradually displaces and marginalizes Muslim normative practices embedded in the social imaginary of the previous moral order, both on an individual level and on a social level. In Inebolu on 28 August 1925 Mustafa Kemal stated: The Turkish nation ought to prove that it is civilized in its mentality and intellect. The Turkish nation ought to demonstrate that it is civilized in its family life and ways of living. . . . Is our clothing national? Is our clothing civilized and international? No, no. . . . Can there be a nation, friends, without clothing? What is the meaning of showing the most valuable jewel to the world if it is covered in mud? . . . In order to reveal this precious gem, it is absolutely imperative that we cleanse ourselves from the mud. . . . Civilized and international clothing is very valuable and worthy of our nation. (Inebolu’da Bir Konusma [A Speech in Inebolu] 28.VIII. 1925 in Ataturk Kultur, Dil ve Tarih Yuksek Kurumu 1990: 89–90, my translation) In the same speech in Inebolu Mustafa Kemal also spoke against women’s facial coverage: In my travels I observed not in the villages but in towns and cities that our women friends are covering their faces and eyes with great care. This must inflict them with pain and a great deal of suffering, especially on hot summer days such as these. Male friends, our own selfishness is in part the cause of this outcome. . . . Women should show their faces to the world. And, they should see the world with their own eyes. (Ataturk Kultur, Dil ve Tarih Yuksek Kurumu 1990: 90, my translation)

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The implicit assumption in the speeches of Ataturk was that an Islamic dress code for both men and women underlined a lifestyle which deviated from the prospect of a civilized society. For him, the Ottoman style of dress was not something that a civilized person could ever wear. In regard to men’s clothing he said: What is this dress? How can a civilized person put this strange clothing on and make the world laugh at him? There should be no doubt that state officials will rectify this problem . . . [they] will redress the whole nation with civilized clothing. (Kastamonu’da Ikinci Bir Konusma [A Second Speech in Kastamonu] 30.VIII. 1925 in Ataturk Kultur, Dil ve Tarih Yuksek Kurumu 1990: 93, my translation) In the Kemalist social imaginary of civilization, women’s Islamic dress was very simply a symbol of barbarism that oppressed women. In his Kastamonu speech on 30 August 1925 Mustafa Kemal clearly articulated his position on women’s Islamic body coverage: I have seen women in some places who throw a piece of cloth or a towel or something like that over their head, and hide their faces and eyes, and when a man passes by she turns her back . . . What is the meaning and sense of such behaviour? Gentlemen. Can the mothers and daughters of a civilized nation take on such a strange shape and adopt this strange manner, this barbarous posture? This image makes the nation an object of much ridicule. It must be remedied at once. (Kastamonu’da Ikinci Bir Konusma [A Second Speech in Kastamonu] 30.VIII. 1925 in Ataturk Kultur, Dil ve Tarih Yuksek Kurumu 1990: 95, my translation) The adoption of European-style clothing thus became imperative, a prescription for the realization of the Kemalist ‘cultural turn’ project. The ‘new woman’ was to wear suits in the public sphere, bathing suits on the beach, and evening gowns at ballroom dance receptions. She was to wear elegant dresses at evening gatherings, pants when horseback riding (Cinar 2005: 63–5), and a French-style manto for an overcoat. Moving away from the Islamic code of dress and taking off the headscarf was a Kemalist imperative for women’s presence and representation in the public sphere. Those who did not comply were quickly singled out as backward and culturally ill-suited for modernity. Within the Kemalist moral order women who wore Islamic clothing were displaced from the


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public sphere of employment, education, and politics, and pushed into a marginalized existence. Fatma Aliye Hanim was among these Istanbullu women. Unfortunately, her major effort to secure greater women’s rights was totally ignored in Kemalist Turkey. In 1925 the Hat Law was enacted to insure that men would wear western-style clothing. Only state-employed religious personnel were permitted to wear religious garb and that too only during religious ceremonies. The law completely prohibited men from displaying Islamic symbols in the public sphere (Cinar 2005: 70). Interestingly, the law did not include an outright ban on women’s Islamic dress, nor did it clearly indicate how women should dress. Until the abolishment of the Caliphate in 1924 – which officially started laiklik – Mustafa Kemal did not even present an image of Islam as subordinating women to men. In his earlier speeches Mustafa Kemal merely suggested that women’s bodily concealment should not prevent them from participating in the public sphere. For example, in a speech he delivered in Izmir on 31 January 1923 he stated In towns and cities . . . those who watch women with the veil assume that these women do not see anything. Women’s coverage as required by religion should be simple. It should not create difficulties for women in their daily social life, and in economic and educational activities. (Turk Inkilap Tarihi Enstitusu 1989: 155, my translation) Mustafa Kemal openly advised these women to ‘dress [modestly] as required by religion and in accordance with the Seriat principles . . . [For him] women should observe the moral principles, rules, and conventions of our society’ (Arat 1998: 55, my translation). Since he did not specify exactly what simple clothing was in Islam, we can probably assume that for him it included women wearing the headscarf and a loose-fitting dress. After 1924, Mustafa Kemal began to express his dislike of the carsaf, ferace, and facial covering, but there is no evidence that he required women to take off their headscarves. Still, there is considerable evidence that Mustafa Kemal wanted women to be both modest and modern (Kadioglu 1998). The Kemalist imagery of a ‘modern woman’ was thus built on the reproduction of a code of morality drawn from religion. Mustafa Kemal also expressed his dislike of women imitating a European style of dress that exposed the body in public. He accused them of having a superficial sense of modernity, of being fascinated by

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European fashion, dance, and afternoon tea parties, while gradually losing their sense of attachment to national values and ideas (Toska 1998: 80). In the process of making sense of ‘national’ women, an image of the Istanbullu woman was invented. While some Istanbullu women embodied old Ottoman ways, others internalized demeaning European behaviour. In either case, they were viewed as lacking a sense of national culture. Thus, urban ‘westernized’ women were sidelined in the Kemalist moral order and regarded as ignorant of the genuine Turkish culture of Anatolia. The ideas expressed by Mustafa Kemal in favour of a simplified version of woman’s Islamic clothing could easily be interpreted as paradoxical. However, I believe this seeming paradox tells us a great deal about how Kemalism managed to synthesize or reconcile its unease with both Islam and western modernity. The Kemalist unease with Islam was resolved with the removal of Ottoman customary practices as symbolized by the Islamic clothing code of carsaf/ferace and articulated in an Istanbullu woman image. For Mustafa Kemal, those who held a certain understanding of Muslim women in Turkey in relation to their Islamic style of clothing were describing Istanbullu women. ‘They were neither genuine Turkish women nor the real women of Anatolia’ (Toska 1998: 78, my translation). An image of Anatolian woman, then, was articulated to redefine woman’s personhood within a Turkified notion of Islam and a national history, as advocated by Ziya Gokalp. Anatolian women, who were not spoiled by Ottoman–Islamic customs or European decadence, were viewed as enjoying equal rights with men. Secularization became an imperative to socially disrupt the influence of Ottoman ways and reconstitute Anatolian customs and conventions in national culture by replacing the universalistic worldview of Islam. Kemalism was ill at ease with western modernity as well. It was enamoured of European techno-scientific civilization and socio-normative standards but at the same time guarded against a world conquering, ‘imperialistic image of the West’ (Atasoy 1997: 86). A verse in the Turkish national anthem by Mehmet Akif Ersoy describes the west as ‘a wild, ferocious beast with a single remaining tooth named “civilization”.’ Again, in opposition to such an image, Anatolia symbolized a moral source of developmentalist goals, yet with a distinct folk culture underpinning the transition to modernity. On this path, women who enjoyed equal rights with men were to shoulder their share of responsibilities. For Mustafa Kemal, it was not acceptable to hold the premise that ‘Turkey cannot be a civilized country and move on the path of progress


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because the population has been separated into two groups of men and women who do not share the same goals . . . [For Ataturk] Anatolian populations live together as a unified group of men and women’ (Toska 1998: 78, my translation), and women should be approached in a way that will maximize their participation in the development project. Kemalist anxiety over both Ottoman–Islamic ways and western ‘civilization’ was connected to the creation of milli his (a national consciousness) for reconstituting nationalized processes of social change. Milli his was an ethos defining sources of moral motivation, judgement, and the cultural practices of individual citizens. In the Kemalist social imaginary Turkish women were expected to bridge the cultural requirements of western modernity and the cultivation of a national ethos. The fundamental task for the Kemalist state was to ‘recreate’ women as possessors of national virtue and morality who, as mothers of the nation, would instill these values in the next generation (A. Inan 1998: 20–1, cited in Durakbasa 1998: 41). In this project, women’s Islamic clothing was a secondary consideration; the embodiment of religious virtue was primary. The frequently made claim that Kemalism displaced religion from the public sphere is not quite true. Undoubtedly, it drastically undermined the old Ottoman social imaginary, but it also defined modern women with reference to religious morals. In his speech at Izmir Teacher’s School for Girls on 14 October 1925, Mustafa Kemal stated: Turkish women should be educated, enlightened, virtuous, earnest, and ‘heavy.’ Not heavy in weight but in morality, in virtue – our women should be the most learned. The responsibility of Turkish women is to bring up future generations to protect and defend the Turkish nation with their intellect, motivation, and armed power. Women who are the source and essence of the life of the nation can only fulfill their responsibility if they are virtuous. Let us be reminded of a verse from Fikret: ‘of course humanity will be degraded if women become wretched.’ (Izmir Kiz Ogretmen Okulunda bir Konusma, 14.X. 1925 in Ataturk Kultur, Dil ve Tarih Yuksek Kurumu 1990: 98, my translation) The ‘new women’ of the Turkish republic were to be modern for sure, but also modest and honourable. By embodying virtues drawn from the state-defined notion of Turkish Islam, these women were ethically

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positioned to be in the moral service of national developmentalism (Kadioglu 1998). They were not viewed as subjects involved in a struggle for their own personal freedom and individual human rights (S. Tekeli 1991), but as objects, as ‘mothers of the society’ servicing national goals (Durakbasa 1998: 41). This role expectation immersed women in the state-induced social engineering programme. As ‘national mothers,’ the selfhood and social standing of women were reconfigured, not in terms of rights, but in terms of loyalty and obligations to the bureaucratic ‘moral order of modernity’ (Taylor 2004). These women were the guardians of the national civilization programme (Durakbasa 1998). According to Gole (1996), Kemalism assumed a ‘civilizing mission’ that guaranteed a wide range of rights for women. The civil code of 1926, which Gole (1996: 74–7) defines as ‘the vector of civilization,’ ensured an egalitarian relationship between men and women in relation to inheritance and marital affairs. On 3 May 1930, women were granted the political right to vote with an amendment of the Municipal Law, and then the right to vote and run in parliamentary elections as a constitutionally granted right in 1934 (Celik-Levin 2007: 204; Ecevit 2007: 190–1). Interestingly, however, the expansion of opportunities for women also silenced them. The bureaucratic implementation of Kemalist reforms suppressed women’s independent voice in favour of an epistemology that secured the state’s rights over and above the individual human rights of women. The single party era of ‘state feminism’ (Ecevit 2007: 190) represents a reversal of women’s independent involvement in formulating and defending their rights and concerns – a movement that dates back to the late Ottoman Empire. Under Kemalism women lost their independent voices. The silencing of the Women’s People’s Party and the Turkish Women’s Union Association are cases in point.

The Turkish Women’s Union Association Building on the experience gained during the Ottoman Empire, urban women continued to press their demands for active, independent involvement in public life and political participation. Nezihe Muhiddin (1889–1958) and Sukufe Nihal (1896–1973) were among the welleducated, activist Ottoman women leaders who struggled for women’s rights and political participation (S. Cakir 1996: 306–12). They founded the Women’s People’s Party (WPP) in Istanbul on 16 June 1923, even


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before Mustafa Kemal’s own People’s Party was founded on 9 September 1923 (Tuncay 1981: 57). The WPP did not receive a welcoming reception from Mustafa Kemal. It was criticized by the media and not approved by the government (Toska 1998: 84). With pressure from Mustafa Kemal, Nezihe Muhiddin and other founding members of the WPP formed the Turkish Women’s Union Association (Turk Kadinlar Birligi) on 7 February 1924. The WPP functioned as a philanthropic organization in support of women’s education and women living in poverty. Despite its name, the association was not exclusively a women’s association. Both women and men were included in its membership. The Women’s Union Association was required by law not to engage in political activity (Ecevit 2007: 188). However, on 25 March 1927, the association amended its by-laws to reflect a new organizational goal – the realization of women’s political rights (Toska 1998: 84). The governor of Istanbul did not approve this change in the association’s by-laws, declaring that women’s primary responsibility was to give birth to and raise children, not to be involved in politics (Caporal 1982: 691). Nonetheless, since the government approved it, the Women’s Union Association began to promote women’s right to political participation. Nezihe Muhiddin, leader of the association, swore in a speech delivered in July 1927 that women in the organization would work until their death towards the goal of obtaining electoral rights (Toska 1998: 84–5). The speech caused much controversy, with some members arguing that the association should continue to do philanthropic work rather than pursue political goals. The government was completely opposed to Nezihe Muhiddin’s political demands (Caporal 1982: 694). The controversy was resolved when Nezihe Muhiddin and other activist women were removed from the leadership of the association in September 1927. A new leader, Latife Bekir, was elected following the departure of Sadiye Hanim, and cooperated fully with the government. After the government granted women suffrage rights in 1934, Latife Bekir and others in the administration followed Mustafa Kemal’s Republican People’s Party’s advice to dissolve the Women’s Union Association (Durakbasa 1998: 39). The association was dissolved in 1936. According to Latife Bekir, women were now granted all their rights by the government. Therefore, there was no longer a women’s question in Turkey, and no reason for a separate women’s association (Toprak 1986: 24–9). With the closing of the Women’s Union Association, the possibility of organizing autonomous women’s organizations was brought to an end, along with any independent voice for women. Although women were granted suffrage rights, and 18 women were elected to parliament in the

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1935 general elections, there was only one woman within this elected group from the former leadership of the Women’s Union Association. Nezihe Muhiddin, Sukufe Nihal, and other leading women activists were not even approved as candidates for the Republican People’s Party (Toska 1998: 85). And Nezihe Muhiddin’s attempt to be elected as an independent was not supported by the single party-government regime (Durakbasa 1998: 39). After the amendment of the Law of Associations in 1948, the Turkish Women’s Union Association was reopened in 1949. It reaffirmed its commitment to the cultural development of women and the strengthening of women’s political rights granted by the state (Caporal 1982: 653–4). However, women were not able to shake off the legacy of the previous era. The years from 1936 to the 1970s were considered the corak yillar (the barren, wasted years) in women’s political activism (S. Tekeli 1998: 337–8). After passing through the ‘restless years’ of the 1970s (Ecevit 2007: 192–5), the growth of a women’s autonomous movement in Turkey began again in the 1980s (Celik-Levin 2007). Islamic women’s activism towards lifting the headscarf ban also flourished during the post-1980s period. It challenged the old Kemalist state by questioning the authority of the Kemalist moral order and its political alliance structure.

Kemalist women: An urban, educated elite Although the Kemalist elite initially singled out urban and Istanbullu women for being unaware of the genuine Turkish culture of Anatolia, it was in fact the women from urban centres in general, and Istanbullu women in particular, who benefited the most from Kemalist reforms. They embraced the Kemalist social change programme with remarkable fervour in an effort to situate the personal dimension of their lives within modern social patterns. They became triumphant, displaying a confident image of modernity with no sense of uncertainty or ambivalence, while the once glorified rural–peasant women of the Anatolian hinterland were left with the image of religious obscurantism. Iffet Halim, a well-known figure from the Turkish Women’s Union Association of the 1930s, has expressed this new image of urban, Istanbullu women: Today, women in the cities are wearing hats, they have become doctors, lawyers, workers, journalists . . . In comparison, rural women continue to follow the same path they did 200 years ago; despite all


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these efforts, they are in the work force in the fewest numbers, and have become humiliated and ignorant to the highest degree. (Iffet Halim 1933: 13–14, quoted in Toska 1998: 86, my translation) Because of their privileged position within Kemalism, urban women from large cities gave themselves a ‘celebrity status’ (Kurzman et al. 2007) as the protectors and executors of the Kemalist social–cultural transformation. Despite this privileged status as possessors of Kemalist knowledge within the cultural hierarchy, these women did not enjoy an autonomous existence within the Kemalist state. In fact, they were submerged within a cultural space controlled by the state. Although voiceless as autonomous agents of their own rights, they intended to uplift rural, Anatolian women from their perceived condition of backwardness. But, Kemalist women trusted neither the cultural condition nor the Muslim religious beliefs of rural, Anatolian women. Without this trust, Muslim women were defined as ‘strangers’ (Simmel 1971) within the cultural management of the Kemalist celebrity status hierarchy. In the current politics of the headscarf ban, it is Kemalist women, though voiceless for themselves, who are active in fighting against Muslim women’s demand for the right to wear the headscarf at school. Identifying themselves with the Kemalist state, they in a way represent an ‘elite women’s hegemony’ (Abadan-Unat 1998: 332) over Islamic women. An epistemological debate now rages over the ethical–political meaning of women’s coverage as well as the hegemonic status of Kemalist, Ataturkcu women. This is the theme of the next chapter.

6

Politics Without Guarantees∗: The Headscarf Ban

For almost three decades now, since the 1980 military coup, the women’s headscarf issue has figured prominently in the ongoing debate over Islam’s increasing presence in the public sphere in Turkey. Women who wear the Islamic headscarf insists that it helps them make sense of their public life experience, while others view it as a symbol of political Islam. With the exception of a few scholarly works on the subject (Abu-Lughod 1986/2000; Hoodfar 1997; Mahmood 2005; Ozdalga 1997; Saktanber 2002), the headscarf remains largely unexamined from the point of view of the people who embrace it. This chapter and the next examine how the headscarf acquires meaning in the Islamic refashioning of social life. I consider how Islamic groups encounter the ‘secular’ institutions and social practices of public space, although it is not entirely clear what the secularity of that space consists of (Taylor 2007), nor how these groups reconfigure a public ethos of engagement with various conceptions of public life. In the present chapter, I draw my data from pro-Islamic and leftleaning newspapers, periodicals, research reports, and literary writings, as well as published material collected from various Islamic groups and organizations. Additional data includes public statements and commentary given by reporters and editors. A textual analysis of this source material enables me to draw a general picture of dominant Islamic views. I do not dwell on particular references, nor do I examine the specific form in which these materials are presented. My goal here is to illustrate an Islamic figuring of transformational politics by examining how a general Islamic normative position is being shaped around the women’s headscarf issue. ∗

I borrowed this formulation from Patel and McMichael (2004: 251). 164

Politics Without Guarantees: The Headscarf Ban 165

The struggle over the women’s headscarf is constitutive of the Islamic political renegotiation of the secular public domain defined by the Kemalist state. Women continue to contest laik practices and the meaning attached to the headscarf by the state. However, their contestation takes place within the larger male-dominated Islamic politics of state transformation. The women’s headscarf issue is also profoundly contingent upon the specific response of Islamic groups to the challenge they face from the laik state bureaucracy. Islamic groups either commit themselves to an oppositional movement or abandon women’s concerns under the risk of threats by the state. In either case, women’s headscarf politics is without guarantees in producing a coherent transformational outcome outside of the state-nationalist position of Turkish–Islam. Women’s Islamic clothing has been subject to strongly contested ideas on whether it is a backward movement directed against modernity that threatens laiklik, or a liberating movement which enlarges the scope of individual rights and freedoms and contributes to the democratization process. This highly contested political issue involves questions about the possibility of reasserting the Kemalist form of knowledge as dominant in the present, on the one hand, and revising the Kemalist frame to permit political renegotiations over the reinterpretation of the past and the present, on the other. Islamic groups have the potential to unravel the Kemalist normative authority of laiklik which has been premised on an arbitrary distinction between private and public domains. The objective of the Islamic ‘strategic practice of criticism’ is the reinterpretation of ‘the present with a view to determining whether (and how) to continue with it in the future’ (Scott 1999: 7). This requires the Islamic articulation of an ethical–political life that assigns a specific meaning to the politics of existential resentment in the intersection between state sovereignty, morality and history. It entails ‘interpretive judgment’ (Connolly 2005: 127) with a mix of moral values, normative practices, desires, passions, and incentives that foster a public ethos in refiguring futures, although the outcome is unknown and without guarantees. Grounding their interpretive judgement in the ‘modern’ social imaginary of individual human rights and freedoms discourse, Islamic women hold the headscarf to be constitutive of a register of legitimacy that gives religion a role in public life. For them, Kemalism is a source of moral ‘disembeddedness’ from social life whose authority over the public sphere must be questioned. However, without a commonly held view of what the ethos of public engagement might be, an Islamic effort to countervail the public authority of Kemalism to produce an imagery of

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a social change appears uncertain. The analysis in this chapter enables us to better assess the power plays involved in the Islamic reconfiguration of a social change project. The political engagement of both laik and Islamic men with the women’s headscarf issue has implications for political discourse which bear directly on the execution of state power. It is in the nexus between the Kemalist bureaucratic deployment of state power and an Islamic refashioning of a conceptual terrain of individual freedoms and human rights that questions arise as to whether and how the headscarf can raise expectations and provide opportunities for a new form of culture and society. This of course brings forth the question of Islam’s relevance to ‘democracy’ as one of the most significant and contested issues discussed in relation to Turkey’s EU membership.

Islamic transformative resistance For 40 years, Islamic groups have been reformulating the women’s headscarf issue around a ‘cultural turn’ (Bonnell and Hunt 1999), from the authoritarian laik knowledge structure of the state to the epistemology of democratic rights and freedoms. Moving outside the cultural binary of modern versus reactionary, the headscarf issue has introduced a new epistemology into the debate – with epistemology being defined as ‘the body of rules and criteria used to evaluate whether [demands to wear the headscarf] should count’ (Somers 1999: 124) as democratic rights. Islamic women and men who redefine the headscarf within the individual rights frame of liberal democracy have subjected Kemalist rule to ‘the test of epistemological accountability and credibility’ (Somers 1999: 124). In questioning various forms of state repression, these groups have developed what Stephen Gill calls, in an entirely different context, ‘transformative resistance’ (2007: 117). In this case, resistance is directed against Kemalist state practices in the hope of constructing a culture of social change. This has been evident since the headscarf ban which was introduced after the 1980 military coup. Islamic women have subsequently moved the platform of resistance from public demonstrations, hunger strikes, and letter writing campaigns onto a legal foundation in the courts, where they have articulated a clear political demand connecting Islamic social imagery to their desire ‘to live in a democracy.’ There is no shared Islamic ‘position’ on the headscarf ban, nor a single, unified form of agency. The formulation of Islamic demands is a context-bound process within which Islamic normative theorizing makes sense in relation to specific circumstances. The normative– political meaning of the headscarf depends on the historical formation


of a particular administrative–bureaucratic context of laiklik at a given period of time. It may be formulated as a matter of religious expression, freedom of conscience, and embodiment of cultural practice, on the one hand, or as a matter of democratic citizenship, individual rights, and social justice, on the other. In a manner similar to that described by Gramsci (1928/1971: 123–205) in The Modern Prince when explaining the role of pedagogical and political work in the emancipatory politics of social movements, Islamic groups are active in the pedagogical task of cognitively connecting a Kemalist understanding of the headscarf issue to the state’s violation of human rights. When they demand that the state be held accountable for the democratic rights of individuals, Islamic groups seek to politically alter the form of society and the state. In this way they develop an idea about the ‘state’s responsibility to cultural difference’ as a concept of epistemic privilege. This captures both ‘normative political values and normative political objectives’ (Scott 1999: 135) in their formulation of a position on the headscarf issue. The most active players within the headscarf movement are young, female university students. They have been the most organized force in a headscarf movement that has developed into both a pedagogical and a political process. In response to the headscarf ban, these women have firmly embraced the religious dimension of their social existence and called for greater freedom of expression and conscience in an attempt to alter the existing state practice of laiklik. I will turn to this argument in the next chapter. Significantly, Islamic women’s politics on the headscarf ban is entangled with Islamic men’s politics. The Islam-sensitive AKP and the proIslamic Welfare Party (WP) before it, as well as other male-dominated Islamic groups, have also defined the headscarf ban in terms of women’s ‘democratic rights.’ However, the military and the judicial bureaucracy have placed both the AKP and the former WP under suspicion of anti-laik charges. As a result, the leadership cadres in these political parties have chosen to withdraw their attachment to the concept of ‘state responsibility to cultural difference,’ both as a normative political value and as a normative political objective. When threatened by the state bureaucracy, the survival of Islamic political parties appears to be more important than the pursuit of an Islamic transformative politics. In deciding to pursue or not to pursue a transformational politics around the women’s headscarf issue, Islamic political parties and their male leadership have greater political agency over women’s issues. However, this is more complex than it might appear.

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In Gramsci’s formulation, political agency refers to the movement itself rather than specific political organizations, political parties, and actual individuals (Gill 2007: 117). There is a large space of micro-politics in which potentially millions of what Gramsci called ‘organic intellectuals’ operate in the social milieu of daily life practices. In our case, this micro-political space contains female university students, as well as members of the Islamic symbolic class of religious orders, intellectuals, and journalists. The political agency of the headscarf movement does not refer to a concrete person, but combines a multiplicity of forces, organizations, institutions, and individuals mobilized to refashion some of the conditions underlying the power plays in society and the state. A process both pedagogical and political combines a variety of elements that interact simultaneously in constituting the movement. As shown by Aminzade et al. (2001), there is a myriad of dimensions to such movements – opposition, resistance, repression, opportunity, concessions, and so forth. In the headscarf movement, where state bureaucratic cadres perceive the integrity of the Kemalist order to be under continuing threat by Islamic forces, the use of the state’s power of repression assumes permanent status. Working under the coercive exigencies of ongoing struggle, the forces of the Islamic movement, in response, have not produced a single unified resistance either. Therefore, the headscarf movement continues to constitute a politics without guarantees. Although they have not retreated entirely, nor gone underground, and while they remain focused on a ‘democratic rights’ platform, Islamic groups pursue different agendas and tactics within various factions of the movement. Some have chosen to seek transformation on the political path, while others have chosen to promote the headscarf issue as a moral, cultural matter divorced from the political realm. Under threat by the Constitutional Court, the male-dominated AKP leadership has chosen to untangle itself from the ‘transformative resistance’ politics of the headscarf movement. This may lead the party to deal with women’s headscarf concerns as a cultural–moral issue, leaving the question of state transformation outside of its balance of power politics. It may also lead university students who seek change to gain greater political agency of their own and develop a more focused resistance. For example, the women who founded the Ak-Der and Ozgur-Der as nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in 1999 decided to pursue their own struggles against the headscarf ban independent of Islamic men. (This will be examined more deeply later in the chapter.) Under either scenario, the Islamic refashioning of the future remains highly complex and uncertain.


Ali Bulac, an Islamic columnist for the liberally oriented pro-Islamic Zaman newspaper, has defined the AKP’s current distancing of itself from headscarf politics as a sign of its submission to the ‘invisible power of the administrative-bureaucratic center’ (Bulac 5 August 2008, my translation). And Etyen Mahcupyan (15 August 2008), an ArmenianTurkish columnist writing for the same pro-Islamic newspaper, has suggested that both the administrative–bureaucratic cadres and the social democratic Republican People’s Party have perpetuated the notion of a permanent Islamic danger, defining Islamic groups as a constant ‘threat’ to the laik state. This fear-mongering has been used to justify a never-ending state of emergency in Turkey. Goldstone and Tilly (2001: 181) define ‘threat’ as ‘an independent factor whose dynamics greatly influence how popular groups and the state act in a variety of conflict situations.’ Therefore, the idea of an ‘Islamic threat’ shapes the state’s repressive actions against students and their supporters in the headscarf movement. In its response to the perceived ‘threat’ of Islamic groups, the state itself becomes a ‘threat’ and source of repression, causing some groups to respond with a mix of concessions, retreat, and/or radicalism. Mahcupyan (15 August 2008) further argues that the notion of an Islamic threat against laiklik, which is used to justify a state of emergency, has also created a permanent discursive condition for military coups in Turkey. The military has intervened in politics using a variety of ‘creative’ pretexts since the 1980 military coup. In the current period, the military has not openly declared a coup, but is engaging in what can only be called ‘slow-motion coup-making that extends the coup over a prolonged period of time’ (Kenes 30 June 2008; Mahcupyan 15 August 2008). This slow-motion coup has generated a permanent condition of bureaucratic monitoring in Turkish politics. Although the AKP is the democratically elected government, it seems that Turkey has actually been ruled in the context of a unique type of coup for the last year and a half. The most sensitive issue is the demand by Islamic groups to lift the headscarf ban. For Bulac (5 August 2008), such circumstances mean that the military–judicial bureaucratic cadres have taken the AKP hostage over the Islamic threat idea. Given this situation, the secularized, Kemalist segments of society, including the social democratic and ultra-nationalist fractions of political parties and women’s organizations, which would otherwise prefer ‘democracy’ to a military coup, support the military bureaucratic monitoring of society because they know that ‘democracy’ guarantees the AKP will remain a majority government. On the other hand, a variety of Islamic groups are supportive of a more ‘democratic’ politics that opposes state repression.

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On 9 February 2008, the AKP government successfully passed a bill in parliament permitting female students to wear the headscarf at universities. Shortly thereafter, on 14 March 2008 the bill was countered in an indictment submitted to the Constitutional Court by the Chief Public Prosecutor of the Supreme Court of Appeals. The indictment accused the AKP of undermining Turkey’s laiklik system and asked for a ban on the party as well as a ban on the prime minister, president, and 69 other party members from participating in politics (see Chapter 1). The AKP avoided being closed down by the Constitutional Court when the court ruled against banning it on 30 July 2008. Nonetheless, the party was certainly intimidated, as 10 out of the 11 judges on the Constitutional Court agreed that the AKP has become a ‘focal point for anti-secular activities and needs a strong warning’ (Simsek 2008). The AKP has also lost half of its state funding because of the Constitutional Court’s decision. Moreover, the decision included a clause stating that ‘if attempts are [made by the AKP] in the future to take steps considered against laiklik, the chief prosecutor will immediately open a new closure case, in which the Constitutional Court will not [have] to examine it from scratch, but [merely] continue from the previous case’ (Bulac 15 August 2008, my grammar). My own belief is that the closure case has decisively shifted the balance of power in favour of the high bureaucracy, thus weakening the AKP government’s ability to pursue a coherent social change policy. For example, Prime Minister Erdogan, in a conciliatory tone, has stated for the first time in a public speech on 5 January 2009 that ‘laiklik must be embraced as one of the foundational, unchangeable principles of the state the way it was defined in meaning and spirit by the Constitution’ (Radikal 5 January 2009, my emphasis). Although still in government, the AKP, now under close bureaucratic surveillance, seems to be reduced to a state of powerlessness in pursuing a transformational policy on issues considered ‘sensitive’ for the future of laiklik. In the future, the AKP may therefore be reluctant to disturb the political alliance structure of the Kemalist state. Placed under the gaze of the state’s surveillance panopticon, the usual suspect issues in the laiklik controversy – such as the lifting of the headscarf ban – are now unlikely to be tackled again soon. Under current conditions, the military–judicial bureaucracy has succeeded in restoring the primacy of the Kemalist state over society. An intimidated AKP has shelved women’s headscarf concerns for now and may decide in the future to avoid bureaucratic challenges. I believe Islamic women are the most likely societal group to continue protesting against the headscarf ban rather than accept the condition of


passivity expected of them by both the state and Islamic political parties. A deeper examination of the headscarf ban provides an opportunity to critically review the Islamic articulation of an epistemological position which privileges the democratic rights of individuals over and beyond the security of the state.

The headscarf ban The Milliyet published a series of reports from 27 May to 18 June 2003 titled the turban dosyasi (the turban file). These reports give us an indication of how widespread the use of the headscarf is in Turkey. Approximately 64.2 per cent of Turkish–Muslim women cover their hair with the headscarf when outside their homes. And 77 women out of every 100 households wear the headscarf. Approximately two thirds of the 22 million women in Turkey over 17 years of age (about 14 million in total) cover their hair when outside the home. Out of these 14 million women, 11 million women define their head covering as a basortusu (headscarf), 2 million women define it as traditional coverage such as the yasmak or Yemeni, 800 thousand women refer to their head covering as a turban, and 270 thousand self-identify their coverage as a carsaf (Milliyet 27 May 2003). Clearly, the headscarf has widespread appeal for many women in Turkey. There has never been a law designed specifically to regulate women’s clothing in Turkey, nor an explicit constitutional ban on women wearing the headscarf at universities or anywhere else. There are only administrative by-laws on a dress code accepted by governments or regulations set up at public institutions such as the Council of Higher Education (YOK). These regulatory by-laws have restricted applicability. For example, by-laws regulating the clothing of state employees can only be applied to state employees. Similar regulations were established in relation to students’ clothing after the 12 September 1980 military coup. Military generals have taken the issue of Muslim women’s head covering into the legal arena, redefining the meaning of citizenship in terms of a generic understanding of Islamic values and morals. In establishing firm control over religion the military in Turkey has promoted the notion of an ‘enlightened Islam’ within the state (see Chapter 3). Beginning in the early 1980s, the military expressed increasing concern that the issue of the Islamic headscarf worn by students was evolving outside the sphere of an ‘enlightened Islam’ and becoming a political symbol of an Islamic reactionary movement. For military coup leader General Kenan Evren, the headscarf symbolized an Islamic ‘threat’ to

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the state and needed to be banned. General Evren has said: ‘We will not allow the headscarf at universities. We are determined. No one should talk about this issue any more’ (quoted in Aksoy 2005: 163, my translation). The military government has made a number of amendments to the clothing by-laws pertaining to students and public employees. On 22 July 1981, the clothing by-law for elementary and high school students’ attire was amended. With the publication of the amendment in the Resmi Gazete (Official Gazette) on 7 December 1981, female students were banned from entering classes wearing the headscarf (Resmi Gazete 7 December 1981). In the same year, another amendment was introduced in Ministry of Education by-laws to regulate the clothing of employees and students in state schools. This amendment stipulated that students and employees were required to wear simple, ‘contemporary,’ and ‘modern’ clothes in accordance with Ataturk’s principles (Resmi Gazete 7 December 1981). Since private universities had not yet spread throughout Turkey by the 1980s, this by-law required all university students to remove their headscarves out of an assumption that they did not conform to modern design and an Ataturkcu line. On the basis of these amendments, the Ataturk University administration decided in 1981 to ban the wearing of any kind of clothing considered an Islamic political symbol, including the headscarf. Subsequent to the ban, 30 students who refused to take off their scarves were subject to criminal investigation and detained by police (Aksoy 2005: 165). February 1982 saw the first outright ban on the headscarf when the YOK yielded to pressure by the military-led National Security Council (NSC). This by-law was fully implemented as of 10 January 1983. It required university police officers and security employees to inspect student clothing at university entrance gates (Aksoy 2005: 166). Those who did not comply with the by-law and insisted on wearing the headscarf were not admitted to their schools. Some students who continued to wear the headscarf were subject to further disciplinary measures by their university administrations, and even expelled. Still others decided to leave school instead of exposing their hair. And some even chose to hide their hair by wearing a wig over their hair or headscarf. Those who did not wish to jeopardize their education revealed their hair. Whatever their final decision, all of these students endured a very difficult, painful process of deliberation (see next chapter as well as Ozdalga’s 1997 in-depth interview). YOK’s by-law was very harsh in its disciplinary measures. It was also difficult to implement and caused a public outcry. In 1983 when the


military regime came to an end and the Motherland Party was elected to form a civilian government, Prime Minister Turgut Ozal asked YOK to modify its clothing by-law. YOK did amend it on 10 May 1984, thereby allowing students who chose to wear the headscarf to cover their hair in a ‘modern, contemporary’ way. This contemporary form of hair covering came to mean the turban rather than the basortusu. The basortusu was defined as un-modern because it is a large headscarf covering the entire head and shoulders and tied under the chin. The turban, which is tied behind the head revealing the neck and ears, was considered a more suitable, contemporary form of head covering. This so-called modern style of headscarf was socially rejected not only by the women themselves but by the media and others who ridiculed it. Thus, Ozal’s conciliatory efforts failed to help young Islamic women who wished to cover themselves return to the classroom. Islamic women wore the turban in a different style, folding it neatly under the chin to conceal the neck and completely cover the hair, ears, and back of the head. Three or four pins are often used to prevent the scarf from slipping and revealing the hair. In the case of the basortusu, the head, hair, and ears are also covered but the scarf is knotted under the chin, sometimes revealing part of the neck. This form of headscarf is not held in place with pins. As a result, it may slip and reveal a small portion of hair on the forehead. However, it should be noted that both styles fully reveal the face. Because of a lack of clarity, the new by-law which was introduced to allow the lifting of the 1982 headscarf ban merely introduced greater complexity into the debate. The discussion over the headscarf issue was now expanded to include the turban-laiklik connection and a woman’s right to cover her hair as a constitutionally guaranteed matter of freedom of religion and conscience (paragraph 24 of the 1982 Constitution) (T.C. Anayasasi 1982). Nowhere in the by-laws are there any specifications as to the meaning of contemporary, modern clothing or how these clothes can be designed to confirm to the principle of laiklik. Nonetheless, these by-laws were justified by reference to Article 2 of the 1982 Constitution which guarantees laiklik as the founding principle of the Republic of Turkey, and Article 174 which insures the unchangeability of Kemalist reforms, as well as Article 10 which guarantees equality before the law, regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, or religion. The 1984 YOK by-law made an arbitrary distinction between basortusu and turban, symbolizing two opposing political positions in relation to Islam. From 1984 onwards, women wearing the headscarf came to be

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addressed as turbanlilar (women with a turban) in a way that discursively identifies their head covering as a political symbol of an Islamic reactionary movement against the state. In contrast, the basortusu came to be associated with the innocence of ordinary Turkish–Muslim women from Anatolia. These Anatolian women who were once despised by Kemalists during the 1930s for being rural, ‘backward,’ and ‘traditional’ have now come to represent purity, piety, and innocence before the state. Interestingly, those who reject the turban often indicate that they are not against the basortusu. They point out that their mothers and grandmothers also cover their hair with the basortusu, which for them symbolizes religiosity and piety. They repeat that they are only against the turban because it symbolizes the politicization of head covering by reactionary Islamic groups. This highly nuanced debate over the headscarf has contributed to the creation of a bifurcated view of Anatolian women. Anatolian women are divided between those who are religious, gracious, and ‘ladylike,’ and turbanli women who are aggressive, disobedient, and rebellious. Young university students who wish to cover their hair and participate in the public sphere as professional women are viewed as reactionaries by the state, while poorly educated women in the domestic sphere of the household are seen as commendable. However, despite the political stigma attached to the turban, a majority of women in Turkey do not see it as problematic in any way. The Milliyet (31 May 2003) reports that about 75.5 per cent of the general adult population is against the headscarf ban in universities, and only 6 million out of the 42–4 million in the total general adult population view the turban as an expression of political Islam. Despite the ban, students remain unwilling to give up their headscarves. As the number of students wearing the headscarf grew in the early 1980s, President Kenan Evren (who retired from his military post to become President after the transition to a civilian regime in 1983) sent a warning to YOK calling attention to the growth of anti-laik reactionary activity in the country in general and in universities in particular. In response, YOK passed another by-law in 1986 which banned the turban at school. The ban was justified on the grounds that rather than being a modern style of head cover, the turban was in fact misused as the basortusu, thereby becoming a political symbol of an Islamic reactionary movement. The amendment made in Article 7 of the higher education disciplinary by-law stipulated that students should wear ‘contemporary clothing’ at all times on university campuses, although it left the


interpretation of contemporary clothing to university administrations (Aksoy 2005: 172; Cinar 2005: 81; Ozdalga 1997: 482). On 8 January 1987 the by-law was published in the Resmi Gazete and became legally enforceable. On the same day university presidents in Turkey meeting in the Mediterranean city of Adana accepted a ban on the headscarf on campuses across the country, including private universities. Students who did not comply with the new clothing by-law were to be ‘convinced’ that they were in the wrong. Special rooms were designated where students were asked to meet with university administrators to be enlightened and persuaded to remove their turban. These were known as ikna odalari (persuasion rooms). If students insisted on wearing their headscarves after efforts were made to persuade them otherwise, the by-law stipulated that students were to be disciplined at the discretion of the university administration. In her novel Ikna Odasi, Yildiz Ramazanoglu (2008) describes women’s experiences in these persuasion rooms as a form of psychological terror. The novel tells the stories of three friends who were forced to make the difficult choice between removing their headscarves in order to continue with their university education or wearing the headscarf and losing the chance for an education. Except for one student, Nermin, who refused to take off her scarf, the other two friends in the novel chose to continue with their education. It was a ‘humiliating’ experience for both of them. One ended up wearing a wig to hide her hair and the other decided to remove her scarf. The implementation of the 1987 by-law was highly arbitrary. The meaning of ‘contemporary clothing’ was ambiguous, resulting in different interpretations and inconsistent implementation of the by-law. The various political orientations and attitudes of university administrations also contributed to the arbitrary application of the by-law. In some universities students were disallowed from attending classes. At others, students were removed from school for a limited period of time, while still other schools expelled them totally. There was also widespread unease among students over implementation of the by-law. There is no accurate statistical data to show the actual number of students affected by the headscarf ban. According to then leader of the True Path Party, 80,000 students were expelled from school in 2004 as a direct outcome of the ban (Zaman Newspaper, 1 October 2004). And the number of teachers laid off from their jobs was estimated to be 5000 (Bulac 2005: 33). Ali Bulac (2005: 33) argues that hundreds of thousands of students have been expelled. Given that many of the students wearing headscarves did not attend classes regularly because of the ban, they

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were essentially disqualified from continuing their education. The families of these students were also adversely affected. Many wanted their daughters to continue their education even it was necessary for them to take off their headscarves. However, as I show in the next chapter, some of these students have felt very uncomfortable about making such a decision. In short, the implementation of the clothing by-law has caused widespread anxiety among students, their families, and other members of society. I refer to this as headscarf madness. It is an expression of the secular ‘panic’ associated with a perceived Islamic threat and plays a leading role in the binding power of the Kemalist state over society. It also generates considerable Islamic distrust against the state. (For an excellent examination of a genealogy of panic disorder and state power, see Orr 2006.) Students affected by the ban have organized protest groups, demanding that university administrations and the government restore their individual human right to freedom of expression and conscience (R. Cakir 2000). In response to the protests, the Motherland Party government passed a bill of amnesty on 16 November 1988. Students disciplined under the 1987 YOK by-law and expelled from university were thereby allowed to return to school. The amnesty law also endorsed freedom of choice in clothing for students and university teaching staff, providing the clothes did not violate Kemalist principles and reforms guaranteed by Article 174 of the Constitution (Aksoy 2005: 178). President Evren vetoed the law, arguing that no law can be passed which makes reference to religion. Subsequently, under the Motherland Party government’s influence, YOK amended its by-law again on 3 December 1988 to permit the wearing of the turban for religious reasons. The amendment was published in the Resmi Gazete on 4 December 1988 (Aksoy 2005: 180). On 10 December 1988, parliament passed a law allowing the headscarf and turban to be used as hair cover for religious reasons. On 5 January 1989, the president challenged this ruling before the Constitutional Court. The court found the law unconstitutional on 7 March 1989 on the grounds that ‘allowing students to cover their heads on religious grounds is against the principle of laiklik . . . ; a secular state cannot introduce a legal measure taking into account religious convictions’ (Sentop 2008: 2). The decision was made by reference to Articles 2, 10, and 174 of the Constitution. Article 10, which guarantees equality before the law, regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, or religion, was put forward by the Constitutional Court decision on the grounds that legislation based on religious reasons violates the equality principle. Subsequently, on 7 July 1989, the Council of State (Danistay)


repealed the YOK by-law of 1988 permitting the turban for religious reasons. However, after Ozal was elected President on 8 November 1989, YOK changed its by-law and gave authority over student discipline to individual universities. As a result, with the exception of a few universities which kept the ban, such as Istanbul University, women were allowed to wear the headscarf while at school. The legal uncertainty with regard to the headscarf ban has become more complicated with the passing of Law No. 3670 on 25 October 1990, a law concerning the establishment of the Directorate General on the Status and Problems of Women (Ecevit 2007: 196). The Directorate was created in accordance with the 1979 UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) which Turkey ratified in 1985 (Celik-Levin 2007). In relation to the headscarf ban, the Directorate acknowledged that Article 10 of the Constitution does not guarantee equality for women. Thus, considering the prohibitive aspects of the headscarf ban, it is interesting that Law 3670 stipulated that all types of dress are allowed in institutions of higher learning, provided they are not forbidden by law (Sentop 2008: 2). Given Law 3670, Supplementary Article 17 which was added to the YOK legislation adopted the same principle and annulled the disciplinary measures taken previously by university administrations (Aksoy 2005: 191). Although a strongly secularist social democratic Republican People’s Party appealed to the Constitutional Court, the court did not declare Article 17 unconstitutional. It argued that the freedom of clothing clause in Law 3670 does not apply to the wearing of the headscarf or turban (Aksoy 2005: 195; Sentop 2008: 2). With this move, the Constitutional Court signalled that the wearing of the headscarf or turban is an ‘exception’ to the freedom of dress clause (Kadioglu 2005b: 40, endnote 18). On the basis of Article 17 of the YOK legislation, many universities allowed students wearing the headscarf to attend classes without facing much of a problem from 1990 until the soft coup of 28 February 1997. However, the court’s ruling on the turban as an exception to the freedom of dress clause has been used after the soft coup to apply a strict ban on headscarves in schools. As should be clear from this chronological account of the changes in clothing regulations, uncertainty and ambivalence define the state’s response to the women’s headscarf issue. In contrast to the Iranian model of state-sanctioned ‘compulsory veiling’ (Afshar 1998; Moghadam 1991) and the Egyptian model of ‘voluntary veiling’ (Hoodfar 1997; Macleod 1991), the application of the headscarf ban in

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Turkey swings back and forth between periods of relaxation and rigid enforcement. After a period of relaxing its disciplinary measures because of the introduction of the 1990 law which established the Directorate General on the Status and Problems of Women, YOK again banned women from wearing the headscarf at school in 1998. The ban was legally justified by reference to the 1991 Constitutional Court’s decision, although it was neither understood nor implemented as grounds for a ban until after the 1997 soft coup (Sentop 2008: 3). The 1998 ban attached a symbolic, moral meaning to the headscarf prohibition, positioning the laiklik principle against an Islamic reactionary movement. However, the uncertainty and ambivalence over the legality of the headscarf ban continue to challenge the moral authority of the Kemalist state. The military-dominated NSC has kept the headscarf issue a top policy priority by designating it the main axis of the laik-Islamist divide in politics. Recommendation number 13 on the list of 18 recommendations by the NSC (Decision No. 406) dealt with the implementation of the ban. It recommends that ‘practices that violate the attire law and might give Turkey an anachronistic image must be prevented’ (Gunay 2001: 14). Following the recommendation, Turkey’s Higher Coordination Council for Human Rights ruled on 8 May 1998 that the headscarf is a symbol of political Islam and that banning it does not constitute a human rights violation (Gunay 2001: 14). The NSC’s definition of the women’s headscarf as a political symbol effectively strengthened a laik conception of public space as hegemonic, thereby helping to unite the general population around the state. For the NSC, the possibility of acknowledging a need for what Connolly (2005: 7) calls ‘the institutional ethos of engagement’ between groups with different political–cultural orientations was out of the question. Rather, the aim was to reduce the visibility of the headscarf in the public sphere. Ideological adherence to the Kemalist principle of laiklik found its expression in YOK’s imposition of the headscarf ban. For YOK, the headscarf ban on university campuses was absolutely necessary to clamp down on political Islam. It found its justification in the 1990 Constitutional Court’s explanation of why the annulment appeal to Article 17 on freedom of dress does not apply to students who wear the headscarf. This was clearly expressed in a declaration issued by the Committee of University Presidents a few days after the 28 February recommendations. The declaration was titled ‘the Relevant Legislation on Clothing in Higher Education Institutions and Legal Appraisals’ (Sentop


2008: 3). The ban was implemented in universities across Turkey as of November 1999 and remains in effect. The NSC’s soft coup of 28 February 1997 was against the pro-Islamic Welfare Party (Refah Partisi – WP). The WP was the majority party within the RefahYol coalition government formed in June 1996 with the conservative, nationalist True Path Party (Dogru Yol). The WP’s frequent symbolic references to the headscarf as central to its politics, among a number of other culturally sensitive issues, caused the party to be perceived as anti-laik. The Constitutional Court closed down the WP in January 1998 on the grounds that the speeches of several party leaders were against the laik principles of the constitution. The WP was replaced by the Virtue Party (Fazilet Partisi – VP) which was itself closed down in June 2001 on similar grounds (Carkoglu and Kalaycioglu 2007: 26). The Felicity Party (Saadet Partisi – FP) was opened immediately after the closure of the VP in July 2001. The FP remained a marginal faction representing a national view ideology within the Islamic movement. The AKP, which was founded in 2001, defined itself as a party with liberal–democratic convictions. Despite its electoral success in forming two successive majority governments, the AKP has come under close scrutiny by the military and judicial bureaucracy. Under the pressure of an intimidating state bureaucracy, the AKP has shown a tendency to abandon its liberal–democratic social change programme, including a lifting of the headscarf ban, to adopt a more state-nationalist position – conciliatory with the actual possessors of state power – the military and judicial bureaucracy (Alpay 2008). Rising state-protectionist bureaucratic nationalism has been instrumental in the AKP’s stepping back from its transformative politics of political and constitutional reform. The AKP now finds it increasingly difficult to tackle a wide range of issues that need to be addressed in relation to Turkey’s EU membership. This includes freedom of association, the civilian oversight of military forces, wider issues on freedom of religion, and a new constitution (Commission of the European Communities November 2008). The AKP also faces an intensifying national security discourse by state bureaucrats and hard-line nationalist political parties. This has been of particular significance after the 9 February 2008 parliamentary vote to amend Articles 10 and 42 of the Constitution – articles on equality before the law and the right to higher education. These amendments allowed women wearing the headscarf to attend university. For Prime Minister Erdogan, the vote by parliament was a triumph for democracy and justice, while for the judicial bureaucracy it was unconstitutional. In March, the Constitutional Court

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placed the AKP on trial with charges of potentially undermining laiklik in Turkey. In October 2008 the Constitutional Court published (in the Resmi Gazete) its reasoning for the closure case against the AKP, arguing that these amendments ‘indirectly change the fundamental characteristics of the Republican regime, which are outlined in Article 2 of the Constitution’ (Koker 2008: 2). The court has justified its decision that the AKP has become ‘a focal point for anti-secular activities’ by referring to parliament’s reasoning in making such amendments: [I]t is known that in our country some female students have been unable to exercise their to education at universities for a [considerable] time because of the attire which is used to cover their heads. Training generations in accordance with the goal determined by Ataturk to achieve contemporary standards of civilization requires that all should be able to use their right to education without discrimination under the principle of equality before law. For these reasons it became necessary to make these amendments to Articles 10 and 41 of the Constitution. (Koker 2008: 2) The court has argued that these amendments introduced religion into politics and, thus, contributed to the possibility of them ‘leading to pressure on people having different lifestyles, political opinions or beliefs’ (Ozbudun 2008: 2). Although the notion that allowing students to wear the headscarf at university violates the rights of others, disrupts public order, and undermines laiklik is highly contentious, the Constitutional Court has used this reasoning both in the annulment of the constitutional amendments and in the closure case against the AKP. Through the cases on the headscarf issue and the closure of the AKP, the Constitutional Court has clearly shown that the state bureaucracy commands true possession of the state in terms of the ability to draft a completely new constitution and make amendments to the existing constitution (Ozbudun 2008; cf. Insel 2007a and 2007b). Throughout 2007 and 2008 this issue has been discussed extensively in Turkish newspapers. The moderately Islamic Zaman newspaper and left-leaning Radikal share the opinion that the judicial bureaucracy has asserted itself against parliamentary democracy, thus paving the way for an emerging system of juristocracy. According to Professor Ergun Ozbudun (2008: 1), who led a legal commission in 2007 to draft a new civilian constitution, the Constitutional


Court has defined the primary constituent power to make new constitutions by reference to ‘the will . . . produced by interruptions in the country’s political regime that occur due to various factors which are outside the legal framework in terms of their emergence.’ For Ozbudun, this implies that a new constitution can only be drafted after such interruptions as military coups and civil wars. According to Hasan Cemal (2007), writing in the social–democratic leaning Milliyet, these sorts of considerations define constitution making in Turkey as a military issue. The 1961, 1971, and 1981 Constitutions were all products of military coups drafted by constituent assemblies formed under military rule. For Cemal, these constitutions reflect ‘an extreme distrust toward the Parliamentary Will and sovereignty of the people.’ According to writers in the Radikal, the 1921 and 1924 Constitutions were also non-civilian, a product of ‘the extraordinary circumstances’ of the state-making project by the military bureaucratic elite (Hur 2007). The 1876 Constitution of the Ottoman Empire appears to be the single exception to the militaristic pattern in constitution making in Turkish history (Ozgurel 2007). Ahmet Insel (2007a) summarizes the meaning of these examples in relation to the Turkish state: power is exercised by the ‘parliamentary system [as] limited by the military . . . [with] the real possibility of [the military’s] intervention in the country’s political and social life.’ Thus, any attempt by the AKP to make constitutional amendments is subject to close scrutiny by what Insel (2007a) refers to as the actual ‘owners of the state’ – the state bureaucracy. Debate over the headscarf ban centred on the Kemalist principle of laiklik has also spurred a discussion on whether the constitution should be free from Kemalist ideology. As discussed extensively in Chapter 2, the Kemalist ideological principles formulated in the 1930s were known as the ‘six arrows.’ These arrows frame the ideological outlook of the Republican People’s Party. For those involved in drafting a new civilian constitution in 2007, including Professor Ozbudun, the association of the six arrows with the Republican People’s Party creates an unfair competitive political environment for other political parties with different ideological outlooks and policy orientations. Furthermore, ideological engagement of the constitution with the six arrows creates the serious problem of an undemocratic, authoritarian environment (Radikal 6 August 2007) under the gaze of state bureaucrats. Another professor of constitutional law, Zafer Uskup, also an AKP parliamentarian, has expressed similar concerns. However, because of his party affiliation, Uskup’s comments were taken as a sign that the AKP is against

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Kemalism, and by definition, against laiklik. For Ozbudun, this was unfair. According to Ozbudun, rather than appealing to Kemalism as a dynamic movement of modernization and social change, constitutional debates selectively centre on an authoritarian interpretation of laiklik. Both Ozbudun and Uskup argue that Kemalism should be removed from the constitution on the grounds that it is used to justify arbitrary bureaucratic interventions. While a statist interpretation of laiklik is often used in appeals to the Constitutional Court, other tenets of the six arrows such as economic statism (devletcilik), populism for a classless society, and revolutionarism are totally ignored. Even nationalism has come to be redefined as Kemalist nationalism (Ataturk miliyetciligi), which is an extremely obscure concept. An ideologically motivated selection of certain principles of Kemalism is used to restrict the scope of a democratic expression of rights and freedoms. This presents a statist version of laiklik as the only way to protect the Turkish Republic and the Kemalist principle of republicanism (Oran 2007b). The obscurity of the position attached to Kemalist ideology in the constitutional debates reinforces a range of penal and civil provisions restricting freedom of expression in Turkey. Article 301 and Article 305 of the Turkish Penal Code are cases in point. Article 301 criminalizes the expression of opinions that are thought to denigrate Turkishness, the Republic, the government, the Grand National Assembly, the judicial institutions of the state, and military or security structures. Article 305 criminalizes any expression presumed to harm fundamental national interests, including independence of the state, its territorial integrity, national security and the fundamental characteristics of the Turkish Republic – for example, secularism (IHOP 2008; International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights 2006). These and other articles continue to undermine the human rights and freedoms of citizens in Turkey on the grounds of protecting state sovereignty.

Islamic human rights organizations Women opposed to the headscarf ban have been subject to the ebb and flow of power struggles between the male-dominated Islamic movement and Kemalist state bureaucrats. However, within the general history of the headscarf debate, these same women have also become politicized in the process of pursuing their own interests against the execution of the ban. They have waged their struggle largely on the basis of human rights violations by the state, with thousands of students filing


court applications. Some cases settled in favour of students have been appealed by the state prosecutor to the Council of State, which has upheld the legality of the ban. Challenging court decisions on the basis of human rights violations, some students have also taken their cases to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). The ECHR became involved with the issue when two students complained that their university administrations had refused to take their graduation photographs while wearing a headscarf. Senay Karaduman, a pharmacy student from Ankara University, applied to the ECHR in 1993, and Leyla Sahin, a medical student from Istanbul University, applied in 2004. In both cases the ECHR ruled that Turkey did not violate the European Convention on Human Rights. The banning of the headscarf on university campuses was deemed not to be against freedom of religion because, according to the court, secular states have the right to protect their institutions against anti-secular activities (Lule 2008: 18). The court declared that when a student chooses to attend a secular institution, that student must comply with the secularism requirements of that institution. Islamic groups rejected the decision by the ECHR on the grounds that there is no freedom of choice in Turkey given that all institutions are laik by law. In the case of Leyla Sahin, the court referred to Turkey’s legal system and decided that the ECHR was in agreement with the Constitutional Court and the Council of State decisions. (For a more detailed discussion of the ECHR decision, see Aksoy 2005: 269–73.) For the ECHR, the public display of religious symbols such as the headscarf in universities, where a majority of students share the same religion, could be a vehicle of fundamentalist ‘oppression’ against non-practicing Muslim students or others with a different religious orientation (Aksoy 2005: 271; Lule 2008: 18). The politicization of women who wear the headscarf in Turkey has been ongoing for years. In fact, Islamic women were involved in various civil society organizations at the highest level in the 1990s. Women’s involvement in the pro-Islamic Welfare Party Ladies Commission in 1989 and 1990 was the first step towards their active participation in politics. With membership registration in the Welfare Party at nearly one million (Y. Arat 1999: 8), the intensity and extent of Islamic women’s activism has been unprecedented compared to women’s involvement in any other political party or organization (Eraslan 2004; R. Cakir 2000: 89–104). More than 18,000 Islamic women worked at the grassroots level in the 1994 local elections in Istanbul alone (R. Cakir 2000: 94). Since the mid-1990s the political experience gained through the WP was successfully used in the founding of Islamic NGOs. After the

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closing of the WP by the Constitutional Court in 1998, Islamic women have focused much of their organizational activism on women’s human rights. There are now more than 300 associations, clubs, and foundations formed by Islamic women (Eraslan 2004). Included among them are Gokkusagi Kadin Platformu (The Rainbow Women’s Platform), founded in 1994 as an umbrella association with 46 organizations in Istanbul; Baskent Kadin Platformu (The Capital City Women’s Platform), founded in 1995 as an umbrella association with 14 organizations in Ankara (Y. Arat 1999: 83); Cinar Kadin Platformu, founded in 1995 as an umbrella association with 14 organizations in Bursa; and Guneydogu Kadin Platformu, founded in Diyarbakir to focus predominantly on Kurdish women’s problems in the southeast. All of these organizations were created for the general improvement of women’s social status in Turkey, as stipulated within the context of Turkey’s ratification of the UN CEDAW agreement. Baskent Kadin Platformu’s efforts are also aimed at providing a counter-response to the ‘traditionalist’ ideas attributed to Islam concerning women’s subordination (R. Cakir 2000). Dr. Hidayet Sefkatli Tuksal, who received a Ph.D. from the Faculty of Theology of Ankara University, is a founding member of the platform. There are also many secularly oriented women’s organizations founded to improve women’s status according to the CEDAW agreement (Ilkkaracan-Ajas 2008; see also Women for Women’s Human Rights – New Ways). Two of the more prominent secularly oriented organizations are Women for Women’s Human Rights and Anayasa Icin Kadin Platformu (Women’s platform for constitutional change), which was founded in 2007 as an umbrella group with 86 women’s organizations. A quick survey of the mission statements of both the Islamic and secularly oriented women’s organizations shows that they agree on the urgent need for implementation of the CEDAW policy prescriptions in Turkey. They also both disagree with the basic assumption widely held by Kemalist state bureaucrats in general and the Kemalist Turkish Women’s Unity Association in particular that women’s rights and equality problems were solved in Turkey with the founding of the republic and the implementation of Kemalist reforms. Despite the consensus here, an ideological divide between Islam and secularism prevents these groups from developing a stronger solidarity network with which to bring about change in Turkey (S. Tekeli 1991). According to Ilkkaracan (2005), the CEDAW’s 2005 report on Turkey points to the fact that neither the constitution nor other relevant laws of Turkey clearly define what constitutes discrimination against women. This is an area in which Islamic women hope to position the


headscarf ban as an issue of discrimination and violation of human rights. Secular women’s organizations are not concerned with the headscarf issue. Their many areas of interest include equality rights, freedom of choice, violence against women, domestic violence, honour crimes, marital relations, sexual rights, labour market participation, education of women, and political representation. They aim to achieve greater gender equality through policy formulation, research activity, and rapid project implementation, as well as through legal, constitutional reforms and enforcement of existing laws (Celik-Levin 2007; Ilkkaracan 2005; Ilkkaracan and Amado 2004). Islamic women who wear the headscarf claim the ban discriminates against them in terms of freedom of choice, equal opportunities, right to education, labour market participation, and political representation. They have formed many different human rights organizations to further their struggle against what they view as discrimination. Ak-Der and Ozgur-Der were both founded in 1999 as non-governmental women’s organizations focusing on the single issue of the headscarf ban. Ak-Der (a women’s rights organization against discrimination) and the Ozgur-Der (an association for freedom of thought and educational rights) share the view that the headscarf is a women’s personal and cultural choice based on the pursuit of individual human rights. Maslum-Der (an organization supporting human rights and the solidarity of oppressed people) was founded in 1991 and also deals with the headscarf ban as a violation of women’s human rights. Maslum-Der is not exclusively a woman’s organization but was founded by those with an ideological attachment to Islamic politics. It is sensitive to the issue of the headscarf ban although it has a more comprehensive mandate on human rights violations in Turkey, including women’s human rights. These organizations commonly emphasize the citizenship and human rights dimension of the headscarf issue in contrast to its religious dimension. In order to provide a more detailed perspective on these organizations’ approach to the headscarf ban, I will discuss Ak-Der and Maslum-Der in depth. My discussion is based on the organizations’ own published materials, as well as other newspaper publications and secondary sources.

Ak-Der Ak-Der was founded on 15 February 1999 as a ‘women’s rights organization committed to fighting discrimination.’ It also registered itself with

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the United Nations (UN) on 25 July 2008 as an NGO with a special consultative status on women’s human rights in Turkey. Its funding comes from membership subscriptions and donations received in compliance with the laws of Turkey. Ak-Der was founded by a group of women who were discriminated against as students, lawyers, medical doctors, teachers, and professors. It has no affiliation with a political party. The President of Ak-Der, Dr. Refia Kizilhan, has written in the organization’s mission statement that the educational rights of students wearing the headscarf have been taken away and the right to work of professional women has been denied, all because of their attire (Ak-der 2005). Among these women is Fatma Benli, a lawyer and vice-President of Ak-der who earned her law degree before the strict implementation of the headscarf ban. She was unable to complete her two years of graduate education because of the ban. A 300-page master’s thesis oral defence was scheduled for her at Istanbul University law school, for which she was required to take off her headscarf. She refused to remove it, and the defence committee in turn refused to take her to the defence (Tavernise 2008). Ak-Der promotes the human rights of Islamic women who wish to wear the headscarf and maintain their access to education and employment without compromising their religious beliefs. Ak-Der took on more than 600 cases for women claiming violation of their human rights because of the headscarf ban, out of 30,000 similar cases in the courts (Eraslan 2004: 823–4). Ak-Der’s focus on women’s human rights links the headscarf issue to the notion of fundamental human rights of freedom and equality as specified in the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. As an NGO registered with the UN, Ak-Der appropriates the declaration’s statement on citizenship rights which asserts that ‘everyone is entitled to realization, through national effort, and international co-operation and in accordance with the organization and the resources of each state, the economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity and the free development of his personality’ (McMichael 2004: 19). By taking a strong stand on a woman’s free choice to dress, Ak-Der articulates the women’s headscarf issue as a matter of Muslim morality defined not by reference to Islamic texts but by reference to the principles of equality, individual rights, and freedoms. For Ak-Der, the headscarf ban constitutes an arbitrarily defined and executed obstruction of women’s individual rights. It has no legal grounding. Therefore, it aims to fight the ban on a legal basis as an issue of justice. It promotes its position through books, newsletters, position papers, press releases, reports, and


survey results, as well as through DVD, CD, VCD releases, YouTube, and Internet blogs. In an effort to raise social sensitivity and awareness of women’s human rights violations, Ak-Der also organizes protest marches and public demonstrations, all within the frame of ‘Press Conferences and Meetings and Demonstration Law.’ In addition, Ak-Der offers counselling services for women who wear the headscarf and wish to continue their education abroad. Even though the total number is not known, Sibel Eraslan (2004: 820–1) estimates that since 2000 there have been approximately 3500 women who have travelled abroad to study because they were not permitted to attend classes in Turkey. Those students with the personal financial means to continue their education abroad are of course able to circumvent the ban. Prime Minister Erdogan’s daughter who is studying in the USA is a prime example. Some women from lower socio-economic backgrounds are able to study abroad with the financial assistance of Islamic NGOs. WONDER is one such supporting organization. It is an international students association founded in 2000 in Vienna, Austria. Its membership consists of both men and women. The founding 12 members of WONDER are Turkish students who travelled to Vienna for their university education in 2000. They became known as the ‘first 12’ (Maden 2008). WONDER owns dormitories and provides counselling and scholarships for students to study in various locations across Europe. There are 200 women who wear the headscarf among the 700 members of WONDER. WONDER is known to be funded by donations from Islamic groups, although its donation sources are not specified in any of its available publications. Ak-Der has no known organizational ties with WONDER, but it provides information and legal support for women who wish to go abroad for their education. Ak-Der (2008) has listed the names and accompanying stories of 17 female students who have earned their diplomas in European countries through WONDER’s financial support. Among the names listed is that of Leyla Sahin, who complained about Turkey’s headscarf ban to the ECHR. Sahin earned her medical degree in Austria. According to AK-Der, many of these students have obtained their degrees from universities in Austria, Hungary, and Romania, because WONDER finds it easier to arrange for admission of Turkish students under the administrative regulations of these countries. HIT, or International Education Consultant, is another organization which offers study opportunities abroad. It was founded in Istanbul in 1993 by the secularly oriented Dogan Group. HIT provides education counselling and placement for students in North America, Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, and Europe. It is not an Islamic organization but it

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does tap into the growing market of Islamic students. HIT advertises widely on Islamic Websites and in publications for Islamic students who are unable to study in Turkey. Both WONDER and HIT place students in schools whose degrees are approved by YOK as equivalent to those of Turkish universities. According to Fatma Benli, the headscarf ban has no legal grounding but reflects a secularist fear of political Islam. According to Benli, [T]his has nothing to do with secularism [laiklik] versus Islam . . . in real secularism, you can do what you want and wear what you want . . . This is all about classism. This is about people who lived in nice neighbourhoods, shopped in nice stores and saw us people from the countryside moving in. So they used the headscarf as a pretext. (Mackinnon Globe and Mail 21 July 2008) This signals a new image of Anatolian women who wear the headscarf and wish to have a place in the public sphere of education and employment. According to Yildiz Ramazanoglu (2004), a Muslim woman researcher and writer who also wears the headscarf, the new Anatolian women with high aspirations challenge the Kemalist social imagery of modern women. That imagery expects women wearing Islamic clothing to remain in the domestic sphere, while uncovered women who adopt a European-style dress code move forward into the public realm and represent women’s embodiment of Kemalist reforms. In an interview by New York Times journalist Tavernise, Fatma Benli argues that the ban actually pushes Turkey backwards by locking women like herself out of skilled professions, permitting them few opportunities in the public realm of employment (Tavernise 2008). Benli adds that the ban has caused women to retreat: ‘ “There’s a sense of defeat,” she said. “Now the objective is to have a family, to make a nice marriage. They do not have the ideals we once had” ’ (Tavernise 2008). Despite the sense of defeat, some women in Islamic clothing are not willing to be associated with an image of Anatolian women as mothers and wives socially confined within the domestic sphere of the household. In another interview with Globe and Mail journalist Mackinnon, Fatma Benli argues that although the ruling elite has constructed the headscarf politically as a symbol of Islamic threat, it represents the upward social mobility of Anatolian populations. The headscarf represents a class rivalry between the old bourgeoisie in large cities such as Istanbul and Ankara, and the newly emerging bourgeoisie of smaller Anatolian cities. In the same interview Benli argues that Kemalist


women are historically viewed as better-educated and moneyed women of high socio-economic status from large cities such as Istanbul and Ankara. They are the ‘White Turks’ of Kemalist Turkey, a colloquial term which has nothing to do with skin colour but refers to a cultural hierarchy in Turkish society (cf. Arat-Koc 2009). In that hierarchy, devout, relatively poor women from the Anatolian hinterland who wear Islamic clothing are often dubbed ‘Black Turks’ (Mackinnon 2008). This suggests that students who wear the headscarf are a visible reminder for ‘White Turks’ that the Kemalist cultural hierarchy is slowly being turned upside down. The old Kemalist elite now feels threatened by the social mobilization of Muslim groups repositioning themselves in society as a culturally distinct fraction of the newly emerging Anatolian upper classes.

Maslum-Der There are many politically diverse human rights organizations founded since the 1990s in the context of Turkey’s push for EU membership. Most welcome the EU’s scrutiny of the country’s human rights records. Many of these organizations are left-leaning and secular, sharing a similar human rights understanding to that of the EU (Duncker 2006). The most prominent human rights organizations in Turkey include IHD (Insan Haklari Dernegi – Human Rights Association) which was founded in 1986, TIHV (Turk Insan Haklari Vakfi – Turkish Human Rights Foundation) which arose in 1990, and the Maslum-Der founded in 1991. The IHD, founded by a number of intellectuals and mothers of political prisoners, focuses on prison conditions, disappearances, political and other unlawful killings, torture, internally displaced people, rights of the disabled, asylum seekers and refugees, as well as the right to freedom of expression and peaceful association. The TIHV, founded by the IHD and medical professionals, provides treatment and rehabilitation for torture victims. The Maslum-Der was founded by a group of 54 Islamic and nationalist individuals as an alternative to the left-leaning, secular human rights organizations in Turkey. It shares similar goals to the IHD and cooperates with them in its activities. (For more details see: International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights 2006.) The Maslum-Der began its work by focusing on right-wing political prisoners and has increasingly become known as a moderate Islamic human rights organization. It derives its finances from subscription fees collected from members, as well as donations. It is completely independent from the state and other political parties. Together with

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the IHD, TIHV, the Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly (HCA), and Amnesty International – Turkey, the Maslum-Der is the founding member of the Human Rights Joint Platform (Insan Haklari Ortak Platformu – IHOP), founded in 2005 to strengthen the capacity of a human rights movement in Turkey (Bianet Haber Merkezi 16 August 2005). In contrast to Islamic women’s human rights organizations, the Maslum-Der does not focus solely on the effects of the headscarf ban on women. Although it is sensitive to the issue, for the Maslum-Der it is unacceptable to ignore other issues surrounding women’s human rights such as gender-based wage discrimination, honour killings, and police harassment of Kurdish women. Its wider human rights agenda is expressed in its founding slogan: ‘on the side of all oppressed and against all oppressors’ (Maslum-Der Mission Statement). In fact, the choice for the name of the organization reflects its overall orientation: the Turkish word maslum means ‘the oppressed’ in English. Maslums are all those individuals and groups whose rights are violated. According to Maslum-Der (Mission Statement: 1), any attempt to restrict human rights that cannot be justified on the principles of human dignity and justice constitutes oppression and a violation of human rights – whether those limitations are economic, social, legal, psychological, cultural, or any other de facto reason. Consequently, the Maslum-Der defines all violations of human rights as within its scope of interest. This is clearly expressed on page 2 of its mission statement: The members of Maslum-Der work towards the achievement of economic and cultural rights; the right to education; women’s rights; the right to health; child’s rights; consumers rights; the right to assembly and to organizing; freedom to travel and settle and the right to a healthy environment as well as a right to life; individual freedom; right to justice and right to a just trial; right to equality; freedom of religion; freedom of thought; freedom of the press; and the right to seek refuge and minority rights. We believe that this is the way to develop an efficient and encompassing human rights struggle. (My grammar) Although Maslum-Der is a general human rights watch organization, it is in the context of the 28 February 1997 soft-coup which demanded rigid implementation of the headscarf ban that the Maslum-Der came to be identified with Islamic issues. For Ayse Kadioglu (2005b: 35), its sensitivity to the concerns of Islamic women and its definition of the ban as a human rights violation contributed to Maslum-Der’s current reputation


as a pro-Islamic organization. I believe that the underlying concept of human rights is what differentiates the Maslum-Der from other secularly oriented human rights organizations. For the Maslum-Der, human rights constitute the common issue for all humanity. It defines the universality of human rights by reference to divine law. According to its mission statement: Maslum-Der believes that human rights are universal, and that the source of human rights is the fact that individuals were created as human beings. Thus, natural law – divine law – constitutes the foundation of human rights . . . Human rights are rights bestowed by God, without any exception, to every individual with full equality in line with human dignity. (Mission Statement: 1) With an emphasis on God’s divine law, the Maslum-Der does not take the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) as the basis for a claim of universal human rights. According to its mission statement, the UDHR cannot be universal. The UNHR is a tool in the post-Second World War reorganization of international politics under western cultural and political hegemony. It reflects an aspect of western cultural values which appears to justify the West’s right to intervene in the affairs of countries in the Islamic world, South East Asia and Far East which possess different cultural and religious orientations. For the MaslumDer, the UDHR is an instrument of domination by western powers, whereas the universal claim of human rights should constitute the common issue for all humanity. The underlying notion of human rights for the Maslum-Der is God’s law. This is a claim to religious universality but without a culture-religion-specific demand of exclusiveness. Interestingly, although it does not base its notion of the universality of human rights on the UDHR, the Maslum-Der agrees with the UDHR for conferring on a person ‘the status of a subject of law beyond domestic jurisdiction’ (Lindgren Alves 2000: 478, quoted in McMichael 2009: 24). This extends the same set of rights to all people and regards all people as equal. Similarly, the Maslum-Der’s mission statement identifies human rights as basic human values possessed by every human being. Human rights are thus universal and egalitarian. According to the UDHR’s definition, human rights are universal but individual nationstates are responsible for the realization of human rights (McMichael 2009: 24–5). For the Maslum-Der, the UDHR construction of human rights – both as universal in its narrative, and particular in its national

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application – is contradictory: The UDHR builds on both the universality principle of human rights and the national principle of the state system in human rights monitoring. For Maslum-Der, the contradiction between the universality and particularity of human rights construction constitutes the basis of a clear double standard. The double standard emerges in monitoring human rights implementation through the complex international processes of bargaining within a community of states such as the EU and the UN. In this construction, a particular European narrative of human rights assumes the status of universality for other states to emulate. Individual states’ emulation of European values and norms is then to be monitored within the nation-state system through the rulings of various international organizations such as the ECHR. The Maslum-Der argues (on page 2 of its mission statement) for the need to develop a human rights understanding and implementation procedure based on justice. The organization further argues that the procedure must be free from any kind of double standard that emerges from within the process of international bargaining and only serves to reproduce global inequalities in the distribution of power and wealth. This double standard appears to be the inevitable outcome of what Chase-Dunn et al. (2009: 76) describe as a ‘ “democratic deficit” of existing institutions of global governance.’ Put somewhat differently: as opposed to the possibility of a ‘cosmopolitan democracy’ emerging from the empowerment of citizens by international declarations and conventions, in parallel with and independently of their own governments (Archibugi and Held 1995), the Maslum-Der evokes the image of an undemocratic global system that is reproduced ideologically and institutionally by the conventions and declarations established within the unequal relations of international organizations. In potentially challenging bases of Euro-American power, the Maslum-Der develops a human rights understanding based on an ethics of justice. The source of this fundamental ethical principle is divine power. Page 2 of the mission statement reads: This fundamental principle which provides for ‘being a witness of the truth’, expresses an understanding which discards the idea based on preferring ‘society’ to ‘the individual’, ‘the majority’ to ‘the minority’ and ‘the ones from us’ to the ‘right and just ones’. This ethical principle gives us the framework to ground and method to defend human rights. This requires that we defend human rights as a general category for everyone . . . Our main principle is to remain on the side


of truth . . . this ethic is to defend human rights on a deontologic[al] ground . . . based on evaluating the ‘goodness’ of an action or deed according to the consequences it produces. Hence, for the MazlumDer to defend human rights without discrimination . . . is a moral, ethical imperative. (My grammar) For the Maslum-Der, the moral imperative of human rights transcends national borders and requires ‘above-politics cooperation’ at the world level (Mission Statement: 2). Towards a more comprehensive concept, the Maslum-Der wishes to realize the common right of all humanity ‘by being open to the world and benefiting from different cultures.’ This is similar to what McMichael (2009: 29–30) means by ‘ethical universalism’ – a concept based on the mutual respect of individuals and collective struggles for self-determination and self-definition against social injustice and prejudice. Again, the Maslum-Der’s mission statement (page 2) reflects the organization’s commitment to the notion of what Mahatma Gandhi (1938) called ‘moral universalism’: In the struggle [for] human rights, . . . it is crucially important that the international community puts human rights and freedom under the guarantee of law through internationally recognized documents. However, we need to point out that international documents signed by many countries through the United Nations are not sufficient in either content or power of enforcement . . . Thus, in order to improve human rights, the human rights defenders of the world need to be open to all cultures of the world, not just to their own, and should develop a vision for transforming the gains of each civilization to the gains of humanity. The Maslum-Der is clear here not to refer to ‘humanity’ as being independent of history. As Hannah Arendt (1951/1986: 298) wrote in her The Origins of Totalitarianism, an abstract idea of humanity itself does not guarantee ‘the right to have rights, or the right of every individual to belong to humanity.’ What ‘humanity’ amounts to in Maslum-Der’s conceptualization is the mutuality of particular historical, cultural circumstances of communities within a transnational sphere. It is morally embedded in God’s ‘divine justice,’ which is assumed to be necessary for the institutionalization of human rights outside national/international state projects. Such a moral commitment to universal aspirations rooted in divine justice certainly lends itself to a religious belief in equality and fairness that is common to many different religions. But the question

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of how to translate such a commitment into action within the global system needs to be seriously addressed.

The moral embeddedness of human rights and democracy Can Islamic women’s concern with the headscarf ban be bridged through a commitment to ethical/moral universalism and the institution of a more ‘comprehensive democracy’? ‘Comprehensive democracy’ (Pratap, Priya, and Wallgren 2004) refers to another kind of democracy, understood as a way of life rather than a mode of governance. It combines the notion of vasudhaiva kutumbakam (a Sanskrit word, meaning ‘the world is a family’) and the Gandhian word swaraj (self and rule). Working for a comprehensive democracy implies sampoorn swaraj (full realization of self-rule). Hence the title of the article written by Pratap and Priya (2004) is ‘Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam: From Democracy to Sampoorn Swaraj.’ I believe such an approach is helpful for understanding the implications of the headscarf ban in a more comprehensive way. This approach takes into account the meaning of the headscarf as integral to a women’s right to self-definition and right to live with a particular moral, cultural, and spiritual orientation. It also reveals the limitations of existing human rights discourse and practice. Central to an Islamic human rights discourse is the moral–ethical dimension of individual self-definition and rule. From the perspective of what I am calling moral embeddedness, Islamic human rights organizations help us situate the headscarf movement within the notion of ‘comprehensive democracy,’ one which also takes into account the moral, cultural, and spiritual aspects of individual human lives (Pratap and Priya 2004). A ‘comprehensive democracy’ requires committed political effort and bridge building with other forms of global justice movements through a process of deliberation on the ideals of justice, self-definition and self-development, as well as the relations of unjust conditions (Young 2000). This is not a deliberation built on a single, self-enclosed, and abstract theory of democracy. In contrast to a theoretical universality abstracted from social context, comprehensive, democratic bridge building is a ‘situated conversation’ of engagement with diverse social contexts (Young 2000: 14). It encompasses life itself in a comprehensive manner that makes our lives more meaningful. Swaraj relates to all dimensions of human life and applies to relationships at all levels, from the individual to the global (Pratap and Priya 2004: 3). In James


Bohman’s (2007: 19–57) words, such an approach identifies democracy not with demos, the people, but with demoi, peoples. ‘A democracy of demoi’ then requires rethinking the basic epistemic assumptions of democracy beyond its singular territorial connotation of space (a district, country, or land) and its territorialized political subjects (state membership). In short, it requires rethinking citizenship, membership, and human life beyond the state (Bohman 2007). As long as we take it as given that all peoples are striving to redefine the basic relationships of human life, no single ideology, group, or region can be identified as the sole proprietary dispenser of the epistemic values promoted by democracy. Unfortunately, the ideological divisions that have solidified between Islamic and secular selves may inhibit the emergence of a comprehensive democracy for some time to come. This is certainly the case in the Turkish context (S. Tekeli 1991). The fear of an Islamic threat has also been manifested in the EU’s unresponsiveness to women’s concerns over the headscarf ban in Turkey, which Islamic human rights organizations call the European ‘double standard.’ Ak-Der, the Islamic women’s rights organization, argues that the headscarf ban violates freedom of religion and conscience. It removes women’s inherent abilities and the right to deliberate on the values and norms of their own lives. This undermines democracy’s fundamental ideal of self-determination which is necessary to fully realize human rights. In rulings by the ECHR on the cases of Senay Karaduman in 1993 and Leyla Sahin in 2004, the religious needs and cultural traditions of women were ignored. According to the Ak-Der’s chair: After 9/11 Islam has been connected with terrorism and we see a worldwide policy against Muslims. Such a policy can also be found within the EU process. We do not expect more religious freedoms for Muslims in Turkey with this process. (Duncker 2006: 57) Ayhan Bilgen (2005: 78–9), former president of Maslum-Der, has argued that the practice of a headscarf ban in Turkey is a violation of women’s rights and freedom of religion. The ban implemented through administrative by-laws and judicial rulings constitutes a crime against women’s human rights in Turkey. The 28 February 1997 soft coup essentially created the political–administrative context for this crime by strengthening the existing imbalance of power over decision-making exercised

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by bureaucratic and judicial cadres. For Bilgen (2005: 79), Islamic groups have held ‘false expectations’ from the EU in regard to the implementation of basic normative conditions of religious freedoms and rights against the ban. The expectations are false because the EU has failed to interact with demoi, or ‘with new publics,’ to use Bohman’s phrase (2007: 46) – those who use human rights to claim their democratic entitlement to freedom of religion. Ali Bulac (2005), an Islamic writer for Zaman Newspaper, expands on this issue and argues that there are dangers in the abstract and generalized notions of democracy and human rights associated with the EU and the ECHR. The democratic ideal and the content of the human rights framework used by the ECHR to deliberate on the women’s headscarf issue are historically specific, reflecting an account of European cultural, social, and moral order. The EU cannot deliberate on the values and practices of the headscarf through a historical account abstracted as a universal theory of democracy. Writing on the ECHR’s 2004 decision regarding Leyla Sahin, Bulac (2005) argued that Islamic groups should never have applied to the ECHR over the headscarf ban. By applying to the ECHR to have the headscarf recognized as an expression of women’s religious beliefs, Islamic groups legitimized the ECHR as an agent with the authority to deliberate on this matter and decide whether women should be allowed to wear the headscarf. For Bulac (2005: 33), this was a mistake which allowed the ECHR to intervene in ‘our religious affairs,’ to decide on the meaning of self-determination and weaken the ability of women to deliberate on their own religious rights and freedoms. This mistake on the part of Islamic groups points to the coercive authority of EU decision-making beyond the importance of group solidarities and politics. From the perspective of Hannah Arendt’s (1958) understanding of ‘action,’ the Islamic granting of legitimacy to the ECHR seems inimical to the normative authority of an individual to deliberate and act. Arendt (1958: 177) asserts that ‘to act, in its most general sense, means to take an initiative, to begin . . . to set something into motion.’ For Arendt, then, the ability to initiate and begin to act constitutes the most fundamental of human freedoms. Writing on the basis of a similar premise, Bulac (2005: 35) argues that no court (or state for that matter) can decide on a religious matter concerning a women’s right to wear the headscarf. This issue can only be deliberated on and acted upon by individuals, communities, and non-governmental civil society groups. The


matter itself is a religious one beyond the jurisdiction of the state and international organizations. Bulac (2005: 34) repeats that the ECHR’s decision is based on the idea that ‘Muslims constitute a majority in Turkey, and that the wearing of the headscarf is an expression of Muslim religious faith which may potentially constitute Muslim oppression over non-Muslims.’ According to Bulac, this is strange yet effective reasoning that hinders Muslims’ ability as individuals and as a community to initiate deliberation and act on a religious matter of conscience. Moreover, for Bulac (2005: 33), the ‘assumption that those who wear the headscarf could be oppressive to others’ is also strange and can only reveal the inability of the EU to engage with Muslim communities. The EU is not an inclusive community of various religious, cultural communities, but a culturally uniform ‘Western club.’ Bulac is therefore highly sceptical about the moral legitimacy of the EU to set normative standards and epistemic values for democracy because its decision-making process actually excludes the normative ideals of deliberating individuals and groups. However, Bulac’s emphasis on the exclusionary practices of the ECHR on human rights should not be taken as indicative of a desire for the inclusion of Islamic individuals and groups in the European decisionmaking process according to the ‘deliberative democracy’ model (Barber 1984; Besson and Marti 2006; Bohman 1996, 2007; Young 2000). Bulac is arguing for neither inclusion nor equal participation of Muslims in the European decision-making process over the headscarf issue. In the deliberative model of democracy political actors not only express preferences and interests, but they engage with one another about how to balance these under circumstances of inclusive equality . . . this model conceptualizes the process of democratic discussion as not merely expressing and registering, but as transforming the preferences, interests, beliefs, and judgments of participants. (Young 2000: 26) However, Bulac’s critique is based on the conviction that religious beliefs in relation to the headscarf are not open to transformative deliberation. Instead, he points to the dishonesty of Muslims in presenting a cosmopolitan image of themselves as a group who synthesize Islamic and European cultural values, practices, and normative standards. For Bulac, the headscarf issue is a religious issue and Muslims should not

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pretend that they are defending it as part of their democratic human rights. According to Bulac, democratic deliberation can only pertain to the ontological meaning of engaging truths about what holds for Europe and what holds for Muslims, and not the religious meaning of the headscarf: The decision of the court [ECHR] should be a vehicle for a cognitive awakening. We Muslims, either because of our naïvity or ignorance, are thinking that we can consume world cultures despite the fundamental values of our religion. The only thing we [have fought] for has been limited to the headscarf and dress code. We are, henceforth, in desperate need of an earnest confrontation with and self-critique of ourselves. (Bulac 2005: 34) Bulac (2005: 38) believes Muslims should take the initiative to figure out how to live as Muslims while living in a modern world. They must ask what kind of a social life they really want, without having false expectations of democracy. Further, they must establish what the meaning of Islamic truth is for a Muslim. For Bulac, the problem is not whether the question of the headscarf is subject to democratic debate, but how to constitute an ontological base of existence for Muslims beyond and outside the moral authority imposed by the state and state-like institutions. His is an intellectual’s concern with the attempts at a ‘fake synthesis’ between Islamic values and European standards. This concern finds its best expression in a description by Žižek (2008: 270–2) of a music critics’ puzzlement with the ‘Ode to Joy’ from the last movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony: at bar 331, the tone changes totally, and instead of the solemn hymnic progression, the same ‘Joy’ theme is repeated in marcia Turca (‘Turkish march’) style, borrowed from the military music for wind and percussion instruments that eighteenth century European armies had adopted from the Turkish janissaries . . . after this point, everything goes wrong . . . But the final cadenza is the strangest of them all, sounding less like Beethoven than a puffed-up version of the finale of Mozart’s Abduction from Seraglio, combining the ‘Turkish’ elements with the fast rococo spectacle . . . The finale is thus a bizarre mixture of Orientalism and regression into late eighteenth century classicism, a double retreat from the historical present, a silent admission


of the purely fantasmatic character of the joy of all-encompassing brotherhood. (Žižek 2008: 271–2)

For Žižek (2008: 273), there is an alternative way to think about the movement: ‘things do not [suddenly] go wrong only at bar 331, with the entrance of the marcia Turca, they go wrong from the very start.’ Žižek analyzes Beethoven’s ‘Ode to Joy’ as a signifier for the unofficial European anthem of unity. The perplexity of the EU over what to do with Turkey’s membership resembles the music critics’ confusion over the last movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. For Žižek (2008: 274), the problem is not Turkey, nor the marcia turca in the Ninth Symphony, ‘but the basic melody itself.’ What is needed is an entirely new melody, through Europe’s ‘interpretive confrontation’ with others and with its own history about a new definition of what Europe really is. In listening to ‘the basic melody’ of European cultural unity played by the Brussels technocratic elite on Turkey’s religious–cultural difference, Bulac asks Islamic groups to be ‘honest’ in regard to their expectations from Europe. Muslims should undertake their own ‘interpretive confrontation’ with a refashioning of their own futures. It is in response to the latest EU report on Turkey’s progress towards fulfilling membership requirements (Commission of the European Communities 5 November 2008) that Bulac offers his urgent call for ‘honesty.’ This finds its reflection in Islamic groups who now increasingly question whether they can ‘trust’ the EU to promote ‘democracy’ as a way of life for individuals and groups with their moral, cultural, and spiritual orientation. To quote Bulac:

The vast majority of religious people are no longer hopeful about the EU . . . EU circles and the intellectuals supportive of the EU bid in Turkey have failed to adequately respond to the demands of religious people . . . While the latest progress report makes references to the problems of all disadvantaged groups, including gays and transsexuals, it does not make a single mention of the problems the religious majority is facing. This is the primary reason for the decline of popular support for the membership bid. Intellectual . . . support will not suffice to get full membership; it will also require popular support. (Bulac 2008)

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Islamic individuals and groups would like to see the EU recognize that their struggle is against the laik notion of the ‘secularity’ of public space as imposed by an authoritarian bureaucracy. However, the silence of the EU on the headscarf problem causes them to question whether they can ever trust the EU to define their struggles through a comprehensive approach to democratic normative expectations related to self-definition and self-rule. Women have been explicit in their questioning of the EU, as they try to make sense of their personal experience of the religious, spiritual, and moral dimensions of life. Rather than implement further reforms towards greater liberalization and democratization, the AKP, under threat of closure, has now moved to establish closer ties with the state bureaucracy. Moreover, the ECHR rulings and the silence of the November 2008 EU progress report on the headscarf problem have served to strengthen a hard-line nationalist position. Islamic women now encounter the headscarf ban in the context of a hesitancy against hard-line state bureaucracy and the European imposition of a double standard on the ban. Islamic women’s personal experiences in making sense of headscarf politics is the subject of the next chapter.

7 Headscarf Madness: Narratives of Religious Rights

This chapter examines how the impassioned, sometimes absurd actions surrounding the headscarf in Turkey are experienced by the people themselves. It considers how larger projects of refashioning social and personal life interact in the making of an Islamic ethical–political standpoint. The chapter shows that as women and men endeavour to exert Islam’s presence in the public sphere, they embrace and uphold a particular Islamic interpretive position through which they participate in a process of redefining their political–cultural–emotional terrain. The headscarf movement constitutes an Islamic reworking of the meaning of secularity in public space that is both pedagogical and political. In A Secular Age (2007: 1–20) Charles Taylor has identified three meanings for the concept of secularity. The first refers to the secularity of public space and involves the emptying of religion from autonomous social spheres. Within this space, the vast majority of people continue to believe in God and practice religion, as was the case in Communist Poland. Laiklik in Turkey has never emptied religion from the public sphere but kept it under strict state control. Therefore, the first meaning of secularity of public space applies to the Turkish case but with some difference. The second meaning for Taylor refers to the falling off of religious belief and people turning away from God. This is definitely not the case in Turkey. The third meaning of secularity refers to the conditions of belief. Secularity in this sense involves a move towards a society in which belief in God is only one option, one human possibility among many others. For Taylor (2007: 3), ‘secularity in this sense is a matter of the whole context of understanding in which our moral, spiritual or religious experience and search takes place.’ The ‘context of understanding’ here refers to the articulation of a background or framework of experience. As discussed extensively in previous chapters, the Islamic 201

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reworking of laiklik through the headscarf movement seems to make most sense in terms of this third aspect of secularity. The headscarf movement is about reimagining the political–social context of moral and religious experience with an emphasis on freedom of religion and human rights discourse. It connects the first meaning of secularity to the third. That is, the headscarf movement reimagines religion in the public sphere by rearticulating the laik conditions of religious experience. This reimagining is transformative of the state. The present chapter aims to uncover how Islamic individuals rearticulate the third sense of secularity defined by Taylor in reference to the conditions of belief and religious experience. The chapter draws from interviews which I conducted with 30 women and 10 men in Ankara. All interviews have been transcribed and analyzed. My informants are all Muslims who describe themselves as religious, regardless of their actual observance of daily prayers. They all fast during the month of Ramadan and all my male respondents attend a mosque for Friday prayers. All but two of the women I interviewed wear a headscarf. These two women are strongly opposed to Islamic headscarf practices. Those who wear the headscarf refer to it as a basortusu while those against it call it a turban. My sample of women who wear the headscarf is made up of 20 students studying in various academic departments at Middle East Technical University, Ankara University, Gazi University, and Hacettepe University. These are prestigious public universities and among the largest in Turkey. The students are enrolled in various programmes including engineering, biology, history, chemistry, physics, and teaching. I also interviewed six professional women: a store manager, a lawyer, a doctor, a social worker, a teacher, and an economist. The teacher and the economist are opposed to the headscarf. I also interviewed four women who wear the headscarf and describe themselves as housewives. The students in my sample are in their twenties and the professional women and housewives are in their thirties. My student respondents come from various cities and towns in central and eastern Anatolia. Those who are not from Ankara initially stayed in state dormitories established for university students, but then moved to private homes, generally in the second year of their university education. Given that the headscarf is also banned in school dormitories, six or seven students will often rent an apartment close to their school in which they dress entirely as they wish. They typically move out of the university dormitories when they first decide to wear the headscarf, frequently in the first year of their university education. Only one student

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in my sample graduated from a religiously oriented high school (an Imam-Hatip School), but all were brought up as Muslims by their parents. None had a strictly religious family background. My male respondents all have professional backgrounds and are in their thirties, forties, and fifties. Among them are two professors from the Faculty of Theology at Ankara University, and a former graduate of the same Faculty who later graduated from the Faculty of Law and currently works as a lawyer in government. I also interviewed a social worker, two jewellers, a shoemaker, two schoolteachers, and the head of an adult public education centre. One of the jewellers is also a lawyer but does not practice law. All define the headscarf as a basortusu, with the exception of three men who refer to the Islamic headscarf as a turban. These three men include the two jewellers and the shoemaker. The Faculty of Theology professors are not opposed to the Islamic headscarf but believe that students should comply with the headscarf ban. Participants were recruited through personal contacts in the community and snowball sampling. The high proportion of female undergraduate university students as compared to other women and men is due to the snowball sampling method. I conducted face-to-face, open-ended interviews with each of my informants. Interviews were approximately 2 hours long and recorded on audiotape. Approval for the interview process was received from the Research Ethics Review Committee of Simon Fraser University and all respondents consented to be interviewed. The respondents have been given pseudonyms. The interviews have enabled me to explore the religious sentiments, personal hopes, and doubts regarding headscarf practices under the conditions of the ban. In addition to illuminating the headscarf movement from the point of view of the people who embrace it, information gathered from the interviews also helps us understand the arguments developed by those who oppose it. This data allows us to assess whether the experiences of women who wear the headscarf actually converge in terms of an attachment to Islamic ethics in public life which figures within the larger context of Islamic politics. The information presented also shows that those opposed to the Islamic headscarf are neither against the religion of Islam nor against women’s coverage for religious reasons. Rather, they are opposed to the entanglement of the Islamic headscarf with political and transformative concerns. This underscores one crucial finding. The headscarf issue is not about being religious, but about Islamic transformative resistance, the rearticulation of political– social conditions of change, and the background of experiencing the Islamic in relation to Charles Taylor’s third sense of secularity.

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My research suggests that it is a fallacy to assume that women and men involved in the headscarf issue possess a unified agency as individuals or groups that will enable them to change the conditions of their experience. My goal here is not to generalize about women’s reasons for wearing the headscarf or the political effects of their decisions on larger Islamic projects, nor to generalize about the oppositional ideas of their adversaries. My interviews provide ethnographic insight into Islamic politics from the perspective of people who embody an Islamic ethos of public life. As Dorothy Smith (1999) suggests, the most pressing concern in ethnographic research is how individuals encounter the social–political–emotional relations involved in the shaping of a knowledge culture within which they are active. Although my sample is relatively small, it provides a clear understanding of women’s own experience with the headscarf. It also allows us to better evaluate the constitutive effect of the headscarf in terms of political agency belonging to the movement itself rather than the various beliefs of individuals or groups. Information gathered from the interviews also allows us to see how women construct strategies for countering opposition. This includes my interviews with women and men who oppose the Islamic headscarf. The issue of strategy is crucial in reconfiguring the conceptual terrain of the marriage between the ethical and the political in which the headscarf movement is located. The commonly upheld headscarf narrative reflects the interconnectedness of a moral–ethical commitment to individual freedoms and human rights, rather than an appeal to Islam as an exclusive or closed framework of religious morality. This situates an Islamic position within the possibility of an engagement with other social experimentations on human living that encounter the demands of opposition and criticism. Thus, the chapter allows us to consider if the recent intensification of headscarf politics provokes a variety of political forms and conceptual terrains that present Islamic transformative politics as a ‘situated conversation’ on the diverse social conditions of women and men.

An Islamic reworking of secularity: Religion in society In A Secular Age, Charles Taylor (2007) included the idea of the secular constituted by the incorporation of religious elements as one possibility of human experience in society. This is an idea raised repeatedly during interviews with my respondents who wear the headscarf. The students I interviewed link the headscarf ban to the political struggles of


Anatolian Muslim groups who are assuming class power as they reposition themselves within society and the state. In this context, the Islamic headscarf represents part of the religious search for these newly emerging Anatolian groups who are exercising the right to make religion and spirituality relevant to the organization of their social lives. This is consistent with the findings of previous chapters. The following narratives reflect some of the experiences and attitudes of students regarding the headscarf ban and the meaning of laiklik in Turkey. Ayse decided to cover her hair in the first year of her high school education in Eastern Turkey. She boarded at school, where she studied for four years. While having a conversation with a friend in the school dormitory, she mentioned her desire to cover her hair at some point in the future. Ayse expressed this as kismet. She thought further about the meaning of kismet and decided that she had to take greater initiative towards its realization. In her own words: kismet doesn’t work like ‘a pear that stews itself and then drops in my mouth. I said to myself that I had to take the time and trouble to make the decision.’ Ayse’s parents were not aware of her decision. Banu also began to wear the headscarf at her high school in Ankara, her hometown. She was brought up in a religious family, for whom reading the Koran and daily prayers were important. For Banu, a good Muslim must live in accordance with the foundational pillars of Islam. Her decision to wear a headscarf was the outcome of her faith in God: The headscarf expresses my religious conviction to give meaning to life. You feel relaxed and comfortable when you listen to music. I feel exactly the same way when I wear my headscarf. My male classmates care about their manners when they talk to me. They are more respectful toward me. They know that my faith in God is the essence of my inner being. I am trying to live that way in society as well. Emine first covered her hair in the second year of her high school education at an Imam-Hatip school. She began her studies in a secular state-run high school. However, after passing the required courses and exams, she transferred to a state-run Imam-Hatip school which teaches a blend of Islamic and secular courses. It wasn’t difficult for her to succeed in courses on the Koran, hadith, fiqh, and Arabic. She learned Arabic from her uncle, a teacher of the language, and studied the Koran with her parents when she was a child. When studying the Koran at

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school, education administrators allow female students to cover their hair, although it is not mandatory. Emine began to cover her hair at school and has continued to do so since then. Zehra’s story is quite different. Although she too was interested in covering her hair in high school, she postponed making the decision until university. Initially, Zehra was hesitant because of the difficulties she saw faced by other female students wearing the headscarf. Nevertheless, she decided to make a commitment in the first year of her university education: Nothing is going to happen to a human being by postponing a decision to a later year. To what year and time can an individual postpone a decision? I decided to take the initiative and make a decision at once. My mother wears the headscarf in a traditional way, tied under her chin. I often wait at the door with needles as my mother leaves the house to make sure that she ties up her scarf securely. Without a needle or two, the headscarf often slips over the head and exposes the hair. These young women were brought up as Muslims by their parents. They learned how to read the Koran in their childhood years during the summer holidays by taking state-run Koran courses in local state mosques. Except for Emine, they have no formal training in religious issues. Zehra wanted to go to the Imam-Hatip School to study religion but decided not to. She indicated that female students in Imam-Hatip schools were expected to cover their hair by their schoolmates, something Zehra found repulsive: These girls were covering themselves just to live up to the expectation. This was repulsive for me. I used to get angry about why these girls were required to cover their hair. If I went to the Imam-Hatip school, I was also going to be influenced by others to cover my hair. I am glad that I didn’t go to the Imam-Hatip. I made my decision to cover my hair on my own. For Zehra, the decision to cover her hair was a difficult one. It was made after a long period of deliberation on how to live her life as a religious person. However, she finds the conditions in which she covers her hair depressing. She experiences her Islamic head covering as pathetic, and tragically comical at the same time. As a result, she has considered dropping out of school. Her parents, who only have a primary school


education, wanted her to open her hair and continue her education. In the end, Zehra decided to continue with her schooling: I do not want to think that a Muslim should live her life like a turtle withdrawn from life in her shell. We should be out there active in society. Therefore, I gave up the idea of leaving school and decided to attend classes with a wig. I have never been comfortable with it, though. You are putting it over your headscarf. Does the headscarf show underneath the wig? Of course it does. When I was walking up the staircase at school today, I saw girls dressed like me wearing wigs. Even I found them funny-looking and strange. [At this point in the interview Zehra looked ashamed and bashful, and her voice was saddened.] They are so comical yet so pathetic. What else we can do but laugh at ourselves. We carry the wigs in our bags and put them over our headscarves just before entering the university. As a result, these wigs often look uncombed and frizzled, as if they are shocked by electricity. But they let you into the school as long as they see some hair on your head. This is bizarre. Everybody is playing a game of deception when they are trying to comply with this stupid ban. For Sultan, another of my respondents, it is preferable to be in this uncomfortable and embarrassing position than to expose her hair. For her, university education is a bread-and-butter issue. ‘A person from a modest family background with limited financial support requires a university education in order to secure one’s livelihood.’ The headscarf, on the other hand, is a matter of moral and spiritual concerns. It is not just a piece of clothing that covers the hair. It entails a range of standards and behaviours which affect the ability to realize Islamic moral virtues in social life. Sultan views the headscarf as integral to the development of an Islamic ethical disposition in the daily practices of her social existence. She notes that when some of her friends took off their scarves, they became more willing to compromise on the Islamic modesty required of pious women and began wearing shortsleeved shirts and tight-fitting pants. However, for Sultan, as much as for Zehra, the most vital concerns behind the headscarf are selfreflection and conscious deliberation over self-definition in a secular context. All of the students I interviewed indicated that wearing the headscarf is central to making religion relevant to the organization of their daily social life. Zehra did not get into the details of her religiosity. Banu

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did not see herself as more religious than others who do not cover their hair, but said that she tries to live as a religious person. Ayse also indicated that she tries to fulfil her religious obligations as much as possible. For Ayse, a good Muslim must have a strong belief in the message of Islam and its encompassing character. Belief is a private matter. Many of the Islamic religious duties and rituals required by the five pillars of Islam are to be carried out discreetly in the privacy of one’s home and without a public declaration of their performance. Daily prayers, for example, do not have to be carried out in a mosque; they can be performed at home. And fasting is an entirely individual matter. Alms giving should also be a private affair between giving and receiving individuals. The wearing of the headscarf is not a requirement found within the five pillars of Islam nor is it one of the six requirements of Islamic faith. It is not foundational to religion. Nevertheless, for Ayse, wearing the headscarf is a religious duty that helps her realize and maintain Islamic virtue in her public life. Moreover, it connects privately held religious beliefs to a public expression of moral and spiritual life. For Emine, Islamic dress is not the most important aspect of being a good Muslim. Rather, the attainment of Islamic knowledge and its application to daily life beyond the technical memorization of the Koran and the hadith represent the real essence of living as a Muslim. Islamic knowledge should be understood in a more comprehensive way. It should help us directly in our lives to deal consistently with the demands of religious morality. It must also help Muslims to be autonomous. It should help them better understand the meaning of individual freedoms and how to connect this with the religious demand for a moral life. A Muslim must reflect on the material conditions of his or her existence, on environmental issues, and on innovative ways of finding solutions to problems. Unless these issues are discussed extensively, Muslims will continue to focus on religion in a limited sense confined to issues of personal piety. Piety is a matter of faith between God and the individual. It really doesn’t concern me. What is most important is to realize the connection between the way I think and the way I live. For Selvi, the religious significance of the headscarf is an issue of faith between God and the individual. She also believes it to be a religious duty but not a foundational requirement of Islam.


Of the most utmost importance for a Muslim is to understand the meaning of the five pillars of Islam. Daily prayers, fasting, and alms giving are all fundamental. A Muslim should critically reflect on the meaning and content of these requirements in order to live consistently according to the moral demands of these Islamic fundamentals. A Muslim should avoid bad things, canonically prohibited acts such as stealing, lying, hurting others, and harsh, unkind behaviour. A Muslim should be educated in the meaning of the message and acquire the capacity to develop a more disciplined and refined self. These are important for personal growth and in order to flourish in society. So wearing a headscarf is important for spiritual growth but not a fundamental requirement. Ayse thinks in much the same way but gives a more specific meaning to the headscarf issue. She speaks of the headscarf as a conduit for experiencing religion as a conception of universal principles beyond a particular place and time, signalling a spiritual kind of life and a way of keeping faith alive in the public sphere. Ayse opens her hair at the school gates and attends classes without a headscarf. She believes it is more important for her to gain an education and participate in the professional, scientific world as a believing, practicing woman than to risk being dismissed by the university administration. Wearing a wig over her headscarf was not an option for Ayse because she feels that wearing a wig is not consistent with the religious duty of modesty expected from women. Nevertheless, she understands why some choose to wear a wig: It is easier for students to wear the wig. You can easily put it over the headscarf and take it off outside the school gates. You are still covered under the wig. I leave school without a scarf and put it on in the street. Everybody sees me doing this, which is embarrassing for me. But I have no option. Meryem, who covered her hair just before attending university, wears a wig over her scarf although she finds it humiliating. She feels that her classmates stare at her. In order to avoid this humiliation, she has considered quitting school, but her parents who are poor farmers in eastern Anatolia insist that she continue her education and secure a better future. She also feels psychological pressure from other students who have chosen to quit school under the headscarf ban. These students believe the wig to be inconsistent with Islamic norms and don’t

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wish to open their hair at school. Since quitting school is not an option for Meryem she prefers the wig to removing the scarf completely, even though it is humiliating. Esra does not find the wig humiliating and has covered her hair since the first year of high school. She is simply not willing to open her hair. She wears her wig as a symbol of protest against the headscarf ban. The wig sends a strong message that she is not willing to comply with the ban: I would never consider opening my hair. I have decided to wear a wig over the headscarf just to be able to attend classes – not for beauty, not because I don’t have hair. I make sure that my headscarf shows underneath the wig. They should realize that I am wearing the headscarf underneath. This shows that I have not opened my hair. Sometimes I don’t wear the wig because some professors do not care about it. But, when I see a fat, well-dressed man, I quickly put the wig over my headscarf. It is certain that this man is the Dean or the Chair. I don’t want to be punished by him. Banu tried at first to wear the wig when the ban was strictly enforced. After a few weeks of trying this, she decided against the wig. She now opens her hair at school. She did not wish to talk about why she decided against the wig, and I didn’t insist. She told me that it was a very difficult decision. She attended classes with tears in her eyes when she first began to open her hair. Initially, everyone in class stared at her, which she found very discomforting. Later they got used to it and they don’t stare at her any longer. Emine also decided to open her hair at the university gates. She told me that her education is very important and she does not wish to jeopardize it. She hopes to continue her education at the graduate level and become an academic. Her father who is a professor at another university also advised her to open her hair at school rather than wear a wig. Her father told her that she could enter university and attend classes with a wig over her headscarf, but this would have singled her out as a ‘turbanli woman’ and would also be registered in her student file. Her father warned that this kind of profiling could jeopardize her post-graduate education and future employment in academia. Still, for her father the decision ultimately belonged to her. After careful deliberation Emine decided to open her hair at school. For these students, the most significant aspect of wearing a headscarf is the personal cultivation of Islamic moral virtues in society.


However, according to them, this does not mean that covered women are morally or spiritually superior to those who do not cover themselves. According to my respondents, men must also actively participate in the cultivation of Islamic virtues. They must enhance their personal growth in spiritual matters and refrain from objectifying women’s bodies. According to Zehra, this requires a serious shift in their understanding of women’s place in society. There is no difference between covered and uncovered women. A woman’s decision to not cover her hair or dress in accordance with the Islamic modesty requirement should not be taken as a sign that she is morally corrupt. Men should be careful not to take the headscarf as a marker which differentiates moral from immoral women. For Zehra, the decision to wear the headscarf is an individual matter of organizing one’s social life in terms of a religious conception of the moral and the spiritual. Banu adds a social–political dimension to the headscarf issue. She believes that women’s religious piety, of which the headscarf is a symbol, is important for the future cultural reshaping of society. Women are the primary agents of childhood socialization. Consequently, mothers play a crucial role in creating within their children a general propensity towards a spiritual life. By passing on Islamic values to their children, women make faith and religious principles central to Muslim social life. They can be at the forefront in inculcating Islamic values and sensibilities into their children’s lifestyle choices. In short, the headscarf is a symbol of religiously inspired social life. Guler, another of my respondents, indicated that she strives to live in harmony with her faith and morality, thereby contributing to the gradual emergence of a normative social context. In a manner similar to Banu, Guler also said that her goal is not an Islamic transformation of existing public institutions but to create a social context in which covered women can achieve greater integration into the public sphere as Islamic individuals. Sebnem further questions state practices which exclude Islamic women who wear the headscarf from gaining access to public education and employment. Sebnem wants to fully participate in public life. Although she briefly considered not enrolling in university because of the ban, she decided against it. She simply will not accept being excluded from the public sphere of education and employment. Ayse’s headscarf practices reflect her desire to exercise her personal autonomy in order to make personal lifestyle choices for herself.

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Next year I will graduate as a science teacher. I will be forced to take off my scarf before entering school and put it back on outside on the streets. My students will see me doing this and it is just not right. I know I will have all sorts of problems as a teacher. I wish I could live comfortably as a religious person. I will follow the rules and open my hair at work because I want to work. I am not arguing against the ban either. I just don’t understand why they don’t allow me to take it off and put it on in the lavatories. Why should I be subjected to the humiliation of dressing on the streets? I am quite hesitant to go into public offices; I am afraid that they will say things to humiliate me or somehow create a situation that prevents me from being a teacher. This is just not right. Selvi also expressed her incomprehension over how it is beneficial for society if she opens her hair. ‘Forcing me to open my hair on the streets at the school gate is damaging to my individuality; it is humiliating for me. Everybody is staring at me as if I am doing something really bad. I just don’t like it.’ Zeynep is convinced that the reasoning behind the headscarf ban has nothing to do with the fear of an individual’s Islamic faith. It is the fear of a connection between an individual’s spiritual search and a social change project. This comes close to Banu’s understanding of the symbolism of the headscarf as contributing to a moral reordering of society. Zeliha’s insights on this subject are illuminating: There are three categories of women in Turkey. One category consists of traditional women from smaller Anatolian towns and villages. They cover their hair in a traditional way with the yasmak. They are Muslims but not very knowledgeable on religious matters. Their way of coverage reflects a modest family background and thus contributes to the honour of the family in that region. The second category of women consists of those who are highly knowledgeable on religious matters but are not active in public life. They do not participate in higher education. They don’t produce knowledge. They may not even be employed and are rather withdrawn from society. The third category of women includes those of us who are trying to be learned in the sciences. We are not only interested in religious science but also in the natural sciences, technical engineering, economics, history, society, etc. We are doing whatever is necessary to get our education. I accept the humiliation of opening and closing my hair on the


streets if this is what I have to do to get my education and participate in society. For Hilal, this is specifically a class struggle. She differentiates the social classes according to two categories: the upper classes from the large cities and the ‘modest’ classes who are from Anatolian towns. ‘We are well respected among modest Anatolian people. Those who reject and exclude us are the bourgeois segments of society.’ Hatice supports and strengthens this view: In the past Islamic women with headscarves were not interested in higher education and the improvement of their position in society. The state educational system helped women of higher social status to advance in the educational system. They had no interest in wearing the headscarf. They mostly earned professional degrees. In the past, those who wanted to be more religious stayed away from public life. They were more interested in issues of moral uprightness, character formation, and domestic matters than higher education and professional employment. But, now the situation is different. We are more aware of our secondary social status in society, and we want to change it. We want to have a better life. We are more conscious that our head coverage and our religiosity should not prevent us from improving our social position in life. . . . As we put this heightened awareness at the centre of our mobilization, opposition against our headscarves has become more rigid. It is because those who oppose our head covering do not want to see us there with them in the higher institutional positions of the state and the economy. All the students I interviewed agree that the headscarf ban serves to protect the privileged position of the traditional upper classes from the formation of an alternative upper class of modest Muslim families arising from the Anatolian hinterland.

How to think about civil matters with a religious dimension? As shown in the previous chapter, the Constitutional Court rulings on the headscarf issue give top priority to laiklik as the foundational principle of the Kemalist state, over and above freedom of religion and conscience. According to the Constitutional Court, legislation based on religious grounds cannot be permitted because it violates the equality

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principle. The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) also ruled that a secular state has the right to overrule freedom of religion and conscience in its legislative efforts to counter religious reactionary movements. The students I interviewed disagree with these decisions. For them, freedom of religion and conscience are central normative values in a laik, democratic society. They insist that their choice to wear the headscarf does no harm to others nor does it represent reactionary opposition to the secular state. For the students, ‘true’ laiklik or secularism should support individuals’ engaged participation in society. Their argument is for the right to cover their hair for religious reasons – a right which should be grounded in ‘social-symbolic trust’ (Žižek 2008: 33). These students are not only advancing ideas in favour of a ‘comprehensive democracy’ but also pointing to the political hegemony of laiklik in the exercise of state power vis-à-vis the subject of individual rights. They believe the ban has nothing to do with laiklik but is a purposeful strategy to reduce the symbolic meaning of religion in grounding behaviour. Gulsen, one of the students in my sample, suggests that those who defend the ban are not even laik: I don’t think they are laik. They don’t want me to live the way I wish, but they also do not want me to live the laiklik. I am not able to experience laiklik. I am a university student. I am smart and successful. I have an active and investigative attitude. But, they are pushing me out of the school. They are making me sad and harassing me. They are preventing me from making future plans for myself after graduation. I am not even sure that I will be allowed to graduate. I want to work in the public sector. I want to work for the government. I don’t know if I will be allowed to work with my headscarf. For Gulsen, laiklik in Turkey means that Islamic individuals are not able to fully express their religiosity in the public sphere or seek employment in the public sector. They have no autonomy over their life choices independent of what is prescribed by the state elite. These students argue that they only seek to produce an agreement on the ethos of public engagement through which their experience can be counted as meaningful. This is the basis on which a common understanding of the symbolic, moral order of laiklik can be produced. From this perspective, which is also shared by another student, Nuran, the headscarf ban is not and cannot be consistent with laiklik. And for Emine, if there is laiklik, there should be respect for


differences in lifestyles and choices. Tijen, also a student, echoes this sentiment: the government, the state, and university administrators define the headscarf as against laiklik. So strange . . . If laiklik is important why don’t they define it in a clear way. There is laiklik in America and England too, and there are many who cover their hair there. They are free to choose the way they dress. If that is laiklik in America it can be that way here too. In Turkey they keep defining laiklik arbitrarily without any clarity as to its meaning. Nobody knows what it refers to when they say they defend laiklik. There are many, many laws that are arbitrary in their restrictions. According to another student, Umit, permitting a wig to be worn over the headscarf is just such an arbitrary practice of the ban. If students who wear a wig over their headscarves are allowed to enter university while other covered students who do not wear a wig are excluded, this creates tense political relations between university employees and professors who observe the ban, and students. The following view expressed by another student, Fatma, helps to clarify the arbitrary definition of laiklik. She refers to the social class struggles described earlier: I think that a specific segment of society is using laiklik for its own interests. They are openly using laiklik and Ataturkism. They are acting as though these principles are under their ownership. Can’t I be laik and Ataturkist? Can’t I love and respect Ataturk? Because I have a headscarf they stamp me as backward and reactionary. How do they know that I am a reactionary person, opposing progress? Maybe I have the same ideas, same taste, attitudes, maybe I enjoy the same things in life. I don’t want them to stamp me as a stranger because of my headscarf. Fatma’s critique of laiklik conveys her opposition to a ‘minimal religion’ (Taylor 2007: 534) which confines the experience of spirituality to one’s immediate circle of family and friends. For Fatma, religion is very much in the public arena. Emine is also adamant that laiklik has no social historical basis in Turkey: There shouldn’t be something called laiklik in Turkey. What is the basis of laiklik? It emerged in Europe with a reform movement, the

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Renaissance. The reason: there was a class of dominant clergy in society exploiting the poor and perpetuating scholastic thinking against progress. Laiklik destroyed such a system, eliminated the dominance of the clergy and helped science and scientific thinking move to the forefront. In Turkey, there was never such a class of clergy, and no need to push forward another class to replace the clergy. But, if laiklik means a separation between religion and the state, well, it doesn’t exist either. The state regulates religion in Turkey. The Directorate of Religious Affairs is the best example. It is a state institution; imams and preachers are state employees. They receive their salaries from the state. Mosques are state institutions. If there is going to be laiklik, it should be different from what we have. In Fatma’s formulation, laiklik must be attached to democracy: I fully support democracy. I am cognizant of the fact that democracy is what enables me to be here. I am here of my own choice. Democracy enables me to make my own choice for myself. I am fully aware that because of democracy my family respects my right to make a choice. But, I still want to have the right to live in accordance with my belief in God. Democracy should guarantee me that right, laiklik should guarantee that right. I am going to be a math teacher. I am aware that I will only be teaching math to my pupils, not religion. As far as I am concerned, laiklik should be relevant here, not in my choice of clothing. I should not be prevented from my daily prayers. My prayers do not harm anyone. I am not a danger to others. I am very successful at school. I am graduating with the highest grades in my class. I fulfill my responsibilities the best I can. They should not restrict me then because of my dress, please. Fatma conceptualizes democracy in terms of freedom of choice over her self-definition and self-rule. Nurcan, another student, complements this by saying that ‘laiklik needs to be supportive of freedom of religion and conscience, but, unfortunately, we are not able to enjoy it in Turkey. Laiklik in Turkey is used in order to limit the scope of our freedom of expression and choice.’ For these students, laiklik undermines the social–symbolic trust in those individuals with a moral and spiritual orientation towards religion. The students’ conception of freedom is close to Kymlicka’s definition of freedom as the ability to act on present preferences. Will Kymlicka (2001) emphasizes ‘context of choice’ for autonomous


action. The values, preferences, or aspirations of individuals are socially informed, and the ability to make choices is intimately tied up with the cultural conditions of individuals. Students in their critique of statist laiklik emphasize religious values as providing the conditions which define what is significant and meaningful for good decisionmaking. Therefore, such values are essential to secure freedom from state-imposed impediments over their preferences. Kymlicka (2001: 22) calls this the ‘liberal culturalist position’ of citizenship. It asserts that the religious searching of the students I interviewed would be fully consistent with liberal democratic principles in justifying the granting of rights. Kymlicka’s ‘liberal culturalist’ position is about granting special rights to ethno-cultural minorities within a liberal democratic framework of Western European or North American multiculturalism. Although the notion of ‘liberal culturalism’ seems to apply to the headscarf case, the students I interviewed in Turkey are not members of a cultural minority group. Their religious seeking is more a case of citizenship entitlement than a demand for special minority rights. Students integrate into their headscarf conceptions of individual freedom ‘a background conception of what is significant’ (Taylor 1979, quoted in Cunningham 2002: 37). This integration constitutes the basis of a ‘comprehensive democracy’ (Pratap, Priya, and Wallgren 2004) with which people can conceive and act on their own goals in refiguring a way of life, regardless of the purpose in their political or religious practices. The students in my sample refer to religion as ‘a context or framework of the taken-for-granted’ (Taylor 2007: 13). This resonates well with two cases discussed extensively within the multiculturalism context of Canada: the founding of Islamic courts in the civil justice system and the Canadian Supreme Court’s decision regarding the divorce case of an Orthodox Jewish woman. Both cases take religion as a background context in mediating civil disputes over personal and communal matters. The debate on Islamic courts ended with a decision against Islamic religious mediation, but the Jewish woman’s divorce case resulted in the legal enforceability of religious promises by a secular court. A discussion of these cases does not signal a move away from this chapter’s concern with the headscarf issue in Turkey. Quite the contrary. These examples from Canada help us better illustrate the complex relationships between religion and democracy, which entail a whole range of struggles between the state, citizens, and cultural–religious communities. I will briefly summarize these cases to draw comparative conclusions about the argument for the headscarf made by the women in my sample.

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The Canadian debate on Islamic courts The debate began when the auditor of Ontario, Canada wrote in his October 2003 report that there was an urgent need to institute an alternative dispute resolution (ADR) system in Ontario. The urgency resulted from the huge backlog in court cases on civil, family, and religious disputes. The Ontario chief justice at the time was also in support of ADR, a system which was envisaged to carry out dispute resolution within ethnic–cultural communities in a culturally sensitive manner. Lawyer Mumtaz Ali was responsible for creating the ‘Islamic Institute of Civil Justice,’ an ADR platform for Muslims based on religious principles. Opponents of the initiative often referred to the Islamic Institute of Civil Justice as the ‘sharia court.’ However, the first Islamic courts in Canada failed to materialize, as intense controversy and debate prompted the Ontario government to decide against the courts. Marion Boyd, a lawyer from Toronto, was asked by the Ontario government to review the 1990 Arbitration Act which dealt with religious groups settling civil disputes using their own courts. She argued that the government could not allow Jewish courts and forbid Muslim ones; that would be discrimination based on religion (Trevelyan 2004). ADR has been operational in Canada since 1990. For example, an Orthodox Jewish court known as Beth Din has been actively involved throughout North America, dealing with commercial business disputes, matrimonial issues, divorce mediation, and other family disputes. Beth Din means ‘house of judgment’ in Hebrew and refers to a rabbinical Judaic court. The Beth Din makes decisions through rabbinical interpretation of primary sources such as the Torah, the Talmut, and the Midrash. The Canadian system also recognizes the right of Canadian Native communities to resolve disputes in accordance with native spiritual and normative standards. Although an Islamic dispute resolution system never materialized, Canadian Muslims hoped to use the Jewish Beth Din model to introduce Islamic mediation into a recognized court of arbitration within an immigrant multicultural system adopted in the beginning of the 1970s. Canadian multiculturalism has facilitated the transformation of a universalistic perspective of citizenship into a variety of claims for equality on the basis of ‘categorical identities,’ including cultural–religious communities claiming rights (Bourque and Duchastel 1999). The 1982 Charter of Rights and Freedoms contributed to this shift. The institution of ADR through religious community-based dispute mediation courts rests on the Charter’s recognition of cultural rights. Cultural


community rights are explicitly incorporated into the constitutional document (Bourque and Duchastel 1999: 188). The decision to settle disputes through religious courts is a matter of choice. Any decision rendered by religious community courts or a panel of mediators would have to be consistent with the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and subject to state monitoring. For example, in contrast to the American courts and the UK’s practice of English Law, Canadian courts do not enforce decisions made by the Beth Din if they violate the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (Jewish Law Guide). According to early supporters of Islamic courts in Canada, the Islamic ADR could have established a link between a Muslim tradition of arbitration, mediation, and conciliation, and the Canadian context of rights and freedoms discourse. According to Kutty and Kutty (2004), such a link would enable Muslims to rethink and reinterpret Islamic texts in contemporary civil matters to be consistent with a liberal framework of rights and freedoms, and a departure from the patriarchal traditions of Muslim societies. Critics of the Islamic ADR have argued that the ADR assumes claimmaking religious communities to be homogeneous. However, Muslims have immigrated from various countries in the world and do not constitute a culturally, linguistically homogenous community. Also, the ‘categorical rights’ of groups such as women cannot be ignored in making claims for community rights. Gender inequalities and male domination of ethno-cultural community organizations may very well discriminate against women in community-based dispute resolutions as well. Women who go through community arbitration might be socially pressured not to appeal the decision in Canadian courts. Transparency and accountability in ADR decisions might be difficult to monitor by the Canadian courts, resulting in the legitimation of cultural–religious abuse of women within the community. These are all serious concerns. (For a detailed analysis of the complicated relations between gender issues and the construction of Muslimness within the Canadian multicultural context, see Khan 2002.) Opponents of Islamic courts have further argued that Islamic law is inherently unjust. Critics frequently draw examples from Iran, Afghanistan, and Saudi Arabia. Many opponents of the initiative were Iranian-Canadian women and their children who immigrated to Canada after the Islamic revolution. Maryam Namazia, a spokesperson for the International Federation of Iranian Refugees, argued in her international women’s day speech delivered in 2004 that the religion of Islam cannot resolve civil disputes justly. For her, discriminatory family and personal

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status codes in Islam are important pillars used to justify the oppression of women in Muslim societies. She argues that the founding of ‘Sharia courts’ is the extension of a movement ‘that stones women on streets and hangs apostates from cranes on city squares in Iran. . . . It has no right to speak of civil rights and justice. It is itself a pillar of injustice and rightless-ness in the world today’ (Namazia 2004). Similarly, For Azar Majedi, head of the Organization for Women’s Liberation, the founding of an Islamic ADR is the work of a political Islamic movement which aims to establish a separate Islamic republic in Canada. Hence the title of the article she delivered on 8 March 2004, International Women’s Day, was ‘Islamic Sharia court in Canada – Is Canada next?’ She states: When I heard about the sharia court in Canada, I first thought it was a joke. When I realized it was real; that it was really happening, and when I read that soon Islamic courts may become a reality in Canada, I was overwhelmed; I was shocked. It sounded like a fantasy. As a friend [said]: the Islamic Republic of Canada is coming into being. I thought of my friends . . . who escaped one Islamic republic only to end up in another. How many Islamic republics do we have to fight?: One in Iran, one in Afghanistan, . . . the creation of another in Iraq, and now one in Canada. (Majedi 2004) Majedi is also against a role for Islam in the justice system. For her, political Islam is a reactionary and misogynist movement . . . There are many women and men here today who have fled the torture, execution threats, and humiliation of political Islam. For us to see the seeds of an Islamic republic being sown here in Canada is terrifying . . . let me . . . take you back to the 11th of September 2001. As a result of this tragedy . . . the crimes of this brutal movement in Afghanistan and Iran were exposed. (Majedi 2004) Interestingly, opponents of Islamic ADR are generally silent on the other examples of ADR initiatives in Canada. Both Namazia and Majedi have been silent on the Beth Din Orthodox ADR of Canada and support the Native Canadian ADR. Janice Stein, a Jewish woman and professor of Political Science, as well as Director of the Munk Centre of International Relations at the University of Toronto, has described such silence as an


expression of Islamophobia and a double standard (Stein 2008). For Stein, religious mediation, Islamic or otherwise, represents a dilemma for the liberal system when addressing civil cases with a religious component. If one shares the perspective of democracy developed by Tilly (2007), the relationship between ethno-cultural-religious issues and women’s rights in a liberal system raises important concerns about the complications of liberal democracy and democratization which cannot be ignored in a predominantly religious world. (I will come back to this issue later in the chapter.) Instead of confronting the complications of democratization in regard to cultural–religious issues, opponents of Islamic mediation have developed their arguments by referring to the universality of human rights. According to Saeed Rahnema (2006), religious mediation harms the universal rights of all citizens in Canada. He argues that ‘permitting different religious interpretations and practices to extend their authority to the secular Canadian legal system jeopardizes the human rights of many Canadian citizens, particularly women.’ Rahnema (2006) has even claimed that ‘Canadian democracy and its social cohesion will be in danger if religious encroachments into the constitutional legal system are not confronted . . . [by] secular, democratic voices who [have] . . . respect for citizens’ rights as guaranteed by the Charter and the Constitution.’ Although Rahnema appeals to the liberal democratic principles of freedom and equality which are reflected in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), he neglects to address complications arising from the ‘dilemma of liberalism’ in terms of cultural–religious issues. My aim here is not to defend the founding of Islamic courts in Canada but to draw conclusions from this experiment for rethinking the complex relationship between individual rights, religious/cultural rights, and the institution of a more comprehensive understanding of democracy as a way of life. The case of the Canadian Jewish woman’s divorce examined below illustrates this complex relationship more fully.

Freedom of religion and the Canadian Supreme Court In the divorce case between Stephanie Brenda Bruker and Jessel Benjamin Marcovitz the Canadian Supreme Court ruled in favour of religious rights in a civil matter. The couple were Orthodox religious Jews and had married according to the norms of Orthodox Judaism in Montreal in 1969. They divorced in a civil court in 1980. The couple agreed in civil divorce proceedings that they would also receive a religiously sanctioned Jewish divorce (get) from a tribunal of rabbis (Beth

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Din). Without the issuance of get a woman cannot remarry within the Jewish religious community and her children will be considered illegitimate. For 15 years, Marcovitz refused to appear before a Beth Din for the issuance of a get. After she obtained her religiously sanctioned divorce in 1995, Bruker decided to open a case in a Canadian court for damages caused by her ex-husband who delayed a religious divorce for 15 years. Damages included compensation for her being unable to remarry and have legitimate children according to the Jewish faith. The Canadian court granted her an award of $47,500 plus interest in 2003 on the basis of a breach of contract, regardless of its religious content. This was despite Markovitz’s argument that the Beth Din constituted a moral obligation and not a legal one. Markovitz insisted that he was protected by his right to freedom of religion from having to pay damages for his breach. The case went to the Quebec Court of Appeal in 2005 which ruled that Marcovitz’s breach of contract was religious in nature and thus not enforceable within a secular court system (Baum 2007). In 2007, the Supreme Court of Canada upheld a $47,500 award to the woman. Madame Justice Rosalie Abella wrote that the consequences to women deprived of a get and loyal to their faith are severe . . . They may not remarry within their faith, even though civilly divorced. If they do remarry, children from a second civil marriage are considered illegitimate and restricted from practicing their religion . . . [Justice Abella argued that] any harm to the husband’s religious freedom in requiring him to pay damages for unilaterally breaching his commitment, is significantly outweighed by the harm caused by his unilateral decision not to honour it. (CBC News 14 December 2007) In short, the Supreme Court of Canada decided on a breach of a religious promise and upheld the enforcement of religious rights of the woman spelled out in a private religious contract agreed within the framework of Beth Din. Without a religiously sanctioned get, the woman is considered a ‘chained wife’ under Jewish religious law and deprived of the right to remarry. The case means that secular courts have the power to rule on breaches of religious promises (CBC News 14 December 2007). The ruling thus sets a precedent on the legal enforcement of promises of religious rights that remains binding within a secular jurisdiction. The two examples drawn from Canada show the complications of liberal democracy in regard to civil matters with religious dimensions. Although the founding of Islamic courts was never realized, Jewish


courts continue to operate. This is a practice that masks discrimination based on religion. Nevertheless, this also frames a context in which the religious rights of individuals as promised in a private religious contract have become legally enforceable. The Canadian cases illustrate that secular state practices regarding civil matters interact continuously with religious issues. A comparative look at the two cases also points to the discriminatory political and social conditions that are pertinent to the general workings and complexities of liberal democracy.

Back to the Turkish headscarf issue: Democratization, trust, trustworthiness, and respect The headscarf ban in Turkey has now entered into an impasse between two polar positions over the secularity of the public space. Both the Turkish state and the ECHR argue that the headscarf ban does not violate freedom of religion and conscience, and that the state has the right to overrule religious freedoms in order to protect the laik order. However, the students I interviewed insist that the state should be accountable for respecting their freedom of religion and conscience. For them, normative religious values should be respected and recognized in a modern, laik, and democratic society. The students in my sample refer to the headscarf ban as a public policy that harms their choice to live religiously. According to the students, the harm encompasses a range of issues: fundamental freedoms, freedom of expression and religion, equality of conditions for the right to education and employment in the public sector, and psychological damage to personhood and personal self-growth. These issues point to state– citizen relations that define the context of public politics in Turkey. The students whose views I have documented wish to integrate conceptions of freedoms and rights with ‘a background conception of what is significant’ for them as human beings in the organization of their social lives. Their desire to take religion as a background reference point suggests that they wish to rework the statist practices of laiklik in redefining the context of citizen–state relations. Central to this reworking is the shaping of the values and norms of Muslim living in a secular context. The reworking of laiklik requires critical thinking and a serious political debate on the multidimensionality of engagement between religious and secular ways. It includes a rethinking of the practices of the Kemalist state and Islamic normative standards in the social context of secularism. The issue here is the historical variability in state–citizen relations. A debate on the context of public politics should reflect on the ethos

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of engagement between Islamic and secular ways of social life. A framework should be worked out in a way that individuals can participate fully in public life, regardless of the political and religious differences in practicing religious obligations. This is a serious debate that calls into question the historical unchangeability assumed in the connections between the sovereignty of the state and state practices of laiklik. To make such an assumption complicates the struggle between citizens and the state to reach a negotiated consensus on the headscarf issue. The question of ‘democracy for which groups?’ remains a concern that needs to put civil issues that have religious content into the complicated negotiations and policy adjustments of the democratic process. This question remains significant not only in Turkey, which has a strong political legacy of state-centrism, but also in Canada which has a long-established history of liberal democracy. Although they have different political–cultural backgrounds, discrimination based on religiously complicated civil issues continues to masquerade both in Turkey and in Canada as universally accessible democracy. Tilly’s (2007) analysis of the processes that make democratization and de-democratization more likely to occur in a national society offers important insights into the interaction between religious concerns and public politics. Tilly argues that democratization and de-democratization interact with the changing ‘state capacity’ to supervise democratic decision-making and to put those decisions into practice. Tilly (2007: 16) defines state capacity as ‘the extent to which interventions of state agents in existing non-state resources, activities, and interpersonal connections alter existing distributions of those resources, activities, and interpersonal connections as well as relations among those distributions.’ Low-capacity, weak states are unlikely to be effective in making and enforcing democratic decisions, in monitoring public politics, and in dealing with security issues. High-capacity states extend states’ monitoring and intervention throughout the territory and population (Tilly 2007: 20). Turkey is a high-capacity state, with relatively strong grass-roots organizations, social movements, political party mobilization, competitive elections, and interest group activity. Therefore, it has the potential to institute a high-capacity democratic state. However, in terms of the extensive involvement by the state military and bureaucratic forces in public politics, Turkey approaches the model of a high-capacity undemocratic state. I argue that in order to reach a negotiated consensus on complicated public policy issues concerning the relationship between the Islamic


headscarf and laik culture, it is fundamental to make the state both democratic and more capacious. According to Tilly (2007: 23), the fundamental processes promoting democratization and de-democratization consist of the increasing integration of trust networks (such as religious membership) into public politics, the increasing insulation of public politics from categorical inequalities (such as gender, religion, class, and ethnicity), and the decreasing autonomy of major coercive power centres (such as armies and religious institutions) from public politics. Tilly (2007: 80–105) contends that trust is a necessary condition for linking negotiations, struggles, and policy adjustments to the democratization of the state. In a trust relationship, at least one party places valued enterprises at risk to the errors, failures, or malfeasance of another party. The students I interviewed contend that the headscarf ban is premised on a fundamental distrust of their political motivations and aspirations by the state and state agents. In turn, women who wear the Islamic headscarf have little trust in the state and the EU as well, for not respecting their freedom of choice and rights to equality. The ban sustains the ‘categorical inequality’ of Islamic women based on their observance of religious obligations in public space. The contentious politics of the headscarf ban in Turkey revolves around deliberations of trust and risk. Islamic women want the state to trust them while state agents deliberate on the risks of lifting the ban. Tilly’s (2005, 2007) work on trust points to a fundamental relationship that is significant for democratization in Turkey – one that could be promoted through the integration of Islamic women and their concerns over the headscarf into a consultative process of public politics. Any changes that might occur from this would rest on Islamic women’s engagement and interaction with the state, which could produce a negotiated consent. However, withdrawal or exclusion from the consultation process carries a higher risk for the growth of trust networks in transforming power reconfigurations outside the state consultative mechanism. As I show below, with little or no respect granted to Islamic individuals, it is highly unlikely that trust can become part of the relations between Islamic individuals and state agents. I suggest that Tilly’s analysis needs to be supplemented by the concept of respect (Sennett 2003). In terms of the relationship between democracy and trust, the Islamic women I interviewed described strong feelings of resentment against the headscarf ban for restricting their full self-realization. They resent the fact that they are not recognized for the choices they make in managing their social life and they continue to search for social respect.

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Richard Sennett (2003) has conceptualized respect as fundamental to experiences of social relations and the self. It addresses an expressive life in which human beings are treated as equals. The critical yardsticks of respect include: status, which refers to where a person stands in a social–cultural hierarchy; prestige, which refers to emotions which status arouses in others; recognition, which conveys mutuality; and honour, which proposes first a code of conduct and second a signalling of a kind of erasure of social boundaries and distance (Sennett 2003: 53–6). If we rethink Islamic women’s experiences from the perspective of respect offered by Sennett, respecting women who wear the Islamic headscarf would include honouring and recognizing their personal choices for seeking religion. It would also include admitting their claims of individual freedoms and rights, permitting them to ‘participate more actively in the conditions of their own care’ (Sennett 2003: 261), and acknowledging their right to self-realization as equals within the status and prestige hierarchy of the Kemalist state. Conceived in this way, relations of democratization must include respect (Sennett 2003) as much as trust (Tilly 2005, 2007). Democratization cannot simply be imagined to occur by following and applying a single, strict set of rules. The relationship between respect, trust, and democracy has to be negotiated. Democratization must involve a ‘negotiated consent.’ According to Sennett (2003: 260), the negotiation engages the complexities of personhood as much as social structure. With little respect and trust granted to Islamic individuals, the foundations of democracy appear to be depreciating in Turkey. One of the woman I interviewed, a self-described housewife named Sebahat, relayed an interesting personal experience which illustrates a growing social tension over existential concerns relating to the headscarf issue. Her experience occurred in a military-run shopping centre. The shopping centre sells subsidized goods to the families of military personnel, currently employed or retired, and to others accompanied by a person who has a membership. Sebahat’s neighbour and friend is married to a retired army officer and therefore has a membership at the shopping centre. This neighbour took Sebahat and her mother-in-law to the military-run shopping centre for an afternoon outing. Sebahat and her mother-in-law wear the headscarf, but their friend does not. Sebahat’s headscarf is in the turban style while the mother-in-law’s is a traditional basortusu. Soldiers are stationed at the gate of the centre and monitor visitors by checking their identification cards at the entrance. Both the friend and the mother-in-law passed the gates and entered


the centre but Sebahat was refused. The mother-in-law and the friend questioned the soldiers about their refusal of Sebahat’s entry. One soldier answered in the following manner: This mother’s headscarf is tied in a religious way, like my mother’s, under the chin. Look at the needles in the headscarf of this woman. She has covered her hair like the turbanli students. We have directives from our authorities and we cannot accept women with such a turban to enter the centre. After this response from the soldier, Sebahat insisted that her motherin-law and friend continue with their shopping, but in solidarity with Sebahat they refused to shop there and left the centre. During the interview Sebahat revealed a sense of despair. She told me: It is not the fault of the soldiers. My son will be a soldier soon. He will also be asked to refuse people like me. I am a mother with three children. My husband is a very low-paid public employee. The only thing I am concerned about is how to find cheaper sale items. That’s why I went to the centre to shop. That shop sells things cheaply because of the taxes we pay but we cannot even shop there. Look at this double standard. The military eats the honey of this country. We pay for it, but we cannot even go to their bloody shops. Sebahat clearly resented the fact that she was targeted for being untrustworthy, although the military’s distrust was not based on her actions. And there was no deliberation on her past and present history. Trust was withdrawn from her not because of objective considerations obtained about her political or Islamic engagements. After all, the mother-in-law was also wearing a headscarf. The military’s decision derives from an instant ‘assessment’ of the style of the headscarf. Because of the way Sebahat wore her scarf it was defined as a turban. And thus she was automatically given the label of untrustworthy. Another woman whom I interviewed relayed a similar story of an incident in which she was deemed untrustworthy. Selma, who wears her headscarf in a turban style, went to her daughter’s graduation ceremony at Ankara University. Her daughter, who does not cover her hair, graduated second in her class in the Department of Space Sciences. Selma was refused entrance to the university because of her headscarf. She was told that if she wants to observe her daughter’s graduation she has to change her headscarf style and tie it under the chin. This is what she

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did to make her scarf fit the definition of basortusu. In the interview, she told me: I don’t care about their rules and regulations. I just went there as a visitor to see my daughter receive her diploma. I didn’t go there to change their rules, but they treated me as if I am a terrorist. I was not a student, just a visiting mother, but they forced me to change the style of my cover on the street . . . humiliating me like that at the door! Am I not a citizen? A bunch of ridiculous people is making these stupid, ridiculous rules. And we have to comply with them! Not only was Selma annoyed but she was also upset that the gatekeepers of the university questioned her fundamental trustworthiness by making a snap judgement based on the style she adopted to cover her hair. Aysegul, another self-defined housewife, gave me an example of being harassed on a public bus: When we were riding on a public bus, a middle-aged woman who was also wearing a headscarf began to shout that ‘I know why you are covering yourselves this way. Your husbands are pressuring you. Don’t worry, we will help you,’ as if we are asking for her help. They keep calling us turbanli. They pity us. They see us as if we are chained. I feel that we are treated as second-class citizens, like slaves, the way blacks are treated in America. Mine, also a self-described housewife, told me the following: Some friends and I, from time to time, visit historical sites in Turkey. We need to see and appreciate our treasures. We have a beautiful country. Anyway, we were visiting an old historical mosque in Bursa. I also had my daughter with me on that trip. My daughter covers her hair. There was a group of older people visiting the mosque as well. My daughter asked one man to take our picture. After he took our pictures, he asked if she was a student. Once she said yes, he said that he couldn’t reconcile her turban with her level of education. He said what a pity, I am so sorry for you. He probably thought that we were uneducated and pressured into wearing the headscarf by our husbands. [Her emphasis] Therefore, he didn’t say anything to us. But, he thought that my educated daughter should not wear it at all, that she should be freed from the turban. Isn’t it funny? I have


a university diploma in engineering. But this man thought, without knowing anything about me, that I must be uneducated and pressured by my husband. I cannot be my own person. This is the kind of society we are living in. Hatice, a student in my sample, explained that she too has being stigmatized for not fitting the expectations others have of an educated woman, merely because of her headscarf. Even strangers on the streets tell her that she is too young to be religious. They question her decision and frequently ask ‘why don’t you enjoy your youth? You can do it later; you are too young for that. Why do you wear that thing? What are you trying to do?’ For Hatice, these sorts of questions reveal that her decision to wear a symbol of her religiosity is not respected and that her motivation is often suspect. The above quotations illustrate how trust was withdrawn from these women on the basis of general references to laik cultural rules pertaining to the secularity of public space. Piotr Sztompka (1999: 69) defines trust as ‘a bet on the future contingent actions of others.’ As argued by Luhmann (1979: 33, quoted in Sztompka 1999: 69), ‘the clues employed to form trust do not eliminate the risk . . . They do not supply complete information about the likely behaviour of the person to be trusted. They simply serve as a springboard for the leap into uncertainty.’ For Sztompka, granting trust is based on an estimate of the trustworthiness of others in the relationship. The estimation of trustworthiness in consideration of conferring trust may be epistemological, based on consideration of information obtained about the future possible engagement of individuals. Or, it may be genealogical, based on knowledge derived from the past history of relationships. Or, it may be based on cultural demands and pressures over what is acceptable and worthy. Sztompka (1999: 70) calls this the ‘culture of trust.’ An estimation of trustworthiness is common in all three considerations of granting trust. In the trust/distrust culture of Turkey’s laiklik, the style of headscarf adopted by women is used as a clue to make epistemological judgements about the risk that women pose to the system. This is well illustrated by a discussion which I observed between a man and a woman who wears the headscarf. I have named the woman Asuman, and the man Zafer. The woman is a store manager from my sample of professional woman, and the man is a jeweller. The man was distrustful of the woman’s intentions, so distrustful, in fact, that he even questioned the sincerity of her religiosity. The woman and man are

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relatives who met each other at the house of another relative of theirs. I observed their conversation while they were playing a friendly card game at home. All the women in the game were wearing a basortusu, tied under the chin, except Asuman whose coverage is defined as a turban. Since they were close relatives none of the women was covering their hair at home. I was invited to play the game as well. The discussion started with Zafer asking Asuman why she covers her hair the way she does. Zafer: ‘my wife, sisters, and your mother also cover their hair with a basortusu. They don’t make any fuss about it, and nobody questions them. Why are you wearing a turban?’ Asuman: ‘I cover my hair because of my belief in Islam. I am just trying to fulfill my religious obligations.’ Zafer: ‘There are only five pillars of Islam. Wearing a headscarf is not one of them. You don’t need to wear a turban to be a Muslim.’ Asuman: ‘yes it is not part of the five pillars of Islam; it nevertheless is an obligation.’ Zafer: ‘Do you do your daily prayers? Namaz [daily prayers that Muslims are required to do five times a day] is the most important pillar of Islam.’ Asuman: ‘Sometimes I do, but I am not doing it regularly.’ Zafer: ‘Namaz is part of the Islamic five pillars. If you are so concerned about being a good Muslim, why don’t you fulfill the most important pillar of Islam.’ Asuman: ‘Woman’s coverage is not a pillar but an obligation. And, I am trying to fulfill my responsibilities.’ Zafer: ‘If it is the case, first you must pray. The rest is just odds and ends.’ The conversation went back and forth. Asuman tried to show that the Koran contains many references to the importance of woman’s coverage. Zafer kept questioning her religious sincerity. Because she does not regularly perform her daily prayers, which is part of the five pillars of Islam, her religious motivation for wearing what Zafer calls a ‘turban’ is questioned. The debate reaches an impasse and Zafer accuses her of being stubborn and disrespectful: ‘You always think that you know it all. You never accept other people’s opinions. You never consider the possibility of being wrong but you are wrong in this case. The turban is not an Islamic pillar. If you are so concerned about performing your religious duties, you must do your namaz.’ The conversation ended with


Asuman leaving the table very upset and crying, although she hid her tears from others in the group. She was heartbroken for being questioned about her sincerity and for not being respected. After a while she came back, acted as if nothing happened, and the card game resumed. Zafer did not apologize to her, nor did she say anything else on the matter. This was not an isolated case, and I have observed many similar instances in Turkey. For example, among the professional women I interviewed who do not cover their hair, the teacher and the economist also questioned the religious sincerity of women who adopt the turban style. These professional women said that they fulfil their religious obligations as required by the Islamic five pillars but the headscarf is not one of them. For them, the Islamic headscarf symbolizes women’s involvement in political Islam. They simply do not trust the intentions of turbanli women. Some of the men I interviewed (the two school teachers and the head of the adult public education centre – all state employees) also expressed their suspicion of covered women. They contend that a good Muslim, either woman or man, has to be sincere, kind-hearted, good natured and mannered, but the display of religious conviction by wearing a headscarf is not necessarily an indication of religiosity. Interestingly, however, this description of a good Muslim is shared by women who wear the headscarf. One of the professors of theology whom I call T.A. also believes that the headscarf is used for political reasons. For him, students who wear it are rebelling against the state and simply don’t want to accept the state’s ruling. The other professor whom I call S.F. disagreed. According to S.F., the rebellion is not against the state but against a specific decision. For T.A., it is against whoever made the decision, including the Council of Higher Education (YOK), which is a state agent. Since the state is behind the decision, student opposition is perceived to be against the state. According to him, this is the source of the unease in society. They both agreed that the students should open their hair and continue their education but without forgetting that they are Muslims. T.A. justified his argument by stating: Our religion requires education. Let’s say the headscarf is also a religious obligation. Religion requires both education and the headscarf. The state forbids one of these religious requirements. Which one do you choose? You will choose to open your hair because education is more important than covering the hair. In the Koran, there is no explicit requirement for covering the hair but there is for the bosom.

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Hair coverage is a tradition. The meaning of Koranic verses should be decided in terms of their emphasis. The Koran emphasizes coverage of the bosom. Hair coverage is not Allah’s order. Open or cover you hair, it is up to you. Either way is permissible. The religious sincerity of these women has been seriously questioned. But none of the women I interviewed who wear the Islamic headscarf made reference to the foundational pillars of Islam to justify their head cover. They all said that it is a symbol of women’s modesty and a religious obligation which some women choose to observe. Yet they do not question the religious conviction of other women who choose not to wear the headscarf. For example, the social worker in my sample of professional women, whom I call Deniz, said that she knows many women who do not cover their hair but live consistently within the Islamic rules of modesty. ‘They do not wear revealing or tight dresses. They don’t wear mini skirts, short sleeved tops, or tight pants. They don’t drink alcohol.’ She covered her hair only a year ago, and her life remains similar to that of other women. She still enjoys a very active social life, eating out, going to concerts in the evenings. According to Deniz, many women in Turkey without a hair cover still behave modestly and unpretentiously in public life. Deniz described her hair coverage as rooted in her faith and the decision to live religiously – a decision which should not be questioned but respected as a matter of personal choice. All the covered women I interviewed expressed this same sentiment. Mehmet, a social worker from my sample of professional men, argued that modesty is an important aspect of Islamic morality that is expected of both women and men. Head covering is an aspect of women’s modesty, but women who wear the headscarf may not necessarily live in accordance with the Islamic meaning of modesty. For Mehmet, modesty is a moral manifestation of faith in the existence of the other world after death. Belief in the other world comes with a belief in accountability. We will be rewarded or punished on the basis of what we have done here. I need to observe, critically think, and intellectually be convinced of the idea of accountability. Once I am convinced, I can refigure my life here. This is what modesty is about. For Mehmet, the meaning of modesty is rooted in the idea that human beings are only guests in this world:


You see a river, leading to a lake in which there is a huge whale swimming. The first question to ask is what the whale is doing here. It should be in the ocean not in a lake. Humans are like whales. We do not belong to this world. I am not talking about rejection of the world at all. Only when we are able to link our existence in this world with the other, can we properly fit in here, just as the whale must find an outlet to the ocean where it lives. Similarly, Deniz describes modesty as an expression of faith that permits a believer to link this world to the other. ‘This world is a place for us to enjoy what has been created and made available for us. But, we need to learn how to say “thank you.” The Islamic concept of accountability is an expression of gratitude for the gifts given to us to enjoy without being self-indulgent.’ Deniz and Mehmet argue that many women in Turkey cover their hair to imitate other covered women. Deniz offered an example of her neighbour’s 15-years-old daughter who recently covered herself: I asked her ‘what are you doing? What is this?’ She said that she decided to wear the headscarf because many of her friends cover themselves and she doesn’t want to be the only one who is not covered. I tried to explain to her that this is not a good reason at all but she did not understand me. Deniz and Mehmet argue for modesty as a concept and practice grounded in faith and devotion. This requires making sense of the religious meaning of modesty by being learned. For them, the headscarf is not primarily about being religious, nor is it an indication of being a good Muslim. Similarly, T.A., the professor of theology, describes a good Muslim as being learned: Being learned is the highest form of religious worship. It is as important as namaz. Thus, a good Muslim will be trustworthy, hardworking, and reflective of his or her actions. You need to think, reflect, and interpret the meaning of your actions. This cannot be done by imitating others. In the West, they also reflect on the meaning of their actions but only for the purpose of realizing their own self-interest. In Islam, reflection cannot be directed towards maximization of self-interest. You cannot imitate this. You need to allow people to think and reflect on things. Unfortunately, we don’t have freedom of thought and conscious reflection in Turkey.

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The emphasis on being learned by critically thinking and reflecting on the meaning of faith and devotion is widely accepted by my respondents. This draws attention to the significance of Islamic pedagogy in changing the normative conditions of Muslim practices through the cultivation of a deeper, broader social imagery for Islamic women. Fatma, a student in my sample, articulated this emphasis on being learned through a concept of Islam hanimefendisi (Islamic lady): When they look at us they should be able to see that we live the religion of Islam. We should have a different flair in our look. In addition to striving towards being a good mother, wife, and educator in our personal lives, we should also strive towards enriching our intellectual capacity. Rather than remaining in the domesticity of our homes, we need to build our capacity in the sciences and other professions. We need to strengthen and live our faith; our work in the sciences should help us to find Allah as the creator of the best. We need to identify with Islamic morals. An Islam hanimefendisi is covered, and still elegant and well dressed, respectful, and respected. She organizes her life according to faith and not by imitation. She is a trustworthy woman with good manners, sincerity, and decency. These are among the personality traits cultivated through Islam. They are also essential aspects of our own culture. These traits indicate our civility. I try to live like this. This is my desire. In order to be a hanimefendi, the headscarf is unnecessary. There are many women in our society who embody Islamic principles of decency, modesty and civility. Some wear the headscarf and some don’t. Sevgi, the lawyer in my sample of professional women, does not even consider the question of whether women who do not cover their hair behave modestly in public life in a manner consistent with Islamic norms. Women, Islamic or otherwise, can wear whatever they want. However, for Tugba, the doctor in my sample, covered women have been put under a microscope: They have been constantly tested, examined, and questioned whether or not their style of dress or public behaviour fits into what they expect from a religious woman. Even if there is a small, tiny diversion from what is perceived as religious we will be seen as insincere Muslims. For example, if I wear pants, even though they are loose and the hip curves covered with a longer tunic, I will be questioned for diverting from religion. This form of dress is still modest


and consistent with Islam. Other women also wear these kinds of dress to be more modest in society, but nobody questions if they are Muslim or not. For the women I interviewed who wear the headscarf, the religion of Islam cultivates ‘a regulative sensibility’ (Mahmood 2005: 47) through its values, norms and standards in shaping one’s conduct in domestic and social life, including employment, education, and other social activities. For them, the Islamic regulative sensibility is constitutive of a Turkish culture already shared by many in Turkey. According to these women, religion is not relegated to a distinct, separate sphere. It is regulative of moral, ethical sensibilities in daily life experience. Both the women and men I interviewed made reference to modesty in relation to a set of norms and values that reveal a viewpoint on refiguring the regulative aspects of social life. This entails making Islamic teaching an integral part of moral education. For Mehmet, this includes cultivating values which avoid deception and lies, being trustworthy, learning to share, being respectful of others, being grateful, and so on. For him, these qualities are integral to Turkish sensibilities. All my respondents share this view regardless of their support for the Islamic headscarf. Therefore, those who support wearing the headscarf are convinced that the current obsession with it is not rooted in opposition to religion or religious sensibilities. It is based on the power plays of class conflict and regional contention between the newly emerging classes of small Anatolian cities and historically dominant groups from large cities. This is expressed by Esra who sees the pursuit of a religious sensibility as part of the very nature of Turkey’s social change story: those who do not want people like us to achieve prominent positions in society resort to the ban. If we achieve higher positions in society with a religious sensibility, we will be potentially transformative of the political practices of the state. That is why they constantly use an iron fist with us. It cannot go on like this. We are thirsty for democracy. And there should be reconciliation. For the professors of theology and the former graduate of the Faculty of Theology in my sample, reconciliation is only possible through the pedagogical work of cognitively embedding the democratic rights of individuals within society. According to S.F.,

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there should first of all be an agreement on the legitimacy of the questions raised about the lack of freedom of thought and conscious reflection. The state and state agents cannot indulge in such pedagogical training. In order to have social harmony we need to have learned individuals. The state works within a command-order hierarchy; the state wants slaves. We are part of the educational system which enslaves individuals. You cannot expect a democrat from the enslaved. We do our scholarly work only within the limits allowed by the state. It is very difficult to achieve social reconciliation. The jeweller-lawyer in my sample, whom I call Osman, acts exactly in the way that the women I interviewed complain about – placing them under close ideological scrutiny and questioning their motivation. In contrast to the professors, Osman sees freedom of thought and conscious reflection as a dangerous move. He simply defines the actions of women who wear the headscarf as political. For him, the turban is the political flag of a reactionary Islamic movement. He views women who wear the Islamic headscarf as part of a movement which aims to turn Turkey into an Iranian-style theocracy. Osman earnestly claimed that he was not against women covering their hair, nor against them performing religious duties. In fact, he described his mother as a very sincere religious woman who regularly performed her daily prayers. She also wore a basortusu. However, for him, the turban is not religious at all. These turbanli students are not religious. They show every contour of their body. You can easily see the curves of their breasts when they walk on the streets. They are simply orospu (whores). Their numbers keep going up because the younger students are imitating the dressing style of these orospu. These harsh words, although unfortunate, show the extent of social tension. For Osman, the granting of rights to these women is dangerous. He acknowledges that the headscarf ban may be violating the principles of freedom of religion and conscience, but he believes Turkey cannot trust Islamic people. Therefore, for him, democracy is a luxury for Turkey. If you let these people, they will turn Turkey into Iran. They hate Ataturk and his principles. They say that they want greater freedoms and rights, but if you give them the freedoms and rights, the first thing they will do is to get rid of the freedoms and the rights of others. EU membership is not a good idea


either. The EU pushes for democracy which encourages these fanatics who hide behind the mask of democratic rights. Turkey needs a strong army. The military should crush them before it is too late. But the military does not want to appear as though they are the ones who are against democracy. The EU will never take Turkey as a member anyway; I think the military should forget about the EU and behave the way it must. With little respect and trust in the relationship between democracy and inequality, which Tilly (2007) contends is vital for democratization, Osman favours the social inequality that is sustained within the Kemalist cultural hierarchy. He freely accepts the lower status and prestige granted to Islamic segments of society. Osman also supports military intervention in politics rather than democratization to ensure the persistence of the cultural hierarchy. His distrust of religiously inspired individuals and groups prevents him from fully supporting democracy, which requires greater participation of individuals, including religious individuals, in the public sphere on a more egalitarian basis. Interestingly, Mehmet, the social worker, and Nedim, the shoemaker, argued against the removal of the headscarf ban even though they support women wearing the Islamic scarf. Contrary to Osman, who distrusts and disrespects Islamic individuals, Mehmet and Nedim argue that the idea of respecting the principles of human rights and freedoms, equality, and social justice is not well established in Turkey. According to Nedim, as long as disrespect and distrust of differences continue to influence norms and standards of behaviour, the removal of the ban will cause social unrest. For Mehmet, the root problem of this disrespect and distrust is the educational system which neglects responsible moral development. The issues of personal self-growth and self-rule have been suppressed because of the bureaucratic fear of producing unintended consequences for the state. As a result, Turkey’s pedagogy is guided by a social imagery of state bureaucrats in which the individual display of certain behaviours is seen as unacceptable. Although neither Mehmet nor Nedim has read Tilly or Sennett, they both argue that the display of differences is only possible within a political context anchored in principles of mutual trust (Tilly) and respect (Sennett). For Nedim, moral maturity, modesty, and decency are all fundamental features of an understanding of democracy that is grounded in culture as a way of social life. The development of such an argument has meant the strengthening of a connection between pedagogical and political processes in a more

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comprehensive social change programme. This programme is widely embraced by Islamic groups as a search for more comprehensive rights and freedoms. For others, it is construed as a search for an Islamic moral order that assaults Kemalist laik principles of the state. The ultimate manner in which the tension between these groups plays itself out remains to be seen. Whatever the eventual outcome, the case of Turkey offers a rare and unique opportunity to witness the ongoing relationship between secularism, Islam and democracy as constituent elements in the ongoing process of state transformation today.

8 Conclusion

This book has examined state transformation in Turkey by focusing on the intersection between knowledge cultures and the globalized frames of neoliberalism. The work brings together the historical complexities that have emerged from the nineteenth-century ‘secular’ reorganization of the Ottoman state to the present ‘Islamic’ reconstituting of the Kemalist laik state. These complexities are revealed through the diverse political orientations, normative measures, standards and practices that exist under a global market economy. In studying the long history of the interplay between secular-laik and Islamic politics in Turkey, my primary aim has been to uncover how such relations interact with the global conditions of historical capitalism. Turkey’s current bid for EU membership links the ways in which participation in the neoliberal market economy and moral/cultural claims are conceived. This is similar to the nineteenth-century Ottoman bid for the adoption of European ways. The incorporation of globalized, normative practices of the market economy and liberalism into an Islamic framing of state reconstitution in Turkey indicates that Islam had long been a part of a complicated plurality in the political reorganization of the global economy. Framing Islamic politics in this way allows us to unravel meaningdriven schemas beyond a state-centric understanding of cultures as homogeneous and nations as a territorial encasement of these cultures. The move beyond state territoriality as a reference point for politics comes down to a critical approach to an epistemology of statecentrism that has dominated social sciences since the late nineteenth century. This shift also challenges essentializing conceptual frameworks of global politics that describe Islam in reified terms as an abstract, self-evident category. Moving beyond a research strategy which conceptualizes Islamic politics, cultures, and global conditions as self-evident 239

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categories poses the specific challenge of detecting, as argued by Saskia Sassen (2007a: 9), how local/national conditions articulate with global dynamics in a way that social relations are continually reconfigured and restructured in space. In dealing with such a challenge, the present work is an attempt to grasp historical contingency rather than construct a formal, abstract conceptual category of state reconstitution detached from historically specific social processes. This is crucial if we are to demonstrate that ‘in history there are divergent manifestations of a singular process,’ and if we are to perceive the unity in diversity without reifying either (McMichael 1990: 396). The methodology adopted in this book offers a historical rethinking of the state-centric territorial politics on the forces of capital and citizens, and on political power between and within states. Through such a methodological rethinking, the book ‘turns to societal forces’ (Atasoy 2009b: 2) in order to examine state reconstitution as a complex, historically specific process. Raising questions about an ‘epistemology of state centrism’ (Brenner 1999: 45), the current Islamic state restructuring in Turkey is understood as a geo-political, geo-economic, and geo-cultural project of change from within and outside. Having traversed a lengthy and complicated history of Turkey from the late Ottoman Empire to the present, I am now in a position to assert that Islam’s marriage with neoliberalism today undermines the connection between state sovereignty, ‘as a measure of actual power’ (Rosenberg 1994: 131), and Kemalist laiklik, historically established during the ‘national era’ of what Beck (2000) calls the ‘first modernity.’ Presented as an ontological feature of social life under ‘modernity,’ the Kemalist connection between state sovereignty and laiklik expresses the central assumption of the first modernity – that ‘we live and act in the self-enclosed spaces of national states and their respective national societies’ (Beck 2000: 20, emphasis original). In conveying an Enlightenmentbased frame of reference, the Kemalist state embodies a representation of the first modernity’s ‘methodological nationalism’ (A.D. Smith 1979: 191, quoted in Beck 2000: 21) which is trapped in the Westphalian system of situating sovereignty in territorially encaged national jurisdictions of socio-economic and politico–cultural relations (Brenner 1999; Mann 1993; P. Taylor 2003). The Islamic reconstitution of the state is premised on the meaning and consequences for human life of the ruling relations of Kemalist entrapment within a ‘container theory of society’ (P. Taylor 2003), one which assumes a territorially bounded space of social relations defined and controlled by the state.

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An Islamic reworking of the Kemalist configuration of the first modernity presents us with a complicated story of a marriage between Islam and neoliberalism that creates the conditions for an ethicopolitical societal mobilization. This mobilization articulates a discourse of human rights based on an ethics of justice and human dignity rooted in divine power, frequently supplemented by liberal–democratic concepts of individual freedoms and rights. An ethic of human rights frames an Islamic deontological approach to self-definition and the right to live within a particular moral, cultural, and spiritual orientation. In this sense, the Islamic human rights approach constitutes an instance of the historical development of ‘an ethic of citizenship governed by human rights’ rather than the principle of national self-determination (McMichael 2009: 25). This unravels the Kemalist ontology and separates the notion of sovereignty from statist laiklik as a generalized feature of social life. And yet, the unravelling of Kemalism is historically specific to the world-historical processes and power relations of neoliberal capitalist restructuring. This book has stressed Islam’s role in transforming the state as a historically specific deployment of ethico-political and pedagogical strategies for reconfiguring the material and discursive relations of neoliberalism. The Islamic reworking of the state is occurring as a historical outcome of Turkey’s integration into the globalized economic, political, and normative frameworks of neoliberalism regionally centred on the EU. Still, this reworking remains a deeply contentious product of the complicated and contradictory relations of the historically specific state project of Kemalism. The twenty-first-century Islamic mobilization of newly rich capitalists from the Anatolian hinterland, the growing concern of women over the headscarf ban, the emergence of Kurdish claims to cultural rights, and the rise of Islamic religious groups have all occurred largely by reference to social injustices inflicted by the Kemalist state. As a historically specific project, Kemalist state formation took place within the general international conjuncture of the Great Depression of 1929 and the resulting state protectionism in the world economy. But the Kemalist state was distinct from fascist and Stalinist states, which were historically rooted in managing the class relations of an industrial economy as a protective, albeit varied, response to the institutions and destructive effects of a laissez-faire economy (Polanyi 1944). The Kemalist state was about instituting an industrial economy when the global free-trade system was collapsing, rather than being a protective response to the laissez-faire economy, as described by Polanyi.

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In instituting an industrial economy, Kemalism legitimized its politico– regulatory strategies by an appeal to the notion of progress rooted in European techno-scientific universalism. Aiming to create a national class of private industrialists, state bureaucrats emerged as the possessors of the state, equipped with political and economic power and in alliance with the possessors of knowledge of European modernity – secularly oriented intellectuals. It is important to highlight the fact that although shaped in the international conjuncture of the Great Depression, Kemalist state making has its roots in the landmark of Ottoman state restructuring, the Tanzimat. The Tanzimat programme involved a specific restructuring of the state through a liberal worldview as imagined in the course of the nineteenthcentury form of free-market-oriented world economy. The Tanzimat was an Ottoman attempt to replicate the ‘capital-coercive trajectory’ of the British state (Tilly 1990). The British trajectory had been formed in the lengthy relations of an ‘accumulation of power and capital within the state’ (cf. Arendt 1951/1986: 143; Arrighi 2007: 229; Tilly 1990). It is important to note that the British model was only one particular form among other historical trajectories by which nation-states developed later in the complicated nineteenth-century political–military relations of the system of states. Various state-making trajectories were at play in instituting the market economy as a politically administered territorial space for the accumulation of power and capital within the European colonial system of states (Arrighi 1994, 2007; Polanyi 1944). This process incorporated global geo-political and economic relations into the British capital-coercive trajectory of state making as the dominant model (Tilly 1990), but the form of the state was not the nation-state; it was colonial. The nation-state system emerged simultaneously out of the complicated world-historical relations of the nineteenth-century market economy. The Tanzimat (restructuring) of the Ottoman state was entangled with larger processes of geographical expansion of capital accumulation and power, via the self-regulating market institution described by Polanyi and its political–military struggles. In response to the destructive economic effects and political–military relations of the market economy, Tanzimat reforms aimed to reconfigure the existing ethos of sovereignty from one which historically accommodated cultural–religious heterodoxy to one which ultimately produced a unified and homogeneous society. The goal was to institute a ‘national state’ in order to contain socio-economic-ethnic relations within society – bundled up with an assumed Ottoman nationality.

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However, the project was riddled with contradictions arising from the deployment of European liberalism as an ideology of state primacy and social cohesion. Liberalism was very difficult for the Ottoman state to implement in its effort to strengthen economic and political–military power. It prompted a period of more generalized ‘integration crises’ in the empire, with nationalism emerging as an organizing principle, not for securing loyalty to the Ottoman state, but for establishing claims to statehood among various communities of the empire. The global geographical expansion of ‘capitalist logic’ (Arrighi 1994) via the Britishled colonial reorganization of the world political–economic space (McMichael 2004) had intensified the process of disintegration of ‘world empires’ (Wallerstein 1974), including the Ottoman Empire, thus leading to a change in the historical form of states. A shift ‘from empires to modern nation states’ (Held et al. 1999: 32) in the territorial politics of political and economic power has been a defining feature of the challenges faced in the Ottoman restructuring of the state. Complications resulted from the fact that the global expansion of ‘capitalist logic’ undermined the ‘territorial logic’ of Ottoman rule, which consequently resulted in the emergence of distinct linguistic, ‘ethnic’ affiliations as markers of nationality and state loyalties (Sassen 1999). It should not be surprising, therefore, that the ‘integration crises’ of the Ottoman Empire inspired intense ideological debates and hopes for state restructuring through the ‘principle of territoriality’ (P. Taylor 2003). These debates were centred on how to secure the state loyalty of various cultural–ethnic groups and contain the socio-economic activities of capital accumulation within Ottoman borders. In response to the integration crises in the Ottoman Empire, various currents of secular and Islamic thinking emerged with the aim of rearticulating ethico-political principles of territoriality and governance. This was to be achieved through an engagement with the European liberal worldview of the market economy, state sovereignty, and nationalism. The process of territorial rearticulation of social, economic, and cultural processes, with a corresponding demarcation of a national society, has occurred since the Tanzimat. Islamic thinking, like secularism, had become a constitutive element in the long history of Turkey’s first modernity since Tanzimat, particularly after the First World War. Ottoman-Islamic intellectuals had hoped for the institution of the primacy of the state and sovereignty in the ethical–political reorganization and regulation of social cohesion – to be realized through the filter of a synthesis between Islamic principles and European modernity. For them, Islam had to accompany the notion of state sovereignty but it had

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to be connected to a comprehensive rethinking of the ethos of a normative order in culturally and politically administering the territorial space of the state. To repeat, the Ottoman–Muslim adherence to European liberal thinking and a market economy since the Tanzimat has set in motion a protracted twentieth-century coupling of secularism and Islam in regard to the notion of state sovereignty. However, I do not view the Islamic reconstitution of the state in Turkey today as the outcome of a ‘culminating process’ (McMichael 2001: 207) which has evolved within the global expansion of market capitalism. Rather, I draw attention to the process whereby state reconstruction becomes a historical project of space restructuring of larger global processes and political–economic– cultural relations in world-historical capitalism. The nation-state is a form of state structuring and expresses socio-political, cultural, and ideological struggles which themselves are historical parts of and outcomes of the politics of the global economy. I agree with McMichael (2001: 206) that, as a historical project, the nation-state has definite ‘geopolitical lineages across time and space.’ As does the restructuring of the state under the world-historical relations of neoliberal capitalism. But the current neoliberal processes of state restructuring do not replicate nineteenth-century relations. What is different today is that the connection between state sovereignty and claims for cultural homogeneity – bundled up in the processes of nation-state making after the First World War – has become unbounded. An examination of Islamic cultural politics in Turkey today, which combines ethico-political and pedagogical processes in the development of an Islamic human rights discourse and a search for ‘comprehensive democracy,’ illustrates this argument well. In breaking the historical connections between state sovereignty and cultural homogeneity imposed by Kemalist laiklik, Islamic groups are extending the scope of a search for ideas and explanatory systems beyond the state. The shift in the territorial extensity of the state is occurring as Islamic groups embody globalized discursive frames of democracy, human rights, and a neoliberal economy. I utilize a comparative perspective because it allows us to uncover the historical contingency involved in the complex entanglement of domestic and global processes and relations. Unless we situate national state restructuring within the material and discursive processes, relations, and structures of the global, which are dynamic, contradictory, and complicated, we cannot make sense of the historical variability in the nuanced relations between Islam and laiklik. The concepts of state restructuring

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encompass a multiplicity of relations within the system of states implicated in the world capitalist economy. It follows that the historical emergence of the two distinct yet intertwined imaginaries of state structuring that continue to influence Turkish politics today, laiklik and Islam, is explained as being conditioned within the nineteenth-century freetrade market economy. The historical entanglement of laiklik and Islam in state restructuring is being repeated in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century neoliberal reorganization of the global market economy. The Tanzimat was a distinct project of Ottoman integration into the British-led political reorganization of capitalism. The current Islamic reconstitution of the state is occurring as contingent to the integration of the Kemalist state into the material and discursive relations of neoliberalism framed by the EU, as well as the IMF and the World Bank. Ngaire Woods (2006) defines these as ‘globalizers’ of neoliberal capitalism. The present work employs a form of comparative historical methodology developed by McMichael (1990) known as ‘incorporated comparison.’ It directs our attention to the restructuring of Ottoman and Kemalist states as something to be understood as distinct outcomes of historically specific global political–economic processes and relations. Given the specificity of each period in the history of capitalism, state restructuring exhibits divergent forms, rather than replicating a generic model of state formation fitting into an ideal type. The nineteenthcentury free-trade market economy generated the Ottoman Tanzimat. The mid-twentieth-century statism of the 1930s, which emerged from the crisis of the nineteenth-century self-regulating market institution (Polanyi 1944), produced the Kemalist state. Late twentieth and early twenty-first century neoliberal market capitalism is generating the Islamic reconstitution of the state. The Kemalist state was predicated on the consolidation of the power of state bureaucrats in instituting the industrial capitalist economy and in creating large private capitalists as its dominant class. The current Islamic reconstitution of the state is devoted to the reworking of the material and ideological–cultural tensions and corresponding practices of the Kemalist state. The Kemalist state itself has been reworked and reconstituted as it has passed through various phases of ‘national developmentalism’ (McMichael 2004) since the First World War, and especially during the international Cold War politics of anti-communism after the Second World War (Atasoy 2003, 2005 Chapters: 4–5). The post-war reworking of the Kemalist state involved adherence to an ideological construct of Turkish Islam underpinning national developmentalist ideology and the disciplinary practices of the state.

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The current Islamic reconstitution of the state in the context of Turkey’s bid for EU membership is being worked out via the mobilization of newly emerging middle classes from Anatolia and other societal groups, including religious groups and intellectuals, women, and Kurds. These groups are demanding new representation in the state. They stand in opposition to the bureaucratically inspired state authoritarianism which excludes a significant segment of the population from meaningful participation in public politics. The Kemalist high bureaucrats as well as the nationalist political parties such as CHP and MHP continue to demand a demonstration of loyalty to core Kemalist principles of state sovereignty. On the other hand, Islamic politics seeks to break the strictly controlled and sanctioned cultural politics of the Kemalist state via an anti-bureaucratic campaign and a mobilization of various groups from the Anatolian hinterland who demand representation. The neoliberal framing of a social change trajectory undertaken through the EU integration programme has intensified tensions over the statist definition of culture and sovereignty. While current Islamic politics challenges the intersection between the cultural continuity of laiklik and state sovereignty, military–judicial bureaucrats in power often respond to the challenge by directly and indirectly intruding into the political negotiations and power plays of state restructuring. The form of the emergent state structure has yet to crystallize. Nevertheless, Islamic societal mobilization cuts through the cultural hierarchy of Kemalism, stretching vertically from the upper bureaucratic echelons of the state to the micro-political space of social terrain. In replacing older cultural hierarchies, Islamic groups upholding ethical principles of human dignity and justice are motivated to build ‘horizontally articulated’ (Brenner et al. 2003: 14) linkages between the cultural and the social within political space, via new representations in the state. Such a mobilization no doubt transforms the state from within and without, although the politics of transformation proceeds with uncertainty and without guarantees. The restructuring of the Kemalist state includes a political reworking of the relations, thinking, and ethos of sovereignty. It also embodies the material and ideological tensions between secular and Islamic orientations on the relations of change in existing patterns of inclusion and exclusion. The heightened politics of state monitoring and disciplining, on the one hand, and social–political mobilization, contestation, and demands for representation, on the other, characterize a dynamic process of state transformation. The bureaucratic vanguard responds by promoting state disciplinary practices that further militarize

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society, and by fostering culturally exclusionary policies that marginalize these newly mobilized societal groups. Nevertheless, rather than providing a resolution to the conflictual relations of state transformation, the coercive practices of the state bureaucracy contribute further to social uncertainty in society. This uncertainty arises from unsettled power struggles and ideological conflicts over the frames of reference for a social change model. It includes representation of new political alliances and social classes from Anatolia, as well as the changing relations of Islamic women in society, and Kurdish cultural demands in refashioning social life and reconstituting the state. Uncertainty in social relations continues to be fed by conflict over bureaucratic persistence in state-centrism as expressed through the monitoring of political space, disciplining of citizens, and normative grounding of social behaviour. After tracing the existing relations of uncertainty in the Kemalist state, which can be referred to as ‘bellicose unitarianism’ (Connolly 2005: 3), this book argues that the bureaucratic insistence on encaging social relations within a notion of national cultural homogeneity feeds into a project of social fascism (Escobar 2004). This is a project that reformulates the ideological bases and ethos of state sovereignty via a continued adherence to the notion of ‘Turkish Islam.’ As an ideological extension of the state sovereignty principle, Turkish Islam refigures the cultural conditions of citizenship and coercive disciplinary practices of bureaucratic domination which in turn intensify the social–political conditions of marginalization and subordination (cf. Abrams 1988). This does not unthink (Somers 1999) Kemalism and its knowledge culture embodied in state-centrism; it aims to re-establish bureaucratic power in the state. However, under neoliberal economic and political restructuring, which generates claims for new representations of social, ethnic, and religious life, Kemalist state-centrism continues to be undermined. The crumbling of Kemalism also lies within the cultural–ideological relations of laiklik. The adherence of Islam to the neoliberal creed restructures the Kemalist state and its sovereignty principle, which has been tied historically to laiklik. An Islamic moral stance on social justice offers a very different view of the state’s sovereign power. Investing considerable authority in state-ruling bureaucratic cadres and the exercise of power, the Kemalist notion of state sovereignty, according to Islamic critiques, turns individuals and cultural communities into what Hegel calls a ‘ “formless mass,” an “indeterminate abstraction” [which] lacks every one of the institutional characteristics that allow us to identify real communities’ (Yack 2003: 33). In The Origins of

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Totalitarianism Hannah Arendt (1951/1986) extends this view of ‘mass society’ into an explanation of state repression. She argues that the loss of social–political organizational networks and moral standards, and hence the lack of meaningful social relations, results in acute, disorganized feelings of insecurity. The disorganized insecurity of the masses is transformed into organized insecurity via bureaucrats in state power using force and various other governmental techniques to coerce and subjugate citizens of the state. For Arendt, bureaucratically organized insecurity shifts ground from a democratic orientation in social relations to the restoration of state primacy. The isolated, lonely, confused individual is the main metaphor used in this theorizing of mass society. The Islamic individuals and groups discussed in this book do not have the depressing image of lonely individuals in a mass society described by Arendt. The Islamic critique of state practices of sovereignty in relation to citizen discipline and moral regulation no doubt appeals to public passions. But, an Islamic orientation moves beyond an emotional appeal to passions; it plays an ideological role in constituting and regulating the interest-based politics of class making (cf. Hirschmann 1977, 1986; Sabel 1982; Sahlins 1976; Thompson 1963) and producing ideas for a social transformational project (cf. Polanyi 1944; Somers and Block 2005). It also plays a regulatory role in normatively grounding human behaviour in the economy and politics (cf. Corrigan and Sayer 1985; Foucault 1966/1970; Polanyi 1944; Smith 1759/1976). Combined, Islam’s constitutive and regulatory roles connect the ethical and political in framing and mobilizing a social change trajectory that appeals to anti-bureaucratic sentiments against state coercion and authoritarianism. Therefore, Islamic politics can only be conceptualized as constitutive of a ‘transformative resistance’ (Gill 2007: 117) to bureaucrats in power and state-centrism in politics. The further point to be made here is that Islamic individuals and groups direct their critique of a ‘moral order’ generated by the Kemalist state’s exclusionary practices at an ethic of state-bureaucratic power as absolute over social space. This ethic expresses the ‘illiberalism’ of the laik moral order and sustains the ‘dark side of [liberal] democracy’ (Mann 2005). This is because, according to Islamic critiques, the laik moral order has established a pre-political, pre-social, and trans-historical imagery of the state that has conceptually entangled sovereignty and cultural homogeneity. This moral order in turn governs the rules of conduct for individuals in the public sphere which, Islamic groups claim, has generated an understanding of citizenship conceptualized as a formless

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mass. They stand opposed to such an understanding of citizenship and promote ideas which make religion more relevant to the organization of their social lives. This opposition represents a systematic attempt to reconstitute a society in which moral and religious experience is only one option among many others in framing social behaviour. A variety of social groups affected by deep class and region-based inequalities and holding culture-based grievances against Kemalism are now mobilized in what Gramsci calls a ‘war of position’ (Gramsci 1928/1971: 88, 108–11, 120, 229–39; Mouffe 1979: 168–204). This is also a pedagogical mobilization which connects the politics of representation to the politics of class culture, knowledge structures, and interpretive valuations that are central to the redefinition of these groups as ‘unequally endowed groups’ (M. Davis 2001: 20). The historically specific ‘epistemology of state centrism’ permeates the conceptual entanglement between state sovereignty and cultural homogeneity within Kemalism. As a distinct ontology of ‘national’ space, state-centrism has its roots in a lengthy process of bureaucratic social engineering which has shaped a ‘national’ culture around laiklik since the Tanzimat of the 1840s. This epistemology lies in a space-based assumption of the national as immune to historical change. Because of the ideological persistence of this assumption about immunity to change, the Kemalist state is now riddled with a ‘crisis of authority’ (Gramsci 1928/1971: 275). In the words of Gramsci (1928/1971: 276), ‘[T]he crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.’ The intransigence in the Kemalist knowledge structure of statecentrism has two historical components: an adherence to the capitalist market economy and liberalism. The historical connection between these two components is repeated – though unique in various important ways – in the course of twenty-first-century neoliberal restructuring. The ongoing challenges to the concepts and practices of the Kemalist state – uniquely embarked upon through EU-induced globalization and democratization programmes – do not imply a ‘post-territorial’ (O’Brien 1992; Ohmae 1990) reorganization of social relations leading to a ‘retreat’ (Strange 1996) from the nation-state project. The state is still very important in territorially consolidating global relations of neoliberalism. The Islamic reworking of the Kemalist state is a historical product of specific global political and economic relations that position neoliberalism as a norm-setting knowledge culture within regional (EU) and international (IMF and World Bank) regulatory frameworks of neoliberal capitalism (van der Pijl 2006; Woods 2006).

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The current Islamic politics of state transformation presents us with an interesting theoretical and methodological challenge. The challenge comes from the fact that Islamic politics is embedded in liberal– democratic and neoliberal capitalist ideas emanating from the EU and the IMF–World Bank, yet ingrained in ethical behaviour arising from Islam as a universal religion. An Islamic reworking of the state incorporates the globalized discursive frameworks of neoliberalism and the universality of the Islamic principles of social justice into the historically specific relations of a knowledge culture within the state. The challenge here is to account for the incorporation of large-scale discursive, institutional, and material processes into a contextualized specification of state restructuring. An Islamic reconstituting of the state is uniquely situated to act as a powerful countervailing project to state-centrism and the national sovereignty principle expressed in laiklik. The possibility of an Islamic recontextualized imagery of state restructuring has historically been generated by neoliberalism. Closely linked to this possibility is the location of the social terrain for the production of ideas. The sociology of ideas perspective (Camic and Gross 2001) presupposes local contexts and institutional settings as the spatial reference point for the production of ideas. Although useful in tracing the importance of ideas, public narratives, and explanatory systems in social change projects, the sociology of ideas perspective remains inadequate in describing the incorporation of the global and ‘universal’ frames in an Islamic transformative politics. Linking contextually specific interpretive phenomena with the globalized discursive framing of a neoliberal perspective and universalized framework of Islamic morality alters the very meaning of spatiality within and across states (Atasoy 2009a: 182). This alerts us to the epistemological inadequacy of state-centrism in describing social processes and global dynamics within the state that cannot be encased territorially as national. As argued by James Ferguson (2006), in place of the territorial social space defined by the state, the contextually specific politics of state transformation spatially encapsulates material and discursive relations of neoliberalism in such a way that a multiplicity of social terrains and political spaces are opened up within the state. At this point, we can see Islamic politics as relational in producing knowledge and generating interpretive meanings for framing social relations, reconstituting power dynamics, and reshaping policy discussions of neoliberal capitalism. This implies that a new form of politics is emerging beyond the legally constructed, categorical notion of state-citizenship relations. The unsettling of state-centrism consists

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of a rethinking of the relationship between the political and social spaces of power under neoliberalism. Islamic politics is part and parcel of the neoliberal production of new configurations of political space outside the state-centric territorial organization of social relations. Sassen (2006) describes this process as ‘denationalization,’ a spatial consequence of the territorial mixing of national and non-national elements. There is an obvious shift in the nation-state frame of reference for organizing socio-political life and cultural meanings with the incorporation of global processes and dynamics. This may not justify a conceptual ‘leap over historical contingencies’ (Block 2001) towards ‘the transnational state’ (Robinson 2004). Although ‘a very different discursive landscape’ (Ferguson 2006: 63) has emerged that cannot be treated as national, nations and nation-states still matter (Calhoun 2007). What is in historical motion is a process of ‘reterritorialization of the state itself’ (Brenner 1999: 42). The process is highly complex as it is contingent at the national level on complicated material relations, political struggles, and ideological–cultural tensions. A neoliberal policy framework has no doubt achieved an epistemic value in the global economy, but the links between participation in global power structures and the reproduction of moral claims and symbolic attachments can only be established as an outcome of political negotiations within the territorial politics of power relations. Recognizing this process opens up the possibility of rethinking state transformation in terms of social relations and practices of spatial re-encompassment which operate through shifting meanings of context. Islamic politics aims to articulate a horizontal integration of the social and the cultural as a state-making project from below. This process involves an Islamic refiguring of a historical path of the political as an expression of newly mobilized social groups which embody globalized interpretive frames of referencing. Such refiguring transforms the old Kemalist modality of public space organized for state-dominated ways of social life. The outcome is truly contingent at the national level on the politics of recombining what is private and what is public. Micro-political issues are also crucial in resolving these tensions. They instill in the populace sentiments concerning the implications for citizenship rights as enforceable claims that emerge out of the conflicts and struggles between state bureaucrats and agents. As these sentiments concern rights, privileges, obligations, and duties, discussions of citizenship necessarily proceed in a normative shadow relaying visions of good civic life (Tilly 1997).

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An Islamic articulation of the global and the micro-political expresses a dynamic and more pluralist orientation from below that may potentially frame an alternative form of sovereignty based on a culture that grounds behaviour through the norms of reciprocal giving (Hyde 1983), trust and trustworthiness (Sztompka 1999; Tilly 2005), and respect (Sennett 2003). An Islamic mobilization that politically and pedagogically links a symbolic attachment to reciprocity and norms of trust, with an ethical position on social justice and respect, may come to deeply challenge the epistemological credibility of Kemalist state rule. The possibility of this challenge is grounded in an Islamic normative authority that embeds a social change trajectory in a commitment to ethical/moral universalism which is implicit in the notion of ‘comprehensive democracy’ (Pratap, Priya, and Wallgren 2004). Taking into account the moral, cultural, and spiritual aspects of individual human lives (Pratap and Priya 2004), the notion of comprehensive democracy morally disassociates ideals of justice, self-definition, and self-development from the ideal of national determination. This helps to reconfigure political space as a horizontally integrated conversation between a multiplicity of diverse social and cultural contexts. A horizontally integrated space reterritorializes state making as a project from below in a manner that incorporates global and micro-political spatial domains of social relations. This is one historical possibility that requires taking risks. There are numerous uncertainties resulting from potentially conflicting normative orientations, strategies, and practices of Islamic groups transforming the state and social relations. There is also the possibility that a complex array of global social movements and institutions, including an Islamic social justice movement, will contest globalized norm-setting frames of neoliberalism at multiple local, national, and global levels. This possibility also requires risk-taking as these social movements adopt diverse normative ideals and political strategies in transforming the conditions of categorical social inequalities. All these possibilities are constitutive of the politics of a social change trajectory, but the outcome of any form of social change politics is without guarantees. This is especially so when pursuing ‘comprehensive democracy’ as a way of life.

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1. Foreign direct investment (FDI) is a form of international capital inflows. It refers to an investment made by a company from an investor country in a foreign host country. FDI usually leads to ownership of at least 10 per cent of the host firm. It ‘sometimes takes the form of foreign acquisition, in which an investor obtains partial or full ownership in an existing company . . . Foreign investors can also . . . establish new companies in a host country, wholly foreign-owned or in partnership with domestic investors’ (Bandelj 2009: 129).

2 The Allure of the West 1. In the Ottoman land-tenure system, both Muslim and non-Muslim millets were allotted parcels of state-conquered lands for farming in the form of timars (fiefs). The timars were the main unit of production, carried out for the subsistence needs of the producers and for the taxation requirements of the state (Bailey 1970: 78–9). These lands were allocated to sipahi (rural cavalry members), who fulfiled military and administrative functions in the districts (Inalcik 1973: 104–8). Sipahi had claims of ownership neither over the land nor over the direct producing peasants. They were intermediaries between the central authority and peasants, collecting taxes in their area of administration for a specified period of time. They would also recruit mercenaries in their timar areas during times of war, to be disbanded at the end of the conflict. The primary role of mercenaries was to work during times of peace on the plot of land allocated to sipahi. The timar was an indivisible and unalterable unit. This system of land allocation and production legally prohibited peasants from selling and subdividing land allotted to them, even though they had direct access to the land (Inalcik 1985: 106). A commercialized form of production was limited and mediated to a large extent through taxation in kind (tithe tax) by sipahi in their timar areas. 2. The white-marble Baroque Palace of Dolmabahce stretches 600 metres along the Bosphorus, the two long wings contains 365 rooms extending from the higher middle section of the enormous throne – the largest in the world – in a mixture of Hindu, Turkish, and Italian styles. The Armenian Balyan family built the palace in 1854. It was furnished and supplied with imported items from Europe. Except for the carpets on the floors, which were Turkish Hereke-made, everything else in the Palace is from Europe, including a fourand-a-half-ton chandelier presented by Queen Victoria. The flavour and taste of the Victorian era dominates the entire accumulation of furniture, utensils and so forth (A Historical Guide to Istanbul 1996: 131–2). 253

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3. Gokalp believed that the printing of newspapers played a key role in this process because of their capacity to describe people’s locally experienced social lives in more colourful ways and thus generate an emotional closeness among the people.

3


1. I use Kemalism and Ataturkculuk interchangeably. 2. The opening of the TRT Kurdish channel in 2008 is a step towards reversing this comprehensive ban on the use of the Kurdish language. 3. In 1951 the DP introduced Law 5816 for ‘Crimes Committed Against the personality of Ataturk and Ataturkism.’ This law was specifically enacted against the religious brotherhoods and intellectuals who were critical of Kemalist reforms (Tarhanli 1993: 28). Political parties established on the centre-right after the DP have continued to promote a conservative version of Kemalism that incorporates religious beliefs and practices of the general population into Kemalist laiklik. They see Islam as an important component of the national culture and a source of social solidarity as advocated by Ziya Gokalp. Nevertheless, both state bureaucrats and political parties of various orientations have always been fearful of political Islam developing outside state control. 4. After its closure the Welfare Party re-emerged under a new name in 1998, the Virtue (Fazilet) Party. The Virtue was the continuation of the Welfare Party in terms of its milli gorus (national view) ideology, party leadership and organizational structure. The AKP emerged in 2001 as the moderate faction of an Islamic political orientation after its split from the Virtue. Although it is a descendant of the Welfare/Virtue Party, as I have discussed in Chapter 1 of this book, the AKP represents a more liberally oriented Islamic discourse which I define as ‘liberal Turkish Islam.’ 5. The concept unthink here was inspired by Wallerstein (1991) Unthinking Social Science: The Limits of Nineteenth Century Paradigms, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 6. Said Nursi had proposed the founding of a university called the Medreset uz-Zehra. Although he pursued this project until 1951, it was never realized. He envisioned the projected medrese to be trilingual: Arabic, Kurdish, and Turkish were all to be used for instruction (Algar 1979: 315). Religious subjects were to be taught together with natural sciences. For Said Nursi, religious sciences represented the light of conscience and natural sciences were the arts of civilization and development. Thus, the Medreset uz-Zehra was to synthesize an Islamic religious orientation with the western idea of material development and progress (Atasoy 2005: 47). This aligns Said Nursi with the modernist– Islamic thinking of Afghani and Abduh. The Med-Zehra movement embraced Said Nursi’s Medrese uz-Zehra project.

4 Reconstituting the State: The Islamic Framing of Neoliberalism 1. The following sections of the chapter on the AKP and neoliberalism, the realignment of Turkish capital, Fethullahcilar, and the class ambiguities of an

Notes

2. 3.

4.

5. 6.

255

Islamic orientation are based on a substantially revised and rewritten version of an earlier publication (Atasoy 2007). It has two additional branches, one in Brussels opened in 1995 and another in Washington D.C. opened in 1998. The Turkish–Saudi joint venture Faisal Finance House was purchased by Kombassan Holding in 1998 and later by the ULKER Group in 2001, with financial contributions from the American Islamic Finance House – LARIBA. Faisal Finance thus acquired the name Family Finance. In the absence of hard data, I can only offer the example of female industrial home-workers engaged in towel production in the Denizli region, which has an overall 50.2 per cent informal employment rate. Globally oriented firms account for almost 70 per cent of the city’s numerous towel firms. Women in this region, some single and some married with children, earn about US$2 an hour. Turkish towel producers established their reputation by weaving towels on handlooms out of pure cotton and linen, designed with unique traditional embroidery motifs. These women often work at home, participating in the production of US$1.5 billion worth of towel exports from Denizli. They see their paid work as a matter of ‘helping out’ subcontractors, who frequently are male relatives and neighbours. For the data in this footnote, see: Atasoy 2003: 74–5; Oz 2003: 6; Tekinarslan 2007: table: Istatistik amacli bolge siniflamasina ve kayitlilik durumuna gore istihdam, 2005. I owe this expression to Ken Jalowica. Turkey published its first official poverty statistics in 2004, following the State Statistics Institute’s survey on Household Budget Research Results published in 2003. The poverty report of 2004 defined the poverty line in terms of the ability to obtain food and basic non-food necessities, whereas the hunger line was defined in terms of not being able to obtain basic food needs. For the data in this paragraph, see Bugra and Keyder 2005: 20; Demirtas 2005; EUROSTAT 2007; T.C. Basbakanlik Turkiye Istatistik Kurumu 2006; World Bank 2005: 29.

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Index 9/11, 195, 220 Abdulhak Hamit, 149 abolition of the caliphate, 60, 66, 157 Abu-Lughod, Lila, 164 access rights, 108 accumulation by dispossession, 23, 77, 79 accumulation of capital, 39, 122 accumulation of power, 242 Afshar, Halef, 142 agricultural exports, consequences for Ottoman society, 40 Ahsap Konak (Kisakurek), 57–8, 98 Ak-Der, 168, 185–9, 195 AKP (Justice and Development Party) 2002 election success, 2 accusations of Islamization, 3–6 adaptive nature, 14 and foreign ownership of state-owned companies, 16 and headscarf politics, 3, 10, 167–70, 179–81 and MUSAID, 116, 118–19 and neoliberalism, 15, 109–13, 114 anti-laik charges, 167, 170 closure case, 89, 180 cultural discourse, 10 human rights discourse, 10–11, 111 ideological outlook, 9–10 presidential candidate, 3 self-definition, 7 TUSIAD’s support, 116 view of EU membership, 7–8, 10, 14–15, 26, 111–12, 179 view of Kemalism, 7–9 vote share, 4 Ali Suavi, 48 Anadolu Finance House, 121 Anatolian tigers, 117 Anatolian woman, 154–9, 163, 174, 188 Anayasa Icin Kadin Platformu, 184

Anglo-Ottoman Commercial Convention (1838), 40, 45 Arendt, Hannah, 18, 100, 193, 196, 248 Arinc, Bulent, 6 Arrighi, Giovanni, 14, 16, 39, 40, 78, 242, 243 Asya Finance House, 121 Atasoy, Yıldız, 3, 7–8, 11, 13, 15, 16, 18, 24, 26, 35–6, 45, 47, 52, 57, 64–5, 67, 71, 73, 76–7, 79–80, 100, 105–6, 108, 112, 124–6, 129–30, 132, 154, 158, 240, 245, 250 Ataturk, Mustafa Kemal, 3, 58–60, 66–7, 155–9, 161 Atsiz, Nihal, 102–3 Avrupalilasma, 27, 45–6, 48–9, 74 Aydinlar Ocagi, 94–5, 104 Babacan, Hatice, 140 Balci, Muharrem, 80 Balibar, Etienne, 64 Barbarosoglu, Fatma, 143, 147 Baskent Kadin Platformu, 184 basortusu Anatolian associations, 174 definition, 138 political status, 139–40, 173 statistics, 171 vs turban, 141, 173–4, 202–3, 226–36 see also headscarf; turban Beck, Ulrick, 19, 60, 240 ‘bellicose Unitarianism’, 78, 247 Benli, Fatma, 186, 188 Beth Din, 218–20, 222 Beylerbeyi Palace, 48 Bilgen, Ayhan, 195 biopolitics, 43 Blair, Tony, 109 Block, Fred, 14, 18, 20–1, 26, 43, 107, 248, 251 Bohman, James, 194 Bora, Tanil, 103 280

Index 281 Bulac, Ali, 169, 175, 196–7, 199 bureaucratic cadres assumption of ‘class power’, 72 capital growth support, 74 coalition with secularized intellectuals, 72 emergence as agent of industrial development, 71 and the Islamic ‘threat’, 169 laiklik management role, 63, 104, 135 political influence, 3, 75 sources of conflict, 15 and women’s dress, 154, 168 Bu Ulke (Meric), 49 Buyukanit, Yasar, 3, 5 Buyuk Dogu, 98–101 Cakir, Rusen, 28–9, 63, 176, 183–4 Cakir, Sibel, 147–8, 160, 176 caliphate, abolition, 60, 66, 157 Canada, 217–24 capital, realignment of private, 113, 122 carsaf definition, 138 Fatma Aliye Hanim’s view, 147, 149 increasing popularity, 146 in political rhetoric, 139 CEDAW (UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women), 177, 184 Cemal, Hasan, 181 Chase-Dunn, Christopher, 192 Chevrier, Yves, 18 CHP (Republican People’s Party), 2, 4–5, 7, 15–16, 246 Cile (Kisakurek), 57, 98 Cinar, Alev, 142 Cinar Kadin Platformu, 184 Ciragan Palace, 48 circle of justice principle, 38, 40, 110 Clash of Civilizations, The (Huntington), 25 class ambiguities, 131–5 Clinton, Bill, 109 Coleman, James, 119

comprehensive democracy, 194–5, 214, 217, 244, 252 Connolly, William, 23, 33, 78, 98–9, 134, 165, 178, 247 Constitution 1876, 41–2, 44, 181 1924, 61, 65, 181 1961, 78, 80–1, 84, 86 1982, 2, 81, 84–7, 92, 173 amendments for Copenhagen criteria, 86 and the headscarf issue, 3, 6, 170, 173, 176–7, 179–81, 184 ideological debate, 180–2 justification of coercive powers under, 85 Kemalist principles, 58, 63 on language, 61, 65 and military bureaucracy, 81, 181 reinstatement, 53 on religious education, 92 role of liberal knowledge, 17 Copenhagen criteria, 1–2, 10, 26, 86, 111, 116, 118 crisis-management strategies, IMF-induced, 112 cultural turn, 156, 166 culture, constitutive role, 107 Davis, Mike, 108 Dean, Mitchel, 43 debt rescheduling programme, IMF-imposed, 76 Decent Work and the Informal Economy (ILO), 122 deep state, 90–1, 141 DEHAP (Democratic People’s Party), 83 deliberative democracy, 197 democracy, Huntington’s perspective, 25 democratization in AKP programme, 111 EU-imposed programme, 123, 135, 249 and EU policy impositions, 15, 17 and headscarf politics, 165, 200, 221, 223–6 MUSIAD support, 118

282

Index

democratization – continued progress, 2 TUSIAD support, 116 democratization discourse, 15, 17, 22–7, 110, 118 Deniz Feneri, 133 DHKP/C (Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party/Front), 90 DiMaggio, Paul, 13, 26, 106, 107, 127 Dink, Hrant, 90 Directorate of Religious Affairs, 60, 62–3, 127, 216 discrimination, 44, 71–2, 119, 177, 180, 184–6, 190, 193, 218–19, 223–4 Dogru Yol, 175, 179 Dolmabahce Palace, 48 dominant state, 13 Durkheim, Emile, 54 durust, 132 durustluk, 132 ECHR (European Court of Human Rights), 90, 183, 187, 192, 195–8, 214, 223 economic growth, 16, 24, 111, 131–2 economic rationality, 21, 120, 130, 134 e-coup, 4, 78, 89, 112 education cultural, 68 and economic growth, 24 and the Kurdish language, 65 Musa Kazim’s view of women’s, 151 secularization, 47, 61 Tanzimat reforms, 47, 146 Young Ottoman policies, 52 El Saadawi, Nawal, 142, 152 End of History, The (Fukuyama), 24 enlightened Islam, 92, 171 epistemic uncertainty, 141–4 equality principle, 43–4, 153, 176 Eraslan, Sibel, 187 Erbakan, Necmettin, 6, 88, 94 Erdogan, Recep Tayyip, 2, 6, 10–12, 83, 111, 127, 129, 170, 179, 187 Ergenekon, 89–91, 102 Escobar, Arturo, 77, 80 ethical universalism, 55, 193

EU Accession Partnership document, 1 EU membership AKP perspective, 7–8, 10, 14–15, 26, 111–12, 179 and human rights organizations, 189 IMF-imposed polices, 112 policy orientations, 15 Europeanization (Avrupalilasma), 27, 45–6, 48–9, 74 European relations, historical perspective, 41, 47 Evren, Kenan, 93, 171, 174 exclusionary practices, 46, 66, 77–8, 197 existential resentment, 98, 134, 165 Family Finance, 121 Fanon, Frantz, 100 fascism, 70–1, 74, 76–7, 80, 247 Fatma Aliye Hanim, 146–50, 151–4, 157 Fatma Fahrunnisa, 147 Fatma Zehra, 147 Fazilet Partisi, 179 Felicity Party (Saadet Partisi), 179 Ferguson, James, 250 Fethullahcilar, 13, 54, 56, 96, 108, 122–3, 127–30, 133 fez, 61, 145 first modernity, Beck’s definition, 19, 22 five pillars of Islam, 208–9, 230 foreign ownership, disapproval rates for, 16 Foucault, Michel, 43, 107, 119, 141, 248 French Revolution, 42 Fukuyama, Francis, 24 Gandhi, Mahatma, 193, 194 gecekondus, 132 Gendarmerie, 89–90 Genelkurmay Baskanligi, 4, 113 Gill, Stephen, 11, 21, 166, 168, 248 Gokalp, Ziya, 54–6, 59–60, 62–3, 71, 101, 106, 127, 158 Gokkusagi Kadin Platformu, 184 Gole, Nilufer, 160

Index 283 Gourevitch, Peter, 70 Gramsci, Antonio, 46, 107–8, 167–8, 249 Great Depression, 70, 74–5, 241–2 Great Transformation, The (Polanyi), 17 Grey Wolves movement, 91 Gul, Abdullah, 3–6, 89 Gulen, Fethullah, 121, 127–8 Gulen community, 13, 54, 56, 96, 108, 122–3, 127–30, 133 Gunay, Ertugrul, 7, 83 Guneydogu Kadin Platformu, 184 Gursel, Cemal, 92, 139 HADEP (People’s Democracy Party), 83 halkevleri, 68 Harvey, David, 77 Hasim, Bayram, 121 hat reform law, sapka kanunu, 61, 157 headscarf class symbolism, 188–9 parliamentary vote lifting ban on, 6 styles of, 173 see also basortusu; turban headscarf ban and the AKP, 3, 10, 167–70, 179–80 chronology, 166, 171–4, 177–9 class perspective, 205, 213 Constitutional amendments, 179–80 context, 164–6 democratic perspective, 194–200, 223 disciplinary measures, 172, 175 discriminatory perspective, 184–5 ECHR ruling, 183 estimates of students affected, 175–6 Fatma Benli on, 188 and freedom of religion, 223 human rights perspective, 167, 178, 182–94, 195 and Islamic transformative resistance, 166–71 Kemalist perspective, 163 legality, 177–8, 183, 186, 188 Milliyet reports, 171, 174 NSC recommendations, 178 and overseas study, 187 Ozal’s modifications, 173

parliamentary challenges to, 176–7, 179 political perspective, 137–41, 167–9, 178–9, 188, 225 in Ramazanoglu’s novel, 175 and women’s equality, 116, 177, 179, 225 and women’s politicization, 183–4 YOK’s justification, 178 headscarf study context, 201–2 data sample, 202–3 goals, 204 student narratives, 205–17 turban vs basortusu, 202–3, 226–36 Hegel, G.W.F., 247 Helsinki Summit, 1 HEP (People’s Labour Party), 82 Hibou, Beatrice, 18 Hirschmann, Albert, 107, 248 Hittites, 67 Hizbullah, 90 Hobbes, Thomas, 35, 50–1 holding companies, 121 Hoodfar, Homa, 142, 164, 177 human capital, 111, 119–20 human rights in AKP discourse, 10–11, 111 Bulac’s arguments, 196–7 in Copenhagen criteria, 116 in democratization discourse, 23–5 universality principle, 192–3, 221 and the veil, 142, 160, 165–7, 178, 183, 185–6, 194–5, 197, 204 violations, 84, 182, 185, 190, 195 women’s organizational focus, 184, 186, 190–1 human rights violations, 90, 167, 178, 182–3, 185, 187, 190 Huntington, Samuel, 24–5 huzun, 34 Ideolocya Orgusu (Kisakurek), 98–9 Iffet Halim, 162–3 IHD (Human Rights Association), 189–90 Ihlas Finance House, 121 Ikna Odasi (Ramazanoglu), 175 Ilim Yayma Cemiyeti, 95

284

Index

Ilkkaracan, Ipek, 184–5 IMF, 13, 22, 75–6, 112–13, 116, 245 incorporated comparison, 245 informal sector, 77, 109, 112, 120, 122, 129, 131–3 Insel, Ahmet, 181 international coercion definition, 13 EU as agent of, 15 Islam AKP discourse, 10 blending western modernity and, 49–53, 59 citizens’ resentment of the military’s portrayal, 5 cultural role, 92 five pillars, 208–9, 230 Gulen’s perspective, 128 Kemalist portrayal, 67–8 and the national view movement, 7 as source of morality, 125–6 Islamic banks, 121 Islamic capitalists, 115 Islamic courts, Canadian debate, 218–21 Islamic dress code, see women’s Islamic clothing Islamic ethic, 119, 133–4 Islamic groups, and state sovereignty, 135–6 Islamic resentment, 4, 134 Islamic trust networks, 122–3 Istanbullu woman, 157–8, 162 Izmirli, Ismail Hakki, 152–4 JITEM (Intelligence and Anti-Terrorism Unit), 90 ‘judicial coup’, 6, 8 kadi justice, 38 Kadinlara Mahsus Gazete, 147 Kadinlar Dunyasi, 147 Kadioglu, Ayse, 58–9, 68, 157, 160, 177, 190 Karaduman, Senay, 183 KDP (Democratic Party of Turkish Kurdistan), 82

Kemalism AKP perspective, 7–9, 11–12 constitutional considerations, 181–2 definition, 3 fascist influences, 70–1 Gokalp’s influence, 62 Gole on the ‘civilizing mission’ of, 160 ideological principles, 181 indeterminism of, 63 and laiklik, 8 and modernization, 58 and Ottoman liberalism, 34 overview, 32–3 paradox, 62 political relevance, 12 Said Nursi’s view, 65 techno-scientific universalism, 70–1, 75 and women’s Islamic clothing, 137, 139, 154–60 Kemalist woman, 137, 144, 162–3 Keyder, Caglar, 42 Kisakurek, Necip Fazil, 49–50, 56–7, 97–101 Kivrikoglu, Huseyin, 89 Kizil Elma (Atsiz), 103 Kizilhan, Refia, 186 knowledge culture, 19, 21, 26, 77, 92, 100, 135, 204, 247, 249–50 knowledge structure, 11–12, 21, 137, 166, 249 Koc Holding, 114 Kombassan Holding, 121 koruculuk, 86 Kotku, M. Zahit, 124 koy enstituleri, 68 Kurdish activism, 82 Kurdish language, 41, 61, 83, 86, 97 Kurdish nationalism, 41, 64–6, 96 Kurdish political parties, 82–3 Kurdish uprisings, 41, 65–6 Kurds, 7–8, 41, 63–6, 85, 96–7, 246 laiklik carsaf in official discourse of, 138 constitutional requirement, 62 definition, 3–4, 62 and Islamism, 11

Index 285 Lausanne Peace Treaty, 64 Lawrence, King, 8, 49, 72, 74–5, 123 liberalism key conceptual component of European, 42, see also Ottoman liberalism liberty, Mill’s paradox of, 51, 67 loan agreement, conditionality terms, 76 Locke, John, 23, 51 Lockean liberalism, 21 logic of rule, 37, 39, 43 Macleod, A. Elowe, 142 Mahcupyan, Etyen, 169 manto, definition, 138 Mardin, Serif, 38, 50, 51, 65, 69, 72, 123, 148 market capitalism, 43 Maslum-Der, 185, 189–93, 195 McMichael, Philip, 14, 40, 43, 58, 71, 77, 79, 130, 186, 191, 193, 240, 243, 244, 245 Med Zehra, 96–7 Meric, Cemil, 34, 49–50 Merkez Bankasi, T.C., 131 Mernissi, Fatima, 152 Mert, Nuray, 123 MHP (National Action Party) coalition, 2, 4, 7 and EU policy, 15 and foreign investment, 16 founder, 101 Kemalist commitment, 5 and Kurdish politics, 83 Turkish-Islamic synthesis, 95, 98, 101, 103–4 militarism, 26, 76, 102 military and the AKP, 9, 167, 179, 181 anti-Islamic campaigns, 89–90 characteristics, 79 coercive policies, 85 and headscarf politics, 6, 172–3, 178, 226–7 historical perspective, 103 importance of Ottoman, 39–40 and MUSIAD members, 117 non-Muslim eligibility, 37, 44, 47

opposition to Gul’s election, 3 political interventions, 3, 10, 77–81, 83–4, 86, 104, 169, 224, 237 portrayal of Islam, 5 recommendations, 87–8 and TUSIAD members, 115 military authoritarianism, 71 military regime, emergency legislation, 86 Mill, John Stuart, 51 millet system autonomy, 37, 39 clothing regulations, 145 and kadi justice, 38 modus operandi, 38 structure, 37 milli his, 159 Milliyet, 171, 174, 181 modernity, Kemalist understanding of, 58–9 Modern Prince, The (Gramsci), 167 Moghadam, Valentine, 142 moral discipline, 76 moral embeddedness, 194 morality, Islam as source of, 125–6 moral regulation, 79–80, 130, 248 moral universalism, 193–4, 252 MP (Motherland Party), 105 MUSIAD (Independent Industrialists’ and Businessmen’s Association), 16, 114, 116–20, 122, 133 Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, 3, 58–60, 66–7, 155–9, 161 Mustafa Sabri Efendi, 152 Namik Kemal, 48, 50, 56, 97, 149, 153–4 Naqshbandi, 66, 95–6, 108, 122–6 national anthem, 158 national culture, state’s preservation role, 93 national developmentalism, 8, 160, 245 nationalism, 3–5, 8, 12, 41–2, 53–4, 56, 58, 60, 62–6, 68, 72, 81, 93–9, 103–5, 182, 243 nationalist parties, 83 national view movement, 6–7, 10, 179

286

Index

neoliberalism democratization discourse, 22–6 globalization discourse, 17–22 Turkish Islam under, 104–6 neoliberal restructuring, distinguishing features, 22 Nezihe Muhiddin, 160–2 Nisvan’i Osmaniye Imdat Cemiyeti, 147 NSC (National Security Council), 80–1, 87–9, 104, 172, 178–9 NSC Decision Number 406, 87–8 NSP (National Salvation Party), 105 Nurcu cemaati, 65, 96, 108, 122–3, 125–6 Ocalan, Abdullah, 82, 86 ‘Ode to Joy’ (Beethoven), 198–9 ontological insecurity, 77, 130 Origins of Totalitarianism, The (Arendt), 193, 248 OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe), 117 Ottomanism, Turkism vs, 56 Ottoman liberalism articulation of, 43 ideology, 36 Meric’s definition, 34 reasons for adoption of, 35–6 Ozal, Turgut, 95, 105, 173, 177 Ozbudun, Ergun, 4, 180–2 Ozgur-Der, 168, 185 Pamuk, Orhan, 34, 56–7 paradox of liberty, Mill’s, 51, 67 pardosu, definition, 138 pedagogies of persuasion, 139 PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party), 5, 82, 88, 90–1 Polanyi, Karl, 17, 19–20, 241 poverty, 109, 132–3, 161 privatization, 1, 16, 18–23, 79, 109, 112–13, 115, 133 public ethos of engagement, 33, 164 Radikal, 16, 90, 170, 180–1 Ramadan, Tariq, 128 Ramazanoglu, Yildiz, 175, 188 reciprocity, 38, 110, 133–4, 252

regime of fear, 84, 86, 97 religious education, state role, 93 Republic of Turkey, founding, 58 respect, 193, 225–6 risk, 225, 229, 252 Rosenberg, Justin, 60, 79, 240 Sabanci Holding, 114 Sabel, Charles, 53, 83, 90 Sabri Efendi, 150–4 Sahin, Leyla, 183, 187, 195 Said, Edward, 11 Said Nursi, 65, 96, 125–7 sapka kanunu, 61, 157 Sassen, Saskia, 12, 41, 240, 243, 251 Schimmel, Annemarie, 124 Scott, David, 119, 165, 167 secularity, Taylor’s perspective, 201, 203–4 Self-determination, 193, 195–6, 241 Sennett, Richard, 226 September 11 terrorist attacks, 195, 220 seriat, 37 Sharia law, 125 Sheikh Said Revolt, 65–6 Sinasi, 48 six arrows, 58, 181–2 slow-motion military coup, 169 Smith, Adam, 107, 130, 248 Smith, Dorothy, 204 social change and the headscarf ban, 166 importance of cultural pluralism, 119 and the Islamic dress code, 142, 154, 159 MUSIAD’s support, 118 Ottoman programme of, 41–2 post-coup programme, 75 Tanzimat model, 45, 52–3 Turkey’s path to, 26, 49 social engineering, 19, 59, 72–4, 76, 79, 118, 134, 154, 160, 249 social fascism, 70, 76–7, 91, 247 soft coup, 78, 88, 115, 117, 121, 177–9, 195 Somers, Margaret, 18, 19, 20, 21, 26, 43, 92, 107, 166, 247, 248

Index 287 sovereignty Ong’s interpretation of Schmitt’s definition, 79 principle of, 60, 247 state-led refiguring of the ethos of, 91, 97 state capacity, Tilly’s definition, 224 state centrism, 240, 249 state feminism, 136, 137, 139, 141, 143, 145, 147, 149, 151, 153, 155, 157, 159–61, 163 state law, Ottoman, 37–8 state power, reassertion of, 77 state regulation, 62, 79, 94, 115, 145 state sovereignty, Islamic groups and, 135–6 Stein, Janice, 221 structural adjustment programme, World Bank-imposed, 76 substantive autonomy, 38–9, 42, 44, 59, 136 Sumerians, 67 sun-language theory, 67, 95 Susurluk incident, 90–1 swaraj, 94 symbolic class, 13, 168 Szelenyi, Ivan, 8, 49, 72, 74–5, 123 Sztompka, Piotr, 229 Tanzimat and European universalism, 45–8 Gokalp’s opposition, 55 and Islamic dress code, 146, 149 overview, 43, 45 purpose and aims, 242, 245 Young Ottomans’ perspective, 49–50 Taylor, Charles, 28, 154–5, 160, 164, 201–4, 215, 217, 240, 243 techno-scientific universality, 74 territorialism, 39 third sense of secularity, 202–3 ‘Third Way’, 25, 109 TIHV (Turkish Human Rights Foundation), 189–90 TIKKO (Turkish Workers and Peasants’ Liberation Army), 90 Tilly, Charles, 25, 39, 43, 221, 237 Today’s Zaman, 4, 90–1 Topbas, Mustafa, 95

Topkapi Palace, 48 transformative resistance, 166, 168, 203, 248 True Path Party (Dogru Yol), 175, 179 trust AKP’s emphasis on, 110–11, 119 and headscarf politics, 225–7, 229, 231, 236 as point of reference, 126 and reciprocity, 133, 135 social-symbolic, 214, 216 trust networks, 122–3, 132–3, 225 trustworthiness, 132, 223, 228–9, 252 Tuksal, Hidayet Sefkatli, 142, 184 TUPRAS, 112 turban vs basortusu, 141, 173–4, 202–3, 226–36 definition, 141 political perspective, 174, 231 and presidential elections, 3–4 see also basortusu; headscarf turbanli, 174, 210, 227–8, 231, 236 Turkculuk, 54, 56, 101, 103 Turkes, Alpaslan, 101–3, 139 Turkification, 54–5 Turk Inkilap Tarihi Enstitusu, 157 Turk Insan Haklari Vakfi, 189 Turkish Armed Forces, 4–5, 80, 86, 88–9 Turkish capital, realignment of, 113 Turkish Historical Society, 67 Turkish History Thesis, 67, 95, 102 Turkish-Islamic nationalism, 97 Turkish-Islamic synthesis, 91, 95–8 Turkish Linguistic Society, 67 Turkish Religion Fund, 121 Turkish War of Independence, 64 Turkish Women’s Union Association, 138, 160–2 Turkism, vs Ottomanism, 56 Basbakanlik Turkiye Istatistik Kurumu, T.C., 131 Turkiye Ulusal Programi 2008, 111, 113 Turklesmek, Islamlasmak, and Muasirlasmak, 54, 106 Turk Ocagi, 101 Turkone, Mumtazer, 53, 83, 90

288

Index

Turk Ulkusu (Atsiz), 102 TUSIAD (Turkish Industrialists’ and Businessmen’s Association), 16, 112, 114–17, 120, 122 UDHR (Universal Declaration of Human Rights), 191–2, 221 ULKER Group, 121 Ulkucu Genclik, 95, 101 Ulkuculer, 56, 101 Ulku Ocaklari, 101, 103–4 Umrandan Uygarliga (Meric), 49 unemployment, 73, 109, 131–3 unequally endowed groups, 33, 108, 249 universality, Zižek’s argument, 11, 13 upward social mobility, 120, 188 Uskup, Zafer, 181–2 van der Pijl, Kees, 10, 11, 14, 15, 249 vasudhaiva kutumbakam, 194 vatan, 97–9 veiling anti-Western symbolism, 143 Egyptian model, 142, 177 Iranian model, 142, 177 see also basortusu; headscarf; turban Virtue Party (Fazilet Partisi), 179 Wallerstein, Immanuel, 11, 35 war of position, 107–8, 123, 249 Weber, Max, 106, 134 western modernity, Kemalist pursuit, 59 wigs, 172, 175, 207, 209–10, 215 women’s associations, 160, 162, 184 women’s Islamic clothing anti-Western symbolism, 143 in Fatma Aliye Hanim’s writings, 146–50 garment types, 137–8

historical perspective, 144, 146 Ismail Hakki Izmirli’s arguments, 152–4 Kemalist perspective, 137, 139, 154–60 as moral metaphor, 154–5 Musa Kazim’s reasoning, 150–1 Ottoman state regulations, 145 and piety, 139, 140, 174 political significance, 142 Sabri Efendi’s argument, 151 and women’s agency, 142, 143–4 and women’s associations, 160, 162, 184 see also basortusu; carsaf ; headscarf; turban Women’s magazines, 146–7 Women’s Union Association, 161 WONDER (students’ association), 187–8 Wood, M. Ellen, 20 Woods, Ngaire, 245 World Bank, 13, 75–6, 111, 119, 122, 245 WP (Welfare Party), 88, 167, 179, 183–4 WPP (Women’s People’s Party), 160–1 Wretched of the Earth (Fanon), 100 Yalcinkaya, Abdurrahman, 5 yasmak, 146 YIMPAS (holding company), 121 YOK (Council of Higher Education), 87, 89, 171–4, 176–8, 188, 231 Young Kurds, 64 Young Ottomans, 48–54, 56, 58, 97, 106 Young Turks, 53–4, 56, 59, 67, 106 Zižek, Slavoj, 11, 13, 198–9 Zolberg, R. Aristide, 42

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