Political Islam in Turkey (original) (raw)
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Since 1937, Turkey has been officially defined as a secular state, albeit with a Muslim-majority population. However, secularism in the Turkish context is distinctive, a product of its particular historical experience and development. Both the Ottoman heritage and contemporary Turkey’s Kemalist founding fathers’ apprehension were decisive factors in the evolution of Turkish secularism (laiklik) and set Turkey’s experience apart from that of other modern secular states. Turkish understanding of secularism itself has never had one single, unambiguous interpretation in Turkey, but in general it is widely understood that it reflects a sense that the state should not be totally blind to religious issues, but also should never favor one particular religion over another. Thus, Islamic practice was carried over in the society from the Ottoman state to the new Turkish Republic and allowed republican elites to declare a new structural order, without losing hegemonic power over religion. At th...
Islam in Turkish politics: Turkey's quest for democracy without Islam
Critique: Critical Middle Eastern Studies, 1999
Recent Turkish politics have witnessed an outstanding and unexpected triumph of political Islam. Under the leadership of Necmettin Erbakan, a senior politician of the Islamist cause, the pro-Islamist Welfare Party (Refah Partisi) emerged from the national elections of December 1995 as the largest party in parliament. After a six month struggle, it came to power in June 1996 as the senior partner in a coalition government with Ciller's True Path Party (TPP) and with Erbakan as prime minister. Before that, in March 1994, Welfare Party (WP) won municipal elections in several large cities. These developments vexed the Turkey's secular establishment; at first they attempted to block Erbakan's efforts to form a government. That is why Erbakan's search for a coalition partner took six months. After forming government, the military, who views itself as the main guardian of the secular "Kemalist" state, tended to become involved in daily politics in order to protect the secularist state from so-called Islamicist infiltrations. In fact, on February 28, 1997, the military dominated National Security Council issued a decree that required curbs on Islamic minded political, social, cultural, and economic groups. In the end, the military's "supervision" of Erbakan's government resulted in its forced resignation in June 1997. Following this, the pressure on the Islamist groups increased, with the some secular leaders hoping for a "settling of accounts" with political Islam. It is interesting that the rise of Islam in recent Turkish politics, particularly in the case of Welfare Party, was considered a surprising event by both Turkish and foreign scholars. Just as an "Islamic revival" after the Democrat Party's coming to power in 1950 meant (among other things) adopting a relatively liberal policy towards Islam, so today "Islamic fundamentalism" is on the agenda not only of political circles, but also of academics. As the Turkish State elite began to think how to handle this "threat" to the secular Republic, it felt ready to find a "scientific" treatment for this "disease". Some felt a need to address the issue of reconciling Islam and democracy. Consequently, the literature on political Islam in general and the Welfare Party in particular, started to increase. Nevertheless, one thing remained unchanged: the advance of Islam in Turkey has been considered an accidental even pathological phenomenon. In this article I want to examine this approach that sees pro-Islamic tendencies as an abnormality and try to introduce a better way to understand this phenomenon.
Secular and Islamic Politics in Turkey
Turkey is 99% Muslim, its ruling party, Justice and Development Party (JDP), comes from but denies its Islamist pedigree and has a very secular feel. However, the deeply secular regime distrusts the JDP with regard to its 'true' colours. This book tries to make sense of these paradoxical perceptions which have characterized Turkey's politics since the JDP came to power in 2002.
A Critique of Political Islam: The Turkish Model Case
The World of Monotheistic Religions Journal, 2018
Political Islam is a term often used in connection with the movements which represent the current political powers in the name of Islam. It is an idea that politically interprets Islamic rules and reflects these rules in a political way. When we look at the phenomenon of political Islam, we can clearly see that it has some differences between Turkey and most of the other Muslim countries. For instance, as Turkey is a secular state, there were some difficulties in expressing religious concepts in politics. Apart from this, political Islam has caused a sharp polarization among conservative people and secular people in Turkey, unlike other Muslim countries. This paper aims to show Islam’s approach to politics, the place and the domain of political Islam in the world conjuncture, and the damage given to the true Islamic understanding by the political Islam as a result of experiences in the history of Turkish politics.
Religion and Politics in Contemporary Turkey
Oxford Handbook of the Sociology of the Middle East, 2021
Religion and secularism have been central threads in Turkish politics throughout the history of the republic. This chapter focuses on three important aspects of the relationship between religion and politics in contemporary Turkey. First, it explores the political functions of the Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet), a government agency that has served as the primary means for the implementation of the religious policies of the Turkish state. Second, it investigates the relations between Islamic communities, political parties, and the state and argues that the distinction between official and unofficial Islam that has informed much of the work on the Turkish religious field must be strongly qualified. Finally, the author focuses on the trajectory of political Islam in Turkey, critically re viewing the literature on the rise, political incorporation, and authoritarian turn of Islamic parties. The conclusion emphasizes the need for studies investigating the impact of politics on religiosity in Turkish society.