Faith and Fashion in Turkey

Consumption, Politics and Islamic Identities

Nazli Alimen

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781786723796
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Islamic Theology

Turkey has witnessed remarkable sociocultural change under the regime of Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP), particularly regarding its religious communities. As individuals with pious identities have increasingly gained access to state power and accumulated economic influence, so religious appearances and practices have become more visible in Turkey's `secular' public spaces. More than this, consumption practices have changed and new Islamic and Islamist identities have emerged.
This book investigates three of the most widespread faith-inspired communities in Turkey: the Gulen, Suleymanli and the Menzil. Nazli Alimen compares these communities, looking at their diverse interpretations of Islamic rules related to the body and dress, and how these different groups compete for power and control in Turkey. In tracing what motivates consumption practices, the book adds to the growing interest in the commercial aspects of modest and Islamic fashion. It also highlights the importance of clothing and bodily rituals (such as veiling, grooming and food choices) for the formation of community identities. Based on ethnographic research, Alimen analyses the relationship between the marketplace and religion, and shows how different communities interact with each other and state institutions. Of particular note are the varied expressions of Islamic masculinities and femininities at play. Appealing to a cross-disciplinary readership, the book will be relevant for scholars within Turkish Studies, Gender Studies, Islamic Studies, Fashion, Consumption Studies, Sociology of Religion and Middle Eastern Studies.

1

Historical Context: Politics, Religion, Society and the Communities

The Foundation and the Early Years of the Republic

The Turkish Republic was founded on 29 October 1923, with Mustafa Kemal (Atatürk) as its first president and İsmet (İnönü) as its first prime minister.¹ The Republican People’s Party (CHP) was the only political party of the new regime and it ruled the state single-handedly for over two decades (1923–1946). This period is referred to as the ‘single-party regime’ or the ‘early Republican era’ (Zürcher 2004).² The single-party regime was based on Mustafa Kemal’s political ideology, called the Kemalist ideology or, simply, Kemalism, which consists of nationalism, republicanism, populism, laicism, revolutionism and statism; known as the ‘six arrows’.³

Kemalism is a normative project with the purpose of modernising both the state (along with its institutions) and the society in its core. It equates modernity with the West (particularly Western Europe); thus, the terms modern/modernisation, western/westernisation and civilised/civilisation are used synonymously in the Kemalist discourse. Kemalism imposes ‘modernisation’ as a normative project that aims to achieve the desired ‘modern’ or ‘Western’ manners and appearances, which symbolise a civilised nation. Accordingly, once the country achieves the desired outlook, the other advancements related to industrialisation and capitalism of modernised nations will follow. The Western or European versions, namely alafranga (the European way) were considered superior to the local and traditional, alaturka (the Turkish way). For instance, wearing ties and hats, shaking hands, dancing (particularly women and men together) and writing from left to right were some of the characteristics of the modern or civilised individuals (Göle 2000).⁴ Men, for example, would be ‘modernised’ through the use of a Western accessory: şapka (hat), a word new to Turkish speakers. With the introduction of the hat law in 1925, all (male) citizens were obliged to wear şapkas, i.e. Western style hats.⁵ This reform also outlawed the wearing of traditional hats, such as the fez (a brimless, cone-shaped, flat-crowned hat made of red felt with a black tassel), and religious headdresses, for example the sarık (a man’s headdress made by wrapping a long piece of fabric around a small cap, see Baker 1986).⁶ In 1934 dress reform was introduced through a law relating to the wearing of prohibited garments associated with religion, such as cübbe (a long and loose robe). On the other hand, women were not prohibited from wearing headscarves, though they were discouraged from doing so (Aktaş 2006).⁷ Nonetheless, the veil was banned in public places where women’s visibility demonstrated ‘the new, modern Turkey’ (Göle 1997a). This resulted in the symbolisation of veiled women as uneducated, rural, traditional and non-modern. I will discuss in detail the veil and the ban on the veil in the last section of this chapter.

Kemalism relies upon the normative belief that a modern society is a secular one. Thus, Kemalist modernisation was built upon secularisation. The single party regime introduced several reforms in an attempt to eliminate the role of religion in public and private lives. The 1924 constitution’s second article, which designated Islam as the state religion, was repealed in 1928. On the other hand, the ‘secular’ state has regularised and controlled religion through an institution, the Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet İşleri Başkanlığı), established on 3 March 1924, the same day as the abolition of the Caliphate. The Directorate of Religious Affairs trains and assigns personnel, including müftüs (state-educated theologians who pore over the Hadith and issue religious rulings, i.e. fatwas), imams (worship leaders of a mosque and Muslim community), müezzins (those who lead and recite the call to prayer for every prayer and act of worship in the mosque), vaizs (preachers) and Qur’an course teachers. It prepares hutbes (Friday sermons), supervises mosques and Islamic education, publishes books and periodicals, and organises the hajj (pilgrimage to Mecca) and umrah (non-obligatory visits to Mecca).⁸ As I will discuss in Chapter Three, some observant Muslims and faith-inspired communities disavow the interpretations of Islam by, and the activities of, the Directorate of Religious Affairs.

The law which entered into force in 1925 abolished all tekkes (lodges where şeyhs [sheiks] and their mürids [disciples] met), zaviyes (Islamic religious schools) and türbes (tombs of notable religious people) all of which had an independent status in the Ottoman Empire. Consequently, the Sufi tarikats, private religious institutions, which had pervasive influence on Anatolian society, were outlawed. Nevertheless, the impact of secularist legislation was uneven in relation to practices. Especially in eastern parts of the country, religious individuals and institutions, including tarikats, tekkes and şeyhs, maintained and even reinvented religious practices (Yalman 1969), such as the Menzil community (see Chapter Two).

In a nutshell, the single-party regime aimed to create a national identity and Turkify both the society and religion (Islam). This included ‘a very particular interpretation of Islam that was encoded in official religious educational practices and institutions’ whereas ‘alternative interpretations were condemned and often declared illegal’ (Shively 2008: 684–685). State Islam, an interpretation of Islam by the single-party regime, advocated that individuals referring to themselves as Muslims did not necessarily need to practise the religion and fulfil the duties, such as daily prayers, fasting, giving alms and pilgrimage (Yalman 1969). This contradicted the views of many observant Muslims on Islam and Muslim identity. In the following decades, several political and religious agents and institutions, in particular right-wing/Islamist politicians and political parties (for example, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in the 2000s), have successfully employed the ‘victimisation discourse’ which argues that the secular regime has used the Kemalist ideology, with its top-down reforms, to victimise the ‘(subaltern) majority’, whom they term ‘god-fearing’, ‘Sunni’ individuals (Kaya 2015).

The Return of the Restricted: Islam in Politics as Religious Populism

Although Turkey was neutral during World War II, the results of the war affected the country in many ways, including politically and economically. One of the main effects was the process of transition to a multi-party system in 1946. The victory of the Democrat Party (DP, a socially conservative economically liberal party, founded in 1946) in the 1950 general election with an overwhelming majority ended the 27-year uncontested power of the CHP. The DP won the following two elections, in 1954 and 1957, and ruled the country until the military coup d’état of 27 May 1960 (Zürcher 2004). What distinguished DP rule from the CHP was the Cold War era in which they governed, which turned Turkey into a geo-politically important regional player (Feroz Ahmad 2004). Agricultural production was mechanised with machinery imported from the United States under Marshall Aid (Feroz Ahmad 2004, Karpat 2004). Some state lands were distributed to landless peasants. The state offered extended credit to farmers and subsidised wheat and cotton. Moreover, there was an emergence of a small group of capital owners in the country (Karpat 2004). During the Korean War (1950–1953), to which Turkey sent soldiers in exchange for NATO membership, there was a boom in cotton prices. As a result of this, cotton producers became rich very quickly and some of them invested in cotton-based industries. Several of the large, family-owned companies that dominate Turkish industry today were among those investors (Zürcher 2004: 228). This further developed the wealth and political power of the industrial elite (for instance, TÜSİAD; see the following section).

Agricultural mechanisation created a labour surplus in the rural areas. Also, with the help of the US aid, mobility of people was facilitated through extensive road building. Starting from the late 1940s, increasing numbers of people moved from rural to urban areas and began to develop settlements in the outskirts of cities, close to city centres, and in particular Istanbul (Duyar-Kienast 2005). Starting in the 1960s this trend created the phenomenon of gecekondu (slum). In slum areas, Turkish political Islam gained great support from the 1970s onwards.

As mentioned previously, the single-party regime aimed to transform the ‘backward’ society into an enlightened one (Heper 1985). Reforms were viewed as progressive development by the supporters of Kemalism, but by the rest of society as the rejection and exclusion of local culture (Robins 1996: 68). Observant individuals had been particularly dissatisfied with the reforms governing Islamic practices, such as the recitation of ezan (call to prayer) in Turkish instead of Arabic with the law introduced in 1933. One of the first actions of the DP government was the removal of the ban on the recitation of ezan in Arabic (Feroz Ahmad 2004, Azak 2010). The DP also closed the People’s Houses (Halkevleri), which had been founded during the single-party regime, helping to disseminate Kemalism and implement its reforms, and influencing the electorate on behalf of the CHP (Karpat 2004, Lewis 1974).⁹ This takeover signified a stance against, and termination of, the Kemalist reforms (Karpat 2004).

The single-party regime positioned the Turkish military as its buttress, and despite the transition to a multi-party political system in 1946, the military continued to play a dominant role throughout the following decades (Hale 1994). Ever since then, the military officers have considered themselves protectors of the regime and Kemalism. Towards the end of the 1950s more and more military officers became discontent with DP rule. The DP policies did not directly stand against the Kemalist reforms but rather ignored or moderated them. For instance, the Hat Law was not repealed, but it became moderate or less binding.¹⁰ In a similar vein, there was no law banning restaurants from being closed during the daylight hours of Ramadan. However, no action was taken by the police to help the restaurant owners who were frightened or whose restaurants were attacked. Thus, for Kemalists, the DP had abandoned the Kemalist revolution and betrayed the upper socioeconomic classes (Lewis 1974: 149). All this discontent brought the DP to the end. The 27 May 1960 military coup d’état overthrew the DP government. The military officers formed the National Unity Committee (Milli Birlik Komitesi) and held power until 28 October 1961.

Political and Social Lives in the 1960s and 1970s

From the early 1960s to the early 1980s, the Turkish economy pursued a policy of import substituting industrialisation (ISI). The public sector in the 1960s and 1970s dominated heavy industry and owned the majority of industrial establishments, such as flour, sugar and tobacco. There was almost no foreign direct investment. There was a small number of Turkish private enterprises, mostly family holdings located in Istanbul. These refused any reform that would allow a reorganisation of the state economic enterprises to become efficient competitors, thereby altering the country’s economic structure. Rather, they sought state subsidy for the private sector (Feroz Ahmad 2004). These private firms, the only industrial bourgeoisie of the pre-1980s, aimed to further their interests, and in 1971 they established their exclusive organisation, the Association of Turkish Industrialists and Businessmen (TÜSİAD). With the establishment of TÜSİAD, industrialists officially claimed their privileged position and signalled their capacity to influence state policies. TÜSİAD has consistently supported state secularism, which seeks to restrict Islam to the private sphere (Buğra 1998, Kuru 2007).

Starting in the 1960s, rapid urbanisation challenged the ideals of the modernisation project (Erman 2012: 293). Whilst the number of people migrating into cities was still low, they could integrate into urban life, but this ceased to be the case after the early 1970s, when this number increased drastically. The populist politics of the political parties began to target the increasing number of immigrants in urban areas. Moreover, they were prone to other competing ideologies, notably political Islam (Poulton 1997).

Necmettin Erbakan, the most powerful figure in Turkish political Islam (Çalmuk 2005), initiated the Islamist movement in Turkish politics in the early 1970s with the formation of the National Outlook (Milli Görüş) movement, which was based on anti-globalisation and an anti-Western attitude (Kuru 2005).¹¹ Two political parties Erbakan founded in the 1970s, the National Order Party (MNP) and the National Salvation Party (MSP), were positioned as the parties of the low-income urban and middle-income rural populations with strong religious feelings and conservative values.¹²

Export of labour from Turkey to European countries was one of the socioeconomically important trends in the 1960s and 1970s. It helped the Turkish economy both by decreasing the unemployment rate and by providing a flow of foreign currency into the country (Feroz Ahmad 2004). Also, political Islam in Turkey benefited from the financial support of guest workers ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Author Bio
• Endorsement
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Figures
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• Glossary
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1 Historical Context: Politics, Religion, Society and the Communities
• 2 Fields and Habitus: The Religious Field of Sunni Islam and the Community Fields
• 3 Power and Politics: Interactions between Fields
• 4 The Body and Space: Gendered Understandings and Practices
• 5 Fashion and Consumption
• Conclusion
• Appendix
• Notes
• References