The Rise of Political Islam in Turkey

Urban Poverty, Grassroots Activism and Islamic Fundamentalism

Kayhan Delibas

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9780857738004
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion, Politics & State

Turkey, officially a secular state, voted in an Islamist party in 2002, 2007 and 2011. How far does this reflect the trend which has seen the rise of political Islam across the Middle East? Does this indicate a growing tendency in the direction of Islamisation amongst the Turkish population? If not, what are the underlying reasons behind the electoral triumphs of the Islamist Justice and Development Party (the AKP)? Kayhan Delibas seeks to answer these questions through an in-depth examination of the appeal of this political party, exploring its ideology, the routes and motives which produce party activists and local party organisations. Concluding that the AKP's success has been built on its criticism of growing inequalities, widespread corruption, unemployment, poverty and lack of basic services, Delibas draws a nuanced portrait of modern Turkish society and the relationship between religion and politics. Delibas offers an explanation, based on research carried out amongst grassroots activists, for the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in Turkey.Islamic movements are often described as anti-modernist, thought to be supported by fundamentalist groups living in a bygone age, isolated from the rest of the modern world.
In recent years, particularly since the events of 9/11, such movements have also been seen as a threat to the Western way of life. But Delibas argues that these movements, and particularly those in Turkey, did not arise out of religious fervour or hatred of Western civilisation, as is often claimed. Rather, they were founded, and have thrived, as a response to socio-economic and political conditions that have been aggravated by neoliberal economic policies, rapid urbanisation and the globalization of culture. By exploring the structural conditions in which an Islamic movement emerged and become popular in a seemingly secular state, The Rise of Political Islam in Turkey offers vital analysis for all those researching modern Turkey and the growth of Islamist politics throughout the Middle East and North Africa.

CHAPTER 1

POLITICAL ISLAM IN TURKEY: GRASSROOTS ACTIVISTS AND THEIR EFFECT ON THE RISE OF PRO-ISLAMIC PARTIES

Introduction

The aim of this book is two-fold. First of all, I wish to explore the underlying causes of the unprecedented rise of political Islam in Turkey. In other words, to shed light on why and how the pro-Islamist Welfare Party tripled its share of votes between 1987 and 1995 from 7 per cent to 21 per cent at general elections, which later paved the way for the pro-Islamist AKP government in 2002. Second, I aim to find out what effect grassroots organisations and activism had on the WP/VP’s unprecedented electoral success in the 1990s.

There is no doubt that one of the most important developments of the 1980s and 1990s was the emergence of fundamentalist movements all around the world. Not surprisingly Turkey, a predominantly Muslim country, was no exception to this religious revivalist trend. From the early 1980s onwards, political Islam had an increasingly influential role in the country’s socioeconomic, political and cultural life (Ayata, 1993, p. 65). In the early 1990s it was argued that this revival of Islamic fundamentalism would change Turkish society (see Şaylan, 1992, p. 127). In fact, this development contradicted predictions of a modernist, secularist paradigm that envisaged secularisation as imminent and the role of religion in politics diminished forever. What was more mysterious for many was the fact that political Islam became one of the main political forces in Turkey despite one and a half centuries of modernisation, Westernisation and strictly guided secularisation policies.

The Historiography of the Rise of the Turkish Islamist Movement: The 1990s

The pro-Islamist Refah Party (the Welfare Party, WP) became the biggest mass political party within a relatively short period of time. The Welfare Party increased its share of the vote from 9.8 per cent in 1989 to 19.1 per cent in the 1994 local elections, a turning point in Turkish political history. For the first time in over 70 years of the secular republic, many of Turkey’s major cities including Istanbul and Ankara, the capital of the secularist republic, faced the reality of having Islamist mayors. This was a devastating shock for the militant secularist elites – chiefly the military and bureaucratic elites, liberals, social democrats, and the Westernised strata of society. The modernised, Westernised and secular elements of Turkish society felt under siege. They felt threatened by Islamic fundamentalism, which is often associated with ‘extremism’, ‘irrationality’, ‘intolerance’ and ‘religious bigotry’ and, since 11 September 2001, with international terrorism.

The results of the general elections held on 24 December 1995 showed that the WP was strengthening its power. It attained 21.4 per cent of the total vote and gained more seats (158 out of 550) than any of the mainstream secularist parties.¹ This time the general election heightened the tension between laicists (secularists) and Islamists (fundamentalists) to a degree where the Islamic-led government was forced to resign after just 11 months in office. However, the resignation of Necmettin Erbakan, the leader of the WP, on 28 February 1997, following what some commentators have called a postmodern coup was not the end but the beginning of another chapter in a long and exhausting battle between secularist military and bureaucratic elites and the Islamic WP.² Not only was the Welfare Party, the largest party in the country, being closed down by the supreme court, but Erbakan and six other MPs were banned from politics as well.

In response to the rise of political Islam, the military elite that dominated the National Security Council (NSC) needed to redefine its ‘security concept’. After fifteen years fighting with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), political Islam was elevated to the number one internal threat to the secular republic. From then on, virtually all of the monthly NSC meetings focused on the şeriat tehdidi – the threat of Islamic fundamentalism – assessed the latest irticai (fundamentalist) activities of various Islamic groups, and worked on plans for their eradication. ‘If necessary, our fight against the fundamentalist threat will continue for one thousand years’, declared one of the leading army generals.³ The process of 28 February continues. It has laid the foundations for the pacification of political Islam. Leading figures such as Erbakan, the creator and leader of the Welfare Party; Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the ex-mayor of Istanbul (for many the future leader of political Islam); Şevket Kazan; Hasan Mezarcı; Şükrü Karatepe, ex-mayor of Kayseri; and many others, have been banned from politics.

In addition to internal concerns, the rise of political Islam in Turkey caused a considerable degree of disquiet in the capital cities of Turkey’s Western allies. New York Times journalist John Darnton (1995) wrote:

For years a strategic ally in the containment of Soviet Communism, Turkey has now become a bulwark against dictators, terrorists and Islamic radicals ... Now, with conflicts multiplying in Azerbaijan and elsewhere, the east conjures up danger as well as riches. Turkey is recasting itself as a buffer state and as a bulwark, only this time against revolutionary Islam.

After noting Turkey’s strategic position during the Cold War as a buffer state against Soviet Communism, Darnton pointed out the new threat to the West by referring to the comment by Willy Claes (ex-secretary general of NATO) that ‘fundamentalism posed as big a threat to the West as Communism once did’.⁴ There is nothing new in Willy Claes’ point of view. It has been widely shared by many influential Western intellectuals but the importance of his view comes when NATO is taken into account. When NATO began to view Islamic fundamentalism as the biggest threat to the West, Turkey, as one of the key NATO members, had a new role as a buffer zone against political Islam. Richard Holbrooke (assistant secretary of state at that time), another high-ranking diplomat in the US administration in the 1990s, assessed the regional situation as ‘the most volatile portion of the world today’. And he added: ‘We haven’t paid enough attention to Turkey.’⁵ Returning to the situation in Turkey, Darnton argued that, ‘The fundamentalist rise is already very real. The Welfare Party, a militant Islamic group, has taken control of local governments in Ankara, Istanbul and other municipalities (ibid.).’

In his article, Darnton highlights three important points: first, Islamic fundamentalism is the new threat to the West; second, Turkey as a bulwark was and will continue to be crucial for Western interests; and third, Islamic fundamentalism is a real threat in Turkey as well. Therefore, it is a security concern for the West itself.

Why is the rise of political Islam so important? First of all, because of the embedded tension between the modernist, secularist elite representing the ‘centre’ and anti-secular Islamic groups representing the ‘periphery’. Turkey is a predominantly Muslim country established from the ruins of the Ottoman Empire in 1923 as a modern and secular republic. The Turkish revolution led by modernist, secularist elites changed everything from the alphabet to the dress code. The most challenging step was the abolition of the Sultanate and the Caliphate, the supreme religious authority of Islam. This was a daunting task, opposed by the conservative religious elite and various sections of society. Since the 1920s the secularist elite have always seen Islam as a major obstacle to Turkey’s modernisation and a serious threat to political authority (Toprak, 1987, p. 218; see also Göle, 2000, pp. 63–4).

Roots of the ‘Centre–Periphery’ Divide

The importance of the rise of political Islam in Turkey comes partly from the nature of the main political cleavage in Turkey. Şerif Mardin argues that: ‘“centre–periphery” relations provide a good explanatory scheme to comprehend Turkish politics’ (1973, pp. 169–91). In the same vein, Nur Yalman points out that during the ‘beneficent period of 1838–1877, Ottoman society was divided into two kulturkamps’ (1973, p. 152). This duality continued until the 1960s. Since then new elements have been added to the equation, such as class and ethnic dimensions. But the divide of secular/anti-secular is still one of the most important aspects of the Turkish polity. For this reason the unprecedented rise of political Islam has caused sharp polarisation – a deep political crisis, widespread panic, anxiety and fear, as well as escalating the tension between the modernist secularists and the Islamist camps in Turkey.⁶

Few other problems, since the 1920s, have challenged the Turkish secular establishment as political Islam did. The Kurdish nationalist movement from 1984 is perhaps the only other fundamental challenge that Turkey faced throughout the 1990s.

Since the mid-1990s the rise of religious movements in general and political Islam in particular has been one of the most commonly discussed subjects in the mass media and various academic disciplines (Benin and Stork, 1997, p. 8; Munson, 1995, pp. 151–66; Sidahmed and Ehteshami, 1996, p. 2). This extraordinary interest is, on the one hand, due to dramatic changes that came about with the end of the Cold War and the proclamation of the New World Order. The collapse of the former Socialist bloc and the diminishment of its mighty military machinery left the US as the single super power. This was a major shift in international politics – a power vacuum that had to be filled. At this historical juncture, Islam, with its one billion adherents spread out across the globe, appeared to constitute the most pervasive and powerful transactional force in the world (Esposito, 1995, p. 4). On the other hand, there has been an increasing politicisation of Islam as an assertive alternative politics across the Muslim world. Furthermore, there have been a series of events, such as attacks on Western embassies, hijackings and hostage-takings, and violent acts by some Islamist groups. Most importantly, the bombing of the World Trade Centre in 1993 and the events of 11 September 2001 triggered massive media coverage of Islamic fundamentalism.⁷

However, the rise of political Islam cannot be investigated in isolation as a regional or localised phenomenon because it is closely connected with political and socioeconomic developments taking place on a global scale (Bina, 1994, p. 3). This is true in the case of the WP in Turkey as well. The rise of the WP/VP from a movement to a mass political party was closely connected with globalisation of neoliberal economy policies and the implementation of restructuring policies by the IMF and the World Bank in Turkey.

Islamic Fundamentalism: A Problematic Categorisation?

The categorisation of political Islam as Islamic fundamentalism was, by and large, one of the results of the end of the Cold War. Was there a new phenomenon called ‘fundamentalism’, or rather a shift in sociology’s conceptualisation? It appears that the conceptualisation of ‘fundamentalism’ has been heavily influenced by the discourse of the New World Order, a sociopolitical trend that dominated the 1990s. Many of the extremist forms of politics that are today labelled fundamentalism could have been called extremism, fanaticism, Buddhism or Islamism in the past, but today are called fundamentalism only because of ideological shifts taking place on a global scale. The proclamation of ‘the end of history’ and claims about ‘the universalisation of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government’ explicitly excluded many non-liberal or non-Western ideologies and government types.⁸ It is this presumption that has allowed the labelling of non-Western or non-liberal politics or ideologies as ‘fundamentalist’.

Like many sociological concepts, the concept of fundamentalism has been rather problematic. The application of this concept to Islam has generated widespread criticism among scholars. It is argued that this concept is neither descriptive nor explanatory (Campo, 1995, pp. 167–94). The concept originated with the American Protestant fundamentalist movement that emerged in the 1920s. Fred Halliday (1995b, p. 399) points out that there are some problems with applying the term ‘fundamentalism’ to Muslim movements. Also, Nikki Keddie (1986, cited in Halliday 1995b, p. 399) suggests that ‘“Islamist” instead of “Islamic fundamentalist” is probably the most accurate concept for this movement’. The discourses of Islamic fundamentalism are diverse. The most permanent discourses shaped by Western commentators tend to view these sociopolitical movements as religious fanatic groups with a unique and rigid agenda of restoring a seventh-century-style Islamic society in the twenty-first century.

Political Islam is often regarded as a major threat to the stability of the Middle East, and therefore to Western interests in the region (Esposito, 1995, p. 4). For some writers like Huntington (1994) and Lewis (1990) Islamic fundamentalism is not just a threat to Western interests but a threat to Western civilisation too. In effect, it has become the Green Menace that replaced the Red Menace of the Cold War era (Esposito, 1995, p. 5).

The discourse on political Islam among Western commentators and academics has some parallels with the discourse on political Islam in Turkey. The one exception is the emphasis given to secularism/anti-secularism and modernity/anti-modernity, which are well-known elements of Western discourse. In Turkey the central focus of the debate is on the threat of ‘Islamic fundamentalism’ to the modern, secular, democratic republic and the principles of Atatürk.⁹

Furthermore, ‘Islamic fundamentalism’ for many scholars is equated with ‘terrorism’, ‘extremism’, ‘intolerance’, ‘irrationality’ or ‘the Green Menace’.¹⁰ These claims are not all unjustified exaggeration or accusations or the product of imaginative minds of external/Western observers. Some of the worst terrorist attacks, such as the 11 September attacks, several plane hijackings, the Dahran bombing in Saudi Arabia and other terrorist attacks (in London, Istanbul, Madrid, etc.) have been staged or orchestrated mainly by Al-Qaeda and some other Islamist terrorist groups. These have conjured up the idea of a global ‘fundamentalist’ jihad (holy war) against the West in the eyes of the Western public. But the issue of terrorism is something that cannot be confined to a particular religion or region. There are groups from all religions, nationalities, ethnic backgrounds or political persuasions that choose terrorism as a way of doing politics. In other words, there is nothing in terrorism exclusive to Islam.

In addition, there are many other problems with the categorisation of Islamic fundamentalism. Labelling political Islam as ‘extremism’, ‘fanaticism’, ‘fundamentalism’, ‘intolerance’ or ‘irrationality’ does not help sociologists grasp the conditions in which these movements emerge and develop. On the contrary, it has led area specialists, sociologists, public policymakers and politicians to a misleading conclusion about the realities of these Islamist groups. Viewing them as nothing more than ‘irrational’, ‘fundamentalist’, ‘intolerant’ movements automatically makes them an enemy of tolerance, democracy and the Western way of life. More importantly, the actions of these groups are the symptoms, but the prime objective of social science is to find out the root causes, the driving forces of these Islamist movements, rather than simply looking at the bare symptoms and launching security policies that have themselves become part of the problem associated with these movements.

The use of the term ‘fundamentalism’ can be criticised for four serious defects: taxonomic error, taxonomic imprecision, polemical distortion and ideological mobilisation (Campo, 1995, p. 172). Its usage is arbitrary in many ways. It is often accusatory, especially in the media; Juergensmeyer (1993, p. 4) has said the term is ‘pejorative’. It implies that these movements are ‘an intolerant, self-righteous and narrowly dogmatic religio...

Table of contents

• Cover
• About the Author
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• 1. Political Islam in Turkey: Grassroots Activists and Their Effect on the Rise of Pro-Islamic Parties
• 2. The Decline of the Turkish Political Party System, 1980–2002
• 3. From Movement to Political Party: The Changing Contours of Political Islam in Turkey
• 4. The Urban Roots of Political Islam
• 5. Explaining the Meaning of Party Membership: Routes to and Reasons for Party Membership
• 6. The Grassroots Activists: The Making of Islamist Activism
• 7. Not Like Any Other Party: The Effects of Grassroots Activism on the Electoral Outcome
• 8. Conclusion: Fundamentalism Demystified
• Appendix
• Notes
• Bibliography