Erdogan’s Turkey: Reconsidering the Religious Revival Narrative
Write an article on Armenia and Azerbaijan and the role of social media spectacle, and how the use
of activist aesthetics is actually harming the ability to reduce tensions and conflicts.
Necmettin Erbakan is an important figure as the leader of various Islamist parties throughout the
70’s,80’s, and 90’s. He came to power as the Prime minister under the Welfare party in 1996, a
religious right party that focused on social issues and grassroots organization and thereby stunned
the secular establishment by winning the 1995 election. However, similar to his previous stints as
the leader of various Islamist parties, the military intervened and banned him from political
activities for 5 years. The 1997 coup, unlike previous ones was not as direct and has been referred
to as a “post-modern” coup, due to its use of establishment pressure as opposed to direct
confrontation.
The “February 28 process,” as the military’s effort to force Erbakan’s resignation is termed in
Turkey, was an important political watershed. It marked the abandonment of the idea that religion
could be used to consolidate society, which had been at the root of the Turkish-Islamic synthesis.
Thereafter, the military embarked on an overt campaign against Islamist ideas and ideology, which
together with Kurdish sepa- ratism was singled out as one of the main threats to Turkish security
ROPI 44
This recognition sparked an intense internal debate and rethink- ing within the Islamic movement
about the movement’s future politi- cal strategy and agenda, and a growing philosophical and
political rift emerged within the movement between two different groups. The “tra- ditionalists”
(Gelenekçiler), centered on Erbakan and his chief lieuten- ant, Recai Kutan, opposed any serious
change in approach or policy, while a younger group of “modernists,” or “reformists” (Yenilikçiler),
led by Recep Tayyip Erdo�an, the mayor of Istanbul, and his close associ- ate Abdullah Gül, argued
that the party needed to rethink its approach to a number of fundamental issues, particularly
democracy, human rights, and relations with the West. The reformists also opposed Erba- kan’s
authoritarian leadership style and called for greater inner-party democracy. ROPI 45
The founders of the AKP, by contrast, were open to cooperation with the secular establishment.
The AKP program emphasizes the par- ty’s loyalty to the fundamental values and constitution of the
Turkish Republic.26 While the AKP has Islamic roots—many of its leaders, including Erdo�an and Gül,
came out of the Milli Görüş movement and had been members of the Welfare and Virtue parties—
the AKP defines itself not as an Islamic party but as a conservative democratic party similar to
Christian democratic parties in Western Europe. 47
Important POINT MADE HERE – Essentially the new Islamic politics isn’t a return to some
former notion of Islamic caliphate and universal Islamic authority or identity – it is particularly
national and limited to the Turkish state. Although Erdogan presents himself discursively as a
symbol of the larger muslim community through symbols such as the Hagia Sofia, the AKP
remains a nationally vested party. In that sense the revival of religious politics is not a return to
anything before the 20th century anyway – even religion here is being used in a somewhat secular
sense – the strengthening of a national “Turkish” identity which itself was constructed in the 20th
century Secular project.
Necmettin Erbakan is an important figure as the leader of various Islamist parties throughout the
70’s,80’s, and 90’s. He came to power as the Prime minister under the Welfare party in 1996, a
religious right party that focused on social issues and grassroots organization and thereby
stunned the secular establishment by winning the 1995 election. However, similar to his previous
stints as the leader of various Islamist parties, the military intervened and banned him from
political activities for 5 years. The 1997 coup, unlike previous ones was not as direct and has
been referred to as a “post-modern” coup, due to its use of establishment pressure as opposed to
direct confrontation.
The AKP does represent a revival of religious politics, but also a certain pragmatism whereby it
isn’t afraid to stray from the conventional narratives which have dominated Turkey’s religious
parties. It portrayed itself initially as neither anti-West, nor anti-European, and increasingly
framed its discourse in “Western-friendly” terms such as human-rights, democracy, and
liberalism. The AKP used a certain sense of cultural soft power to reflect religious authority,
with Erdogan using symbolic religious posturing to flex his muscles in the Middle-East, while
similarly attempting to integrate Turkey into a global economy and institutions such as the EU,
which were previously seen as non-Islamic. Thus, the religious/secular divide itself is not as
powerful in Turkey under the AKP, rather they use a pragmatic mix of religious and secular
narratives to ensure their political survival.
However, recent events have obviously complicated this narrative. After the failed 2015 coup,
the ongoing journalists purges and incredulity towards Western responses has significantly
soured EU-Turkey relations and bought Erdogan under increasing pressure domestically and
abroad. This recent turn as well provides evidence that we shouldn’t view the AKP as a religious
party necessarily. Most young-conservatives that have stopped supporting Erdogan are looking
for a conservative alternative – not a religious one. The opposite of what we would expect, were
Erdogan nothing more than a religious leader. The recent Gezi park protests further complicate
the idea of a strict divide between religious and secular politics. Turkish citizens upset over the
governments lack of free and open political expression, as well as interestingly, the
transformation of public spaces into consumer resorts and shopping centers resonated throughout
Turkish society. In particular, the
Gezi protests amplified a strong social reaction
against the government’s urban renewal policies. Erecting luxurious residences and skyscrapers
all around the country, and replacing cities’ last remaining forest lands and squares
with highways, shopping malls, grandiose mosques, hydroelectric and nuclear plants, and
gigantic airports were identified by the protestors as the definite signs of the AKP’s authoritarian
transformation of urban landscapes into profitable income resources. From the lens
of the protestors, these ‘environmentally and culturally damaging’ urban renewal policies
were a ‘new way of oppression’, threatening their lifestyles and subverting their feelings of
belonging and attachment to their living spaces (Farro and Demirhisar 2014, 177).
Just as Erdogan himself had initially been successful through a pragmatic approach whereby
traditional Islamic symbolism was used in tandem with placating to the Anatolian bourgosie and
a further neoliberal push in the Turkish economy, so too had the revolt against authoritarian
practices equally become a hybrid mix between religious groups, secular groups, traditionalists
and conservatives, and neoliberals and social reformers. Thereby, the future of Turkish politics,
just as its past cannot be understood solely by the explanatory force of some supposed dichotomy
between religious and secular politics; instead the operationalization of these narratives by both
the state and the citizenry will have to be examined going forward.
CITATION BLOCKS
After Atatürk’s death in 1938, the authoritarian tendencies of the regime intensified. Atatürk’s
successor, İsmet İnönü, sought to build the regime’s legitimacy on a strict interpretation of
Kemalism. One- party rule served as a means to carry out a radical transformation of Turkish
society. The majority of the population remained outside of politics and wedded to traditional
habits and lifestyles over which Islam continued to exert an important influence. In a sense, what
has occurred over the past several decades is an attempt by this marginalized periphery to find its
political voice and representation. Political Islam has increasingly provided that voice. Over time,
the political goals and ideology of the Islamic movement have evolved, and it has jettisoned or
moderated many key tenets of its initial political agenda, particularly its hostility to Westernization,
in an effort to attract broader political support. ROPI 35
Ironically, the military contributed to the strengthening of politi- cal Islam in Turkey. An upsurge of
left-wing and right-wing violence that brought Turkey to the brink of civil war in the 1970s eventually prompted the military to intervene in 1980 to restore order.11 In an effort to combat
communism and leftist ideologies, the military attempted to strengthen the role of Islam. Under the
military’s tute- lage, religious education was made a compulsory subject in all schools. Quranic
classes were opened, and state-controlled moral and religious education was promoted ROPI 37
In effect, the military sought to institute a process of state- controlled “Islamization from above.” By
fusing Islamic symbols with nationalism, the military hoped to create a more homogeneous and less
political Islamic community and to insulate the population from the influence of left-wing ideologies
ROPI 37
The rise of political Islam in Turkey has its roots in the reforms under- taken in the late Ottoman
period and in the nature of the political transformation undertaken after the founding of the
Turkish Republic by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in 1923.2 Atatürk’s attempt to transform Turkey
into a modern, Western, secular state essentially represented a “revolution from above.” It was a
state-instituted, top-down enterprise in social engineering carried out by a small militarybureaucratic elite that imposed its secularist vision on a reluctant traditional society. In carrying
out this transformation, the elite made little effort to co-opt or cajole the population or the
opposition. As Do�u Ergil noted, “Neither the secularization nor the Turkification of the nation
was negotiated with the people in a serious way.”3 Instead the elite simply tried to use the
“strong state” to overwhelm and intimidate any opposition.4 ROPI 33
However, most of these reforms were limited to the urban centers; the countryside remained
largely untouched. Until the 1950s, the bulk of the Turkish population remained isolated and
traditional, while the urban centers were modern and secular. In effect, two Turkeys coex- isted in
uneasy harmony: an urban, modern, secular “center” and a rural, traditional, religious “periphery,”5
ROPI 33
The architects of this ideological program hoped to create a new form of depoliticized TurkishIslamic culture that would reunify soci- ety and provide the basis for a unified, strong, and stable
state. The syn- thesis, however, sent an ambiguous message. On one hand, under the 1982
constitution, Turkey was defined as a secular state. On the other hand, the role of religion was
strengthened in schools and education as a means of reinforcing Turkish nationalism, which tended
to weaken the emphasis on secularism. At the same time, it provided opportuni- ties for the
Islamists to expand and reinforce their own message. ROPI 38
These economic and social changes contributed to an upsurge in the political strength of Islamic
political groups in the 1970s and 1980s. Its first independent political expression was the
establishment of the National Order Party (MNP) in January 1970. The MNP was the first of several
Islamic parties led by Necmettin Erbakan. It advocated a new economic and social order based on
“national” (read Islamic) principles. However, the MNP’s existence was short-lived. The party was
shut down after a military intervention in 1971 on the grounds that it was against the secular nature
of the state. The founders of the MNP and its successors came out of the National View (Milli
Görüş) movement,17 whose leaders sought a return to traditional values and institutions. They
regarded the Kemalist attempt to replace the Islamic-Ottoman state and culture with a West- ern
model as a historic mistake and the source of all the ills in Turkish society. Their goal was to build a
“national (Islamic) order” and put an end to the process of Westernization.18 They saw Turkey’s
identity and future closely linked with the Muslim world, rather than with the West. ROPI 40
Important POINT MADE HERE – Essentially the new Islamic politics isn’t a return to some former
notion of Islamic caliphate and universal Islamic authority or identity – it is particularly national and
limited to the Turkish state. Although Erdogan presents himself discursively as a symbol of the
larger muslim community through symbols such as the Hagia Sofia, the AKP remains a nationally
vested party. In that sense the revival of religious politics is not a return to anything before the 20th
century anyway – even religion here is being used in a somewhat secular sense – the strengthening
of a national “Turkish” identity which itself was constructed in the 20th century Secular project.
Necmettin Erbakan is an important figure as the leader of various Islamist parties throughout the
70’s,80’s, and 90’s. He came to power as the Prime minister under the Welfare party in 1996, a
religious right party that focused on social issues and grassroots organization and thereby stunned
the secular establishment by winning the 1995 election. However, similar to his previous stints as
the leader of various Islamist parties, the military intervened and banned him from political
activities for 5 years. The 1997 coup, unlike previous ones was not as direct and has been referred
to as a “post-modern” coup, due to its use of establishment pressure as opposed to direct
confrontation.
The “February 28 process,” as the military’s effort to force Erbakan’s resignation is termed in
Turkey, was an important political watershed. It marked the abandonment of the idea that religion
could be used to consolidate society, which had been at the root of the Turkish-Islamic synthesis.
Thereafter, the military embarked on an overt campaign against Islamist ideas and ideology, which
together with Kurdish sepa- ratism was singled out as one of the main threats to Turkish security
ROPI 44
This recognition sparked an intense internal debate and rethink- ing within the Islamic movement
about the movement’s future politi- cal strategy and agenda, and a growing philosophical and
political rift emerged within the movement between two different groups. The “tra- ditionalists”
(Gelenekçiler), centered on Erbakan and his chief lieuten- ant, Recai Kutan, opposed any serious
change in approach or policy, while a younger group of “modernists,” or “reformists” (Yenilikçiler),
led by Recep Tayyip Erdo�an, the mayor of Istanbul, and his close associ- ate Abdullah Gül, argued
that the party needed to rethink its approach to a number of fundamental issues, particularly
democracy, human rights, and relations with the West. The reformists also opposed Erba- kan’s
authoritarian leadership style and called for greater inner-party democracy. ROPI 45
The founders of the AKP, by contrast, were open to cooperation with the secular establishment.
The AKP program emphasizes the par- ty’s loyalty to the fundamental values and constitution of the
Turkish Republic.26 While the AKP has Islamic roots—many of its leaders, including Erdo�an and Gül,
came out of the Milli Görüş movement and had been members of the Welfare and Virtue parties—
the AKP defines itself not as an Islamic party but as a conservative democratic party similar to
Christian democratic parties in Western Europe. 47
Whereas it received 34 percent of the vote in the November 2002 election, it obtained 46.6 percent
of the vote in the July 22, 2007, election—an increase of more than 12 percent. Moreover, the AKP
increased its electoral support in all seven regions of the country. The most important increases
occurred in the predominantly Kurdish areas of southeastern Anatolia. The AKP also increased its
support in the five largest cities in Turkey. In Istanbul, it received almost as many votes as all its
opponents combined. This suggests that the AKP is gradually extending its hold from the periphery
toward the city centers. The par- ty’s main support, however, comes from the poorer and lessdeveloped parts of the cities (the varo�). 49
While the 2007 election showed clear cleavages between the center and the periphery, with the
CHP doing best in the wealthier parts of the larger cities, it also showed, as Tanju Tosun has pointed
out, that the AKP represents a catch-all party and should not be regarded as a religious party.29
Indeed, the support it received from different social groups gives the AKP the attributes of a centerright party. 50
The AKP does represent a revival of religious politics, but also a certain pragmatism whereby it isn’t
afraid to stray from the conventional narratives which have dominated Turkey’s religious parties. It
portrayed itself initially as neither anti-West, nor anti-European, and increasingly framed its
discourse in “Western-friendly” terms such as human-rights, democracy, and liberalism. The AKP
used a certain sense of cultural soft power to reflect religious authority, with Erdogan using
symbolic religious posturing to flex his muscles in the Middle-East, while similarly attempting to
integrate Turkey into a global economy and institutions such as the EU, which were previously seen
as non-Islamic. Thus, the religious/secular divide itself is not as powerful in Turkey under the AKP,
rather they use a pragmatic mix of religious and secular narratives to ensure their political survival.
However, recent events have obviously complicated this narrative. After the failed 2015 coup, the
ongoing journalists purges and incredulity towards Western responses has significantly soured EUTurkey relations and bought Erdogan under increasing pressure domestically and abroad. This
recent turn as well provides evidence that we shouldn’t view the AKP as a religious party
necessarily. Most young-conservatives that have stopped supporting Erdogan are looking for a
conservative alternative – not a religious one. The opposite of what we would expect, were Erdogan
nothing more than a religious leader. The recent Gezi park protests further complicate the idea of a
strict divide between religious and secular politics. Turkish citizens upset over the governments lack
of free and open political expression, as well as interestingly, the transformation of public spaces
into consumer resorts and shopping centers resonated throughout Turkish society. In particular, the
Gezi protests amplified a strong social reaction
against the government’s urban renewal policies. Erecting luxurious residences and skyscrapers
all around the country, and replacing cities’ last remaining forest lands and squares
with highways, shopping malls, grandiose mosques, hydroelectric and nuclear plants, and
gigantic airports were identified by the protestors as the definite signs of the AKP’s authoritarian
transformation of urban landscapes into profitable income resources. From the lens
of the protestors, these ‘environmentally and culturally damaging’ urban renewal policies
were a ‘new way of oppression’, threatening their lifestyles and subverting their feelings of
belonging and attachment to their living spaces (Farro and Demirhisar 2014, 177).
The Anti-Capitalist Muslims’ invitation of
secular communities to such an Islamic-oriented political event, as well as the remarkable
interest shown by secular communities towards this ‘Islamic political’ form of protest, raised
important questions regarding the potentiality of the Gezi protests to defy the long-standing
boundary between secular and Islamic communities – a boundary that has regenerated the
‘secular/Islamic divide’ as a hegemonic rule in characterising Turkish politics for more than
three decades (Damar 2012, 2014).
Just as Erdogan himself had initially been successful through a pragmatic approach whereby
traditional Islamic symbolism was used in tandem with placating to the Anatolian bourgosie and
a further neoliberal push in the Turkish economy, so too had the revolt against authoritarian
practices equally become a hybrid mix between religious groups, secular groups, traditionalists
and conservatives, and neoliberals and social reformers. Thereby, the future of Turkish politics,
just as its past cannot be understood solely by the explanatory force of some supposed dichotomy
between religious and secular politics; instead the operationalization of these narratives by both
the state and the citizenry will have to be examined going forward.
In the words of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, it aimed to “liberate the religion of
Islam, within which we have been living peacefully and happily with
devotion, from the customary ways in which it has become a means
of politics [vasıta-i siyaset] (Bravo, applause).”6 (secularism in France and Turkey 201)
After the coup d’état in 1980, the Kemalist military
constitutionalized compulsory Sunni religion courses in the public
school curriculum and redefined the constitutional role of statesalaried
imams as serving national solidarity. The portion of the
literature that takes Kemalist laicism as anticlerical qualifies this
moment either as a mere contradiction or as some kind of necessity
emerging from the different nature of Islam for reaching laicism in a
Muslim society. However, the constituent assembly debates in the
making of the military constitution of 1982 show that the military’s
institutional preferences came from an explicit interest in mobilizing
religion (as the cement of society) against leftist movements and had
nothing to do with the “threat of Islam.” (secularism in france and turkey 200)
In a speech he gave in January 1923, Mustafa Kemal stated that “our religion is the
most reasonable and most natural religion, and it is precisely for this
reason that it has been the last religion. In order for a religion to be
natural, it should conform to reason, technology, science, and logic.
Our religion is totally compatible with these.”11 (secularism in france and turkey, 203)
there is
danger in it of the use of religion for political ends. Now that the
state has rid itself entirely of religious control, it should, in turn,
leave Islam alone.… Adivar, in Yale Law Review, 206 SFT
Twenty-nine İmam Hatip four-year
secondary schools (schools for the education of Muslim clerics) were
established in 1924 in place of the medreses in order to bring up
imams and preachers loyal to the Republic.26 The number of İmam
Hatip schools declined steadily from 1924 until 1930 because of a
lack of students, and in the 1929–30 academic year they were all
closed. The Faculty of Theology at Istanbul University was closed in
1933, after a report by a European scholar documented the small
number of registered students. 209 SFT
Sinan Tekelioğlu
That means, we have given the administration
of their pious foundations to them and placed the “Directorate of
Religious Affairs” at the head of the religious community belonging
to the religion of Islam.… But we have left its hands tied.…
Whereas christian and jewish Turkish religious communities have
established schools for themselves, have trained priests, rabbis,
and grave diggers. But the Turks who constitute 8/10 of this
country … do not even have someone to bury their dead. 220 SFT